Chapter 11: 11 Time To Relax

It didn't take me long using Velocity's speed powers and Vista's space crunching powers to gather enough sand to create a fake beach. I also used the space warping powers to increase the inside of a box to be large enough to hold it. I also tossed in two deck chairs, a beach umbrella, and several flotation devices from a nearby store and left a note saying I would be back to pay for the items that had just disappeared from their store.

I stopped at a pizza place and ordered a dozen pizzas to be delivered to the Rig and then ran back to the Rig to the boy's group showers and used Vista's powers to expand it to a ridiculous size and touched the wall to freeze it for 6 hours. As a test, I let Vista's power lapse and the room stayed the way it was. I held in my laugh at the successful experiment and ran over to the far wall to dump out all of the sand I had gathered.

The room was about the size of a skating rink and I spread the sand out to resemble a nice beach. It was then I realized the problem I had. If I turned the water on all the showers, it would gather up and flow out of the room through the door, because I had plugged up the drains. After thinking about it for a moment, I used Vista's powers to drop the floor down a foot and froze it with Clockblocker's power.

I really should have dropped it down a lot more than that so we could go swimming, then changed my mind. We were there to relax and enjoy being on a beach and what I was doing was enough for that. It was too bad there wasn't a pool at the Rig, because I could have made the beach at the side of that instead.

I started the showers and filled up a good portion of the floor with water until it reached the edge of the sand and had to adjust it to not wash away. As I waited for the water to fill the rest of the space, I put out the chairs and umbrella and set up a great relaxing area for us to use.

When it was done, I ran over to the door and opened it, zoomed out to my room and changed into my beach shorts, then ran back. I reached the end of the hallway and Vista was already at the door of the shower room. She wore a light wrap that covered her from neck to knee and I couldn't see what she wore underneath.

“Perfect timing!” I said and walked over to her normally. “I just finished setting everything up.”

“Setting up... wait.” Vista gave me an odd look. “I thought... um... shower...”

I gave her a huge smile. “We're pretending it's a beach, remember?” I opened the door and waved her inside.

Vista gasped at the room that actually looked like a real beach, except the water was clear and the floor underneath could be seen.

“Your beach retreat awaits you.” I said and pointed at the far side of the room.

“Oh, my god.” Vista said and seemed to shake herself a little before she took off her sneakers and stepped into the foot deep water.

I closed the door behind me and zoomed across the edge of the room and turned off the showers and went back to stand beside her. She nodded to me and we walked side by side through the water and up onto the beach.

Vista motioned for me to have a seat on the right deck chair and I did, then I lost my breath when she opened her wrap and dropped it to the sand. She wore a one piece green bathing suit that was the same color as her hero suit and it hugged her tightly in all the right places. Her breasts stood out a lot more than they normally would have, probably because the suit highlighted them perfectly.

My mind skittered to a stop when she turned around and showed off her backside. I hadn't seen anyone wearing something like that before and my eyes drank in how awesome it was. She turned around again and my eyes didn't lift from there, because I couldn't look away. I also couldn't tell you why my heart was pounding in my chest. Her suit was really form fitting and I would never, ever forget the sight.

“A-A-Alex.” Vista whispered with a shaky voice.

It took me several moments before I tore my gaze away from where it had been and I rose my eyes up to look at her deep red face. “Vista, you... you are... amazing.”

Vista looked at the other chair for a second and then stepped close to me and sat down across my lap. She didn't say anything and leaned into me and looked right into my eyes. Neither of us said anything about what she was pressed against or how the both of us really liked that she was. We stared at each other for a moment and then our lips touched.

By unspoken agreement, we decided to make up for all of the missed kisses we would have had during my month and a half of timelessness.

Half an hour later, the shower door opened and a manly gasp sounded. “What the hell happened in here?”

We broke the kiss and looked over to see Aegis holding a pizza box.

“That came quicker than I thought it would.” I said and waved to him. “Now that you've seen my replacement gift to Vista, you can let the rest of the Wards know and we can have the pizza party in here.”

Aegis flew over to us and landed on the sand. “Armsmaster's going to be pissed.”

“You'd think that if you didn't know I planned to apologize by permanently expanding his lab for him.” I said smugly.

Vista giggled. “You should lead with that, since Alex figured out a cheat for combining both my power and Clockblocker's.”

Aegis looked at the expanded space around us and smiled as he handed Vista the pizza box. “We'll be back with a table and drinks.”

“Awesome.” I said and he flew over to the door. “The dress code is shorts and t-shirts!”

Aegis waved and went out the door and shut it.

“I need to go and put on my own.” Vista said and climbed off of my lap to put the pizza box on the other chair. “I don't want anyone else to see me wearing this and the wrap is too warm to wear all the time.”

I stood up and gave her a very pointed look. “Thank you for giving me this gift.”

Vista blushed. “A-Alex, I... I really...”

“Me, too.” I said and gave her a kiss. “See you in a few minutes.”

Vista nodded and shrunk the distance from her to the door and stepped out of the room.

“That's still awesome.” I said and she smiled and reset the space and closed the door. I looked at the chairs and knew there would be a bunch of people coming and picked up the pizza box before I expanded both chairs to the size of couches and froze them in time with Clockblocker's power.

I couldn't really tell you why I could use it so well, except that it had a main physical component in order to be used and I had already figured out how to use it effectively. The best part was that even at 50%, it was just like Vista's power. What was half of any time that you could set something to freeze it? Any time you could set it, of course.

That thought made me laugh, because now that I had the powers permanently, that little block I had felt in my head when using a copied power wasn't there. That meant I had Velocity's speed power as my primary and had Shadow Stalker's, Vista's, and Clockblocker's powers set at 50% as secondaries. It hadn't taken me long to realize that defeating someone whose powers I copied would give me the full power and it could stay as my primary power without restriction.

What had been neat to discover was that I could keep the 50% versions active when they weren't my primary. It only worked for powers I had won, however. Copied powers were still restricted to 50% as a primary and locked as a secondary. That meant I was going to have to spar with the other protectorate heroes and win, which was why I had politely asked for them to train me hard, since I had been out of circulation for so long.

“Holy shit, it's real!” Kid Win said when the shower door opened and he saw inside.

“Language, Chris. There are kids present.” Aegis joked, because we were all underage, and he floated in with a large table and Kid Win flew in on his hoverboard and carried the other pizza boxes.

“How did you do all of this?” Taylor asked as she entered the room and carried several folding chairs with both her arms and thousands of bug helpers. Gallant entered right behind her with a cooler as Aegis put the table in front of one of the expanded chairs. The pizzas were set down on it and the cooler was placed beside them.

“I want to joke and say it's a trade secret, except you all saw me copy Velocity's power.” I said and they all nodded. They knew if I set that as my primary, I could move at half Velocity's speed, which was nearly instantaneously. How fast was half of nearly instantaneous? Nearly instantaneous. I actually did laugh at that thought as Vista came back into the room. She hopped over to me and she laughed, too.

“Are you going to share with the class?” Miss Militia asked as she entered the room. She wore a red bikini that was both modest and revealing, because she wore a sarong around her waist and her trademark flag bandana around her neck to keep her face covered.

I assumed she wore the face covering to make sure we all knew she was attending as Miss Militia and not in her civilian identity.

“What was half of infinity again?” Vista and I asked at the same time.

Miss Militia let out a rare laugh and accepted a folding chair from Taylor and set it beside the table and sat down to leave the expanded deck chairs for us to sit down.

Gallant looked both conflicted and happy, which meant he picked up on the amusement from everyone else and not from me. “Velocity's power is another one that qualifies with half power being meaningless?”

I nodded. “It's pretty neat, since moving so fast means I can do so much without having it impact my time significantly.” I gave him a smile and looked at Miss Militia. “With what Velocity said before about being able to take instant naps to stay coherent during the day, I can do a lot more things now with all of the extra time that's going to free up for me.”

Miss Militia blinked her eyes at me several times. “You can't mean...”

“I don't count as a Noctis Cape like you, someone that doesn't need to sleep; but, I can fake it and stay up all night.” I said and didn't miss her slight shiver and her soft exhale that made me think she was both relieved and nervous. That was an odd thing for me to figure out, which told me that Vista wasn't the only one that had really missed me while I was indisposed.

“Just because you don't need to stay in bed all night, that doesn't mean I don't want you there so I can cuddle you!” Vista admitted, which was a direct counter to my reveal of having so much extra time. She blushed at her statement, because now everyone knew she stayed in my room sometimes.

I opened my mouth to respond and Aegis interrupted me.

“I hope I don't have to make it an order to have you relax on your off time.” Aegis said as he glanced at Vista. “Preferably alone.”

Neither I nor Vista agreed with that.

“There's a reason we only patrol for two hours a night and only every second weekend if we aren't busy with personal things.” Aegis continued.

I looked over at Miss Militia and saw her nod. “You make a good point. No official work at night, even if I keep Velocity's power active.”

Vista gave my side a hug and kissed my cheek. “Thank you.”

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I turned in her arms to face her and put my arms around her. “To be fair, I do have a lot of evening cuddles to make up for.”

“You missed a bunch of television episodes, too.” Gallant said. “Or that's what Vista's red marker says on the TV guide.”

That made everyone laugh and Vista looked proud for keeping track of it all.

“I'll do my best to catch up.” I said and rubbed Vista's back as I looked at Taylor. “I promise.”

Taylor blushed a little and nodded. She knew I meant hanging out with her, since I had missed so many chances.

“I hope you bought our favorites.” Kid Win said and opened the top pizza box. “Pepperoni and mushrooms for this one.”

“Right here.” Gallant said and took two pieces.

“Hawaiian?” Aegis asked when he opened the next box and Miss Militia put up her hand.

“Oh! We need napkins and paper plates. I'll be right back.” I said and zoomed out of the room, went to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of paper plates, plastic forks and knives, and a pack of napkins. I was back a second later and set everything on the table.

“Having you around is definitely going to make things go smoother from now on.” Aegis said.

“I'll do my best, sir!” I said and saluted him like I had saluted Director Piggot and Vista giggled.

“That was so sneaky what you did.” Vista said and gave me another kiss while Aegis distributed the pizzas to everyone.

“She's still pretty pissed about it.” Kid Win said and we looked at him. “I overheard Armsmaster talking to her and Dragon about the test results and how they can be applied to Clockblocker and his future training.”

I nodded and we all settled down to eat and talked about what I had missed. I wasn't surprised that it was a lot, both professionally and personally. There wasn't really anything they could tell the school, except that it was Ward related. That wasn't going to help me with keeping a secret identity, since both my cape personality and civilian identity had been missing for the same amount of time.

It didn't bother me, since I hadn't really been that careful about it. Unmasking was potentially a bad idea for a Ward, though. It opened up a particularly sticky can of worms that involved people, namely criminals, that would try to exert pressure on the people in my personal life to gain control of me. It wouldn't work like they think, though.

If anyone came after Vista or Taylor, they would pay dearly for it.

Gallant flinched and glanced at me, then he mentioned how much more fun it would be to play in the water. I told him about my original idea that if it had been a pool, the beach would have worked that much better beside it. Everyone agreed and then remembered that we were on a re-purposed oil rig with limited space inside.

It was on the edge of Brockton Bay Harbour and the PRT would never allow a pool to be built inside. As it was, the floaties and blow up things still worked in foot deep water and we all managed to play a little. We carried on and laughed, joked, and had as good of a time as we could on a fake beach.

When Miss Militia called an end to the beach party that afternoon and informed us that Aegis and Gallant had a patrol to get to, Vista offered to help me with my schoolwork.

“I suggest cleaning this up first.” Miss Militia said as she waved at the skating rink sized room.

“I'll take care of it all and I'll have this back to the way it was before supper.” I said, truthfully. I had only set the expansions for 6 hours and it would end long before suppertime.

Miss Militia nodded and grabbed her half-full pizza box and a towel before she walked through the water to the door and stepped up and out. “Thank you for this relaxing time, Alex.”

“You're welcome.” I said with a happy smile. “I'm glad you could accept my water siphon gun.”

Miss Militia nodded and we all watched her as she dried off her feet and put on her shoes. She hung the towel on the door handle and left it there for the next person to use. Everyone else followed her example and thanked me for the fun time before drying their feet and leaving. Vista was last and gave me a searching look.

“You can stay and watch, even if I do it at super speed.” I said with a grin.

Vista softly laughed. “You just told me a reason to do it and a reason not to.”

“I know.” I said and gave her a quick kiss. “Meet you in my room in ten minutes?”

Vista nodded and shrunk the distance to the door and hopped out without touching the water.

“That's still awesome every time I see it.” I said and she waved as the space snapped back to normal and she shut the door.

I cleared away the shower drains and let the water wash down and then used the same trick as before and opened the box and used Vista's powers to dump the sand back inside. I added the chairs and umbrella, then chuckled. I used super speed to drop off the unused plates and napkins in the kitchen and went up to the top of the rig and put the expanded chairs and the umbrella on the roof overlooking the helipad.

I ran back through the facility and out into Brockton Bay to return the sand where I got it. Not surprisingly, no one noticed it had been missing or noticed its return. I stopped at the store and paid for the things I had taken and returned to the Rig. I dropped the box into the supply closet and went back to check the shower room again.

Everything seemed fine and all that was needed was to wait for the time freeze to end and it would snap right back to how it had been before. I couldn't cancel the use of Clockblocker's powers anyway.

“Myriad.” Armsmaster said from down the hallway. “You have something for me?”

“Yes, sir.” I said and stepped back as I waved inside the shower room. “If you would like to see an example first?”

The stoic man nodded and walked over to look into the room without stepping inside. His eyes widened at the size of the thing. His eyes went to me and went back into the space.

“I cheated and creating a temporary hammerspace.” I said.

“Temporary.” Armsmaster said, his voice sounded disappointed.

“Just this one, sir. I couldn't in good conscience commandeer the boy's group showers permanently. I wanted to restart my Ward career with a memorable pizza party and the effect will end in about an hour.”

Armsmaster gave me another look. “How will your promise be different? Clockblocker's power has only set times, even if he only subconsciously used it.”

I chuckled. “Vista told me that he wanted to teach me a lesson and I was frozen for a month and a half. Was that his max or was he just trying to annoy me the most and didn't want me frozen for years?”

Armsmaster's eyebrows rose and his look was almost shocked.

“There's no real way to test it with physical objects, since their state over any length of time can't really be discerned because they can't tell you after the freeze ends how they feel.” I said and he nodded. “However, if I used his lesson as the top of my limit, that means I can touch something and it will freeze for a month and a half.”

Armsmaster nodded again. “I can see the use of things like that for emergency shelters and...”

“Sir, you're forgetting a very important fact.” I interrupted.

“And that is?”

“You assumed that I am limited to touching things only once.” I said and grinned at him.

Armsmaster jerked as if I had slapped him. His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline and his eyes nearly bugged out as he stared at me.

I could almost see all of the calculations going through his head at the implications. “I think you can find or make a nice cleared spot inside your lab that I can expand to give you an arena-sized space to work with.”

Armsmaster opened his mouth and closed it, opened it again, then snapped it closed and nodded.

“I'm going to my room to do my homework with Vista until suppertime. Message me after that if you have some space cleared.” I said and Armsmaster nodded again and walked away.

I zoomed across the Rig using Velocity's power and went to my room. Vista was there waiting for me already and my mind stuttered to a stop, because she had changed back into her tight bathing suit.

“Are you ready to get to work?” Vista asked with a red face and a teasing look.

“Yes... no... I...” I audibly swallowed and my mouth felt dry. “I think so.”

Vista softly laughed and sat down behind my collapsible table and motioned beside her. I walked over and sat down where she wanted and felt a thrill go through me, because she cuddled in close and pressed herself to my arm. I glanced down at my arm where we were touching and back to her face.

“I really missed you.” Vista whispered.

I nodded and took out a math book from my bag. Every time I moved my arm, it rubbed across her chest, and it was the oddest and best feeling in the world. By the look on her face, Vista agreed with me that warm and tingly feelings were the best.

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