Backseat Heroes

Lila.

Lila Davis is a good girl. In her thirteen years of existence upon this earth, she has never strayed far from the path her parents laid out for her. The worst thing she's ever done is a tie between getting a B- on a paper in sixth grade and lying about brushing her teeth when she was seven. She's not snobby, prissy, or a suck-up, either. She just does what she is told, and carries on with her day.

Her relationship with her parents, despite her compliance with their wishes, is quite strained. They constantly try to compare Lila to her sister, despite the complete unfairness of it. To compare someone with powers with someone who does not have them is the equivalent to comparing a toad and a model based on beauty, already knowing who would win.

Cara, Lila's older sister, had always been ahead of everyone else. Her most important milestones, like learning to walk and talk, came significantly earlier than they did for the other children her age. By the start of kindergarten, she knew her multiplication table by heart and could comprehend Shakespeare's writings with ease.

However, it took many years before they realized Cara's abilities were more than just an aptitude for learning. She had superpowers. Her parents were beyond thrilled, and Cara became the golden child, the one they doted on to no end. Meanwhile, their second daughter was pushed to the shadows.

Lila knows her parents wish that she had powers as well. They're not good at appreciating what they have, never have been, and most likely never will be. So she just rolls with it, and tries to live up to their anticipations and expectations as well as she can.

After all, there's only so much a thirteen year-old can do.

/////

The heat was thick, choking, and quite unbearable. Still, that was not about to deter a certain thirteen year-old girl from taking her usual walk from school to her apartment, a five block journey she simply loved. If anything, it delayed her unpleasant but inevitable arrival home, which would come much quicker if she took the bus like every other kid living in her side of the city.

Lila kicked a rock, watching as it tumbled off the sidewalk and into the gutter. Despite the humidity, the streets were still bustling with people, as was per usual. They just looked more red-faced than usual, and a little sweaty too.

What was the most amusing, thought Lila with a little smile, was seeing the tourists. They expected Maine to be cool year-round, hardly ever reaching above seventy degrees Fahrenheit. The looks on their faces when they got their first taste of a summer in Maine...priceless.

She shifted her schoolbag from one shoulder to the other, looking up at the sky that was mostly blocked by the shiny silver sides of the skyscrapers. Speaking of summer, today was her official first day of it. Seventh grade was over, finished, done, with straight A's in every class.

Lila knew she should've been pleased to have the next two and a half months off, but she couldn't help but feel a bit melancholy about it. She'd be around her parents all the time now, listening to them gab about Cara's latest accomplishments as her superhero identity, Cyphoid. As much as she loved her sister, hearing about her both from the television and her parents 24/7 was enough to make her want to rip her ears off - or something else equally dramatic, but less damaging.

She let herself into the spacious flat she shared with the rest of her family, moving out of habit towards the living room. She and Cara had adopted the custom of watching dorky cartoons together after Lila's school let out everyday, and today was meant to be no different.

However, to her surprise and disappointment, Cara was nowhere to be found. Upon asking her parents, she found they didn't know, either. Interesting - usually when Cara went off to fight crime, she left a note, a voice mail, something to let them know she'd gone off. This was the first time she'd left unannounced.

Well, hopefully she'd explain when she got home later. For now, Lila was going to sit down, watch cartoons, and try to remember as many details as she could so she could tell Cara about Spongebob's latest antics later on.

Cara never came home.

/////

Cara was a very modest person. Still, she never underplayed just how brilliant she was. After all, it was her power, having all of this information tucked away in her brain. She could build a motorcycle from scratch, crack a code in under forty seconds, even recite an entire book backwards without practicing or memorizing anything before hand.

Therefore, the fact that someone had been able to successfully kidnap and imprison her with little to no trouble infuriated the heroine very much. She'd thought her way out of situations like this one numerous times before. So why couldn't she now?

For the sixth time in the half hour she'd been awake, she gingerly tested the restraints typing her wrists firmly together behind the chair she was sitting on. Her ankles were tied as well. The material was rope, but laced with something metallic like iron, only it wasn't iron. At least, it didn't seem to be iron. Her mind was still muddled, unusually so.

The blindfold she'd woken up wearing had slid off ages ago, but due to the complete and utter darkness of the room, she still couldn't see a thing. There were no windows, as far as she could tell. A quiet shout and it's echo told her the room was small. The chair she was in was bolted to the ground.

For once, one of the smartest people in the world - if not the smartest, thanks to that super brain of hers - was stumped. Completely, utterly, wholly, totally stumped, and as far as she could tell, there was nothing she could do about it. The famous superhero Cyphoid, defeater of numerous villains and dangerous problems alike, was trapped.

And for the first time in her life, she had no idea what to do.

/////

A/N: This was the introduction to the first of five of the main characters, Lila, and her older sister Cara. Let me know if you enjoy the book so far! Uploads will be erratic at best, but I'm hoping to keep the posting moderately constant, since this is one of my favorite plot ideas I've ever had.