Old Acquaintance/Super

I went to a little trouble to look up OA. It wasn't so easy, since he lives about forty miles from nowhere, down dirt roads and worse. I brought the beer - Corona, his favorite, so I hoped he might be a bit less taciturn than usual.

He welcomed me warmly, which is to say that he put down his shotgun when he recognized me (or maybe the Corona), and invited me in.

I didn't spend a lot of time on the usual BS. I pretty much went straight for the question - which super power did you choose? I mentioned that my correspondents had gone heavily for the purse.

"They probably don't realize how tough it is to cash in a few hundred kilo's of gold", he said. "Besides, I'm pretty well fixed from ... before."

I could never get him to be specific about that "before." I know that he used to be some kind of electronic hardware engineer, but I can't make up my mind if he cashed out of dot.com, played poker, or smuggled whatever.

"Mind reading doesn't look so hot either. Whose mind would I read? Butch's? I occasionally get some temporary female company out here, but it might not be too good an idea to find out what the girls are thinking either."

Butch is his old German Shepard.

"So you picked flying?" I said.

"I didn't say that," he said. "It has its own downside. I would look pretty silly doing Immelmans on a broom stick."

Clearly he wasn't going to tell me more, so I finished another Corona or two, and headed back towards civilization.

So did that old rascal not take any, I wondered.

Following that crappy road was none too easy in the dark, so I kept glancing up at the not-quite-half moon to orient myself.

On one of those glances I saw the oddest looking crow flash across the moon, and if I'm not mistaken, climb into an Immelman. I didn't know crows did that.

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