Falling for a Superhero

I Pledge Allegiance to...Anyone but the Proliator

Dastan still ignored me on Wednesday. Hayden ate lunch with me and my friends, somehow managing not to get his butt kicked by a pissed off Nik. Not only was Nik mad, but so was Dastan by my perception. He and Hayden had an even more intense argument than when he offered to drive me home. I shrugged it off though. I just accepted that Dastan and I would never be friends so nothing would be worth the hassle of trying to understand him.

Now, on the next day, the pep rally was scheduled for after school. Since Mrs. Hayes was so impressed with my pictures on mine and Dast—my article, she wanted me to take pictures at the pep rally and football game to help out the partners that were focused on sports. But of course, I had to borrow a camera from Dastan himself to do that.

I finally found him after school in the Journalism room, alone.

“Mrs. Hayes said I could use your camera,” I told him as he was logging off the computer.

“Fine,” he said, avoiding eye contact. I expected no words and a crappy toss of the camera to me in order for me to drop it and be stuck with expenses and ridicule, but he actually answered and placed the strap over my head and collected his things to leave. Yup. That’s how we were now and most of me figured it was better than any fueled interactions from before.

He did whatever he wanted to. And I just did what I was required to, even if that meant associating with him. Hayden taught—or rather reminded me—to be the person that didn’t hold a grudge over someone who had no chance at resolving our problems. Although I tried to kill him with kindness most of the time (except when he was with Mickie), I couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t a hopeless jerk when no one was around. Why?

“Wait,” I had called after him for some reason. He stopped in his tracks and turned to me with a foreign sort of look that I hadn’t seen on his face before. Maybe…sadness? Remorse? A human conscience? “Why aren’t we friends?”

He opened his mouth as if he already had the perfect answer to that, but his only response was: “Have fun at the pep rally. Be careful on your walk home,” completely avoiding my question.

***

I had went to the pep rally, taking excellent pictures of the freshmen and JV football team that played beforehand—yes, of actual events and not Hayden’s silly faces—without getting carried off by the running back, Hayden Marshal, himself. I knew that Hayden would offer to give me a ride home, but in his time-consuming social life, I decided to walk.

However, when I passed the first alleyway off the main road past the school’s block, I noticed a group of guys. Half of them were on their knees with colorful chests and blind folds. They were also wrapped in plastic wrap. With the three Greek letter jackets, I knew that the three standing men were hazing the other three.

“Hey, stop that!” I said, jogging over and already trying to pry the plastic wrap from the pledges’ sweaty and iridescent chests. One of the members pushed me back though. That’s when my hand and lower arm smashed down onto shards of glass left in the street. I looked down as I hissed in pain and then realized that it was a broken beer bottle that matched a dozen others that were still together in an arrangement on the ground by a funnel and a curled plastic tube. s**t. I was in trouble. And just my luck that I hadn’t brought my phone.

“Pledges, what was the first rule of your initiation?” the one that pushed me asked them as the other two unfolded the pledges’ blindfolds.

“Don’t snitch,” they chanted. I turned up my nose and was completely confused. The guy that pushed me opened a can of beer, took a sip, threw most of it on the pledges and then smashed it into the nearest wall.

“So who’s goddamn girlfriend is this!?”

He thought that I was saving them because I was in a relationship with one of them? The pledges started denying my existence—which was their honest right—and the main leader started asking for a paddle as I held my wrist and hoped my arm would stop bleeding.

Harder with each lash, he beat them harder and harder as they bit down on a lemon. I only started to worry about myself when the leader walked toward my direction and yanked me up from the ground. I immediately smelt all the beer on him, even though it was the pledges that were showered in that stuff. He smirked.

“You’re really pretty,” he commented.

“Thanks…” I whispered, not knowing what was running through his devious mind. Suddenly, he whistled and the spankings stopped, unlike the muffled grunting. I even glanced over to see a pledge fall to his side and squirm off the pain coming through his ass. I don’t blame him. They beat him the most because they made comments that someone as good looking as him could get a girl like me.

“I got a new one,” the leader told his friends, lazily, his eyes drooping down of fatigue. “Untie the bastards and the first one to lay this pretty b***h gets in without hell week. The other two…well you’re just out of luck.”

Before I knew it, the other two had sliced the plastic wrap with a pocket knife and the pledges all looked at me. s**t, s**t, s**t.

“How about the first one that touches her gets beat the hardest and so on, and so forth?” a voice drenched in an English accent suddenly said from nowhere. From behind the pledges—well the only two not wiggling on the ground—stood a man, dressed in black, gold, and red. His suit was all black, but his belt, shoes, and mask were gold. The only ounce of red was his cape and outlines to his gloves and shoes.

Proliator.

Suddenly, I was seized by the smelly leader and with a blur Proliator smashed him into a wall and I tightly closed my eyes, both wanting to miss the violence in front of me and also bite down on my lower lip enough to take the pain away from my cuts along my arm.

“What? You didn’t like my ‘new idea’?” Proliator asked the frat boy leader in an accent so perfect you’d think it was his specialty so girls could comment further on how they were saved by their knight in shining armor. “Oh right. You can’t speak now.”

What? I opened my eyes and saw the two members sprawled out on the concrete just like the pledge that had got beaten too hard was earlier. The pledges, however, were gone now hopefully getting some help. I, on the other hand, hopped up and started backing away. That’s when I saw what was really happening.

“All they want is to be accepted into your fraternity. And for what? No one should want to be considered as a ‘brother’ of yours,” Proliator said down to them. Suddenly, he touched the leader’s leg and he immediately started to scream in pain, yet somehow the cry was familiar to me. “Is that how you want them to feel!? Huh! And her? You brought her into this for absolutely no reason, you filthy scum.”

I started backing away when I noticed that he still knew I was there, or maybe the fact that he had one touch and he made the tough guy scream so hard. I turned to walk away and then he appeared in front of me. My breath was held faster than when I had met Dastan. His eyes weren’t really visible in the dark, but I swear that I saw flickers of…red? Maybe to match the blood he just shed on those guys…

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered.

“How do I know that?” I asked back. He twitched his lips and his eyes released all red flakes.

“I’ve never had someone so afraid of me unwarranted,” he said. I stepped back.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I denied. I gestured to the unconscious frat boys. “But I’m pretty sure they are.”

“They really beat up themselves if you saw what happened,” he reasoned. “Which you didn’t because you were busy shutting your eyes for no reason.”

“I don’t like to see fighting,” I confessed. He slightly snorted and then even I scoffed. “Especially not from some wanna-be superhero.”

He looked at me, not with arrogance or disbelief. He just…looked at me and I felt as if he was staring into my soul, trying to tell me some unspoken prophecy or some crap. Eventually, I started to walk around him, attempting to pull out shards of glass in my arm that caused me pain. Suddenly, with a blur of speed, Proliator was standing in front of me.

“You can’t leave yet,” he said. Under what authority?

“And why not?” I asked impatiently. I wanted to cross my arms, but glass prevented that.

“I haven’t healed you,” he answered. Healed me?

“That’s what a hospital is for. I rather have professionals than some boy living out his comic book dream,” I said to him. “So if you don’t mind—”

“Here,” he said, grabbing my un-stabbed arm. His eyes started to glow a light, noticeable blue as his touch was cold at first, but then it had warmed and then was normal temperature—as if I had tiny shots of electricity that quickly subsided—as his other hand tried to pull a big piece of glass out. I hissed in pain and when my eyes that were pricked with water looked up to his, they had changed into a golden/orange color that was glazed with just as many tears as mine. “You can feel that?”

The electric sparks across my arm from your touch? Yeah…

“The intense pain coming from my arm!? YES!” I yelled, removing his grip on me. “Now if you don’t mind, you can go squeal about another one of your heroic deeds while I go to the hospital.”

With that, I had finally walked around him and had to switch directions to change my course to the emergency room. Great. Just freaking great. So even though I had a theory of the Proliator being some fake NYPD stunt to scare criminals, he turned out to be real. And it was just my luck that I had to meet him like this. UGH. Why did I have to be the person that insisted on trying to save people from unfortunate situations like hazing—and yet still end up getting hurt!?

Not only that, but I’d have to explain my stitches to Dad…and Sebastian…and Cheyenne…and anyone else that would surely ask about it.

“Is that how you want them to feel!? Huh! And her? You brought her into this for absolutely no reason, you filthy scum.”

Proliator’s words weren’t some battle cry towards the head jerk, but it was as if he was a frustrated teacher or coach, grilling something into his mind by personal tactics. But then he added me in the situation as if that would give some sort of sympathy. Yeah right. The boy’s screams still rang in my head and it took me through my entire nightmare to realize that his screams matched the shrieks coming from the poor pledges as if Proliator really made him understand the pain he inflicted.