52 Tales of 2018 - Rise of Weirdness - Daniella's Escape

[fardell24]

September 20, 1972
Omaha, Nebraska
Daniella Lawson had 'come out' to her parents. It had become impossible to hide the fact that she was becoming 'Fluffy'. (Her ears were becoming more pointed, and it was not always possible to have her hair down.) They had reacted in the manner she had expected, with prejudice and misunderstanding...
Daniella had came down to the dining room with her hair tied back in a high ponytail, thus clearly displaying her ears, which clearly showed she was becoming an Elf. Her parents both took a double take. “Your ears!” her mother said.

“Yes, Mom, Dad. I'm Fluffy, I'm an Elf.”

“No!” her father had said.

“Stop Dabbling in Magic, young girl!”

“I'm sixteen! I'm not young anymore.”

Then things had gotten worse. Her parents continued to press her to stop using magic, and she lashed out... First her ponytail lifted up so it was pointing 180 degrees away from where it had been pointing previously. Then she emitted a surge of energy. The dining room was a mess. Her mother fled. Her father went to the phone, and called 911.


Meredith Lawson saw her husband exit the house. “What did you do?” she asked, as he came to where she was.

“I called 911.”

“That's an overreaction isn't it?”

“You saw what Daniella did! She's been subverted by those Transformed crazies.”
Meredith sighed. It was no use arguing with him in that mood. All she wanted was for Daniella to see sense, that nothing good came out of using magic.


Half an hour later, the Douglas County Anti-Magic Response Unit had arrived. “Isn't this an overreaction?” Meredith asked one of the officers.

“No one wants another Winchester Ma'am,” the officer responded.

Winchester. The event the Government pointed to when questioned about the security state that had been built up over the last fourteen years. “Of course,” Meredith groused. She knew that it was a requirement for every County in the country to have such a force as a result of the event in Winchester.


Daniella paced the living room. 'What to do?' she pondered, not for the first time. She didn't want to face the A-MRU!

“Do you promise not to lash out, at your parents?” the officer her mother had talked to called on a megaphone.
“No!” she called. She really couldn't make such a promise.

“We have no choice,” the officer said.

The various vehicles activated their weapons.
Suddenly, a forcefield surrounded the house. 'No choice,' Daniella thought. It pushed outwards, sending police cars flying, damaging the neighbouring houses.

“Neutralise it, quickly!” the officer ordered. Shots were fired from the Assault Vehicles. The forcefield retracted slightly.

Daniella knew that the forcefield wouldn't last long. She decided to do something else. ‘Up!’ she thought, putting her willpower into something else.
The gravitational force within the magic field surrounding the house was reversed. Additional force then sent the house and the ground below it and the yards accelerating upwards at 9.8 meters per second per second.

The house climbed above the city. As it became visible on the radar at the air force base, fighters were scrambled. Daniella realised this. She continued guiding the house further upwards.
However, there was another problem. Her power was derived from the field generated from the Trinity Hellstorm. It didn't extend into orbit. As the house passed above the ionosphere, Daniella knew that the magic was fading as she went further upwards. ‘I have to do something!’ While she did have books of incantations (including the original Sumerian versions) she didn't have time to consult them. But there was something else.
There was Radon in the basement. 'It has to work,' she thought, as she concentrated on the Radon, drawing it into the furnace, and creating a critical mass. “I have become death, destroyer of worlds,” she said, quoting Oppenheimer.
There was an explosion, which shook the house, but it stayed together. Contained in the furnace, was now a microstorm, which had a millionth the power of the one at Trinity. A magical field, surrounded the house, thus allowing it go into orbit.
‘Where to go now?’ Daniella wondered as she looked at the planet below. She then looked at the Moon. "There!" she said.


White House, Washington DC
President Nixon had been notified of the situation once satellites had detected a nuclear incident above Nebraska. Reports from the Omaha neighbourhood were still coming in. ‘So much for reducing NASA’s budget,’ he thought. If they could do that, America needed a permanent presence in space...