The attack came while Elevator Girl was out on patrol, wearing her leather uniform for non-quick-change situations.  It was in a familiar location: the harbor, in the same general area where she’d battled Mammoth.  It was hard for her to wrap her head around the fact that battle was about a month ago.  Now there was some sort of giant machine in the harbor using the water of the harbor itself to create (What else?) ice.  The machine was trapping ships and endangering people on shore.  When harbor police tried to reach it, they were attacked.  She heard the sirens, knew by the number of them that the run was a big one, and followed them to the scene.

Elevator Girl started wading out into the water and immediately realized the difference between early October and early November on the Great Lakes.  Even through her costume’s leather hip boots, thickened because of her 200-foot height, the water was icy cold.

And there was another problem.  Elevator Girl hadn’t had to go too far into the water in her battle with Mammoth.  The boots’ spiked heels didn’t handle her massive weight on the lake floor well.  She was having a difficult time just standing, let alone wading out to the machine.

As she approached it, Elevator Girl looked around the area.  Most menaces she’d faced lately had been ice-oriented, and Kellie was convinced it was because of some mysterious enemy, hiding in the background for some reason.  Even Mammoth’s name suggested an ice-age creature, and she was sure he’d been planted by the mystery adversary.  But the only one of those foes to use machinery against her was the Planner, and he was nowhere to be seen.  With his ego, he’d be around if this one was his doing.

When Elevator Girl got within 400 feet of the machine, it suddenly lifted a single arm, adjusting it into a gun-like shape.  The device fired a stream of icy water directly at the teen heroine.  Instinctively, she lifter her arms to block it -- and it immediately blasted directly on her size-changing bracelet.

Elevator Girl dove under the water.  Up to that moment she’d been trying to keep the bracelet’s electronics dry.  Now that was a lost cause, so she dove for the machine’s base.

She found that it was on four sturdy metal legs.  She reached her arms out and grabbed all four at once.  Getting her feet under her, she pulled the legs, and the machine, out of the water.

The moment the machine’s mechanisms were out of the water, small explosions began happening all over it.  Elevator Girl flipped it away from herself just before it blew up altogether.

Then she saw a small airship, shaped like a stealth plane, but made entirely of crystal, flying off from out on the harbor and into the city.  She spun as best she could in the water, and hit the bracelet’s growth button.  But all she got was a stinging electric shock.

“Blast it!” Elevator Girl said.  She realized the water was shorting out the bracelet’s controls.  But she was too far out into the water and losing too much time at this size.  In two seconds, the ship was out of sight.

The teen heroine realized the ship was probably monitoring her battle.  All the other locations had been in areas where cameras could be planted, but not this one.  Her mystery foe was still just trying to gather information on her.  But why?

Elevator Girl managed to get out of the water and back ashore.  By trying the bracelet, she found that the shrinking control still worked, but the growth control only gave her an electric shock.  She hoped letting the mechanism dry out would be enough to get it working again, but that would take at least overnight.  She headed for home.

Elevator Girl actually changed into Kellie Ross in the cave that had been her first headquarters, where she still kept one emergency outfit, sealed in a plastic bag.  From there she could walk home at normal size, without trying to use the malfunctioning growth control.

Kellie’s mom, Gemma, was surprised when her daughter came in through the back door instead of her usual entrance from the basement, and in different street clothes than she expected.  “Did patrol go well, honey?” she asked.

Gemma was shocked when Kellie took off the bracelet.  “The bracelet got wet stopping yet another ice attack,” the daughter said.  “It’s shorting out now.”

Gemma was looking at her daughter’s wrist and ran over to her.  “Oh, my God, Kellie, what have you done to yourself?”

Kellie tried unsuccessfully to tug her wrist free of her mother’s grasp.  “It’s a small electrical burn, Mom.  It’s nothing.”

Gemma looked horrified as she pointed to a darker area near the center of the burn.  “What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s just some kind of skin tag, Mom.  It’s nothing.”

“It wasn’t there before you started wearing that bracelet,” Gemma said, “and that color’s just not right.  We need to get you to a dermatologist right away.”

“MAH-ahm!” said Kellie.  “It’s no big deal.  It’s just a skin tag.”

“Kellie, there is a history of cancer in this family, and that ‘skin tag’ looks to me like it could be cancerous, and it came from a malfunctioning device to trigger rapid growth -- and cancer is out of control cell growth.  We just can’t take a chance on this.  I’m calling a specialist to get you in tomorrow morning, and that’s that.”

That night, Kellie reluctantly left the bracelet off.  It still needed time to dry, and her burn needed a chance to heal.  But she’d become so used to wearing the bracelet at virtually all times, including when she slept, that it just felt … wrong to not be wearing it.

Gemma managed to get an appointment with a dermatologist for that morning first thing, leaving Kellie free to return to school afterward.  Despite the awkward impact of doing so on her sleep schedule for work, Gemma took Kellie.  For one thing, Kellie might be a superheroine, but she wasn’t old enough to drive.  For another, Gemma wanted to know for herself that her daughter was safe.

Kellie mostly was confident that she was fine, but her mother’s words had struck a deeply buried fear within her.  Cancer was the bane of her life, taking her father and threatening the life of her boyfriend, Dakota Greene.

The trip to the doctor’s office mainly took place in tense silence, except for one moment when Kellie, thinking about cancer in her life, chuckled.

“What’s funny?” Gemma asked.

“I just realized why it’s so easy for me to fight giant monsters,” Kellie said, “aside from having super-powers, I mean.”

“Because you think so fast you don’t have time to be scared?” Gemma asked.

“Partly that,” Kellie acknowledged, “and it’s partly that those monsters aren’t even close to the scariest thing in my life.  Cancer’s the scariest thing.”

Gemma, keeping her eyes on the road, held the steering wheel with one hand while patting her daughter’s shoulder with the other.  “It’ll be all right, sweetie,” she said.  “You’ll see.”

Gemma’s assessment would prove correct when they showed Kellie’s skin tag and burn to the dermatologist, whose name was Dr. Christie Dekker.

“This doesn’t look too serious,” the doctor said.  “I’ll take it off, as a precaution, but I’m 99-percent sure it’s just a skin tag that got burned.  I am curious, though.  This burn on your wrist is in an odd place.  How did you get it?”

“My grandpa was an inventor,” Kellie said, trying to be as truthful as possible without revealing too much.  “He made this wrist game gadget me, and it shorted out yesterday.”

Getting items from a cupboard in the room, Dekker said, “Doesn’t sound like he was much of an inventor.  You might want to be careful with his inventions from now on.”

Gemma stared at Kellie, who was scowling at the disparaging remark made about her grandfather.  But Kellie knew that Dekker had no way of knowing her grandpa was Elevator Man, and also knew that arguing too much could create a risk to her secret identity if she let the truth about her grandpa slip, so she held her tongue.

The doctor turned around with what looked like a small fire extinguisher with a miniaturized nozzle.  “This is what we’re going to use to remove the the skin tag,” Dekker said.  “It’s a standard treatment for small skin problems like this.”

“What’s it do?” Gemma asked.

“It’s a super-cold chemical compound, like that in some fire extinguishers,” Dekker said.  “It’ll burn your skin tag off by freezing it.”

Kellie wanted to roll her eyes, but didn’t dare.  Great, more freezing stuff, she thought.

The shot to the burned skin tag took less than a second; then the tag was gone.  Dekker put a dressing over the tiny wound.  “You won’t be able to wear a bracelet or a wristwatch -- does anybody even wear a wristwatch anymore? Anyway, you can’t wear a bracelet for the rest of the day today, or a ‘wrist gizmo’ either.  It should be well enough tomorrow for you to wear whatever.”

“Thanks, doctor,” said Gemma.

As soon as they were in the car, Gemma, buckling her seat belt, said, “Well, it looks like Elevator Girl is out of commission for today.  That‘ll save us a trip home to get the bracelet.”

“Yeah,” said Kellie ruefully as she, too buckled up.  “Man, I wish I’d mastered the remote technique Grandpa described.”

“Explain that to me again,” Gemma said, backing out of the parking space.

“In theory, with use over time my mind should be able to link with the bracelet so I can access the powers remotely,” Kellie said.  “At that point I won’t even need to wear the bracelet to use the powers.  So long as it exists, I can change sizes.”

Gemma nodded.  “That would be good for a situation like today,” she said, pulling the car out onto the road.

“And it might save my life, or the lives of others,” Kellie said.  “One of the reasons the Planner was able to capture me, along with my concussion at the time, was that he had noticed how I used the bracelet and took it out of commission first.  It was only because you got Granite Man to the scene that I got the room I needed to survive that little encounter, and it’s a miracle more students weren’t hurt and that no one was killed.”

“Well, the world got along all right before Elevator Girl came along, and it’ll just have to do without her for today,” Gemma said.

“I guess,” Kellie said flatly.  “So, now what?”

“Now, I take you to school,” Gemma said.

“No, I meant, what are you going to do, Mom?”

“Well, I’m wide awake, and there’s not too much time before my shift starts, since I‘m covering for someone on half of a day shift this afternoon,” Gemma said.  “I think I’ll just swing by the park and sit with my favorite statue for awhile before I go home to change into my work clothes.”

Kellie couldn’t help but smile.  She knew her mother was going to sit with the statue that was secretly Granite Man, an ancient warrior under a spell that had left him a statue that could only live when someone needed rescuing.  It was Gemma who had revived Granite Man to rescue Kellie when the Planner attacked, and Kellie knew her mother had fallen in love with the stony superhero that day.  In his statue form, Granite Man was only dimly aware of what went on around him, but he knew Gemma was there at some level, and she was determined to let him know someone cared.  She went to sit with him every chance she could.

Kellie patted her Mom’s leg.  “He’ll appreciate that, Mom,” she said.

“Yeah, someday,” Gemma said, her voice slightly choked with emotion.  “C’mon, let’s get you to school.”