“Invisible fire? That’s a new power!” She squinted, and I could feel the mounting attitude. “Can you turn invisible when nobody’s looking? The villains of Vanguard won’t know what hit them.”
“Tone it down. I still have that entire strength and bulletproof thing going for me.”
I had barely extended my middle finger in her direction when she spun about. The heel of her shoe caught my chin. The momentum allowed her to hook her arm around my neck and swing her body to my back. I tried to turn, to drive my elbow into her mask, but she easily dodged the blow.
“Is clumsy a power?”
Her heel struck the back of my knee. Wrapping her arm around my neck, she held me in place with her leg. I couldn’t gain leverage to grab her over my shoulder. I had power at my disposal, and I was being bested by a vigilante who knew how to kick.
Pointing a fist at the dumpster, I let loose a stream of obscenities. The fire gathered at my forearm, pulsing as it shot from my hand, slamming into the side of the bin. It rocketed upward, metal screeching along the side of the building.
Hellcat let go, backing away. “Until you can be consistent, it’s best not to rely on your fireworks.”
“But—”
“Me…” She moved where I could see her patting her chest. “Mentor. You…” She gestured in my direction. “Mentee. Listen, before I have to send you to detention.”
I bit my tongue, a sign of a newly growing maturity. It was aggravating that I understood what she was saying. Ididn’t want to be a hero, but okay, I had a skill set that made me useful. Except, it only showed up sometimes. Hard to scare villains when you have to tell them to wait until I turned into a living matchstick.
“It’ll be okay. The public thinks superheroes get their powers and overnight they’re out saving the streets. That’s why there are so many teams, and they go through members so quickly. Think of it like superhero boot camp.”
“So you’ve done this before?”
Hellcat laughed. “God, no. But right now, seems I’m your best bet.”
No powers, no experience, and yet, I couldn’t see any other options. Prometheus had made a mistake in choosing me as his heir. Sure, getting shot and laughing it off was a fun parlor trick, but it didn’t make me a hero. Hellcat had bested me with a couple of swift kicks.
“I’m—”
“Scared?”
“No.”
“Determined?”
“Well—”
“You think this is all a mistake, and you should go home and call it quits?”
“I mean?—”
With no fanfare, Hellcat ripped down the zipper of her leather jacket. In a dark alley, a vigilante flashed me. No, worse than that. She took my hand and placed it just aboveher bra. She held it there, making sure my fingertips grazed her skin.
“I took my first bullet at age twenty. It was me or a school kid.” She dragged my hand to the side of her navel. “Metalica turned her fingers into blades and ran me through. But I wouldn’t let her murder an innocent bystander.”
The skin along her torso read like a fighter’s version of brail. Pink scars were visible across almost every part of her body. Hellcat might be a skilled fighter, but even she couldn’t win all the time. I moved to a square of gauze covered in red blotches.
“This?”
“Shadow,” she growled. She stepped back, zipping up the jacket, returning to the indestructible Hellcat. “You can be fast, but you’ll encounter somebody faster.”
Before I could ask questions, she turned and walked toward the mouth of the alley. We had ventured to a questionable part of Southland, and it surprised me that we hadn’t been mugged upon arriving. It seemed without the heroes, more than a few citizens had indulged in their criminal tendencies.
“Are you coming?”
I sulked, so sue me. I followed until she stopped me with an outstretched hand. She pointed to the ground, where the streetlight cast a shadow on the pavement. Withanother step, I’d leave the darkness and be visible to nearby citizens of Vanguard.
“Superheroes don’t need to deal with this. For now, we’re hiding in the shadows. It adds to our mystique.”
