Super

1 - There's A Reason I'm Invisible

PLEASE NOTE THAT SUPER IS CURRENTLY UNDERGOING EDITING. THE FINISHED, REVISED VERSION WILL REPLACE THIS ONE ON JANUARY 22 2022 SO IF YOU ARE A NEW READER OR EVEN A RE-READER, IT IS ADVISED YOU WAIT UNTIL JAN 22! THANK YOU :)

"In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different."

– Coco Chanel

Lila Parker was indubitably average. With average brown hair, which she twirled around her averagely pudgy fingers, and average brown eyes that shone just enough to make her average height of 5'5'' really stand out. Even her clothes, ripped jeans and a purple Ramones tee shirt, were average. The only thing about Lila Parker that was not average was that she had super powers. She was also my best friend.

By day, Lila sat in class and twiddled her thumbs. By night, she would slip into a midnight-blue spandex suit, tie an obnoxious strip of blue leather with two eyeholes cut just wide enough so onlookers could view her winged eye makeup around the upper half of her head and scale an insanely tall building in a matter of seconds. She could also leap from said building, landing unscathed on her feet, melt into the shadows, and stalk pray like a natural-born hunter. When she needed weapons, her fingernails grew into talon-like claws. When she needed speed and agility, her average body could morph into that of any form of cat she pleased; be it a lion, tiger, puma even.

Actually, the whole by-day/ by-night thing wasn't strictly true. Lila was a superhero so she would find any excuse to dash out of class if civilians needed her during the day. It just happened that most crimes here in New York City took place at night. Lila excelled at night rescues, perhaps because of the cat-like night vision she possessed, or maybe due to the fact that nobody would see her coming. That's probably why I expected her to be my saviour that lonely Friday night and not some stranger unbeknownst to the super world.

Last year, supers started popping up everywhere once crime rates spiked exponentially. Apparently they'd always been there and were just waiting for the right moment to introduce themselves: when they knew humans would finally be ready. That would be our generation, the one stock full of teenagers that wished with all their might that they could be swept off to Neverland or at the very least, discover Narnia in some beaten-up old wardrobe.

Most supers were heroes; those who were not quickly learned to stay out of their way. All of them had amazing gifts. There were heroes like Gold Thrush, probably the most famous of them all, who could fly, run at the speed of light, and possessed super strength, among other things. Then there were supers like Alloy or Lila (a.k.a. The Claw) who could take on the appearance of something. For example, The Claw could turn into a cat, with all the cat-like abilities (kind of like a Barbie Dream House with all the accessories), and Alloy who could take on any metallic composition, which made punching him a real knuckle-breaker. Actually, the reason they were so similar was because they were siblings. Alloy was the Claw's evil twin. Yeah, Lila's family was a little messed up.

Now, if you've ever been followed, you'll know a little bit about how this goes. You'd know you're in trouble as soon as the Mazda sedan idling outside your friend's house starts revving its engine the moment he thanks you again for helping him with biology homework and shuts the door behind you. When the sedan's wheels silently start to roll and the car follows at an extremely slow, steady pace behind you, you know it's time to quicken your pace and when you reach an alley, you'd turn down it because that seems like the appropriate thing to do and besides, you know that alleys are only dead ends in movies, right? Wrong.

I stopped, staring in a mixture of horror and shock up at the huge brick wall in front of me. No way in hell would I be able to climb that. It was run or hide, and my hiding options certainly weren't very good considering the only things in this stupid alley were trashcans full to the brim of what smelled like year-old fruit and an old, soggy mattress. As for running, that wasn't much of a choice either considering two things: (1) there was a wall in front of me and (2) there was a car full of potential muggers behind. Basically, there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.