Storm reclined on a pink fluffy cloud. The ‘find a mortal’ challenge was issued only yesterday, but she still felt like she was behind. Had her sisters already found their targets? It wasn’t enough that they had to find a mortal and get him to fall in love with them. No, he had to have a special interest in her element. She reviewed what she knew of mortals. On earth, many different men dealt with the air element. There were weathermen, pilots, and parachutists, just to name a few. If she was going to do this, it had to be someone exciting, some one who could make her heart race.

She tapped her index finger against her lip as she thought. “Maybe MC would help.” She sat up and after tracing a square into the air, a crystal screen appeared. Slowly mists swirled and showed her the Mortal Channel. She flipped through the pictures: islands, and water. Earth’s concentration of H2O would make finding a man for Maryna easy.

“Hold up.” She landed on a screen filled with a man in black SUV. He was hanging out the window, a camera gripped in his hand. The sky to his west blackened; the winds whirled. His black hair whipped around his head. He had bronze skin and a close-up showed his black eyes dancing with joy. Under his arm on the door, hand-painted white lettering proclaimed, “Storm Chaser.”

Laughter erupted from her chest and shook the cloud. “A definite sign, if ever I’ve seen one.” She observed the man, identified by the news channel as Vance Nodin. He was a meteorologist, based in some small town called Red Cabin, Oklahoma. “Looks like I’m headed for Oklahoma.” She snapped her fingers.

Within minutes, the serene peace of the cloud chaise was replaced by chaos of the swirling, angry winds. Debris flew past her head. “Whoops. Overshot my mark.”

She made adjustments and landed on a sidewalk in what she assumed to be Red Cabin. First thing to do was set up a normal mortal home nearby. Then she’d track him down. ~*~

Vance Nodin pulled the camera away from his face and rubbed his eyes. Looking back through the viewfinder he saw the previous apparition had vanished. “I’m really tired.” He turned to his partner Heidi Fingerhoffer. “You’d never believe what I thought I saw out there.”

“Knowing you, it was either a four-inch thick porter house steak, a gorgeous redhead or big, cold bottle of Dr. Pepper. Which was it?”

Heidi had been Vance’s partner for close to three years. She’d begun as an intern and ended up chasing the winds by his side.

“Actually, she had this white-blond hair that whipped around her face in the wind. She was small…Wow! I need some sleep and maybe some suga—Look out!” The tornado had veered around, and was now headed directly for them.

“Hang on!” Heidi shouted over the rushing wind. She threw the truck in reverse and floored the gas.

For nearly a mile, they drove in reverse as the tornado bore down on them. Suddenly it took a ragged turn and rushed off in the opposite direction again.

Vance stopped shaking and turned to Heidi. “Now that was amazing, Rusty! Knew I could count on you to keep your head. I got some good footage.”

“Ready to move on?”

He stared out as the tornado began to unwind. Damn. If The Tank had been ready, this would have been the perfect deployment for it. “Yeah, let’s keep track of this beast.”

The Tank was a monster vehicle he and Mike Dale, from the National Weather Service, had designed. Then Vance hired in a few guys to bring the beast from paper to life size. They started with the chassis from a nineteen ninety-nine Chevy four by four. Then they took a layer of specially designed military/weapons grade steel to fashion the body and hood. The windows and sunroof were made from three layers of bulletproof glass.

It cost nearly a million dollars to create but once it was complete, he was confident that they could safely punch the core, so to speak, of the tornado and take readings from the inside.

Punching the core was a term used when someone drove straight into the tornado. Not always the smartest of ideas but for their purposes it was the best bet.

For data collection they were going to sight up a tornado, determine to the best of their ability, its exact path, then drive the tank straight into the line of fire and wait for the tornado to come to them.

Vance grinned as he envisioned The Tank. After it was finished one of the guys, Albert McHale, a self-described auto artist chased them all out and several weeks later, they were allowed to see the finished work.

Finally, Albert opened the doors to his shop to reveal a vehicle that would rival any monster truck in design. He had painted the entire thing to look like an actual military tank, including painted-on tank treads with a black tornado that “swirled” beneath it.

Vance had been blown away. “You realize that no matter how great this looks it will only take one bad storm to destroy the paint job?”

Al had nodded. “That’s the reason for the six rolls of film. Several pictures taken at each stage of the game. Take care of my baby now.”

The Tank cost a fortune to feed and it was hungry—often. Just one good reading would have paid for it. Unfortunately, each time they missed it by a hair’s width. It was increasingly frustrating for all of the team.

“We’ll catch it next time, Boss.”

“Sure we will.” He tried to sound confident but deep inside he felt they’d always miss it by just this much.