Star Harbor Nights

Dani Harris was not a killer.

That's not to say that in the time since finding the blue ring, Dani hadn't seen anybody die. There had been a gang fight that had got badly out of hand... Dani hadn't killed anybody, but people had died. More recently, a girl had overdosed in bed. None of this had seemed real at the time, any more than any thing ever did with the ring on. Dani was living a dream, a fantasy life... the perfect fantasy life, a teenager's idea of heaven.

The ring provided an alluring body, mysterious powers, and an endless opportunity for adventure. That's what it was. That's what it did.

Which lead to the question, how was it that Dani ended up in the nightclubs every night? At first it had been novelty... the thrill of sneaking past the bouncers... the excitement of new and forbidden things. But novelty fades, and the bouncers didn't seem to particularly care. Even when Dani walked in the front door in plain sight, nobody asked for ID or demanded a cover charge.

So why had Dani kept doing it? Everybody got stuck in a rut sometimes... super powers might change a lot of things, but they didn't change that.

When the greaser came up and kissed her on the lips, and then fell dead at her feet, it was in a way the first real thing that had happened to Dani in months. It was too weird not to be real. She didn't remember going invisible. She made no conscious decision to leave. Moments later, she was outside and around the corner, and realizing that she couldn't see her hands in front of her face. There was a panicky moment where she couldn't call to mind the feeling of solidness which made her turn visible.

"What... what the hell happened?" she asked herself, out loud. without the ring, Dani tended to do that a lot... but never with it on. She didn't need to. The ring made her beautiful and powerful. There were always people who wanted to talk to her, thanks to the ring.

The ring had done more than change her life.

It had changed her.

Now, she stared at her finger--at the bluish-silver band with its too-big sapphire colored stone--as if it had bit her. Had it somehow killed that guy? Was the ring really as great... as good... as it had first seemed? Dani wasn't worldly... or hadn't been, before the beginning of summer... but she didn't think she was naive. She'd been cautious using the ring at first. She'd done tests to see if it was somehow working on her will, addicting or corrupting her. She hadn't noticed any unspeakable hungers. She didn't feel any strange, unaccountable weaknesses when she wasn't wearing it... just the same regular everyday insecurity that had been normal life for sixteen years.

Her bedroom was full of comic books, movies, and roleplaying games. While she was fairly sure that these things weren't exactly accurate reference materials for occult artifacts of great power, she liked to think they'd given her a pretty good handle on the various ways that such an artifact could subtly ensnare a person. What trick could some moldy old wizard or ancient god come up with that would be more insidious than what the average Game Master with an axe to grind could concoct?

On the other hand, though, the recurring theme in all the stories she'd read--except for some fantastically bad fan fiction on the internet, which usually had a main character with a name suspiciously similar to the author's--was that there was always a price to be paid. You didn't just get handed a buttload of magical super powers for no reason, not without some heavy duty consequences coming your way down the road. There was no such thing as a free lunch, right?

So what was her price?

She didn't even know the extent of her powers, really. At first, she'd been excited to discover each new facet of the abilities that the ring bestowed, but as weeks went by and new ones kept appearing, she started getting... nervous. Not exactly scared. A little guilty, maybe. Because she still remembered the stories. If she was going to be honest with herself, that might have been why she drifted into her routine of clubbing and partying instead of following her original plan, which of course, had been heroics. It only took a smidge of her powers to make herself mysterious and sexy, and it helped keep her mind off the question of what her potential power level might actually be... which kept her from thinking about the potential price tag.

She was pretty sure the ring didn't give her any sort of total cosmic power... she definitely wasn't any sort of "Blue Lantern"... but what limitations it did have didn't seem to follow any sort of hard and fast line. Honestly, when she did test the extent of its abilities, she was kind of shocked at how often it did seem to conform to what she expected from years of comics and video games. That realization had made her wonder if the ring wasn't simply responding to her expectations, which suggested that maybe it was capable of doing just about anything. She'd tested this theory by trying to focus her willpower on the idea that the ring really should give her total cosmic power, but to no avail. In the end, she'd decided that maybe the video game makers had just got more stuff right than she'd expected.

Now she wondered if her previous impression hadn't been correct. Could it be that her worries about paying a price for the powers had actually made it happen? That would make it doubly her fault that the man was dead... but it might also mean she could undo it.

She shut her eyes, clenching her fist tightly and focusing all her concentration on the ring. "I wish he weren't dead, I wish he weren't dead, I wish he weren't dead," she said. There was no sensation that anything had been accomplished. She realized she would have to go back to the club... if she wanted to find out for sure if it had worked.

She realized that she really, extremely did not want to do that.

If she didn't go back to the club, then where? Home? That was probably the best idea... because that would mean she'd have to take off the ring. The last thing Dani needed was for her mother to find a beautiful twenty-something woman with a shimmering blue aura in their apartment. She could take off the ring, be normal for a while... maybe just get a full night's sleep for once and see if that didn't give her a better handle on what was happening. She could even cool it with the ring entirely for a couple days.

Yes, that was definitely a good idea. That was exactly what she should do.

It would help that thought to sound more sincere inside her head if she hadn't already started walking in a different direction. She still wasn't detecting any insidious influence from the ring... just ordinary human stupidity. She knew what she should be doing, and she was doing the opposite. Well, why not? She was sixteen. Besides, she rationalized--fully aware that it was a rationalization--that she wasn't going to learn anything about the ring by leaving it on her night stand. No, what she really should be doing is getting out there and actually using it the way she'd been avoiding for so long. That was what made the most sense. If she... or the ring... really had killed that guy, it was probably because she didn't have enough control over it.

She'd been careless and irresponsible with her power, and somebody else had paid the price. That was a common theme in superhero stories, too. If she tried to deny her responsibility and ran from the power, it seemed inevitable to her that more people would get hurt. She didn't want that on her conscience. She couldn't do anything to help the guy who'd died, but she could do her best to make sure that nobody else did.

The thing about Star Harbor was that, for a city full of intrigue and danger, it seemed like you could wander forever and never find any. Dani had worked out a solution to that her third night out with the ring. One of its abilities was to conjure other items of lesser, though appreciable, power. When she wanted to find enemies to fight, she just concentrated and it summoned to her hand a blue metal compass which pointed the way towards trouble.

The previous times that she'd used it, the compass point had swung around lazily a bit before orienting strongly in one direction. This time, as Dani watched, it jumped wildly around, pulling heavily in several different directions. She felt a weird sensation passing through her mystically enhanced body... she didn't have an instruction manual for the compass any more than she did for the ring, but she had the strong suspicion that something very bad was abroad in the world tonight.

She watched the needle jerking around and oriented herself in the direction it seemed to be stabbing towards most often. As soon as she took a step, the compass seemed to make up its mind and obligingly locked on whatever target she was heading towards.

She set off at a fast trot, adjusting her costume as she went. Her tight pants became candy striped leggings in alternating dark and light blue, and a segmented blue leather skirt sprouted from her waist. Her top became chain mail tunic with leather shoulder pads, all azure tinted. Blue boots with a modest heel grew around her feet. She could make the blue effect in her clothes as subtle or strong as she wanted... she made it strong now, while also making her aura flare brighter to further enhance the color. There wasn't much chance that anybody who saw Dani when she was "ringed up" would associate the beautiful woman they saw with the sulky, quiet teenager Dani was during the day... if they even knew Dani during the day... but she had the idea that her "other" form might be a worthwhile secret identity in its own right, if she could keep it separate from her heroic persona.

Also, the glowing blue made a great dramatic effect.

She didn't have far to go before the compass pulsed, buzzing and shaking in her hand to let her know that she was approaching the contact. She released it, letting it poof away into nothingness, and conjured up her sword. It was a short blade, maybe eighteen inches long, with a blade shaped like an elongated diamond, widest a few inches below the triangular tip, then tapering slightly away towards the hilt. Again, it reminded Dani more of something from a fantasy video game than any real sword ever wielded by a medieval warrior, but she knew from experience that its balance was perfect in her hand and its edges were razor sharp.

Dani could just barely see activity within a weed-choked vacant lot. She flared her aura more, providing a circle of illumination around herself, and charged forward, hoping it would be easy to sort out what was happening. The compass wouldn't have lead her here if there wasn't something that fulfilled the definition of "enemy", but that didn't mean everybody present would be fair game or that it would necessarily be obvious who was on which side.

Once her blue glow spilled onto the field, Dani realized very quickly that she wasn't going to need a program to know the score. There were five skeletons--walking, living (sort of) skeletons--quite obviously menacing a pair of bums. Their bony fingers held the men, who were very pale and slack, by the arms.

Dani reached for a battle cry, or failing that, a quip. Her mouth was dry, however, and her brain was empty.

This was exactly what she'd come here for, though... she'd been looking for something to fight that she could cut loose on, without any qualms.

"Did I do this?" the insistent voice asked in her head. "Did the ring arrange this for me?"

She did her best to push the doubts away... at least she knew that the ring wasn't taking over her mind, or else she wouldn't have those kinds of doubts. Unless, of course, that thought was planted by the ring. No, she was getting ridiculous... and in the mean time, one skeleton had broken away from each of the victims and the two were now headed for her with surprising speed.

Dani held up her left hand, pointing the ring's gemstone towards the nearer skeleton. A blue beam lanced out, blasting right through it. She'd used the force beam on a person before and it had sent him flying. The bony thing simply went to pieces. Its twin was almost upon her, but a quick swing of her short sword cleanly severed a vertebra in its neck. The head tumbled forward... but only a few inches before it righted itself and settled back into place, the damaged bone fully repaired.

The pulverized skeleton was only a little slower in reassembling itself, and now she had both to contend with. Dani brought her sword across in a diagonal chopping motion, cleaving through both of their bodies before reversing the motion and doing so again, at an opposite angle to form an "X"... the two skeletons, both cut twice clean through both arms, ribcage, and spine, promptly slid apart. Dani didn't wait for them to start to reform, but smashed their skulls and hacked at the larger pieces with lightning speed, then swept the bits away with a wider force blast.

The bone shards went sailing through the air, only to stop as if caught on a bizarre cross-breeze. Once again, both skeletons reassembled themselves, this time actually standing suspended in mid-air. Their bodies formed already in motion towards her, losing altitude by inches as if they were running down a slope until their feet touched the ground.

Worse, the other three had now dropped what they were doing... the victims now looking distressingly lifeless... and were now regarding her with their fixed, eyeless stares.

Dani could blast five as easily as two, but that wouldn't keep them down. She had no doubt that she could get away clean... even if the things could do the air-walking trick on demand, she could fly and turn invisible besides... but she'd made such a big point of seeking out trouble so she could learn more about her powers. What exactly would that teach her?

Before she could follow that thought with its logical follow-up... that her movement powers needed testing as much as her combat abilities... an ear-splitting howl pierced the night, ringing from somewhere on high.

Dani looked up and around. On the roof of the nearest building, she saw the figure of a woman who was somehow wreathed in both shadows and moonlight. Just in case there had been any doubt about the origin of the sound, the woman howled again, louder... this time, the cry trailed off into a sort of high, yipping laughter.

Suddenly, Dani was wishing she'd listened to her first instincts and gone home, or that she'd simply never found the blue ring.

Unfortunately, it seemed no more inclined to grant her wishes now than it had before.