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The valley high in the Sierra Nevadas of California had always been rather isolated from the outside world. Only a single highway went into it, snaking up the river valley, along with the old railroad tracks.
Its isolation made it a favorite summer hideaway for the rich, a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of LA or Silicon Valley. Something that the farmers in the valley never quite understood. But as long as they spread their money around before they packed up their golf clubs and tennis racquets and drove off in the BMWs and Porsches, they didn't care.
Kara squeezed her bare thighs together and came to a stop twenty feet above the trees on the mountainside. She looked at the devastation below.
The earthquake had left the valley even more isolated than before. The broken dam and the mudslide had buried a stretch of road under tons of mud, completely cutting the valley off. The rich dark loam, the same soil that made the valley so fertile, was too soft for the National Guard trucks carrying food, medicine, and other supplies to the stranded people. Helicopters had started carrying in the most urgently needed supplies and evacuating the injured, but that wasn't going to be enough. The highway would have to be cleared.
Her bright blue eyes sparkled as she used her Tachyon vision to peer through the tons of mud to the road surface below. The pavement appeared to be intact, though it was cracked in a few places.
Even if every road crew in the county were to work on it, it would still take them days to clear the way. And the road crews would not be forthcoming any time soon, they had their hands busy elsewhere in the aftermath of the quake.
Kara turned to the shapely blonde woman hovering in the air at her side. "Well, Sharon, we may as well get to it. It looks like we've got a lot of work to do."
Without waiting for an answer, Kara swooped down to the valley floor. Water, dirt, mud, stones, rocks, boulders, leaves, twigs, branches, and shattered tree trunks began to fly as she started digging.
While Kara possessed all of the speed of a Velorian Protector, she also possessed the hands of one. Working one handful at a time, it would take the two Velorians the rest of the day to clear the road.
That's if there were two Velorians working on it. Looking around, she saw that she was alone. Almost.
Straightening up, she brushed her long muddy hair back from her face and looked around. Her bright blue eyes sparkled as she saw the National Guardsmen by their trucks nearly a mile below. Some of them had binoculars to their eyes as they stared at her. Splattered from head to toe with mud, her tiny blue and red costume completely invisible, she knew that she couldn't be a very pretty sight. Still, for most of them it was probably their first sight of the fabulous SuperFemme, as she was known to the world at large.
But where was Sharon? She was nowhere in sight.
Sometimes Sharon took her duties and obligations as a Scribe too seriously. To stay behind the scenes and out of sight, only recording the exploits of the Protector without getting involved. Without getting her hands dirty, as she'd often said.
Kara looked down at her own mud-covered hands. She would have to have another talk with Sharon about that. But not now. Now she had work to do. She shrugged her shoulders. Given the distance and the mud covering her body, the Guardsmen couldn't see the interesting motions her shrug generated along the upper front portion of her torso.
Shaking her head, she bent down and resumed digging.
It suddenly got dark as something blotted out the sun. Startled, Kara looked up.
Sharon was hovering over her, a railroad flatbed car hanging from each hand. The mud told Kara that Sharon had just dug those out of the mudslide somewhere in the vicinity. Through the mud Kara could see Sharon's fingers pressed deep into the hard steel as she gripped the cars between the faded words 'America' and 'Express' stenciled on the sides.
"Catch, Kara." Sharon swung an arm and let go of one of the flatbed cars.
Kara reached up and caught it, flexing her calves to generate just enough of her flight powers in order to keep the heavy mass of metal from burying her in the soft mud.
Grabbing on to it with both hands, Sharon then dived to the ground and plunged her flatbed into the mud. Burying it deep, she scooped up several tons of the stuff. Muscles bulged onto her arms and back as she lifted it up and tossed the load nearly a quarter of a mile.
She then plunged her giant 'shovel' back into the mud for another load, as if she was doing nothing more than shoveling the snow off of the sidewalk in front of her Colorado home.
Before lifting her latest load, she turned and looked at Kara over her shoulder. Tossing her head to throw her long golden hair out of her face, she grinned. "The America Express car. Don't heave loam without it."
Kara dug her own flatbed into the mud. Scooping up a load of loam, she heaved it right at Sharon, burying the Scribe from Velor under a couple of tons of wet mud.