Super

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"I think about how much depends upon a best friend. You wake up in the morning, you swing your legs out of bed, and put your feet on the ground and stand up.

You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there.

The floor is always there.

Until it's not."

– John Green and David Levithan

Less than a minute later, a familiar midnight-blue suit appeared outside my window, Lila's masked face peeking in. "Mind opening the window?" She was sweating, "it's kind of hard to hold on here." I frowned and opened the window. Lila tumbled in, breathing heavily. She ripped off her mask and exposed her suit just above the waist to where a jagged cut in her hip was bleeding steadily.

"I was less than twenty feet from your house when our little friend," her mouth puckered like she tasted something sour, "appeared out of nowhere and stabbed me! Like, what the hell, man?"

I gasped. I knew IH could clone himself within a twenty-foot vicinity and had no doubt that's what happened. While he was distracting me, he stabbed my best friend. I bit my lip and rushed to get the emergency first aid kit I kept under my bed. Lila was always taking pit stops at my house to get bandaged up so I was pretty much used to her cuts and bruises. She was also a baby when it came to pain. She whimpered as I dabbed her side with rubbing alcohol. The wound wasn't deep at all and it made me wonder why IH had even bothered stabbing her if he barely grazed the skin.

"You're scowling," Lila noted, "is it that bad? You only scowl when something's bad. Am I gonna die?"

"Lila I'm scowling because I hurt myself worse when I fell off the climbing wall in first grade."

"You only grazed your elbow."

"Exactly. He barely grazed you. Why would he stab you if he didn't want to hurt you?"

"Maybe he did it to get your attention," Lila suggested softly, her wide eyes glancing up to meet my own, "oh my gosh! What if he did it to get your attention? We could catch him!" Forgetting all about her little injury, Lila was on her feet and clapping excitedly. "We could use you as bait and–"

"Wow, hold up," I got up and dusted myself off, "I am not being used as bait!"

Lila pouted, "fine. Be that way."

"Look, Lila, I'm only human. I'm not brave like you supers."

"We're human too," she countered, quieter this time, "we just have super cool powers that let us push through the fear."

I raised my eyebrow, "exactly. You have powers and I don't."

"I have powers so I can protect people like you," she said pointedly. I didn't bother arguing.

"Touché," I shrugged, "but I'm still not going to be bait."

"Fine, fine," she muttered, "leave us all high and dry. But when the city gets destroyed because you were too scared to meet lover boy in a dark alley, don't come crying to me," she joked with a giggle and leapt out of the open window.

When the supers revealed themselves to us lowly civilians last year, the truth is, I already knew. Lila had told me everything a good year and a half before everyone "came out" with their powers. Well, their alternate identities came out. Their secret identities remained a secret because they didn't want villains tracking down them or their families. It was much easier when nobody knew who they were. Still, two and a half years later, it still shocked me when Lila took a dive bomb out of my apartment building from five stories up.

"By the way!" She called from below. I leant out of my open window to see her cupping her mouth, "I didn't come because I was injured. I came because I thought you were in danger!" And like that, she melted into the shadows. If she thought I was in danger, all the supers would. And no doubt a few would be making an appearance tonight.

Supers always got a sense for when someone was in trouble. Unfortunately, they couldn't tell if another super was already at a crime scene so a couple of them tended to show up at the same place. It was pretty funny actually to see someone arrive right as another dusted off his or her hands and shooed the late arrival on their way. A couple of supers had begun to team up over the last few months, using ear chips to communicate, work together, and save more people at once so five heroes didn't show up at one crime scene when another crime didn't have any supers at all.

Unfortunately, Lila never teamed up with any of the others, which is probably why I got an unexpected visit from one of the quietest and yet most powerful supers known to New York City. Storm clouds started funnelling over my apartment and immediately, I knew he'd arrived. The only super in New York City with the power to control the weather was floating cross-legged on a wisp of cloud right outside my window like it was the freaking magic carpet.

"Hey," Electro said by way of greeting as I waved him inside. Despite the brooding mystique Electro so often held in interviews, he was actually pretty friendly. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," I nodded, "I just got a visit from number one of Villains Most Wanted." I took the opportunity to study the super up close. Sometimes it was difficult to tell supers' ethnicities from fuzzy camera footage and so, for the first time, I realised Electro was Asian – though if you asked me, I couldn't tell you from which country. News cameras always captured heroes from a distance during rescues so they never quite managed to zoom in on Electro's caramel face and spikey black hair. Given that there were no Asians at my school, I knew for a fact that I did not know this boy.

"Bat Boy paid you a visit?" Electro joked and then winced, poking the chip in his ear. "Hey, I was only kidding!" I laughed, realising Bat Boy must have been working with Electro. I wondered who else might have been listening in.

"Hey, does that thing go on speaker?" I asked. Electro looked at me, sizing up his options before nodding. He pulled out his phone, typed in a password to some sort of app, and pulled the chip out of his ear. Sound began playing through his phone. Several supers were tapped in, I realised.

"So I'm Annabelle," I introduced, trying to stay calm. Besides Lila (and obviously the Invisible Hand), I had never met another super. She was pretty much the only one that ever came to my rescue considering we were virtually inseparable and therefore she was always there when I needed her (not that I got cornered by hitmen on a regular basis).

"Hey Annabelle," a chorus of voices chimed from the phone.

"You can call me Annie," I said.

"Hey Annie."

Electro watched me, grinning. Like Lila and most other supers, his mask was a leather band with two eyeholes that wrapped around his head. Unlike Spiderman – who was a myth, by the way – nobody really wore full head masks. Only one did and that was Arson, but only because the suit was fireproof and he obviously didn't want to set fire to a leather mask so his suit extended over his head. Most supers were a little... Careless. They figured if they got recognised, it would be by someone in their school and not a villain.

"So Annie," Electro said. Despite his Asian exterior, his accent was that of a New Yorker. "Want to tell us what happened?" I nodded. Realizing the other supers couldn't see me, I grunted a yes and began, for the second time that night, my recount of what happened.

"Annie, honey," my door opened and my mom's eyes widened at the sight of Electro. (Side note: she was his biggest fan.)

He grinned and waved and the other supers chorused, "hi Annie's mom," from the phone, embarrassing my mother and causing her to mutter an apology before closing the door and hurrying out of my room. By the time I finished summarizing what happened, my mom had already brought Electro and me a cup of tea and invited the other supers over. They all declined obviously, but they found it funny nonetheless.

"Bye mom," I said pointedly, staring daggers at her as she hurried out. It was three o'clock and she was still awake meaning my dad still wasn't home.

"She's nice," Electro mused, sipping on herbal tea. I laughed.

"So what are we going to do?"

"We?" Electro raised an eyebrow. Even the other supers were stunned into silence.

"A brave human?" The voice I had identified as Bat Boy piped up, "well that's a first."

"Hey!" I whined.

"It was a compliment."

"To me," I rebutted, "not to the rest of humankind."

"Fair enough," he chuckled.

"Um, I have a question," I said blushing once the laughter died down.

"Yeah?" Several voices chimed.

"For Bat Boy."

"Oh."

"Yeah?"

"Why are you called Bat Boy? Why not Batman?"

"The name was taken," he chuckled at my question, "and the creators threatened to sue me if I stole the name."

"Wow," I muttered. "Okay, so I repeat, what are we going to do?"

"Bait?" Suggested a girl, the only girl, I realised, that was on the call (besides me).

"No, Mist, that's wrong," Electro shook his head even though she couldn't see. I bit my lip to keep from fangirling. Mist was on this call? Oh boy...

"Okay well we need a plan," a voice that I hadn't identified but recognized from his constant perkiness rang through. Something about that voice was familiar, but all supers disguised their voices, either toning them down or up in order to remain unrecognized.

"Alright," I broke the silence, "my mom's right. Get your butts over here. We need to discuss this in person."

✩✩✩

Half an hour later, five supers were crowded in my room. My mom had brought us all cups of herbal tea and everyone sipped them gratefully, cupping the warm mug in their cold hands. The October chill was taking its toll. Nobody trusted me enough to take off their masks, which I understood, but at the same time, I was a little hurt. It was clear the masks were bugging them, rashes forming where the edge of the band rubbed. Most supers knew each other's identities so I had heard, especially the ones that worked together, but of course they wouldn't trust some random girl whom Electro had met only forty-five minutes ago. Silence filled the room as everyone sipped daintily at their tea.

"So," Mist broke the silence. In the midst of five supers, I obviously felt intimidated, especially since some of my biggest heroes were here like Mist and Gold Thrush. Of course, I was a fan of the others too: Electro, Bat Boy, and Lodestone. "We need a plan."

"No shi-" Lodestone's words died in his mouth as Mist shot him a glare.

"Mist is right though," I agreed. Everyone gave me a look as if to ask why is she here again? But nobody argued. I swallowed, replaying Lila's enthusiasm in my head. "We need to use me as bait."

"Are you crazy?" Gold Thrush screeched. "You'll get hurt! Or worse, killed!"

"The Invisible Hand is right though, if he wanted to kill me, he'd have done it already."

"He freaking stabbed your friend!"

I flinched. "It was a scrape," I waved it away. "Besides she's already back out and about fighting crime."

Everyone froze. Whoops. I had slipped up. "She's a super?"

"I meant fighting fashion crime," I stammered, hoping nobody would call me out on my lie, but everyone looked sceptical. Luckily I hadn't mentioned Lila's name, only that she was my friend, but I still couldn't tell them which super she was in case they tracked down all of my friends and figured it out. Besides Mist and the Claw, there were few female supers left in the city. It was just a matter of process of elimination.

"Besides me, there are only two other female supers," Mist echoed my thoughts with narrowed her eyes, "the others are all retired or defeated."

Unfortunately – and somewhat stereotypically – the gene for super strength fell on the Y chromosome – a chromosome which girls do not possess – and so many of the female supers lost in battles of strength to their stronger male counterparts (where super strength was a prevalent power). So when it came to female superheroes, it really was survival of the fittest; only those with the most useful powers would survive. Biology was so anti-feminist in the super world, I could have laughed.

"Mist," Electro chided, "we should respect Annabelle's friend's privacy. You wouldn't want anyone trying to figure out your identity."

"Fine." Mist, like Electro, was Asian. In fact, they had remarkably similar features. From her caramel skin to her big brown eyes and finally her thick black hair.

"Like I was saying," I quickly steered the conversation back on track, "we need to use me as bait. The only way to do that is for me to get in trouble and for none of you to save me."

"Shame he doesn't have a calling card like Bat Boy over here."

"Actually that's Batman."

"Actually that was a joke," Lodestone, the perky one I realised, sassed. Everyone let out a nervous laugh and it occurred to me just how anxious they all were about catching the Invisible Hand. I looked around at everyone's faces – or what was visible of them. A few were handsome, like Gold Thrush and Bat Boy, but none were sharp or defined. In fact, they all looked like...

"You're all just kids! Teenagers!" I realised. Sure, Lila was my age too, but where were all the adult heroes when we needed them? The supers tried to hide their shock, but it didn't work. They were all my age. They were all around seventeen.

"Actually, I'm twenty two," Bat Boy corrected.

"Shut up Bat Boy."

"Noted."

"So basically you're proposing we just thrust you out in the street and wait for you to get hit by a car or something?" Mist raised an eyebrow, "I'm all for using you for bait but that seems a little extreme, don't you think?"

"Or," I said, straitening up as my excitement grew, "we could stage something, you know? One of you could dress up like a mugger or something – I mean that's what he saved me from the first time round – and pretend to mug me or whatever and he'll show up, right?"

"Great, great, that's all great, except for one problem:" Bat Boy said sarcastically, "won't he recognise us considering we'll be wearing masks?"

Lodestone smacked him on the back of the head, "no you i***t. Not if we're wearing disguises."

"Oh even better, we'll just unmask ourselves for the whole freaking world, right?"

"Lodestone, you're an i***t," I rolled my eyes, ignoring the glare he sent my way, "you'll just wear a ski mask or something." Everyone gave him a pointed look and he gulped.

"Oooohhh no." He shook his head, meeting everyone's guilty faces, "why do I get the feeling that when Annie said 'you' she didn't mean 'you' in general?" We let out awkward coughs and rubbed the backs of our necks. "AW COME ON!"

"Sorry Lodestone," I sent him an apologetic smile, to which he just glared back and grumbled to himself, "I thought this kind of thing was only supposed to happen in movies." And with that, he tugged off his silver mask.

We let out a collective gasp. Obviously everyone knew who he was, but I didn't... The boy underneath was none other than Arden "Ardie" Ladders. If his sister was always getting her cat stuck in the tree, how come it was up to Lila to save it and not her own damn brother? Ardie sent me a nervous glance. He was sixteen, a year younger than me and a grade below me in school.

"No," I shook my head, "nuh uh. We are not using him as the mugger. He's only sixteen!"

"You forget that I have super powers," Ardie grinned like a maniac. Lodestone's power was magnetism. Basically he could turn into a giant magnet and either attract or repel anything magnetic and only the things he wanted to attractepel. Say he was fighting someone with a gun and a wristwatch, for instance. He could attract the gun, but not the watch. Or if the guy shot at him, he could repel the bullet, and not affect the watch. It was pretty cool, but the power pretty much only worked in combat, not for, say, rescuing cats out of trees.

"No freaking way!" I protested, and then I choked. Ardie knew Lila. Lila was my best friend. It was only a matter of time before he pieced together her secret identity.

Ardie regarded me bashfully, "don't tell anyone," he pleaded, tossing his mask aside. By now it was well past three in the morning, almost four, and all we had for a plan was that Ardie would dress up like a mugger and pretend to attack me and then pray the Invisible Hand would come to my rescue while everyone else hid and watched. It wasn't much of a plan, but as everyone began to yawn and wipe the sleep from the eyes, I realized it was all we had for now.

"There's just one thing," I whispered tentatively, "he slaughtered those other men. Who's to say he won't kill you?" I directed the question at Ardie who just studied his fiddling hands with a newfound interest.

"Well... We can just get me out in time, right? Have an extraction team ready or something..." He let out a nervous chuckle.

I shook my head, "not if he decides to boil your blood!"

"What we haven't addressed," Mist interrupted, "is why he's so interested in you, Annie."

"What are you saying, Mist?" Electro asked, a clear warning in his voice.

"I'm just saying, why's he so keen on getting to know you?"

"He said something about having to trust me... Maybe with information..." I pieced together slowly, my mind spinning faster as a new idea popped into it, "with the information those guys wanted! Maybe he killed them so he could warn me about something!"

"Do you think it has anything to do with your dad?" Ardie a.k.a. Lodestone asked.

"Her dad?" The other supers all sent me quizzical looks.

"He's the mayor," Ardie supplied. "Running for state senator, right?"

I said nothing, choosing to nod in agreement instead.

Hastily, Gold Thrush got to his feet. Despite his outgoing and charismatic personality, he had been quiet for most of the night. Now, he turned to me and in his smooth voice, asked, "Annabelle, would you feel safer if one of us stayed with you tonight?"

I gulped. Would Lila be back in time to sleep over? Probably not. If she hadn't returned by now, she was likely out fighting crime or crashed on some doorstep for the night. Usually when she showed up on my couch, it would be at two in the morning, not four. Finally, I nodded.

"Yes please," I said in a small voice. Everyone looked at Mist who just shrugged.

"Don't look at me," she said, "my mom will flip if I'm not home when she wakes up, which is six, by the way." And with that, Mist evaporated into, shocker, mist, floating out the window like fog carried on a breeze.

"Anyone else want to volunteer?" Gold asked. Ardie looked away, refusing to make eye contact. I wasn't offended. In fact, I wasn't leaping at the opportunity to acknowledge his secret either. Things were awkward enough as is. When nobody else spoke up, Gold said, "well I guess that's me then."

✩✩✩