Kellie Ross was almost relieved when the report came in about the attack on the site of a major business announcement in the city’s industrial district. It’s not that she wanted anyone to get hurt -- but then, since it was reported that the villain at the scene was the Planner with one of his giant robots, the odds were he had constructed his plan to minimize injury and his own risk of criminal liability.
Kellie almost welcomed the action because it got her mind off the disturbing phone call she had just completed with Dakota when the word came in. She had called to invite him to Thanksgiving dinner when he told her he would be out of town for the entire break, headed to Chicago.
“I didn’t know you had any family in Chicago, Kota,” Kellie said.
“I don’t,” said Dakota flatly.
“Then why are you going to Chicago for Thanksgiving?” Kellie asked.
“Kel … my doctors … they found something they don’t like. Something they really don’t like. There are specialists there, in Chicago, who can check things out, and some of them are working Wednesday and Friday. I’m gonna be in the hospital for Thanksgiving, Kel, and I’m probably not gonna care about dinner.”
“Oh, Kota! No!”
“Kel, I’m gonna be all right,” Dakota said. “If all goes as planned, I’ll be home by the end of break. Please, just have a good Thanksgiving, and I’ll catch you up when me and my parents get back.”
“Can you keep me posted on what’s happening?” Kellie asked.
“It sounds like I’ll be pretty out of it,” Dakota said. “Besides, you’re gonna have enough on your mind with your … other duties.”
Dakota was one of only two people who knew Kellie’s secret identity as Elevator Girl. The other was her mother, Gemma
“You said you and your parents were going on the trip,“ Kellie said. “What about Lakota?”
“Sis is staying home,” Dakota said.
“Is she gonna be alone for Thanksgiving?”
“This all came together pretty quick,” Dakota said. “I don’t think she’s got anywhere to come for dinner.”
“She does now -- well, let me check.” Kellie called out her request to Gemma, explaining the situation. Gemma immediately agreed.
“I’ll see you when I get back, Kel,” Dakota said. “Don’t worry, OK?”
“OK,” she said. “You just … you take care, all right? I … I … I just want you OK, OK?”
Dakota chuckled. “OK,” he said.
Now Elevator Girl, in her leather costume, was on her way to take down the adversary who had given her the most trouble in the past, briefly capturing her. Only the intervention of Granite Man and a group of Kellie’s fellow students had been enough to defeat the Planner on that occasion.
The site wasn‘t hard to find. There were all sorts of vehicles outside, including two local news stations. That made sense; in this economy, any major business announcement involving jobs would be newsworthy.
The doors to the building were open, so Kellie dropped her height swiftly enough that her center of gravity stayed airborne, then glided in at bug size in order to assess the situation and re-enlarge in the room.
Once in the room, Kellie saw that the mayor, the governor and a group of company and city leaders were gathered. She didn’t take time at that moment to identify everyone.
Towering over the group was a 20-foot robot with the Planner on its shoulder. To the sides were several security people, mostly in plain clothes, who were all encrusted in (what else?) ice.
It seemed that every adversary Kellie took on lately, including the Planner, was using ice and freezing related technology. Kellie knew the Planner had a mysterious backer, who almost certainly was behind the other attacks as well. But the Planner had escaped police custody before even being booked into jail, using one of his contingency plans, and the mastermind behind the attacks had left no other obvious clues.
Kellie shot up to 25 feet tall, crouching just enough that her head didn’t hit the ceiling, and throwing a punch at the Planner himself.
The move activated an automatic ice shield in front of the Planner, one which encrusted Kellie’s hand and wrist. It also sent an ice blast to her other hand and wrist.
“This is too easy,” the Planner said. “I’m surprised at your nerve, Elevator Girl, showing up here alone.”
Kellie crouched lower and added 15 feet to her height, snapping the ice bonds. “You’re right, Planner,” she said. “This is too easy.”
“But -- your controls --” the Planner said, looking at both of Elevator Girl’s wrists. As he did so, he realized that she was no longer wearing her size-shifting bracelet. Kellie had mastered a psychic link between herself and the bracelet just recently; she didn’t need to manipulate it, or even wear it, to access her powers now.
Kellie smiled. “I guess you didn’t know to subtract something from your equations,” she said as she smashed the robots between her two hands. It had a structural weak point in what would be the lower back on a human being, and that snapped. Apparently, the Planner hadn’t planned for this possibility.
“So much for planning,” Kellie said, scooping up the Planner by the front of his jumpsuit.
“But -- I don’t understand!” the Planner said, looking off to his side as if trying to find someone. “I was told --”
Then the Planner’s eyes looked panic-stricken. He made a gurgling sound and went stiff. Terrified, his skin began to turn blue before Kellie’s eyes and his breathing stopped.
“CPR!” Kellie yelled. “This man needs CPR!”
A woman from among the dignitaries stepped forward. “I’m a doctor,” she said.
Kellie knew CPR herself, but she was the only one who could quickly free the frozen officers. She did so while the doctor went to work on the Planner.
Once the officers were freed, Kellie moved to offer her aid with CPR on the planner.
The doctor was sitting atop him, a horrified and mystified look on her face. Kellie realized for the first time that the doctor was Christie Dekker, the dermatologist she saw about two weeks earlier for the removal of a small growth on her wrist.
Dekker, stunned, looked up at Elevator Girl. “This man is dead,” she said. “It’s like he froze to death from the inside out.”
Kellie put a gloved hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Those officers and guards still need your help, doctor,” the teen heroine said.
Kellie stayed at the scene for police interviews. The media were given some press releases, but the people inside were kept there until they could be deposed by authorities -- even the governor.
“Do you have any idea what the Planner wanted here?” Kellie asked Dekker.
The doctor shrugged. “He said he wanted the technologies of the business, and wanted them turned over to him.”
“In the rush to get here, I never heard; what is this business?” Kellie asked.
“Brice Cryonics,” Dekker said. “It’s a freezing technology systems operation, with an R & D arm.”
“R & D?” Kellie repeated.
“Research and development,” Dekker said.
“Well, that makes sense,” Kellie said. “But how did he die?”
“Some sort of pre-rigged freezing device within him,” Dekker said. “I don’t know anything about the man, but I’m guessing it’s a suicide pill of some sort.”
Kellie shook her head, but said nothing more on that topic. She looked at the doctor. “Doc, why are you here?”
“Firms doing medical work need a doctor on staff,” Dekker said, “or on the board. I’m on the board of directors. I actually helped convince the company to come here, but they may regret that now.”
Soon after, Kellie was on her way home. She hadn’t wanted to show it before, but she was shaken. No human adversary of hers had died before. Even though his death wasn’t her fault, it was still a shock. She was wishing Dakota was available to talk to, but he had so much on his mind right now, he didn’t need a whiny superheroine girlfriend.
But there was something else. Kellie was sure the Planner’s death wasn’t a suicide. Knowing him, he had a contingency plan to escape if he was captured. Suicide wasn’t a plan, and wasn’t his style. No, he had been murdered, almost certainly by his mysterious employer. But why?
Shortly after Kellie got home, Dakota’s twin sister Lakota called. “Thanks for having me over for Thanksgiving dinner, Kellie,” she said. “You don’t know how much this means.”
“You’re welcome,” Kellie said. “But why aren’t you going along?”
“It’s too expensive,” Lakota said. “I’m old enough to be at home for a couple of days, and I can fend for myself in a lot of that time, but I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do for Thanksgiving.”
“Well, ours isn’t much,” Kellie said. “It’s been just the two of us for some years now, so we don’t make scads and scads of food.”
“Don’t you go see family?”
“We don’t have much extended family out there,” Kellie said. “We had Grandpa over until his health got bad, but there’s not anybody else close by, and our budget hasn’t allowed much for travel.”
“Well, I’ve always thought of you as family,” said Lakota, “or at least a really good friend to my brother. I’m glad you two are a couple now. You’re good for each other.”
Kellie was debating asking Lakota to stay at their house while her family was gone. It might help Lakota, but it also might be a risk to her secret identity.
“Now, don’t offer to have me come over to stay, because I couldn’t accept,” Lakota said. “I need to stay in our house so it looks lived in.”
“Will you be OK alone there?” Kellie asked. “I mean, I’m sure your parents told you, ‘No parties.’”
“Yeah, like I’d have a party here while my brother’s in the hospital,” Lakota said. “No danger of that.”
The teens worked out the time Lakota should come over for dinner, and made arrangements for Kellie to get updates on Dakota through his twin.
When the call ended, Kellie went to the drawer in which her mother kept a scrap of paper with an odd verse, one she’d used once before. Kellie read it again. She was turning over Lakota’s words in her head, along with her mother’s feelings for Granite Man. She thought about the loneliness she felt now, and the loneliness Lakota felt, and the loneliness she knew her mother felt, and Granite Man’s eternal loneliness, half-living for all eternity as a stone statue.
When Gemma awakened Granite Man to rescue Kellie, the two of them clearly had fallen in love. Since then, knowing that the statue that could be animated into Granite Man was dimly aware of what went on around him, Gemma had been spending every moment she could spare at the park, gazing at the statue and talking to it when no one else was around.
The next morning was Wednesday, which was the first day of Thanksgiving break this year. Kellie made her excuses to her mother and went downtown as Kellie, taking a city bus to complete the trip and carrying her father‘s old winter trench coat with her. Her mother had never been able to part with it; she said the rumpled look was just so him.
Soon Kellie was at the park, standing in front of the statue. In the Great Lakes area air in late November, it was chilly enough that few people were in the park, and no one was near the statue that was secretly Granite Man.
Kellie stood gazing up at the statue from beside its base for a moment, then said the words, “O Rock of Power, Defend us in This dangerous hour.”
A yellow light surrounded the statue and Granite Man came to life. He smiled down at Kellie. “Why, El- Kellie,” he said, remembering that the teen’s identity as Elevator Girl was secret. “What brings you here, my friend?”
“My mother,” said Kellie.
“Gemma?” said Granite Man, sounding more than a little concerned. “What’s wrong? What’s the danger to Gemma?”
“Loneliness,” Kellie said. “She’s in danger of being alone, without the man she loves.”
Granite Man’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How can I help with that?”
Kellie placed her gloved hands on the ancient warrior-hero’s chest. “Stamitos, the man she loves is you,” she said. “You’re the only one who can save her from this danger.”
“But … But that isn’t something for Granite Man to rescue her from.”
Kellie smiled. “But it is something for Stamitos to rescue her from.”
“But that’s not a real danger,” Stamitos protested.
“Then why did the magic work when I said the words?” Kellie asked.
Stamitos looked, to Kellie’s surprise, small. “What do you mean?”
“When anyone uses the spell to awaken you and there’s no real danger, you don’t wake up,” Kellie said. “So how did the spell awaken you now? Nothing else is going on.”
Stamitos looked up. “Ares? Athena?” he said. They were the Greek gods who had left him in this state of half-life so he could be the hero he longed to be, rather than dying at the gaze of Medusa, millennia ago.
Suddenly, Granite Man was surrounded in a green light. After a few seconds, Kellie saw Stamitos standing before her, fully human and wearing almost nothing.
She handed him the trench coat. “Here, put this on,” she said.
“I’m … cold!” Stamitos said. “I’m actually cold! You did it, Kellie! You’ve broken the curse!”
“Actually, I just thought of the loophole and took a chance,” Kellie said. “How you and Mom feel about each other was what really broke the spell.”
Kellie got them home by bus, despite some odd stares at the man who looked like a well-built, barefoot flasher. Then she hustled Stamitos to the house.
“Hey, Mom!” Kellie yelled as she entered by the back door. “There’s somebody here who wants to see you!”
Gemma walked into the room, looking slightly annoyed. “Who is --”
Then she saw him. “Stamitos?” she said in disbelief.
Stamitos ran to her, shouting, “Gemma!” He enfolded her in an embrace, which was returned, and then began to kiss her passionately.
After a long moment, Gemma pulled back. “But, how?”
“Thank her,” Stamitos said, pointing at Kelly.
“Kelly?” Gemma said.
“I just thought you might like to have a fourth here for Thanksgiving dinner, that’s all,” Kellie said.
“Thanksgiving dinner?” Stamitos said, looking confused.
“It’s when we give thanks to the forces beyond ourselves for all the blessings in our lives,” Kellie said, “and gorge ourselves silly on food.”
“Then it’s a most appropriate feast for me to celebrate, for I have my life to be thankful for,” Stamitos said, “and my love.”
“We’ll have to work out a lot of details,” Kellie said. “Clothes, a last name, a place to stay …” Kellie said.
“Oh, I think he can stay in the guest room, at least for now,” Gemma said. “We’ll have to see if we can scrounge up something for you to wear before tomorrow, when Lakota comes over. And the rest will keep.”
“Indeed it will,” said Stamitos. He began to kiss Gemma again, and she kissed him back.
Kellie giggled and left the two of them alone.
Kellie kept smiling and giggling as she went to her room. There was too much heartache around her right now; at least she’d been able to rescue two people who both deserved it from theirs.