The wind was so loud in her ears that it seemed deafening, pummeling her eardrums. She straightened out as much as she could, putting her head down, pointing her toes behind her. Her engorged nipples stung from the increasingly strong vibrations she had been feeling for two hours, and were battered by the wind whistling past them. Looking down she saw a big city pass and from the contours of the river knew it to be Philadelphia. It had only been a couple of minutes. Moving so fast was almost like a dream.
She recognized the shores of Chesapeake Bay and raised her head. With alacrity she saw her target, her destiny. Alacrity mixed with relief -- she hadn't been too late.
Another little rocket, like the one that had discharged the first pulse bomb over Atlanta, now heading down toward downtown Washington, D.C. Pointing down now to the wide-open spaces of big white historic buildings and monuments, the Mall, the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the White House...
Dareen shut her eyes and said a little prayer. Give me the strength, Allah... She knew her purpose now, and felt unequal to the task. ‘I'm just Dareen Alkaras, an amazed and confused 24-year-old librarian...’
Opening her eyes she got focused on the hard, the material, the physical: namely the task of diverting this rocket. It turned out not to be that difficult. She flew up to it while it was still a couple of thousand feet up. It was ten feet long, shorter than that bullet-shaped 1950's lug in that crazy scientist's garage, and thinner too. He must have improved the design. The naked supergirl turned upside down with it and hugged it, wrapping her arms and legs around it like a lover, feeling the vibrations through her crushed breasts and below, right into her pussy. Her feet clasped each other on the far side. The metal was a little warm, though quite hot around her feet. Her nipples were so hot they seemed to meld with the rocket, like good and evil siblings who love/hate each other.
With a little grunt she twisted the rocket and reversed its direction. She relaxed as its thruster now propelled the both of them upward, through clouds that left a sheen of cold condensation on her hair and her butt cheeks, then up further. The thruster expended itself and Dareen knew it was time to act. She was making it up as she went, but she hopped off her evil mechanical lover and grabbed it from below with hands placed firmly on both sides. Bracing her legs apart, she coiled backwards and held her breath, her breasts sticking up in front and blocking her forward view, and then with a mighty heave she flung the rocket up into the stratosphere.
The rocket went up, up, out of sight almost. Then it exploded.
Dareen, standing spread-eagled in the cool air, watched as the little faraway puff of smoke dissipated. Then she reached down to feel her nipples. That stinging sensation was gone. She exhaled, then felt her concave tummy flex in and out as she caught her breath. It was not a matter of physical exertion; that had been well within her powers. There was just something about this that had taken a lot out of her.
After a couple of moments she flew back down with her usual ease and surveyed the city far below. To her relief it seemed normal. Tiny cars were still moving slowly along the narrow streets. She detected lights among the buildings. Lengthening shadows from the buildings as sunset approached. Everything was O.K.
She looked around in her airy environs. There were no fighter jets, no sign of activity. Evidently nobody had detected the rocket but her.
She allowed the slow ascent as she knelt forward in mid-air, on her invisible sajjada, thanking Allah for being of service, thankful that the horrible thing that was to happen to her country had been averted. And then, straightening up again, she looked at the sun getting low in the sky, a few long reddish clouds both above and below it, and decided that was where she was going to go now. She figured that Elly must be back with her folks in the Bronx. They lived on a crowded street, no way for NakedGirl to make a visit and have the press bug them like they did with her and Elly's apartment. She wanted Elly's folks to remain anonymous to the press and to the world.
She turned and swerved and flew west and south, back to the dry high plain with the water hole and the fig tree and her friends the horses.
The night advanced and the stars came out, thousands of them in the crisp night of the Texas plain, the naked supergirl felt the last bit of sun warmth leaching from the sand under her bare back and bare buttocks. She lay stretched out on the rise, legs and arm apart, totally open to the universe above. In the distance, she heard the slight ripples as a horse drank. Mostly they were asleep now, with a snorting exhale now and then. Dareen, her tummy full of figs, closed her eyes and dozed off.
When she awoke it was still night. Odd, how she had fallen asleep in such a totally bashful position. Yet there was no one to see and the air, though not that warm, was like the softest of blankets. She wondered if without her powers she would feel so comfortable in nature and decided she certainly wouldn't. At bottom she was Muslim, a believer in women staying covered. It was not a matter of subjugation but of dignity. Dareen's beliefs on this were becoming more organized. Sure, it was comfortable to wear skimpy clothes in hot weather, but the girls who did that seemed to fall into three categories. First, the stupid and the silly. Second, the showoffs and the sluts. Third, intelligent girls who were simply unaware of what they were giving up.
And here I am, NakedGirl. Very much a part of Creation, she had decided, but naked by necessity, not by choice. Or so it seemed. Once again she told herself: Allah has given me this power and I have saved lives with it.
Not entirely placated by this thought, Dareen got up and brushed the sand off her back and butt. She looked down and wiggled her toes, shaking sand off, watching her jutting brown mountains jiggle in the process. She tugged on her nipples, so dark and huge and hard in this cold air, they felt tough like leather. Then she looked up to the stars. She just couldn't sleep tonight. She had just saved the federal government from a shutdown, from being a sitting duck for something worse, and probably saved thousands of lives in the process. That first pulse bomb over Atlanta, the one she had failed to stop, that was just a trial run. Whoever that crazy scientist guy was, he was deadly serious now about disrupting the world, or at least the United States. A more dangerous terrorist, in some ways, that the evil men who had planned 9/11.
More immediately, she had to assure Elly that everything was O.K. She could picture Elly going back to her folks' house in panic and despair, not knowing what happened. But how to contact her? Dareen didn't have her cell phone with her of course, or any I.D., she had just her own naked self. She had to find someone with a phone and call 411 to get Elly's parents' number. She remembered the street and Elly's last name, it should be easy. Then she decided not to show her nakedness to any more people than necessary. In short, find a pay phone.
Dareen waved to the horses as she flew off. They looked up and seemed to acknowledge their bare-skinned friend.
Find a pay phone, call Elly, then get back to Atlanta. Though going back to her apartment, with the press calling up all the time and probably visiting, that would have to be re-thought. Dareen sped through the cool night air under the stars. She found herself enjoying it. Though the wind-chill made it actually cold, she felt like she was diving through the cold water of a pool. After a while she got used to it.
She went higher and faster and looked down, past the little blotches of lights here and there. No particular urge to visit any one of them. Her mind wandered as she journeyed. Her super-perceptive eyes peered down into the blackness and picked out wide deserts, sandstone formations, the occasional narrow river. In no time at all she was quite far out to the west. She looked behind her to the east and thought she could sense the beginnings of the sky getting lighter, a change too slight for the normal eye to detect.
A small bright light caught her eye. She knew what it was, knew it was stupid to go down to it, but did anyway. A window in a clothing store. In the display window was a beautiful dress on a manikin, the display light still on at this hour for some reason. Actually this was a rear window, facing away from the little street in a tiny town. As the naked supergirl could see, there was a rear entrance with a set of stairs going down to it from a raised platform, all painted black for some reason. In the cold air, the naked girl sat on the dark steps, elbows on her knees, hands under her chin, and contemplated the dress with desire and longing, like a poor girl who wanted it but couldn't afford it. The dress was so beautiful, nice long sleeves, ankle-length. And with shoes and nylons on the manikin too. And the rear door was half-open! A little showy for Dareen's taste, but it would feel so good on her... to be covered up... she could just walk through the door and take it...
Dareen shook herself from such thoughts and got up, brushing away some pebbles from her butt. She couldn't just take the dress; it would be stealing. And she couldn't put anything on now; she needed her super powers. Without another thought she flew up and out of there.
She passed some more towns, but mostly there was just the blackness of the hilly desert dotted with little shrubs and some cactus.
Presently she found what she was looking for. Down she went, towards a solitary street light, into a small one-street town, maybe three stores and a post office. The street light was right in front of the post office and, her impression had been correct, it shone down onto a pay phone.
She gazed up idly at the post office -- it said, "Scrub Flats, Arizona" -- and picked up the phone and dialed "0". A recorded voice said, "You must first deposit twenty-five cents for this call. You must first deposit twenty-five cents for this call. You must first..." Her bare shoulders slumped. She called 411. Same message.
If she was in Arizona, then in New York, three hours ahead, it would now be 8:30 or so. Elly would be up by now. Yet how could Dareen get a hold of her? She definitely wasn't going to show herself to anyone. In mild frustration she kicked a pebble with her big toe and it shot down the street like a bullet and, two hundred yards away, hit a 55-gallon drum next to the gas station with a loud clang. Dareen's head darted in every direction. Didn't anybody hear that!! Apparently not, the town was deserted at this hour.
Still, she felt uneasy about being right under the street light. She spread her arms aloft and softly landed across the street on the tar paper roof of the little diner. As she looked around for other possibilities she felt the cold air on her erect nipples. It sure gets cold in the desert at night, she told herself. A normal girl would probably die of hypothermia here. She felt the gritty tar paper under her soles. Yuck.
There was a scrub-studded hill up to the right. There seemed to be a light on in a little building. She glided up, looking for another pay phone. It turned out to be a security booth to a gated community. Hovering a hundred feet up, she saw the parked ambulances, the walkers, and realized it was for senior citizens. She thought of what her father once said. "When I get old, shoot me before you put me in one of those places."
She hovered closer to the booth. There was a light on in there all right, and a TV. The booth was closed up on this cold night, but through the window she saw a telephone. Unfortunately, it was next to the security guard, who was leaning back in his swivel chair, snoring.
Dareen squatted down on the ground some distance away, elbows on her knees, wondering how to get at that phone. Should she create a distraction to get him out of the booth? A trick, and she would be using the phone without permission, but she thought she could be excused given the circumstances.
Her plans were interrupted by what was coming over the TV. The pale blue light could be barely seen from such a distance, the words inaudible, but not to NakedGirl.
"So based on this late-breaking news from New York, what we have here is Dareen Alkaras, a young Arab woman who has some kind of secret formula that allows her to do these -- things and performs some 'good deeds' to fool the more gullible among us, yet she is a shameless exhibitionist and obviously anti-American."
"Yes, and more than that, Bill," the bearded "expert" guest said in a Brit accent. "I'm sure we are in agreement, we should give credit where it is due, we are very glad as to that handful of people whose lives she has saved."
"Yes, you can't take that away from her," the host interjected quickly.
"But her other antics, barging naked into that Jewish Friends Committee meeting, knocking over the map of Israel with her bare foot, then ripping down the American flag in front of a crowd of people -- not to mention being profoundly offensive to the Muslim community by flaunting her nudity into the face of the cameras after she caught the Joly Tower, and declaring herself doing the will of Allah -- well, Bill, this woman apparently just wants people to hate her. And in that she will probably succeed."
"Yes, viewers are encouraged to respond to our latest Cobb News poll, 'Is NakedGirl the savior of mankind or a spoiled supergirl', though not a scientific poll, the early returns are running to the second choice, 60 percent... Now, Andrew, what do you say to those people who point to her, you just mentioned this, catching the Joly Tower in Atlanta? A very close parallel to 9/11, obviously."
"Perhaps deliberately so. One is forced to ask, ‘How is it that she happened to be right there when the bomb went off in the basement? How could she know?’ The answer is, she HAD to know."
"Andrew, that's a very serious charge. Are you saying that NakedGirl was behind the bombing?"
"I'm saying that she, and the bombers, probably had similar motivations. They both are anti-American and opposed to the many cultures that co-exist here. By saving the tower from impacting, she was able to paint herself as a hero, in preparation for future mischief. I think the authorities should look at it in this light."
"Thank you, Andrew. Well you have heard previously, Mr. Nedrow of the FBI has said that there is nothing to support that theory, that as far as he knows Ms. Alkaras has no criminal record and NakedGirl is acting alone, though of course at this early stage all kinds of theories can and must be looked at. We will return in a moment."
Dareen, squatting naked in the predawn air, nipples hard and erect with the cold, was in shock. Her brown eyes were wide with disbelief. This was like a bad dream. Hopefully as soon as they know she saved the federal government they would change their minds.
The phone rang, loudly. It was a jolt to her and also to the security guard, who woke up in mid-snore. "Yes... Building four? Damn, I thought I fixed that... O.K." He roused himself and walked out of the booth, closing the door behind him as he pulled on a jacket.
This was her chance. The naked girl saw him walk down the road, almost out of sight before disappearing a few hundred feet up behind the furthest building. Then she hopped into the booth.
It was nice and warm in here. Quickly she called information and got Elly's folks' number. "Where are you?"
"Arizona."
"Arizona?"
"I did it, Elly. It was a pulse bomb over Washington D.C. It was heading down and I turned it up and it went into outer space."
A long silence. "Wow... Looks like nobody knows. After I lost sight of that garbage truck I had nothing to do but come back to my folks'. Then you had your adventures which I saw on TV. Dar, they're really dragging you through the mud this morning on the cable news."
"I know... What should I do?"
"Stay away a couple of days. You've got to stay out of sight. Then we'll think about it. I don't think it's a good idea to go back to the apartment, not now." Elly sounded nervous and then coughed. Dareen sensed she was smoking a cigarette, even at this early hour. "I'll bring your things back to Atlanta. Call your cell phone when you get back, I'll have it."
"Okay... Thanks, El."
"We're in this together, Dar."
Dareen bit her lip. "I love you, El."
"Love you too, Dar... Take a dip in the Pacific for me, O.K."
"O.K." And now she heard the security guard's footsteps, still far away but heading her way. "Bye." She hung up and flew out the booth and out of sight. When he got back, the security guard wondered why the door was open; he was sure he'd closed it.