Hero Stalker

Part Fifteen

Garden Street was deserted, save for the orderly rows of cars lining the edges of the road. Normally, a summer evening in Routaille meant kids playing in the street and neighbors walking door to door, but the rain had driven them all inside. Even if they look through the shutters, they'll just see a blur.

A delicious thrill flooded my veins. I took off running. My legs churned like they'd had a motor installed. Psi-energy surged through my body. Puddles made slapping noises when my feet hit them. The rest of me felt incredibly light, like I'd float up into the sky if my legs weren't holding me down.

I jumped off my right leg. It fired like a piston and hurled me forward. My feet hit the sidewalk fifty feet away. I skidded another twenty with jets of water arching up from under my heels.

"Unreal," I whispered when I came to a stop at a traffic light, my heart pounding. Cars whizzed down the road in front of me. In a handful of seconds, I'd run the half mile from my house to Circle Street, the road that ran the whole length of Routaille.

I took a deep breath and peered down the road. Pedestrians filled the sidewalk. Darn it. Headlights cut through the darkness. The thick smell of the marigolds planted in the median washed over me. If I was a mugger, which way would I go? Probably towards GreenwoodHeights. There were three neighborhoods south of The Wall: Routaille was middle-class black, The Vineyard was middle-class white, and the people of GreenwoodHeights couldn't afford to be picky about their neighbors. Even if the man who'd stolen Laura's purse didn't live there, it'd be the best place to spend large amounts of cash without getting noticed.

I turned left onto Circle Street and joined the briskly-walking pedestrians. Moving this slow felt like I'd clamped lead weights to my ankles. My hands shook, like I'd drunk three cups of coffee and tried to sit still. Even if I'd had a decent costume, I wouldn't have been able to run at superspeed on the crowded sidewalk.

 There's go to be a better way to do this, I thought, ducking past a man with a giant grey umbrella. He glared at me. "Young lady!"

"Sorry," I muttered, pushing my way forward. What did Slasher do, besides flying around in his jet? The sidewalks carried foot traffic, the city roads overflowed with cars, and buildings boxed in almost every block. Wait a second.

I took a left on Maxnode, a side street barely wide enough to fit two buses at a time. A lone stereo boomed from an upstairs window above a crumbling pharmacy, but the sidewalks were bare. Good.

I sprinted at top speed towards the pharmacy and threw myself at the building. Blades whipped out of my fingers and shredded through my sneakers. I squeezed my eyes shut. Crunch! A jolt shot through my shoulders. I opened my eyes to find my blades sunk deep into the brick. Four little holes remained when I pulled my left hand free.

Awesome.

I climbed hand over hand. Theoretically, with sufficient force behind them, psi-blades could cut through anything. But as long as I didn't move too fast, the brick provided enough resistance to keep me moving upwards. Either that, or my blades had a mind of their own.

A shiver went down my spine as I clambered onto the roof. There was a six foot gap between this building and the next. Like most of the buildings in Bayton, both roofs were perfectly flat. I cleared the distance with barely any run-up and landed in a giant puddle.  

My wet, shredded sneakers squished as I ran across the rooftops. GreenwoodHeights lay ahead, almost completely dark—the supervillain Positron had destroyed the most of their street lights two years ago. Slasher, Femme Fatale, and Cypher had apprehended him, but any repair truck that stayed too late found itself propped up on cinderblocks come morning.

Not that the purse snatcher would have gotten as far as GreenwoodHeights. He wasn't as fast as me.

I caught a glimpse of pink in the alley beneath me. A man in a hoodie bent over Laura's purse, his face hidden as he counted the wrinkled five and tens meant for her rent payment. Gotcha.

 I swung myself off the roof, grabbed the fire escape on the other side of the alley, and dropped straight down in front of the bastard. Shocks swam up my ankles, and I nearly fell to my knees. Dark Justice had made it look too easy.

"Hand over the bag," I commanded.

He shoved the money into the purse as he scrambled to his feet. Couldn't have been more than fourteen, a scrawny kid with 43 shaved into the side of his head for Darryl Ross, point guard for the Bayton Bulldogs and local legend. If it wasn't for the switchblade in his hand, he'd have reminded me of a younger version of Will.

"Back down, bitch!" He held out the knife.

The world slowed down. I pivoted on one foot and kicked him in the gut. He flew backwards and slammed into a dumpster. Clang! The purse fell from his hands and landed in a puddle. I picked it up. The rent money was still inside, snug and dry.

Energy swirled through my veins. Was this was being high felt like? I slung the purse over my shoulder. I should say something.

"Ain't never gonna back down."

Then I turned and sprinted off into the night.

The other single mothers were still consoling Laura by the time I'd dried off and pulled on my PJs. Mom paced back and forth, chattering on her cellphone about securing a loan. She caught me as I headed for the door.

"Gloria Marie! You are not going out of this house dressed like that!"

I wore PJs, a rain jacket, and my torn sneakers. But I wasn't planning to go anywhere. The vein in Mom's forehead stood out. I'd have bet five bucks she blamed herself for Laura getting mugged.

"I'm just going to Wawa's to pick up some Coke." A toddler stumbled into the coffee table and fell down in tears. "Gimme five minutes."

"I need you here." In the corner by the ficus, Janice and another woman argued incoherently in raised voices. A four-year-old shoved over a toddler. Another kid had smashed brownies against his shirt.

 "Sorry, Mom, I gotta go." I opened the door. "Hey! Laura! Someone left your purse on the steps!"

Laura raced over to the door and snatched it up; Mom followed on her heels. The same question flickered across both of their faces. What if . . . ? Then Laura dug in and pulled out the envelope of cash.

She yelped with joy and threw her arms around Mom's neck. Mom hugged her back. I took a few steps towards the living room, turned, and fled up the steps, leaving flecks of mud on the ancient carpet.

"Thank God!" someone said behind me.

"Impossible."

"You must have a guardian angel!"

Guardian superhero, I thought as I shut my bedroom door. I didn't trust the grin on my face not to give me away.

The newspaper clippings fluttered in the breeze from the half-open window. I'd read those articles over and over, but I'd never before understood what it felt like to belong in one of them. 'Femme Fatale Foils Ice Queen'. 'Slasher and NSWAT Turn Cracken into Calamari'. 'Black Knives Bust Concocted by Cypher and Precocious Pulse'.  I wondered what my alter-ego's name would be. I wondered what puns the editor of the Clarion would come up with for it.

I felt like a hero. And it was even better than I'd imagined it would be.