"Bye," Gramps said. He disappeared from sight.
Brock rose in the air, then turned himself into a dazzling fireworks display. He became the diversion the others needed.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Shawnacy dropped to the ground with an invisible Gramps holding her hand and Estelle on her back. As they neared the asphalt, people yelped and ran to get out of the way. Most of the attention, though, was still focused on Brock seemingly turning into an azure sun over their heads.
"Jump!" Estelle barked.
Shawnacy let go of Gramps' hand even as Estelle rolled off her back. They hit the ground rolling, all three of them, to do somersaults back to their feet, and, as they did, they ploughed into a bunch of people. Folks went sprawling everywhere. Estelle looked around for kids or for anyone who might be seriously hurt. Nope. No kids. No one critically injured. She spotted more than a few angry people, though, which was certainly justified.
And they were supposed to blend in with this crowd?
Shawnacy had the easiest time pulling that one off. She was dressed like any other woman her age in jeans, boots, and a winter coat. She didn't walk fast or do anything fast, but just kind of moved at the same pace and with the same rhythm as the rest of those there. For Estelle, becoming a part of the crowd was a little harder. She was a three and a half foot tall hunchback with a repulsively ugly face, after all. She pulled the hood of her hoody up over her head. She stuffed her fists into the hoody's pockets, and she kept her head down so that no one could get a clear look at her face. At first she moved, not frantically, but quickly. Then she slowed down and, like Shawnacy, became part of the moving crowd. Thirty seconds, and she lost herself completely among the throngs of people.
Ironically enough, it was the invisible Gramps who had the hardest time dissolving into the mob. People kept running into him and going,
"Aagghh!"
Gramps couldn't move in any direction without running into a knot of people. So,
"Aagghh!"
all over the place. He spotted a flagpole embedded in the cement. He leaned against it, staying stock still. He figured that ought to keep people from running into him, at least until he could get a sense of things.
Brock dropped out of the sky like a blazing azure comet, and that scared the shit out of just about everybody on the ground. They knocked each other over fleeing in terror. Brock hit the ground to become just another guy in a wheelchair. He sent his crackling azure force rolling on ahead of him like a mini-star to finally explode in a harmless FLASH!, blinding everyone who gazed upon it. The crowd reformed around Brock. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to him.
Okay then. Everyone had, at last, come back to Earth.
END OF CHAPTER SIX