The first thing Valerie did after the activation of the power-detection ring was a short celebratory dance. The second was to briefly fantasize about saving cities and fighting monsters just like everyone had done at least once as a kid, and those who said they didn't were filthy liars. After a couple of minutes - definitely no longer than half an hour - she pointed the ring at the wall and brought up the screen again.

Name: Valerie Grant Bio: 17-year old female Aspect: undetected ENHANCED ATTRIBUTES ENHANCED SKILLS POWERS Strength 1.01 none detected none detected Durability 1.72

On second thought, the projected screen wasn't nearly as useful as it first appeared. Nowhere in the manual did it say what the numbers displayed actually meant...or what the attributes it used stood for. In fact, beyond basic use instructions and a long since expired warranty, the most interesting information contained by the twenty-page leaflet was that the ring could function underwater but would temporarily stop working if heated over 1337 Kelvin, the melting point of gold.

Deciding to resolve this in the simplest way available, Valerie picked up the nearest chair. The action was so easy she stumbled when the expected resistance did not appear. It felt more like lifting a styrofoam prop than furniture of solid wood, light enough to hold one-handed, throw and catch with ease, twirl around like a conductor's baton and-

CRACK!

The chair's leg snapped halfway through the third twirl, everything but the foot-long piece of wood in Valerie's hand flying off into the nearest wall with, well, wood-shattering force. The teenage girl was left gaping for a second or two before bursting into giggles in typical teenage girl fashion.

Far from being put off by the damage she'd inadvertedly caused, the blonde would-be superheroine proceeded to test her newfound strength on her writing desk, her bed, her bookcase and her collection of shoes. Picking up objects she'd strained to move every spring cleaning was easy, even the largest of them more awkward than heavy. She couldn't casually throw the bookcase around as she had a chair, but it fet at most like a bulky shopping bag. Then a thought struck her;

"I can now carry as many actual shopping bags as I want - talk about mundane utility!"

The testing ended when a triumphant jump revealed she had at least a six-foot vertical leap with no running start... as her head left a dent on the ceiling.

"Dad! I'm going for a walk!" she called out as she went out the door five minutes later. If everything in the house was too light or fragile to test her powers with (and on), then she would look for them elsewhere.

xxxx xxxx

Jogging through West Belden avenue, Valerie did not notice how cold it must be until she saw saw the thick blanket of snow. Despite the late hour and low temperatures the sidewalks were full of people, even though the streets themselves were conspicuously empty. Like most other major cities in the New Age, Chicago had a booming night life but private transportation was at a premium. Kids and adults wrapped in layer after layer of winter wear slogged through the sludge, playing, shopping, going about their business.

The blonde teenager wasn't the only winter runner around though she was the only one in just shorts and a sports bra, which garnered more than a few stares. Too full of excitement and pent up energy to go back and change, she just preened under the attention and, unbeknownst to onlookers, proof of super durability, then looked for somewhere more quiet to practice.

Oz Park was right around the corner but would probably be too crowded, so she continued due East until concrete and asphalt gave way to turf, trees and the open air of the lakefront. The quiet darkness of Lake Michigan could be seen through a haze of thin mist in the distance, the remains of old marinas and wharves still peeking through the shallows in many places.

There were far fewer pedestrians along the lakefront. The biting cold and lateness might contribute to that, but it was mostly about people not liking to be reminded of the only major monster attack on the city some two years before. From Pinewater Glenn to the Gold Coast, four miles of the old lakefront trail snaked right next to the shallows, marking where the local heroes had barely held back the water fiend that had tried to wash the city away with a localized tsunami.

Finally free of curious observers, Valerie sped up from a leisury jog to a run and discovered another use for enhanced strength. The same power that had turned a casual jump into a collision with the ceiling now propelled her forward, her every step clearing air like a Triple Jump champion's. Hair dancing in the wind like a flag, legs aborbing the shock of repeated landings as if walking around, trees passing by in a near-blur... it was like flying! It was awesome! She wanted to keep doing it forever! Then she slipped on a patch of ice and fell head-first onto a tree at fifty miles an hour.

"Note to self; enhanced strength is not enhanced agility." She felt her forehead with tentative fingers but found nothing other than lots of wooden splinters tanged up in her hair. "On the other hand I'm now tough enough to headbutt trees and win, so no harm done."

Seeing as the tree was already broken, she tested her other enhanced attribute against it by firmly grabbing the trunk and pulling... to no effect. Giving the foot-thick stump a frown, she set her legs on either side, grabbed it again, and lifted with her back the second time. No matter how she strained though, the thing remained firmly rooted. What the hell? It wasn't even particularly large when compared to the other young trees near the waterfront; any proper tree from a forest would completely dwarf it.

"Heracles I am not," she huffed, referring to the legendary hero who, in leu of any normal weapons, wielded a tree he had uprooted as a club. "At least I didn't break any nails." In fact, despite running for ten minutes straight then exerting her full strength for another twenty she felt no strain or fatigue.

It's probably my durability being higher than my strength, she thought. Now let's do more testing while the light lasts.

xxxx xxxx

When a slightly muddy, somewhat tired and entirely famished Valerie walked away from the lakefront, it was well into the night and snow was falling once more. The streets were far more empty now, only the occasional overdressed traveler braving the late January frost and the quiet giving the city a mysterious and forbidding air. The white-capped Chicago skyline was less a concrete jungle then and closer to the Canadian taiga on the northern shores of the Great Lakes; it was no place to linger.

"Help! Somebody help!"

Valerie stopped. The woman's cry piercing through the night came from a back alley going through Trebes park towards DePaul University... and sounded just right for a student out late and in trouble. Chicago had never been a safe city - it had been infamous about its criminal element once upon a time though not as bad as Detroit or St. Lewis - and whatever had caused them to shout like that would be even more of a threat to teenage girls.

Having previously confirmed she had powers and established that made her tough enough to go through the average car accident unscathed, Valerie now decided those facts trumped her age. Plus what hero heard a call for help and ran away? She immediately ran towards potential danger instead.

"Hah! Told ya someone would fall for it. Pay up!" said a girl swathed in so many layers of winter wear it was hard to make out her face as soon as Valerie ran into the alley. Her voice was far more recognizable as it matched the call for help exactly.

"Yeah, yeah, there's one born every minute," a much taller, similarly-insulated figure replied in a disgusted tone. That one was definitely male, though still more boy than man.

"Shut up and let's get this over with," the third figure grumbled, "I'm 'bout to freeze my ass off."

"What is going on?" Valerie asked, confused. "Why did you shout for help?"

"Are you daft?" the unknown girl asked, then saw the blonde's clothing - or relative lack thereof. "Nevermind. Sleeveless in fucking January clinches it."

"It's a roberry, dumbass," the tall boy explained as he advanced menacingly. "Now hand over your... wait, do you even have a purse? Or pockets?"

"You don't look like robbers," Valerie told him with a dubious frown. What kind of robbers set up ambushes in the middle of a snowstorm instead of robbing a shop, or something.

"Just hand over your stuff," the third amateur criminal droned with a long-suffering sigh. "We're not playing twenty questions in a bloody blizzard."

"If that's how you want to play it," Valerie answered with a shrug and took out her cell phone. When the tall boy reached out to take it, she punched him with her off-hand. More of an awkward shove than a punch, really, but he still flew twenty feet and landed on the snow-covered curb with a grunt.

"Fuck! A meta!" the female would-be robber cried out and stumbled back. Fumbling with gloved hands, she managed to get a switchblade out and wave it haphazardly in Valerie's general direction.

The blonde did not stop her advance; catching robbers was exactly the kind of crime low-end metahumans or beginner heroes were suppowed to help with. Blocking a few awkward blows with one arm - the blade failed to cut her - she tried to get a hold of the other girl with her off-hand, but the criminal managed to avoid her grasp. Then something with the apparent consistency and force of a wrapped-up newspaper struck her over the head and neck a couple of times.

"Shit! She's invulnerable!" the formerly-bored robber shouted, discarding a baseball bat so bent out of shape it looked like a questionmark. A roll on the snow-covered pavement was the only thing that saved him from the dreaded Shove of Doom that had taken out his tall companion.

Bam!

Valerie stumbled back as someone struck her in the solar plexus with a tire iron.

Bam! Bam!

She then fell on her back as two more blows, one on her right thigh the other in her upper chest, finished knocking her breath out and made her leg go numb.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Sometime between the fourth and fifth shot she realized someone was shooting at her, with a real gun and everything, but by then she was too disoriented to do anything about it. One of the shots had struck her left temple and now she was not only seeing double but something red and black was gnawing at the edges of her vision.

"Shit, she's still moving!" someone gasped in disbelief when the shots stopped. "Let's get out of here!"

The robbers swiftly vanished into the night. Instead of pursuing, Valerie turned around and vomited what little she'd eaten since midday. Instead of making the nausea go away that made it even worse, which was hugely unfair in her opinion. Groaning, she sat up and took stock; she was covered in mud, slush and some drops of her own vomit, her hair still had wooden splinters, her skin was raw and tender where the bullets struck and would probably bruise... and her clothes had no less than three bullet holes. Being a hero sucked and her parents were going to murder her!

No sooner had that thought come and gone that the ring on her right middle finger turned warm once more...