Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: ROAD (05/19/22)
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TITLE: Cold on the Trail | Previous Challenge Entry
By Art Westefeld
05/26/22 -
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Speedster arrived at the Alaska Bureau of Investigations office nearest to where Freeze had been spotted. She was informed that Freeze was trying to free a super villain, Waerloga, of whom she'd never heard. Lady Freeze was generally a loner, so Speedster remarked to the Trooper at the desk, “Maybe she believes he can eliminate her need to drain heat from others.”
The Trooper drawled, “Don’t know anything about that, but she’s been seen near the road we’re using to transport ‘em to prison.”
After getting the route from the Colonel, a process which would have been approved with just a nod back home, Speedster raced across the roads to where her foe was waiting. As she got closer, she slowed to a normal human speed so as not to alert her frozen foe, who was crouched close to the highway where the prison transport would pass by.
As she crept closer, Speedster judged her chances of dealing with her foe. She could see Freeze shivering in the cool air and thought, uncharitably, ‘It’s her own fault for coming to Alaska. How did she get here?’
Speedster had no further time to wonder. Both women heard the sound of a heavy transport rattling ever closer.
Freeze spoke, unaware of the heroine a few feet behind her, “Once I break him out, I can use his gratitude to cure me of these powers, so I can be a normal woman again.”
Speedster empathized with her foe wanting to be normal, but asking another supervillain to assist seemed like she was going down a rabbit trail of desperation. “No matter,” Speedster said under her breath. “She’s planning a jailbreak and I have to stop her.”
Crawling, so her shadow wouldn’t give her away to Freeze, Speedster arrived just as the transport crossed in front of them.
Freeze fired ice blasts from her hands, one to block the truck, the second to rip open the transport. Speedster saw a little man leap from the truck and scramble towards Freeze. Leaving the villains to talk, Speedster abandoned stealth to rescue the driver, who had been thrown from the truck and was lying on the side of the road, bleeding from a head wound that was staining his blue uniform shirt. Her actions were spotted by Freeze who muttered, “Why can’t she stay home? I’m not hurting anyone, just doing a simple jailbreak.”
Speedster raced the unconscious driver to a nearby hospital. Returning, she discovered how her foe had arrived in Alaska. Freeze and Waerloga were getting into a nearby Jeep. Speedster could have run rings around the SUV if she needed to, but decided to see what her foe’s plan was exactly.
Waerloga asked, his voice inflected with a European accent, “While I thank you, why have you broken me out?”
Freeze responded, not aware that their every word was being heard by the Speedster, who had entered the back of the Jeep and was vibrating herself to invisibility, “You have magical powers, right? I want you to cast a spell to make me a normal human woman again. Once I’m cured we’ll use my brains and your magic to sweep the lower forty-eight states with a crimewave of unimaginable proportions!”
Waerloga grunted, “I could cure you, but my magic is bound to Alaska. Once you left you’d have your powers and weaknesses back.”
Freeze spoke in an icy tone. “What good are you then? I see why nobody’s ever heard of you.”
Speedster had heard enough. Reaching over Freeze’s shoulder, avoiding touching her, she slammed the steering wheel hard right, turning the Jeep in to an off road vehicle. The resulting bumps of leaving the highway knocked out Waerloga, while Freeze struggled to stay upright.
Speedster needed a way to defeat her without touching her, so she twisted the steering wheel back and forth until the Jeep crashed into a road sign, setting off the airbags.
As Speedster towed her defeated foe back to the ABI office, she ruminated on how many other criminals would have followed glacier carved roads to free a minor supervillain.
*****
Author’s note: Waerloga is the Olde English word from which the modern word “warlock” is derived. It also means deceiver.
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