A Pearl Before Swine Pt. 04 Ch. 11-14

Walking among the massive tanks, she found herself staring at the cloudy blue fluid encased within. There was no way this was any sort of legal operation. She had never seen these machines before let alone the plans for a massive facility like this. Reaching the end of the spacious room, she saw that it was connected to a long hallway. Off each door of the hallway was another huge room full of these tanks.

Walking up to one series of tanks, she suddenly jumped back and nearly screamed. "Oh Neptune's depths" she whispered as a creature moved to the glass surface of the tank. It was a huge shape, vaguely humanoid, but mostly out of a horror movie. Everything about it was black, and Pearl couldn't tell if it was skin, fur, or scales. Stumbling around the room, she saw more of these shapes in several of the other tubes. "They're growing monsters" she said to herself.

"HEY!" a military voice cried out. "Red alert. We have a breach in Project Atlas, lab z-27-h. Repeat, unidentified infiltrator has ..." Pearl had recovered from her surprise and dashed down the room to knock the guard unconscious. He had no identifying information anywhere, and he didn't even have a weapon.

A door opened down the hallway, and a host of guards rushed towards her led by the Giant. As they approached, she was satisfied to see the Giant hesitate a bit. Unfortunately, there were far too many for her to effectively subdue even without weapons, and she was sure this was only the first wave. She needed an escape. The door she came in was sealed shut, so she raced down the length of the hall.

Running out of options, she dashed into the first room she saw that had a window. It was an enormous room of tubes again, and she estimated that it contained at least twice as many tubes as some of the other rooms. The large window on the end looked to be made of one-way glass, and she dashed towards it desperately trying to think of all her options. Suddenly she stopped in shock. These tanks weren't filled with monsters. They were filled with people. Unconscious naked forms of dozens of people floated in their blue goop. Pearl clenched her teeth. The only thing she could do for them now was to escape to plot their rescue another day.

A hover-jet equipped with some sort of turret rose to window level, and she increased her speed. Crashing through the window, she took a mighty leap at the flying escape route.

She missed.

Her flailing arms missed the front of the hovering platform by inches. She screamed as she fell past several stories per second. Her mind nearly blacked out as her muscles became paralyzed with fear. Then the thought of all those people filled her head. They were real people, she was sure of it. If she died now, they were doomed to whatever their captors had planned for them.

She could not let that happen. With her eyes still closed, she unleashed every ounce of her power. She let in the fear, the despair, the love and loss, her hopes and dreams, and then she simply said: "Stop".

She was floating just a few dozen meters above the street. Most of the busy citizens didn't look up to notice the glowing superheroine and her self-realization. The corner of one of the nearby buildings housed a restaurant with a ceiling to floor window. A large family was seated around the corner table, but none of them turned to notice her. A young boy just stared at her with wide eyes.

Back at home, the girl known as Pearl by night stared at her reflection in the mirror for an eternity.

Sometimes it took well into the Powered's mid-life crisis for their powers to become fully revealed. Pearl had always suspected that she would eventually grow into her own powers, since her wide assortment lacked a clear direction. Now she knew she could be something, change things, shape the world.

And those people needed her help.