But For Her, It Was...

The package delivery route which went near the high school was supposed to be the punishment detail, and -- Annie didn't understand that, especially when she was viewing the peaceful neighborhood through the van's clean windshield at three in the morning. It wasn't exactly a bad area. Solidly middle-class, if she was any judge. And as far as Annie was concerned, having been dealing with both city and job for a whole three weeks made her an expert.

...okay, so she'd heard fragments of weird stories drifting around the loading dock. That wasn't unusual. Three weeks had been more than enough to teach her that the local drivers liked to tell stories, and clearly the best way to top all comers was through the not-so-minor embellishment of facts. Not that she'd gotten close enough to hear the whole of anything yet, and friendships were still a work in progress after the move, but -- well, they had to be kidding around, at least during those moments when they weren't outright lying to each other.

Regional tall tales, in which horses seemed to frequently become involved. Or rather, girls with horse ears. Annie, fresh out of college, was assuming she'd missed some sort of headband-anchored fad. The less frequently mentioned tails just required a local furry community and a little more in the way of glue.

She could definitely say there was a tendency towards talespinning among the drivers. Annie guessed she understood that too. You didn't always expect to find creative types among the ranks, but everyone had to work somewhere -- Annie would know -- and besides, fiction was just about built into the job. Behemoth Retail, as it would happily remind everyone during any possible press opportunity, had started as a bookstore. Additionally, the company was supposed to be so insanely protective of its public image that any employees who kept personal journals about their work experience tended to change a few things. Like names. Their own, the employer, all supervisors, anyone they'd met that day and, just to make sure they were legally in the clear, generally wound up ending all entries with the words Parody Is Protected Speech. From behind the strongest firewall setting they could manage. Just in case.

Because things supposedly happened during deliveries. Stuff which the company really didn't want anyone to talk about, because it had a pretty significant presence in Canterlot and really didn't want to lose the entire employee pool to panic. So you switched up a few details, and that was how you stayed employed. Or so the half-assembled story fragments claimed, and she was sure she was missing the majority of multiple people's first novels...

Annie... hadn't really experienced any of it. Canterlot was a good city to live in. But if you were a delivery driver, it had a few problems. Like the fact that the place seemed to occupy roughly three times the space of any other city. It was as if someone had drawn up urban planning which could host 300% of the current population and when the expected number of residents failed to actually move in, solved the problem through tripling the size of everyone's lawn. The high school itself took up a huge patch of land, and did so through not putting much of anything on most of it.

And when you worked for a company which tracked exactly how long it took to make a delivery -- including going from one stop to another -- and, all too often, seemed to measure by houses passed instead of actual mileage...

There were probably little tricks to getting into the top driver ranks. Annie was hoping to work up the courage necessary for approaching some of the others, because it would potentially help to ask in person and besides, maybe then she could finally hear a complete tall tale. Although... she could have sworn she'd overheard something about not being fully part of the team until you had your own story to tell. There had definitely been a few accidentally-acquired words regarding how she was overdue, but Annie was currently assuming that related to the training.

She didn't really mind the job. Most of the packages were of manageable size. The majority of residents kept their animals under control. Really, when you considered it as a percentage, just about all of the customers were nice. And as an artist who was really just doing this until she found a chance to break through into her real profession, Annie really appreciated the chance to work on her postgraduate photography skills. Because the job came with a Mandatory Phone, and one of the things she had to do with every package was take a picture of it in a state of Being At The Delivery Address. For verification.

So that was exactly what she'd been doing.

Admittedly, there was only so much she could usually try with the shot. It was typically a box or a padded envelope, in front of a door. Or on steps. (She could leave items on steps once in a while, but the package had to be something mid-sized: large enough to be noticed on the way up or down.) And porches existed.

But then she had the houses themselves. There was quite a bit of variety there. Colors, building styles... it all contributed to the framing shots and since those were automatically sent to customers as proof of delivery, she always had an audience for her work!

Even if none of them seemed to appreciate the filters.

Or that one capture from just before she'd been put on the supposed punishment detail. Annie had been truly proud of that. Getting the maddened little dog into the frame had required some awkward angling, especially since it had kept moving. Couldn't claw at the clear barrier while barking its head off in murderous fury if it didn't move. And she'd even picked up some of the spittle as it flew towards the interior window glass.

Annie had mentally labeled that composition as The New American Home. The customer who'd seen the shot pop up in email had unfairly retitled it to That Stupid Delivery Drone (Two-Legged Kind) Scared My Precious Little Poochie. And now Annie had the high school's neighborhood for a while.

Several hours before dawn, on a cool night in late March, when her van was mostly loaded up with perishable purchases which had to be on porches well before sunrise. Looking at unoccupied sidewalks and vacant roads, because hers was the only active vehicle. And the miniature murder mutts were asleep, she wasn't blocking anyone's driveway because no one had to leave their house at this hour, it was peaceful and quiet and she got a clear shot of the stars because the night was pristine and stopping to line everything up for the picture only put her twenty seconds behind schedule. She could make that up.

The punishment detail? This couldn't be it. Sure, the customer had raised a fuss in the office and bringing the dog along had added some barking punctuation to the insanity, but -- if you stayed with Behemoth, then you had to learn every route in the city. She hadn't done this one before. Really, that was probably all it was. She couldn't even view the night shift as someone trying to get back at her: you had to do all of those eventually too.

She pulled the van over to what wasn't quite the last house: simply the final stop in this section before she changed residential neighborhoods. There was a long stretch of mostly-industrial road before she reached the next batch: businesses, a couple of minor factories, and the start of the winding trail which led to the scrapyard -- but someone else had that section. All she had to do was...

Annie found the proper small box among the van's contents. Strengthening legs (working with the benefit of knee wraps and a weight belt) carried her up to the newest porch. She stepped back, took out the Mandatory Phone, arranged a pleasant night piece, managed to get the potted plants into the shot, and then got back in the van. It only took seconds to get everything moving again (all recorded by the onboard computer, which was just looking for an excuse to file a few complaints of its own), and she drove towards the somewhat wider road.

Check traffic. Mirrors. There was no real need for either at this hour, because every examination found naught but empty roads. But she was a good driver.

A pretty, if somewhat too spacious, city. The sort of weather where the van's heater gave her just enough residual warmth upon getting out to reach the vents again in comfort. A job which, while not what she really wanted to do, gave her income, the twinned chances to think and plan, added to -- moments of darkness-blessed peace.

Annie smiled to herself. Checked the mirrors one more time, started the van into the turn --

-- it shouldn't have been that fast.

A photographer had to understand speed. Because photography was about capturing life, and life had this nasty tendency to try and get out of frame before you could snap the lock closed on the light. If you came across a really good collection of utterly still objects? Feel free to paint it. Things which were moving had to be timed, and if you didn't recognize how the timing was supposed to work out...

She never actually saw the approach of the car which hit the van's passenger side. There was barely any audio indication of another engine at work. A split-second of motor, followed by a desperate, almost Doppler-shifted screech of brakes --

-- and then the entire vehicle rocked.

She was jolted against the seatbelt, then felt herself bounce off the seat itself as the van dropped back onto all four wheels. Packages tumbled from internal shelving. Padded envelopes did their best, and occasionally found that was good enough. A sudden electronic wail of distress told her that the van's computer and internal cameras had all just gone offline --

-- a car door openslammed.

That was exactly the right way to describe it. Normally, a door would open and then potentially be slammed shut. The strange overlay of sounds suggested the driver had somehow found a way of doing it all in one motion.

And then her own door was being yanked open -- which happened with a screech of freshly-tormented metal. Nothing about the van had been meant to move that fast.

"Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh!" the self-censoring teenager gasped. "Are you all right? That's the only important thing! Tell me you're all right! Because if you're not and it's safe to move you, I can have you at the hospital in --"

She said all this while progressively leaning into the driver area, because there was such a thing as Personal Space and surely Emergencies meant that didn't have priority any more. The movement, combined with flickering interior lights and a clear night sky, gave Annie just enough illumination to work with.

The teenager's long hair was a wild prismatic multihued mess: the overall look was of a tornado which had flunked out of stylist school. Clothing mostly suggested that the girl had decided it was three in the morning, no one was gonna see, and so little things like color coordination and fabric matching could go hang. The jacket didn't go with her skin, the pants didn't work with the jacket, and there was nothing in the world which could help the boots. Not even fire, because that didn't solve the problem so much as changing it into a slightly more charred form.

Height was just about dead average. The build was slightly strange. From the waist up, the girl was on the slim side. She didn't have much of a collarbone, and the shoulders felt perilously close to the slender neck. Random clothing grabs had no need to reach towards a bra hanger. In terms of anatomical purpose, the arms existed because it was hard to yank open a door with your toes. Fingers also wove about as the girl talked, drawing strange traceries into the night air. Something always had to be moving.

The lower body suggested that was usually the girl.

What could be seen of those limbs was thick. Powerful. The laces of the ugly boots struggled to contain the calves, and they were losing. From the waist down, the girl looked like a cross between a marathon runner, speed sprinter, and the ultra-rare sort of gym rat who'd decided that every day was going to be Leg Day.

"Say something! I need you to say something! I-don't-know-if-I-can-move-you-if-you-don't --"

And she talked way too fast. Syllables blurred into each other. Diphthongs took one look at what was happening and got out of the area while they still could.

"...I'm okay," Annie judged. Shaken, but she didn't feel as if she'd gotten anything more than a light bruising from the seat belt. "...computer? Alert Code Thunder --"

The van's speakers wailed again, just before the interior GPS screen shut off.

"Just gotta make sure," the teenager quickly said. "Does that usually talk back to you, or are you going to start saying concussion stuff about phasers?"

"Talks back," Annie wearily replied. "That's supposed to send out a notice to the warehouse. Tell them I've been in an accident. If it didn't happen already."

...accident. Three weeks on the job and she'd been in an accident. But it hadn't been her fault. She'd checked. Twice. No cars had been on the approach. So the girl must have --

-- the packages...

No. She was okay. It was one of the few things Behemoth understood. If you got into an accident, then you were off the clock. If the computer had sent the alert, then there would be extra vans on the way: unload hers, redistribute some of the load, and get the orders to the customers. She couldn't get fired for something which had truly been no fault of her own, and if she wasn't hurt...

Shaky fingers, stronger than those of the teenager, carefully unfastened the seat belt.

The van's engine made an odd noise: something far removed from a sluggish piston, much closer to what was almost a low mechanical growl. The driver, aware that the damage could be spreading, instinctively turned the engine off.

"Clear the door?" Annie asked, and the teenager leaned back so quickly as to present the illusion that no one had ever been in the way. The recent college graduate got out, tested legs which were vibrating a little too much for comfort, walked around the van with the girl following her closely...

The teenager had been driving an antique: one which wasn't going to get much older. It was a car from the era where war-returned drivers had recently been piloting tanks and wanted to deal with something which had roughly the same durability, mass, and possibly quality of steering. It was the sort of vehicle which generally met with one of three endings: no replacement parts available, minor short somewhere in the electrical system which couldn't be located, or direct nuclear strike. Most of what the accident had done to that car was add a few extra dents, crack one headlight, scuff more paint, and possibly improve the radio reception because the Actual Antenna had visibly been knocked into a better alignment.

The impacting car had either rebounded slightly or been knocked backwards when the van had rocked back into position. Either way, there was enough clearance to walk between the vehicles and so Annie, using the headlights from the other car, got a good look at the damage.

The van's side door was just about caved in. The top of the sliding track was still more or less flush, but -- there were little flares of metal at the outer edges. Possible jam points. Which meant very little when compared to the fact that the center of the door was about a foot closer to being inside the van. This had mostly pulled the metal away from the bottom of the track, and there was a thigh-sized gap against the back edge.

"Hey!" the girl abruptly said. "You're a Behemoth driver!"

The logo, even when partially crumpled, remained unmistakable. "Yeah. So?"

"Can I get a look in there?"

Annie blinked.

"You want to what?

"Because I've got a wishlist," the girl quickly continued. "It's public. I put stuff I want on it. Want and can't afford just yet. But I set it up so that when someone buys me something off it, I don't get told what it was. Just that something's on the way. Because surprises are great! Even if waiting for them sucks. Anyway, I got a notice two nights ago and the whatever hasn't shown up yet, so I thought maybe if I just got back there and checked for my address..."

Annie simply looked at the girl, then silently folded her arms.

"It won't take long," the teen said. "I'm a really great speed-sorter. You should totally hire me. And besides, someone should really check in there. In case anything came out through that one gap. You don't want anyone's stuff lost, right? Especially mine."

The driver automatically checked the road. No packages appeared to have fallen out.

Annie sighed.

"What happened?"

The girl, who had followed her around the larger vehicle, awkwardly shuffled her feet. Large soles repeatedly scraped at the asphalt.

"You mean how I hit you?"

Well, at least the girl had admitted fault. "Yeah."

"So I've got this friend," the teenager said.

Annie automatically checked the old car's passenger seat --

"-- not with me!" the student hastily declared. "She's the one with the car. Um. Who had the car. She got it from a relative who didn't need it any more. Something happened, and... she decided she wasn't going to drive it herself. It's been through a lot. And the seats kind of smell like apples. Don't tell her I said that."

Automatically, "Don't tell who --"

"-- anyway, she sold it." Both hands went behind the back as eyes narrowed. "Just not to any of us! She said it cost too much for anyone to maintain, it's been used too much for collectors, and she didn't want us getting stuck with the bills! And that's when I totally could have asked my parents to..."

Which was when both females became aware that Annie was staring. The teenager just didn't seem to care.

"She sold it to the scrapyard!" emerged as a protest. "She said it was fair value, and it was easier than taking the whole car apart and selling off bits by themselves! But the scrap people were supposed to come out to her house and pick it up. They didn't. They postponed four times. And I finally said I'd drive it over for her, they agreed to leave the check in a little envelope at the gate, but I got caught up in some stuff and by the time I remembered..."

Magenta eyes briefly regarded the clear night sky with fully-undeserved frustration.

"I went out to her place," the girl said. "The car was left out for me. So I was just driving it to the scrapyard. To leave it there. It was the last ride." And her right hand reached out, gently patted the hood. "So I just thought... I'd give it one more run. We were almost at the scrapyard, too."

I don't remember passing that car in any of the local driveways.

"I didn't see you," Annie said.

The girl's feet shuffled again.

"Last ride," the teenager repeated. "I thought -- it would be nice if the car got to really open up one more time. And it's really late right now. So late that it's early. No one's on the road. I made sure. So I... gave it some speed. I just didn't think you were gonna be there." A little more softly, "Maybe I shouldn't do that again. You're okay, but... and if it had been a cat or something, I'd never hear the end of it and she'd probably never stop crying..."

The girl briefly frowned.

"Different she," the teenager added. "You haven't met. That I know about. But I'm sorry. I hit the brakes as soon as I saw you. I... just couldn't get it stopped in time."

Annie looked around. At the empty night, and the long, vacant road.

No one else out right now.
My lights would have been visible for...

"How fast were you going?" This question seemed crucial.

The foot shuffling visibly accelerated.

"I don't know."

"You don't --" was as far as Annie got.

"I gave it some speed," the teenager huffily said. "I can do that. Or I found out I can do that. Recently. It's not easy. But it doesn't exactly show up on the --"

Stopped. Blinked. Her hands came around to the front of her stomach, briefly wrung against each other.

"That's a weird look on your door," the girl added. "Did you notice? It's kind of like a face. With one eye open and the other one winking. Evilly. And I think my radiator grille gave your car some teeth. So you've got an evil face which smiles. With evil."

Annie looked it over.

I can see that...

The Mandatory Phone came out. The area was examined for lighting. Filters were applied, and the shot got taken.

"What was that for?" the girl asked.

"Insurance," Annie technically didn't lie. The company would take their own pictures, but they would always accept something from the scene. Even if no one ever said anything about her composition... "So we'd better get to it. Can I see your paperwork? Before the cops show up." Not that they were likely to do so unless one of the females called them, or they drove through by sheer accident. Any distress signal the computer might have sent off before demise would have gone to the warehouse.

"Paperwork?" was, perhaps, a little too confused.

"Proof of insurance," Annie patiently explained. "I'm not going to be directly involved in any settlement, though." Since she wasn't hurt and frankly, if it had even been a minor cut situation, saying she wasn't hurt was far easier than filling out the associated forms for a company bandage. "Just grab it out of your purse. Or the glove compartment. Wherever it is --"

Feet were now shuffling at a rate which seemed to produce blur.

"-- I don't have insurance," said the girl.

The driver's jaw clenched.

Because it was her friend's car and that friend called for a pickup, so she would have taken it off the insurance policy. Doesn't matter if the car had third-party. This one obviously doesn't have a policy which covers whatever she's driving.

"Driver's license," Annie tried. "We've got to exchange information --"

Much more softly, "-- I don't have one of those either."

"You don't what --"

"-- I know how to drive!" the girl defensively shouted. "I had all the classes! I just didn't get to take my test! I've kinda had a lot of stuff going on for the last year, and it was just easier to get everywhere on foot! Most of the time. Because I couldn't fly. Again, most of the time. And once I could really run, then doing everything on foot was just easier! And a lot cheaper than a car." She briefly thought that over. "Except for the shoes. I go through a lot of shoes. But every one of my friends knows I can drive, and I guess when I offered to bring the car over, she just thought... I'd picked up my license already."

The van's engine made a sound: a sort of low, mechanical, angry growl. Annie sympathized. She had something similar developing at the back of her own throat.

This girl... thought the recent college graduate. This kid...

"No cops on the road," the teenager pointed out. "I figured I was okay as long as I just did all of the signal stuff. But then I saw that long open stretch, I thought about how it was the car's last ride, and I -- gave it some speed." Almost desperate now, "I swear I hit the brakes as soon as I saw you! The car just isn't as fast as my reflexes! I just about had my foot through the floor and I couldn't get it stopped in time...!"

Her head went down and when it finally raised again, moonlight reflected from damp eyes.

"You won't tell, will you?" she softly asked. "About the paperwork stuff. I can get it all straightened out. I swear. I just need some time." Decibels dropped away. "And I... screwed up. I know that. But I won't do it again. I promise. Maybe... I... my friend's car is still going, maybe if you just told everyone that it was a hit-and-run and... the driver fled the scene... I..."

The teen swallowed. Most of the terror got caught as a lump about halfway down.

"That was a stupid idea," the girl said. "It's -- not responsible. It's running away from problems. Or driving. I shouldn't..." And stopped, all at once, as nearly every part of her body ceased movement.

Nearly. The mouth was still going.

"What do you want to do?" the girl's fear asked. And waited.

The van's engine let off a low-pitched rumble of fuel-driven anger. Annie, who was still trying to figure out exactly how exasperated to be, reminded herself to shut the whole thing down before anything else went wrong --

-- the girl looked all the way up. Her gaze went over Annie's left shoulder.

"Your van," the teenager said with a rather odd placidity, "is growling at us."

I need to kill the engine pushed its way through confusion, mild shock, and growing rage.

Then she remembered that she'd already done that.

She turned. Looked directly at the larger vehicle.

And then the van's single open eye -- the configuration produced by dents, shadows, and transferred dirt -- narrowed.

Phantom, mostly two-dimensional teeth had slightly parted. There was no gap behind them, not even the interior of the van and a view of scattered packages. Just more metal. Nothing which was actually capable of biting, much less swallowing -- which didn't seem to matter, because the intent was clearly there.

There was one more growl, as the single eye stared them down. And then four wheels rotated as the steering wheel turned of its own accord, pushed against their mountings,nearly breaking the axles as they tried to face sideways. The entire van lurched and its former driver, frozen in the warped face of the impossible, could do nothing more than wait for the next impact --

-- it shouldn't have been that fast.

Slender fingers gripped her waist. There was another lurch: roughly vertical, no more than an inch or two: the teenager was likely doing just about all of the lifting with her legs. But the arms had a job, and this couldn't be kept up for long...

...the world blurred.

The van's sneering face slid off to one side. Annie's shoes hit the blacktop several times in rapid stuttering succession, with each producing a jolt to her spine. Then she was next to the old car, the passenger door openslammed --

-- her head hurt. So did her back and knees, because the girl had given up on the normal rate at which humans sat down and adjusted Annie's position manually. The fresh windburn sensation on the delivery driver's face had probably been produced by the seat belt.

The teenager was now behind the wheel. And the light blue hands put the car in gear, the entire thing seemed to leap backwards, and then they were driving in reverse at an ever-increasing rate, putting some distance between older vehicle and van --

-- it shouldn't have been that fast. Even if she'd been able to move... scrambling for the car, getting in, all of it -- at least half a minute, especially with the girl needing to race around to the other side in order to drive.

It shouldn't have been that fast.

But it hadn't been fast enough.

The van screamed, and did so with a sound like pistons exploding from an engine block. Reoriented its tires, and gunned the engine.

The chase was on.