Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

It begins

Slightly edited.

I had only just brought out the books I needed for my next class when a familiar pair of footsteps came running through the hallway. I had been through this scene too many times that week, and the weeks before that, so to say that I was tired of hearing Hannah say "you'll never guess what happened," would be the largest understatement in the universe.

Hannah Lowell was that typical pretty reporter in all the comic books. I hadn't seen a day when her blonde hair wasn't looking perfect, not even when Alex Henderson accidentally dropped a bucket of slime on her head in the year 3 play did it look anything other than gorgeous. To have "hair like Hannah's" was the best you could say about someone's hair. She was also the closest thing I had to a best friend at school and she, like every other best friend out there, had this blog about the thing I hated the most: supers, especially the superheroes.

It's not that I was in favour of the crimes and chaos going on in the city, I just couldn't stand the superheroes we had. Maximum Fury, for example, had recently destroyed three whole streets while going after some bank robbers. It was an accident, sure, but it had made getting school and back way too complicated. Not to talk about getting into town. The supervillains at least had the intention of making things shitty, while the superheroes made things shitty without even trying to.

"Jamie, you'll never guess what happened!" said the same excited voice as all the other times Hannah had approached me with news and updates about those bloody supers.

"What?" I sighed and turned to face her, as usual. Somehow I managed to make it sound less rude than the other times, not that it changed anything because she kept talking.

"We've got a new supervillain in town!"

Had I not known better, I would have asked her if she seriously just squealed at the mention of a new villain in town, but I did know better. She definitely squealed and had every intention of doing so.

The thing with Hannah was that she was as smart as you could get, enough to rival McConnor McKane in the annual Chem-offs, but she had this way of prioritising all the wrong things. One quite obvious example being that she was being too interested in the hero/villain business for her own good. I mean, who in their right mind would put up a poll on which super villain they believed would be the hottest looking underneath the mask? (The Python easily won) Not to talk about that one about who would be the best in bed (Red Velvet). Someday one of them was bound to try and get their revenge on her for not scoring first place. At least she was anonymous.

"Another one? Seriously?" I groaned at her words. It had only been a week or so since Dark Thunder (No. 5 on the "villain I'd date" poll) had been put behind bars.

"Oh yeah, and he's ripped, but that's not the point. Apparently, he's called Black Phoenix and he broke into the mayor's mansion last night!"

Isn't weird how all supers choose stupid names? At least that was what I thought. Some part of me always blamed my hate for them on their ridiculous names. There was Midnight Falcon (No. 3 on the "superhero who's totally a jock IRL" list), Ice Babe (No. 2 on the "superhero I'd turn lesbian for" list), Psychoman (winner of the "villain who's most likely someone's crazy ex" poll) and so many more.

The only one I had some kind of admiration for was Ice Babe who didn't get to pick the name herself. During her early days of fighting crime in Lowe, the most peaceful city ever before the supers came, someone got her on video and their reaction to her powers was "oh that's ice, babe!" and social media went wild so ever since that she's stuck with the name.

"So?"

Hannah smirked at me. It was her signature reporter smirk, the one that every cocky and nosy investigator in the comics have. "My intel says he stole some important documents and tried to burn the archive."

I frowned at her, more than I usually did, and for once, it wasn't because I was annoyed, I was slightly worried. The things she told me hadn't even been on the news yet and it didn't sound like the gossip and interviews she otherwise relied on.

"Ultimately, I'd believe that the documents either are about the new no-crime plan or the first draft of some contracts for the supers."

A slight chuckle escaped me and I shook my head at her rambling. "How many computers did you hack?" It was a joke but judging by the wide-eyed and scared look she replied with I couldn't have been far off. "Fuck." Leave it to Hannah to go too far when fangirling. "What on earth did you do?"

Even though I said it as quietly as I could, Hannah still had the need to shush me with a quick "not so loud."

I couldn't believe it.

We were in a hallway so there was no way someone could have heard us over the dangerously loud and chattering teenagers. Unless they had super hearing. Even then, they would have had to concentrate on us in the first place and I highly doubted that.

Yet, in the haste of the moment, I shut up and looked around me to see if anyone was listening. No one was. Hannah was simply too damn paranoid. Then again, she did recently hack into the mayor's computers.

"My lips are sealed," I whispered to her. "If you're found out, it's someone else's fault."

In a hurry, I closed my locker for good and turned away from my slightly insane friend in hopes of getting to class without even more stress on my plate.

Looking back, I don't know how I ever could have thought that it was a good idea.