I woke up to the sight of my wife developing a case of qwertytis. As delectably nerdy as she looked, lying on her tummy with her cheek resting on her laptop's keyboard, I really hated to wake her, but she should probably have some time for the key imprints to smoothe out of her face.

"Good morning, my love."

"Mm."

"C'mon. Pry your face up and get a shower. I'll make pancakes."

She lifted her head, peered at me blearily, rubbed at her cheek and looked at the computer with growing comprehension.

"So, comics, huh? What got you started on those?"

"Sam told me about Superman."

"Ah. Superhero comic books are quite the rabbit hole, you know."

"What is a rabbit hole?"

"A hole a rabbit digs to live in. It's also something complex and interesting that gets more complex and interesting the more you look into it." I smiled. "Comic books are culturally significant, but please add the following to your required reading list: Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and, just for grins, toss in The Hunting of the Snark. All by Lewis Carroll."

"I can find these on Amazon?"

"They're over a hundred years old. You can find the full text on Wikipedia."

We went down 51 to the hardware store to look at materials. I got a roll of mylar, a can of spray foam, a length of PVC pipe and a plastic lawnmower wheel. The plastic pipe was more of a good idea type thing, figuring we might need it eventually, but some more research suggested it wouldn't work in my project as I thought it would, so I also got a piece of aluminum.

Eorzea has aluminum, after a fashion. It's only available from a vendor in Eulmore for battle currency. There's no mining of aluminum ore over there, so I don't know where the vendor supposedly got it. Further research shows there's no mining of aluminum ore here either; aluminum comes from refining bauxite, which is mined in this country but not actually used to make aluminum.

Nearest significant source of bauxite I could find is in Arkansas, about 150 miles east of us. That's six hours by bus or three hours by goobbue to get material we'd then have to figure out how to reduce to the metal we actually want.

Or, we could, like, you know, whatchacall, buy it. Stranger things have happened.

We got lunch nearby and went to the workshop to try to make recipes. Tsu'na is much better at coming up with materials recipes than I am; she seems to have a knack for the visualization needed, and she doesn't have my preconceived notions. I, in turn, have been working up recipes that use her materials, research into where we can gather, and networking in town.

Now that hunting season is starting, I plan to talk to Sam and maybe Mr. Hartman about making it known that we'll buy venison. It'll be a bit of out-of-pocket, but we can make that up by selling venison pies. And, as long as we're buying some venison and not keeping obvious records of it, there's no way for anyone to know we're stockpiling on our own, way above what the deer bag limits should allow.

Tsu'na tore herself away from comics to work on reproducing mylar. From her earlier work on plastic she was able to make clear material, but making it thin, flexible and strong eluded her. Her most promising efforts turned out to be too stiff and brittle or too thin and fragile. I told her what I knew about surface tension and we spent some time poking holes in sheets of mylar to see how it tore. She said she'd revisit "stringiness". But after a couple hours she took a break to read again.

We had leftover pizza in the workshop before heading to the bar for my evening shift. As we walked in, I saw Sam giving us a Look. It was very similar to the look Master Shen gave us the last time we came into Flying Tigers...an "aw hell, what am I gonna do with them" look. It wasn't a look I wanted to see on Sam.

"Evening."

He nodded back.

"You okay? You look kinda tired."

"Yeah...didn't sleep too well after yer wife lifted my truck."

Tsu'na had set up her laptop on the bar and was sort of burying herself in it.

"Sorry, did you just say Tsu'na stole your truck?"

"No, she didn't steal it. She lifted it. Picked up the back end."

I stared at him. He was totally not kidding. I glanced at my wife. "We need to talk."

"We need to talk," she mumbled.

"Did you really pick up the end of his truck? Why?"

"He said Superman can throw cars. I wanted to know if I could."

I sighed. I tried to keep it light as I turned back to Sam. "Well, that makes sense. I'd wonder about that too."

"...What, yer sayin' you can pick my truck up too?"

"Dunno. Never tried. Have you?"

"Course I haven't tried!"

"Really? After seeing her do it, you didn't even try?"

"I...That ain't the point! How the hell'd she do that? She a robot or somethin'?"

"What is a robot, Husband?"

"Like a mammet."

"Do they make mammets that look like people?"

"They're getting close."

Tsu'na considered this, then turned to Sam. "Do you think I am a machine?"

"I don't know what you are! What kinda people can lift trucks?"

"People with training," I said.

"Training? What kinda training teaches people to lift trucks?"

"The kind we had." Sam was looking agitated. "Do you want to see my wife bleed, Sam?"

"What...? I..."

He looked from me to her and back, not articulating the word "no" at any point.

Tsu'na scowled at me. "Are you asking me to cut myself for him?"

"Sewing needle should do."

She pursed her lips, but brought out her Weaver embroidery hoop and pulled loose the needle. She grimaced as she poked her thumb, then held up her hand for Sam to see a drop of blood.

"You see?" I said. "She's not a robot. Nor is she Superman, because that wouldn't work on him."

"Then what is she?"

What. Not who. This wasn't looking good. "She's my wife, who I love with all my heart. She went through the same training I did, which conditioned our strength. It's not like we were born this way."

"Well, how the fuck do I know? You keep sayin' 'classified' this an' 'classified' that! How do I know you weren't made in a lab somewhere?"

Same as how I do. I don't. "You really believe that? We eat, we drink, we sleep, we breathe..." I gestured at Tsu'na's hand. "...we bleed. We're people, Sam. People with specialized training."

"You keep sayin' 'training'. What kinda 'training' makes someone that strong?"

"I can't tell you."

"Right. 'Classified.'"

Tsu'na looked at me. "Perhaps you should give him an explanation, Husband."

I looked back at her. I saw she had an empty doc open on her laptop. Give Sam an explanation. Clever.

I sighed, thought for a moment, and turned back to Sam. "Look...it's like this..."

He waited, looking anticipatorily skeptical.

"There's what we know, and what we don't know. What we know includes the fact that we received specialized training and skills that make us extremely able to kill people and break things. We know that we used these skills to great effect in combat situations. We never had any real metrics on what exactly we could do...we just knew that with training and practice we could do things better..."

He was still listening.

"But there's a lot of stuff we don't know. We don't know, for example, with one hundred percent certainty, that you're not a Russian sleeper agent."

He snorted.

"Or coerced by the Chinese government."

He started to chuckle.

"Or an Al-Qaeda sympathizer. Or an ISIS operative. Or a domestic terrorist. Or a religious fanatic. Or a political extremist. Or some other flavor of sociopath, maybe one who's just one belligerent drunk away from launching a bloodbath. We can't read your mind, we don't know your heart...we don't know you any better than you know us."

His amusement faded as it became clear I was serious.

"We also don't know who you might talk to. Or who might overhear you talking. Or...and here's a fun one...who might grab you off the street and torture you to find out what you know."

His face changed. These were thoughts he hadn't had before.

"What we do know is that anyone who goes through the same training as us, who acquires the same skills as us, can go a long way toward killing people and breaking things. And the sorts of people who'd employ said skills for that would probably train like-minded people too. Which kind of magnifies the concern."

Tsu'na was typing, occasionally pausing to switch tabs and look things up. I leaned in a bit for effect. "So we know that if we let anyone know about our training, we no longer have any control over the information. And what happens as a consequence is our fault. However many people die is our fault. So we don't talk about our training. To anyone. Nothing personal. And that's what I mean by 'classified'."

Sam met my eyes. He wasn't happy. He wasn't satisfied. But he wasn't hostile.

I allowed a humorless smile. "Oh, and I don't know if I can pick up a truck. After closing, if it's all the same to you, I might want to give it a go."

He grimaced. In the mirror behind him I glimpsed the first customers of the evening coming in.

"Do you want us to leave, Sam?"

"The bar or the town?"

"Either. Both."

Tsu'na softly added, "Please do not make us unhappy, Sam."

He looked at her a moment, looked at me another, glanced at the guys that had come in, and shook his head. "Do yer damn job. We'll talk later." He headed down the bar to take drink orders.

The evening was largely incident-free. There was a bit of shoving at a pool table, but when I started to wander over they waved me off and went back to the game.

Tsu'na typed and researched. I occasionally stroked her shoulder. She occasionally squeezed my hand.

When the last of the patrons had staggered out and Sam had locked the front doors, he came and studied us a minute. Then he said, "Fine. C'mon." and led us out the back.

If my wife had picked up the back of the truck, she managed it without tearing off the bumper, but I still reached past it for the undercarriage near the tow hook. Sam and Tsu'na watched as I braced myself and heaved.

It was the heaviest thing I've ever tried to lift. My inner voice was saying, "You're trying to pick up a truck! You can't fucking pick up a truck!" But hey, the numbers in my journal say I'm more than fifty times as strong as the average schmo, and it was time I put that to the test.

I got it up off the ground. I shifted to get more under it and started pushing rather than lifting. It got higher. I kept pushing. Eventually my arms straightened.

I was fucking picking up a truck. Most of the weight was on the engine end, but still.

Letting it down gently rather than just dropping it was a different kind of hard. They make it look so easy in the movies. Guess we're not Superman-strength. Yet.

The look on Sam's face had changed. It bordered on wonder now, rather than suspicion and grim denial. He was seeing something amazing, and not just my wife being some kind of freak.

On that note, I looked at my magnificent miqo'te, she looked at me, and without a word we took positions at either end of the truck. I took the heavy end. Because I'm a gentleman.

The heavy end was heavy. Picking up the back end wasn't as much lifting the truck as it was rocking the weight forward onto the front wheels. But together we were feeling the whole thing. It was a strain, it was slow, it was a lot of creaking of the suspension.

But we got it off the ground. Maybe a foot...I had my hands full and wasn't measuring. Should've asked Sam. Maybe next time. I somehow suspect there'll be a next time.

Could we have thrown it? Perhaps a foot or two. Certainly not like Hulk throwing boulders into orbit. Or even Spiderman throwing a car at the Rhino.

We got it down again without breaking it. We came around and hugged each other hard. This was something new we had done together.

Sam approached, shaking his head. "An' you really never done that before."

"Never needed to. Heavier weapons and tactical gear, sure, but we never had to lift a vehicle."

"Trainin'."

I nodded. "Training."

"Could I learn to do that?"

"Maybe. Not from us."

"...So...what else can you do?"

"Classified."

"Maybe try not doin' it in front of anyone else?"

"Sounds like a plan."