Ray's Crazy Kids

Superman Landings Are Hard on the Knees

If you've ever gone on a rollercoaster, you probably know the lurch of falling at an insane speed. The overturning stomach, the wind in your ears, the primal feeling that you're going to die. Ray loved roller coasters for all those reasons : the thrill of the fall was something he'd loved for as long as he could remember.

And as he would later be known to say, no fall was more thrilling than the one with Maddie in his arms. The Lincoln Towers were starting to collapse, the reputed poor infrastructure not being able to withstand it's main support wall being blown out. They'd only fallen a couple feet, enough to make Maddie scream and Ray lose his cool when they passed the windows of a lower storey. The glass shattered from the intense heat inside the building, showering both falling bodies in shards of hot glass.

The shards hit them like hail, piercing their flame-kissed skin like needles. However, the sharp pain brought Ray back to his senses ; time seemed to slow as he realized the blue shimmer that had once encased his hand was still a thin sheen, barely perceptible, but present.

As the world flashed before his eyes as is custom when you're falling to your potential death, Ray was struck by the image of his sister leaping into the ash-filled air, the frail Miss K in her arms.

If Ray had been able to put his impulse into a picture, he would've been able to point out what he'd seen ; the same thin sheen of energy, coating Mika's entire body, glowing bright on her legs and back, strengthening them for the shock of impact.

Unconsciously, Ray had noticed how his sister unconsciously manipulated her power to save both hers and Miss K's lives. Now, he directed the blue sheen, concentrated on the hand that had been hanging on to the building, spreading it evenly across his body so as to protect himself.

"More, I need more," his instincts screamed, and the blue sheen strengthened, forming casts of blue glimmer on his legs, running strings of light down his back, turning the skin, muscles and bones to steel -- unpierceable, untearable, unbreakable.

Maddie screamed wildly, small head buried in the crook of Ray's sweating neck, arms tight around his throat. Ray's free arm waved around wildly as they fell, his feet kicking the air uselessly until he got them under control.

They kept falling and falling, Maddie losing control of herself in her fear so that frost was now forming where she held onto Ray's shirt. But he was too busy to notice : there was still the split-second decision on how to land.

Finally, the image of his sister still fresh in his mind, Ray smirked wildly. Leave it up to him to smile as he plummeted towards what the screaming crowd thought was his doom. The building was about to fall, it was too risky to have someone fly by and grab the hero and his damsel. The same reason stopped anyone from going in to catch them -- and besides, if that option was taken, the whiplash was sure to break one of their necks.

Mika was screaming the loudest. For all the insults she threw at her brother, she certainly didn't want to see him become a red smudge buried under tons of rubble and flaming furniture. Even less because she hadn't able to keep track of him when she should've known better than to trust he'd put his safety above some breakneck hero stunt.

As she watched her brother fall, apparently out of control, she cursed her Dunst blood. The same thing that had pushed Ray to get the Power For Hire license had now pushed him off the edge of a building, random child in arm, planless, and most importantly ignorant of how to properly.

Mika wished with her entire being her brother would somehow suddenly learn how to execute a perfect landing. From a fifteen storey height. With a kid in one arm. And limited skin-strengthening ability. Mika was already grieving.

Just as tear started pouring down her face, the unthinkable happened. Ray reined in his legs and bent them under him, holding Maddie steady with one arm as the other reached between his trembling thighs.

Three storeys flew past as time started to accelerate again, and Ray took notice of the ground growing nearer and nearer. Maddie screamed even louder as they past the third floor, second floor, first floor, and hit the pavement.

Ray's ankles might as well have been spotlights from the amount of blue light collected in them. The protection overkill tempered the impact as it shot up Ray's legs. His free hand made connection with the ground, and with a push of superhuman strength, countered the force that wanted to drive him face-first into the pavement with a push. The other hand was tightly curled around Maddie's neck and head, gripping her spine to prevent the whiplash that nearly shook them both.

Ash rose from the ground in a great cloud when they hit, and somewhere in the crowd Mika panicked as she lost sight of her brother. The crowd held their breaths as the ash swirling around the two figures was flung onto a rising gust of hot air and swept away from Ray's hunched figure.

"Ray-" Mika started screaming, her heart missing a beat before she realized what position her brother was in.

Contrary to what she had thought, and what a large portion of the crowd still thought, Ray hadn't been impaled on a piece of stray rubble. His blond head raised itself dramatically, one hand curled around Maddie's trembling body. Ray's other hand was in fact a fist, planted firmly on the ground that had cracked upon impact with it. The youngest Dunst twin was kneeling, one knee planted in the ground.

"...A freaking Superman Landing?" Mika stuttered, slack jawed in incredulosity.

A slight movement in Ray's other arm interrupted her shocked-still anger. Maddie, barely distinguishable from Ray through the heavy coat of ash and soot that covered them both, turned her head to look at the crowd. Ray gently let her onto the ground, where she clung to his scorched pants for dear life.

From the crowd, there was a cry and a woman tore herself free from the spectators, running straight for Maddie and Ray. Maddie cried out, leaping into the woman's arms, arms and legs wrapped around her in a tight embrace. Behind them came a man, who joined them in the reunion. The family cried together, Maddie caged between the two protective bodies of her parents as Ray ushered them away from the danger of falling chunks of the building.

Finally, Maddie's mother got up as her father took the child in his arms. Both of them looked at Ray, their dust-smeared faces streaked with clear paths run by relieved tears.

"You- you saved my little girl. Thank you so much," the man managed to utter as his wife kept quietly sobbing into Maddie's head, smoothing the shuddering child's hair, "I can't even-- you're a hero."

Ray smiled, a row of white teeth glinting brightly in his face, made dark by the crass and dust of the building he'd just escaped. He looked down at Maddie, whose brown eyes were already putting him on a pedestal. From that very moment, when she saw the young man covered from head to toe in ash, blood and bruises, smiling as a building surrendered to flames behind him, Ray became her Hero.