Exactly 2.47 seconds later, a second bolt of lightning strikes at the same latitude and longitude. The plane has travelled multiple times its own length by that point, so the lightning hits a tree on the ground below.

It deposits: a person.

What? Where is she? She was on the plane, and then she was--somewhere--and now she's here. It feels like waking up from a truly epic dream, her mind full of plans she doesn't remember and emotions she has no reason to be feeling. Terror and hope and fierce determination.

Also, she appears to be made of some kind of shiny metal, holding its shape like a solid but flowing like a liquid as she moves. And there are levers in her mind, things she could choose to do the same way she could choose move her limbs, but with no sense of what would result from doing them.

"What the actual fuck." She tries waking up again; it doesn't go. She tries poking one of the mental levers?

[a sphere of space extending 1500 meters from her in every direction]

Agrjalalfhaj? She "puts" whatever that was "back" "down" and tries a different one.

Now she's holding a blade made of ?light-distorting purpleness? It glows but doesn't illuminate anything.

Light . . . saber? Is she dreaming about being a Jedi? but Jedi moral philosophy is dumb side issue. She has a lightsaber. She very carefully tries cutting a stick in half with it.

The stick is so smoothly and perfectly in half. 

That is: so incredibly cool. She puts the lightsaber away and tries the third thing.

Reserve: 12000/12000

Current factor: 1

. . . What if the current factor was 2?

The tone of the cars on the distant highway changes. The wind feels slower against her skin.

She picks up one of the stick-halves, waves it around a bit, drops it again.

The stick behaves normally while she's holding it, but when she drops it it falls just slightly slower than it should.

Oh that's fun. What if the current factor is 10, does it slow things down even more?

But of course. 

Coooool. She puts the current factor back to 1 and tries the next thing.

The next thing waits patiently for input.

Can she input 2 again? Can she input half of this stick?

The stick is no longer in her hand; it is now There. 

Where?

In the place where the stick is.

Can it be back on the ground instead?

Her wish is this thing's command!

This is all incredibly cool and weird but it's also stupid cold out, so just in case she isn't dreaming she should figure out where she is. She walks in the direction of fewer trees.

She's across the street from a Walmart Supercenter.

There are a handful of cars scattered through the parking lot.

Oh good, civilization.

Aaaand it's closed because it's midnight on Christmas. 

Possibly the thing to do here is get out her cell phone and call her parents, so that someone in the world knows where she is, but she doesn't want to try to explain this whole thing over the phone and also it would scare them for no reason. She'll get somewhere less stress-inducing and then call them. Maybe she's even close enough to Pittsburgh that they can drive out and get her. Where is she anyway?

She's at a Walmart Supercenter. (Her phone is totally fucked.)

Oh right, because of the lightning. Honestly it's a stroke of luck her clothes are only scorched and not shreds.Maybe there's someone sleeping in their car who can drive her to a bus station or a police station or at least tell her where she is.

There is a guy sleeping in the third car she checks.

Knock knock on the window? Attempt at sad puppy eyes that's surprisingly high quality considering her eyes are featureless quicksilver like the rest of her?

The guy blinks blearily up at her, decides she’s a dream and he’s still asleep, and puts his head back down.

Knock knock. "Please? I'm lost and my phone is dead. I'll buy you dinner?"

“You’re a dream,” he informs her. “I don’t hafts get up for dreams.”

If he's dreaming and she's dreaming then who's flying the plane? The pilot, one hopes.

Maybe she should bother someone else. Are there any buildings she can see from here that have their lights on?

Nope.

She could wander around looking for a police station but she's so cold. Knock knock knock "I'm really sorry but please wake up!" If this doesn't work she'll bail and hope she can keep herself warm by jogging until she finds another person.

He groans and opens the car door.

"Thank you, sorry, can you tell me where I am and help me get to a police station or a bus station or something?"

“Uh, Uniontown. I have no idea where to find cops, I’m just passing through.” And not stupid enough to deliberately interact with cops.

That could be a lot worse! "Do you have a phone I can borrow for two minutes to tell my parents where I am?"

"Sure, persistent dream girl." He hands her his phone. It does not occur to him that annoying dream apparitions might be stymied by his lockscreen.

"Um. Can you unlock it?" If he doesn't want to unlock it she can give the emergency call feature a try.

"3-4-5-7-9-1," he mumbles grumpily. 

"Thank you so much!"

Her first call doesn't go through, which is nerve-wracking; her second goes to voicemail, which just means her mom hasn't started picking up unknown numbers. She texts "this is Samantha pick up" and tries again and that works, but the connection is terrible.

"Mom it's me, I'm at the Walmart in Uniontown, come get me! Something happened to the plane, I don't know what, I didn't see it crash and I don't think I'm injured but it's all very weird."

"Thank you!! I feel fine but uh. My skin looks weird? It's not as bad as it sounds. I think."

"I can't hear you, you're breaking up--love you too--see you soon--" the line goes dead and there's not enough signal to get another text through.

Samantha gives the man his phone back with a twenty-dollar bill wrapped around it and starts jogging back and forth in front of the Walmart to keep warm. She's scared the plane crashed and everyone else on it is dead. She's scared something is wrong with her skin. She's scared something is wrong with her brain. The guy didn't remark on her looking weird at all; he might have been being polite or she might have hit her head getting out of the wreckage of a plane crash and now she thinks she's silver and has superpowers. She feels lucid, she can add and subtract two-digit numbers in her head and get the same answer every time, the cold bites in a way cold in her dreams never has, but all of that seems like thin evidence in the face of: how did she get out of the plane? She can't even go look for the plane, she said she was at the Walmart, she needs to stay by the doors of the Walmart until her parents get here.

There is some kind of ruckus around the side of the building. 

She's gonna go check that out. It might be another human being, or a solvable problem, or information about what the fuck is going on. Or the next part of this dream plot. She walks to the corner and peeks around it. (Her attempt at stealth is not really accounting for how reflective her face is now. If there are any light sources over there, she gleams.)

There are like twenty dog-sized mice fighting with over a hundred mouse-sized arthropods of various stripes. As Samora watches they manage to knock over the dumpster they seem to be fighting over.

She is so dreaming.

 She doesn't get any closer but does continue keeping an eye on them, in case one faction gives up on the dumpster and starts trying to get into cars. Probably Car Guy is safer than she is right now but he's asleep and someone should be keeping an eye on this nonsense. And if she's dreaming then it doesn't matter. But you can't just not be careful just because you're definitely dreaming, so she will hold very still and keep both eyes and ears out for More Weird Shit. Or her parents, though there's no way they're going to be here in the next twenty minutes.

Eventually the bugs win, although the mice manage to reduce their numbers somewhat, perhaps to the tune of the literal meaning of the word decimation. The bugs strip the mouse skeletons bare and then converge on the dumpster, making a discordant humming noise with their various different parts. 

That's kind of disgusting. Also not good news re: the bugs' likelihood of being satisfied with the contents of the dumpster.

She internally debates whether, should the bugs come her way, it will be Lightsaber Time. On the one hand, she knows what she's doing with a sword, or at least a rattan sword, and she doesn't want to be eaten by bugs. On the other hand, she doesn't know what she's doing with the lightsaber and might cut her own hand or foot off and also it's not really the best weapon option for lots of small bugs.

The bugs aren't all done with the dumpster, but some of them start to trickle off it and in her general direction. 

Backing away slowly. They are still small enough to stomp on but she doesn't want to let them get that close. She should have tucked her pants into her socks when she had the chance. If any of them look like they're coming after her in particular it's gonna be Lightsaber Time. 

A millipede longer than her boot sole scuttles towards her. 

Nope nope don't fuck with me. Whack.

Now this parking lot has a new pothole and the millipede is no longer a threat.

She really needs to not cut her own foot off with this thing. Did the millipede serve as an example pour encourager les autres?

One bug is more interested in eating its buddy's bisected corpse than her, does that count?

Yeah sure great, godspeed weird bug thing. Anybody else feeling lucky? 

Some other bugs skitter in her direction but more opportunistically than determinedly.

Dodge dodge dodge and anything that gets within three feet gets chopped. She's turning and moving to keep all the bugs in her field of view, which is letting them control the pace and direction of the fight, but she's controlling the angle and range and that's what's important right now. 

While she's doing that, a raccoon the size of a Saint Bernard tiptoes past and into the Walmart. 

Did a giant raccoon just phase through the wall--focus. Avoiding bugs. Occasionally killing bugs. If the raccoon is real it's not her problem and if she's imagining it it's not a problem she can do anything about.

Eventually the swarm more-or-less disperses. If the raccoon is real it does not immediately demonstrate this by coming back out.

If she was a ghost raccoon she'd stay in the Walmart too. What the fuck is going on. She's made a bit of a hash of this chunk of parking lot and doesn't have anything she can do about it and doesn't even feel bad, really, what else was she gonna do. She feels kind of better, actually. Less freezing. Adrenaline and physical exercise were just what she needed.

She has time to get pretty worn down again before her parents arrive. It's still cold, and she didn't sleep much on the plane, and once the adrenaline wears off she's just pacing and shivering and thinking.

She really doesn't have an explanation for any of this. It's gone on way too long to be a dream, and if she's insane it's not the kind where she can figure out what really happened just by thinking about it. If she really called her parents--and that part wasn't weird and nonsensical at all--they'll really arrive, and if they can see her silver skin and the lightsaber then it'll all be real. And--pretty cool? Apart from the giant animals, but that seems like a problem for animal control, except she appears to be convinced deep in her bones that it's her problem actually.

Why does she feel like it's her problem? Just because she first encountered them while alone? What is her brain doing. Having a lightsaber does not mean her ideal career is suddenly animal contro. The ideal tools for animal control are tranquilizer guns and stuff. She's going to graduate college and go to law school and make the world a better place that way. Maybe the superpowers will turn out to be useful enough that she should be doing something else, but that's a decision to make when she's had sleep and breakfast and isn't feeling a weird obsession with some bugs she found behind a Walmart.

Eventually her family arrives, Mom and Dad and her brother James with his long legs squashed into the back seat of the old Honda Civic. They pile out of the car, startle at her silver skin and then pull her into a giant group hug for several minutes.

"Boy am I glad to see you!"

"Thank goodness you're alright--are you alright? You're all--shiny--"

"Oh thank goodness I'm not hallucinating. Did you check the news, do you know if my plane crashed--?"

"Sis, how do you not know whether your plane crashed--"

"I'll take a look--my word. Seems that lightning storm has been giving people superpowers."

"What--Dad, lemme see--"

"You can read it out loud to the rest of us in the car, dear, it's cold and I want to go to bed."

"Okay Mom."

(In the car:)

"Do you have superpowers?"

"I do!"

"Oh my godddddd of course you have superpowers. What did you get? Can you fly?"

"I have a lightsaber! And I think I can slow down time! And maybe some other stuff? It didn't come with a manual."

"We gotta do some experiments then! And I wanna see the lightsaber. You gotta show me the lightsaber."

"Not in the car, Jack!"

"Haha you said carjack. And I didn't mean in the car."

"That joke stopped being funny when I was ten."

"Then why'd you laugh?"

"Because I'm super tired and out of it. I'd laugh at a grocery list right now. I should look at more news articOH SHIT squid godzilla!"

Three miles later there is a grizzly bear the size of a school bus sprawled out across the road. 

The car screeches to a halt as soon as the shape looms up out of the darkness, then creeps forward to get the headlights on it.

"What the sam hill is that thing?" wonders Samantha's father.

Samantha peers around the passenger seat. "Is it dead, or just asleep?"

"Maybe we should turn around and try a different way," says her mother.

The bear makes a snore-y snuffling noise. It's pretty loud. 

"We should definitely turn around, Carl."

"Mom, no. I--I know this sounds crazy but I think I can take it. And if we leave it it's going to attack someone."

"You're right, kiddo, that does sound insane. I'm calling animal control. And the cops."

"Dad, what are the cops supposed to do about a monster the size of a bus?"

"What are you planning to do about a monster the size of a bus?"

"I can slow down time and I have a lightsaber. I sneak up on it, stab it a bunch of times really fast, and run away again."

"Absolutely not. I'm calling the police, who will come and shoot it with guns like normal people."

Samantha's instincts continue to scream that this is a terrible idea and she's a terrible person for letting a bunch of innocent innocent until proven guilty cops go up against this thing when she's right here, but her logical brain says she should shut up so she shuts up.

If it's not actively killing people right now the Pennsylvania state police have more important things to do! Goodbye!

Samantha unbuckles her seat belt. "See?" she says in a harsh whisper. "These things are all over the place. Everyone who can possibly fight them needs to be doing their part."

"We can just get on a different road!" her mother hisses back.

"And let it stomp into someone's house and eat them?! No!" 

"Samantha, what's gotten into you?!"

I don't know "I have a job to do! With great power comes great responsibility. The lightning, the monsters, the superpowers, it's all one thing. There's a reason for, for all of this. I don't know what it is. But I know there's a reason. I know I have to do something."

Elizabeth Maris stares over her shoulder into her daughter's featureless silver eyes.

"Fine. Okay. Fine. But if that thing so much as twitches you run back to the car immediately. Carl, get us pointed away from it."

"Alright. But let the record show that this whole situation is ridiculous." Carl backs up a ways on the empty road and does a careful U-turn.

Samantha sets her speedup factor to ten again and hears the car's idling slow down enough to distinguish individual revs, sees her family seem to freeze.

Can she set it higher? 

Anything past twelve or so feels like pushing something heavy, or stretching a joint past where it wants to be. She had probably better not.

Alright. Ten it is then. She doesn't want it cutting out on her. 

A few seconds of focus and out comes the not-a-lightsaber, a line of separation between Here and There. She walks towards the bear on careful feet and to her family's eyes it looks like she's moving as fast as a cantering horse. She's terrified, and she holds tight to the fear as the only proof she has of her own sanity as she slashes at the sleeping monster's throat.

The bear wakes up with a jerk and ROARS. 

She screams back and slashes at its face and neck thirty times per sidereal second.

It gushes blood, and its roar trails off into an agonized gurgle. It slumps forward, everything from the neck up a shredded horror of bone and bits of flesh. 

Samantha unmanifests her lightsaber and stands still in accelerated time, panting with adrenaline. She is covered in blood and she stood between her family and a monster and she has never felt better. She wipes her bloodsoaked face with a bloodsoaked sleeve, drops back into realtime, and walks back to the car.

Jack breaks the silence first. "Wow, sis, remind me never to mess with you!" and suddenly they're all laughing with hysterical relief for a good thirty seconds. 

"That was really something," says Samantha's father, when they've all pulled themselves together.

"I'm very proud of you too," says her mother, "but let me put my coat down on the seat before you get back in the car."

"I can turn my shirt inside out too? I'm going to need the world's longest shower anyway."

"Maybe you had better."

"You still smell better than you do after fight practice!"

"Jaaaaack!"

The road is still blocked by bear, of course, now complete with bloody grinning skull. 

Well, they're already facing the other way.

"We could just drive around it," says Jack.

"I'd rather not have to explain to anyone why I drove through a puddle of blood," says Carl exhaustedly, and everyone pipes down while he figures out an alternate route.

The next odd thing they see is a beehive in someone's backyard. (1) of the bees is now very large, and has apparently survived stinging a fox to death.

"Do you mind if I--"

"Sure. Whatever."

"Better me than the guy whose house is."

"Yeah, I guess so."

Samantha gets out of the car again and speeds up to--3x, because it's belatedly occurring to her that she can't be sure none of the animals got mental changes. Does the bee seem like it's going to attack her immediately?

Nope! The bee looks up when she approaches, and makes a soft buzzing noise, waggling its thorax in a manner reminiscent of a happy dog. 

She slows down to realtime, because she doesn't think she can make understandable words come out of herself when she's sped up, and says softly, "Hey there. Are you okay? I don't think you can get back into your hive like that." This is stupid. Probably the bee doesn't speak English even if it's a person now. Here she is anyway.

The bee wiggles its antennae at her, then scurries around on top of the hive like a dog turning around in its bed, and lies down on top of it. It can't get in the hive, but it's okay on the hive. 

That is adorable, and bizarre, and she really hopes the bear wasn't like that. Next time she encounters a sleeping monster she should have the nads to wake it up and try diplomacy first.

"I'm worried the people who live in that house" point "are going to freak out about you. Do you think you can, I don't know, move your hive? To somewhere with fewer humans?"

It looks where she points, then gently buzzes towards her, lands on her head, and touches its antennae to her forehead. 

Suddenly she has a bizarre, but somehow comprehensible, insight into What It Is Like To Be This Bee. There is the hive, which is homefamilymustprotect. There are humans, which are like unto gods, but like, benevolent, beloved gods. There are various irrelevant critters. And there are BAD THINGS to defend the hive from, like that fox, which this bee took down ALL BY ITSELF. (It is very proud of this! Pride isn't something it really understood before it got big but now it does.) Its feelings about defending the hive from BAD THINGS is shaped strikingly similarly to Samantha's feelings about defending humanity from weird monsters. 

It didn't really understand what she just said, but it got "concerned tone of voice" and "pointing at the big box* where the humans live." If there is something concerning for the humans, it is willing to do its best to protect them, too. 

*the bee has the concept of a hive constructed in a box made to be good for making hives in, as opposed to a hive made in the wild where you make do with what you have, and categorizes the house as the former

Oh wow.

Can she telepathy back at the bee the concept that the humans in the box might mistake it for a Bad Things and be afraid of it and maybe hurt it when they shouldn't? And that she wants to prevent this mistake from occurring?

(Back in the car, Samantha's family would quite like to know What In Tarnation, but they're going to let her cook.)

The bee is skeptical of this occurrence (it is bigger but still clearly a bee! It smells like bee and everything!) but if she, a human, thinks this error is possible, then it can't be dismissed solely based on the god-like wisdom of humankind. It doesn't...really have any idea of how to prevent it, though? Maybe it could smell MORE LIKE BEE, except it doesn't actually know how to do that. 

She will be right back, she asserts, and then walks to the house and . . . gives up before ringing the doorbell, because it's like two in the damn morning and she can't make someone else be awake right now. Instead she goes back to the car and bums a grocery receipt and a pen from her mom and shoves a note through the house's mail slot.

FYI You have a hive of bees in your yard and one of the bees is huge but also smart and friendly and telepathic. Please don't hurt them. Thank you!!!

Samantha goes back to the bee and tells it that she has done the human equivalent of a bee dance to tell the human who lives here not to be afraid and she wishes both the bees and the humans well. Goodbye, giant intelligent bee friend.

Goodbye!!! The bee wishes her well too. 

Maybe they can get home without any more sidequests? One way to find out.

They see some more weird stuff but nothing it makes any sense to try to intervene with.

Then everyone except Samantha can collapse into bed, and Samantha can wash off the blood and collapse into bed.

The next morning, she's still silvery and way more psychologically functional and she gets to open Christmas presents! And then do experiments to figure out what the heck her powers actually do! For this purpose she will call up her nerdiest pair of friends and ask if they're in town for Christmas and do they want to come over and help her do superpowers science.

Her nerdiest pair of friends are Jewish but they get the same school breaks. 

Their mother picks up the phone. 

"Hi Ms Lensherr! Are Emily and Edie home?" 

"Right now, they're...busy. I can tell them you called when they get back."

"Okay! Tell them I got superpowers in the thing that happened and I want to figure out how they work and I figured they'd have good ideas for what to try so I was gonna invite them over for lunch and science." She's hardly going to be doing the secret identity thing now that she looks like so much liquid mercury, is she.

"Oh, you too?"

"Oh, them too? Oh that's so great, they're going to be so good at being superheroes if they decide to go that route. Tell them congrats."

"I will. Not that it's entirely necessary, Emily is currently beating gravity in a fight and over the moon about it." She considers that phrasing. "Metaphorically."

"That is so cool, I hope they have an awesome time. See you around!"

She calls her next-nerdiest friend!

“Hi, Sam,” says her next-nerdiest friend, sounding a little distracted.

"Hi Amanda! How's your winter break going? I have superpowers!"

"Wow, really? That's so cool! Uh, things are going mostly fine, but a giant earthworm just destroyed the shed in the backyard."

"Oh shit I'll be right over!" Hey mom hey dad she's borrowing the car, Amanda's having a giant earthworm problem byyyyye

The earthworm is writhing around Amanda's back yard. The shed is definitely totaled, and in fact might be difficult to differentiate from the remains of the also-totaled patio. It's...bigger than "destroyed the shed" might imply. Actually if it goes unaddressed too much longer the foundations of the house are at risk. 

Samantha is some combination of not clever enough to figure out how to use the speedup power while driving a car and too smart to try, but she does break the regular speed limit and gets from the driveway to the back yard at 10x.

She's not going to make the same mistake twice when she has so many mistakes she hasn't even made once yet. She drops back to realtime. "Hey! Can you understand me? You need to calm down." Hopefully if it's smart enough to be people it's also acquired at least one of sight, hearing, or telepathy, because she doesn't speak Vibrations or Pheromones or whatever earthworms use to communicate. If they communicate.

Well, it definitely notices her shouting! You can tell by how it swings its head (or is that its tail? Becoming huge hasn't made it easier to tell the ends apart) at her like a medieval flail. 

She ducks on instinct, and speeds up halfway through ducking on much newer instinct. Out comes the distortion blade in case it comes back for another pass. "If you can understand me, hold still and I won't have to stab you!" Not her most diplomatic speech ever. At least she remembered to slow down for it so it didn't come out in chipmunk mode. Back to fast in case it has other ideas. 

It hesitates, some primal instinct identifying the distortion blade as Bad News, then dives back into the soil. 

That's not actually going to stop it from damaging the house more, is the thing. And as far she can tell it's still mentally just a worm. She goes to 10x and makes a swipe straight through the unresisting soil at where it logically has to be. 

The soil is unresisting. The worm...less so. On the other hand, her blade is pretty hard to resist. 

Both segments of worm--not halves, she only cut off about a fifth--erupt from the ground, spraying worm blood everywhere. 

Does it look like they're about to grow into two entire worms? If not she'll chop the bigger piece into two pieces.

Nope! The places where the pieces of worm were once joined are bleeding freely, not growing back. The smaller piece whacks desperately at her with a club-like end.

That's good, because she doesn't have a ton of options other than lightsaber. She stumbles back from the flailing end, recovers, cuts again.

This worm is flailing REALLY DESPERATELY. In increasingly small pieces. Bits of blood and solider chunks of viscera seem to occupy all the places where it's possible to dodge away from potentially dangerous bits of worm.