Pro Heroes

Sophie's dad

They arrive back at the restaurant and they go to the back without saying a word to miss Wu. She sees the distortion in them, the defeat emanating off them. She notes that some of them are hurt Sophie has her arm in a sling, Killer still has blood covering him.

"Wow, this is your agency? This place is small compared to the one we were just in." Killer looked around the room, seeing pizza boxes and clothes laying around.

"Yea well we can't afford a bigger place, so this is are HQ for now.'' Andrew turns on the TV, the news is playing. "A gang attacked the Blackmist agency, apparently the gang ran an underground fight club. Witnesses stated the monsters attacked the agency. Lucky they were taken out, but we do have confirmation that the pro hero, Tacoman and his team took out the biggest monster, a hulking beast. We have some footage of this fight but it cuts out before the fight is over. But it is sad to report, the pro hero Blackmist was killed in the altercation, by a villain they call Champ. Apparently, he is the champion of the underground fight club."

"Tacoman! Look, your rank went up!" Steven said excitedly.

Everyone gathered around Steven and his laptop except Sophie. She is sitting by herself. "Tacoman's rank goes from 280,842 to 257,523! When we get to the top 250,000, we get a grant for hero gear and an agency." Steven said excitedly.

"Yeah, but we need more pros. Tacoman is the only official pro hero and we need three for an agency." Andrew said, looking around the room trying not to look at Sophie sitting alone on the couch, hugging her knees.

"Three black mist only had one, didn't he?" Ronnie looked puzzled.

Andrew grabbed the computer and began to read off the heroes in the Blackmist agency and their rank. "It says here that in the agency, Blackmist was ranked 1,000, Hdmi 22,058, the last one was Lpd. His rank is. . . . . . .'' Andrew grabbed the screen and shouted out. "500!"

"Who?" Steven tilted his head, looking confused.

"I don't know. There are no pictures on the website. I guess to help counsel the agents even though this is a hero only website. But he must have been out. Because if he was there, the villains would have been stopped. Him being in the top 500, he must be really powerful. Too bad, I wonder what he was doing. I would have loved to see him fight." Andrew sat back in his chair.

"Sophie, did you hear? We can almost afford an agency." Said Ronnie excitedly.

"Yea. . . cool." Sophie said with a monotone voice as she stood up and walked to the bathroom.

"You may want to go check on her." Ronnie said, looking over at Andrew.

"Yea." Andrew stood up and walked to the bathroom. As he walked, he spoke under his breath. "Even though I don't know what to say." Andrew knocked on the door to the bathroom. "Hey sis are you ok?"

". . . . No." Sophie said softly, sounding like she was crying.

"Can I come in?" Andrew said, concerned.

". . . . . Yeah." Sophie replied, continuing to cry.

Andrew slowly opens the door. Sophie is sitting on the floor hugging her knees crying. Andrew closed the door and sat beside her, putting his arm around her. She turned to him, laying her head on his chest and continued to cry and Andrew wrapped his other arm around her. "I didn't care about fighting. All I cared about was making sure you were safe. Knowing you were hurt, I couldn't ask you to fight."

"You didn't have to ask, not this time. I wanted to fight." Sophie bared her head deeper in his chest.

"Why, why would you go into a fight after you get hurt? Why was it so important?" Andrew asked sincerely, wondering why, why did she care about helping Blackmist so much?