Author note:
In Chapter 30 there are unpleasant scenes referring to child abuse, but the details are not mentioned to keep only the idea present. It is about rescuing them, rather than the event and dealing punishment to the perps. If this is something you don't want to read I completely understand and I would suggest you skip the chapter. Why is it there? Because I would love a world where someone was able to stop it and punish the offenders.

Chapter 29

The hurricane didn't quite get strong enough to be named, and although a bit of damage was done, no one died. I stayed underwater with my telepathic mind division listening for cries of help. That did happen a few times, but on closer examination, didn't require my help.

I thought I had managed to help without any pictures being taken, but I didn't consider hotel security. Since the storm was a bit of a letdown on the disaster front, the news service ran the story of me saving the family on the catamaran. There was CCTV footage of me opening the hotel lobby, a floating William, the father carrying the six-year-old Casey along with an older daughter and son. They bigged it up with how they were all going to die before I turned up and how grateful they were. Casey stole the show with an enthusiastic 'Thank you, Angel.'

Of course, that became my official name, at least until I earned another. Supers generally stayed away from names with religious overtones and the church's response was the reason why. They were angry that anyone would pretend to be a supernatural being of the Lord and demanded proof, which was laughed at by the majority since no religion could demand proof without appearing hypocritical. It didn't matter that I wasn't the one who had named myself and when some reporter asked Casey she just said, 'we were about to die and an Angel came and saved us'.

I was still going through my grief from my breakup and trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. I had power now, I was no longer a squishy and could be a proper superhero if I wanted. I wanted to be close to Hannah which would mean living in New York.

Being a superhero in America was different to anywhere else in the world. The US took the moral ground and refused to execute supervillains and instead built a containment facility in the desert to contain them. The one exception being murderers although it took years before the legal process was finished and they were put to sleep. The cost must have been astronomical as no one had managed to produce a way to block powers as yet. What that meant on a practical level was that supervillains tried to avoid outright murder, but were otherwise more numerous in the US than anywhere else. In fact, supervillains often left their own countries and set up base in the US, because of the laws there. As a consequence, there were more superheroes to combat them. And combat them they did.

The rest of the world pointed out the increased number of casualties from collateral damage, which meant more people died than if they had a more draconian way of dealing with supervillains, but America was holding the high moral ground and refused to change.

All this was good news for me if I was going to use my new superpowers. I wouldn't have to kill anybody. The trouble was my heart wasn't in it. I didn't mind helping and, as I found out, there were always more people who needed help, but I felt like I was holding back the sea with a bucket.

I decided to leave the Bahamas, partly get away from the Angel debate, which seemed to have settled in my favour with the Christians who objected looking like religious fanatics, and partly to scope out New York. I decided to dress as 'Angel' cross to Miami using my compass and follow the coast up. I had never really tested how fast I could go. I didn't have any way of checking and no great desire to do so, which was another reason I didn't think I was suited for being a superhero. When I thought of superheroes, I thought of people pushing themselves to their limits, constantly training, like Stacy used to, never being satisfied and always reaching to improve and that just wasn't me.

If I pushed it, I could have reached New York faster, but I had no great urgency so I meandered up the coast, travelling at night, stopping a few hours before the sun rose to sink beneath the waves and have a few hours of sleep. I didn't need sleep that much anymore, but I enjoyed it so refused to give it up.

I would try and find somewhere deserted and used my telepathy to check that I was unobserved before returning to my more normal appearance. I was still thinking of myself as Josie but knew I would have to change my name again. The name Chris I now associated with my male life.

I would wander in with my backpack on and pretend to be an Aussie travelling around the world. I would have breakfast in whatever cafe I could find and then have a look around town, taking in the sights before it got dark enough to continue my journey. Then it occurred to me, if I was an Aussie travelling around the world, why didn't I check out a few tourist destinations? I put on hold my trip to New York and picked up a cheap phone to use the internet and google maps and started really being a tourist.

Obviously, a young girl travelling on her own across America is not the safest thing to do, but I had superpowers so I was never in real danger. I did have a few incidents. In Nashville, where I went to sample the music, I was approached in the bar by a fairly forceful male character, who even had a pair of flunkies. I tried the 'I'm fifteen' routine, but that didn't even slow him down. So I told him I had a little superpower that allowed me to be safe. I didn't want to suggest I was super powerful, but a small power was acceptable. I remember reading a fantasy book with a telekinetic who moved the fluid in the semicircular canals of your ears to cause people to have vertigo. A bit of dizziness sounded like a small but useful power, but I underestimated the effect. When I told him to back off and he didn't, I shifted the fluid in his ear and he fell over and started vomiting. His two flunkies didn't know what to do and I left as quietly as I could, while everyone was focused on the man lying on the floor.

I walked into the darkness and then changed into my 'Angel' costume before taking off and flying away. Normally, I enjoyed the sights during the day and travelled to the next place during the night, spending a couple of hours sleeping either underwater, if I could find any water deep enough, floating in a tree or not bothering to sleep at all. That night I felt like enjoying the nighttime music with the possibility of dancing, but I hadn't got to the dancing before having to leave in a hurry.

Persistent 'man' trouble is annoying, but 'older couple worried about a young girl on her own' is much harder to deal with. That happened when I was enjoying the Grand Canyon. At first, it was a simple request for me to take their picture, then asking where my parents were. I made the mistake of telling them I was eighteen and travelling on my own. They didn't believe me. I had the DNA biological age only a little above fifteen, but with my short stature, I probably looked younger.

It was during the daytime so I couldn't disappear into the night and I didn't have an obvious transport so they presumed I had hitchhiked in, which was dangerous for a young girl. I couldn't hurt them since they were only being nice, so I ended up travelling in their car to Flagstaff and having a meal with them. I got up pretending to need the toilet, paid for the meal for all of us and slipped out the back.

I spent almost a month in Huntington Beach, learning to surf and enjoying the relaxed atmosphere, but had to leave when some idiot started chasing me thinking I was some kind of mermaid. He probably caught sight of me diving into the water and not coming back up in the evenings. I did have a few nice nights out dancing there, the surfing crowd being more chilled.

I was living pretty cheaply since I didn't have to pay for accommodation and only ate something when I felt like it. I bought a steel drinking bottle and would surreptitiously add water that I had filtered to be pure water and then chilled with my mind.

It was after I had spent three months looking at the sights and trying to enjoy myself that I realised I was having to work harder and harder to have fun. I was lonely, but I also was over my emotional meltdown and ready to go and visit Hannah. I hadn't worked out what I wanted to do with my life, but there was no rush.

Chapter 30

I was on the wrong side of the country when I decided to start heading back to New York. I was in Seattle and still thinking about working as a superhero, so I decided to use my telepathic mind division to listen for young girls calling for help. I thought I would travel, stopping at major population centres and do a bit of superhero work and see how I felt about it. To my horror, I was inundated. I have never deliberately killed anyone and that night I came the closest.

I changed the orders I had given to my mind division to only give information on the closest case. I flew quickly to an ordinary house and hovered outside the house closest to the eight-year-old girl who was crying in her mind as her father did unspeakable things to her. Both were well within my domain, as was her mother who was asleep in another room. I had to restrain my urge to tear the man apart, instead, I woke her mother and checked with my telepathic division that the mother was both clueless and blameless and then levitated her into her child's bedroom with the light switching on so she could have no doubts about what was occurring before physically separating the man from the child. I turned the man away from the girl and crushed his man bits to a useless pulp before levitating him with his lower half naked outside his front door and locking it behind him.

I left them to get to my next case, my heart bleeding even for the seconds that I had left the girl while getting her mother. That first case was better than most. It wasn't always the father, there were uncles, cousins, friends of brothers or fathers, and often there were women who knew it was happening but couldn't or wouldn't stop it. In every case, I made sure the groin was unrecoverable on the men. I took video on my phone as I turned the lights on. Later on, I made sure all those videos were uploaded so none of them could claim innocence.

I didn't know what to do with those girls who didn't have a safe place to go to. I asked the children if they had a safe adult who could look after them. Some had divorced parents, some had grandparents or aunts that they felt safe with, but most didn't know addresses or other ways of contacting them so I took those children to the police, asking them to keep the children out of their abusive parent's hands. Mothers who wouldn't protect them I considered part of the problem. I showed the policewoman who had responded to my request the video and allowed them to take a copy of the video for evidence. After my second visit to a police station, a superhero with flight started following me, keeping a little distance.

I ignored him and followed the next call. The next case shook my belief system, it was a child in an orphanage and judging by the clothes the man was wearing or half wearing, I believed him to be a man of faith. I switched the lights on as my camera recorded his behaviour, pulled them apart and destroyed his genitals. The abused orphan, Brook, I took with me. I used my micro telekinesis to clean her and held her in my arms as I continued my crusade. I couldn't leave her behind and didn't trust a system that had failed her so badly. She was fourteen years old and bigger than me, so my princess carry probably looked odd, but she needed the comfort along with my reassurance that I would never allow it to happen again. The superhero man following me and reporting my activity left shortly afterwards and was replaced with a female superheroine. She turned up at my next case and I had to telekinetically restrain her from killing the man who was abusing a three-year-old.

The second child that I rescued that didn't have a home to go to, Holly, was seven and I think the location was a brothel. The superheroine following me introduced herself as Cali, full name Caliente because she had heat and flame powers. She offered to carry Holly. We had two more cases, one where the mother was unaware and one where it was a visiting uncle before we had a third case where there was nowhere safe to leave her. After a discussion with Cali, we stopped off at her parent's house and borrowed their caravan. I only later realised the level of trust she showed me that night. She thought we would just hide the kids in the caravan until later but I just picked up the caravan and carried it with me as we continued.

By the end of the night, I had four girls to look after. Holly age seven, Simone age nine, Terese age thirteen and Brook age fourteen. I bought the caravan off Cali's parents with a few diamonds, stocked it with what food they could spare, said goodbye and took the caravan with the girls inside off to the ocean. I smiled at the confused look on Cali's face as I and the caravan sank beneath the waves.

We hid there until the next night, the girls enjoying the magic of being underwater and the gentle sounds of the ocean. Then I flew high and fast across the country until New York. I had planned to hide beneath the waves again, but I was met as I descended by five of New York's superheroes who had somehow known I was coming.

At that stage, I hadn't uploaded the videos I had taken although I had given a copy to the police, so the public was confused by the events of my rampage. There were lots of men with crushed genitals, some left screaming in pain outside their front doors with a number of kids left at a police station with a number of arrests. Obviously, I had been caught on camera, often with a girl in my arms and a caravan floating beneath me. The media was treating it cautiously. Young girls were saved, but men were hurt in a horrifying way and the probability was that I was responsible. One politician tried to use the story to convince the public that superheroes needed more restrictions on their power and suggested that I was a man-hater.

This left the New York superheroes unsure how to treat me. Was I a supervillain? A rather arrogant man in army fatigues, also known as the Colonel, demanded I surrender myself to justice. I asked what I had done wrong and he replied that I had wilfully maimed men.

I pulled out my phone and started playing the videos. The screen was small, but what I had recorded was obvious. The only female flyer from their group asked for a copy and my permission to publish it online. She also requested I did the same thing here in New York. A few of the men winced at that. The Colonel suggested I gather the evidence but leave the justice to the courts. I felt he was saying what he was supposed to, but his heart wasn't really in it.

I didn't wait for the phone to be returned as I suspected that was the way I had been tracked. I headed for the sea, said goodbye and disappeared into its depths. I travelled underwater so they wouldn't know where to watch for me and the next night I found a camping site which turned out to be Heckscher State Park Campground. I pretended I just arrived and paid for a week. And then surreptitiously moved the caravan to that spot. In case anyone was looking I pretended to pick up the tow bar and pull the caravan to its correct place. I had changed out of my Angel costume and had to introduce my new look to the children. I kept the Angel name since I didn't have a different one to use. I was pretty sure no one would associate my new look with Angel. I was going to have to retire my jean shorts and white T-shirt as a precautionary measure.