After finishing her conversation with Ashton, Summer felt both relieved and a bit bitter. Once again, she was falling behind. Just like that invitation had said, she was Golden Reign, the worthless hero. She had to be something useful, or at least more interesting, she could do with her power. Turning her lamp from yellow to purple didn’t really count. Neither did turning off the light while it was still on.
Maybe a change of scenery would help. She could go… Oh, right. Her car had been destroyed. She did a quick check of her accounts to make sure she had enough. Even though she had been paid during her time as a fake hero, Summer never really spent her own money on things. That was part of why she was determined to buy her own car this time, before her father got one for her.
Now that she knew about Ashton’s situation, she felt guilty and spoiled. Here she was worried about buying a car before her father could and he was struggling just to find a new place to live. Maybe that was the very reason she fell behind everyone else. She needed to try harder to survive on her own.
Her first problem was how to go and buy a car if she didn’t have a car to get there in the first place. Were taxis still a thing? Probably not in residential areas. It wasn’t like they had a personal chauffeur either. In the end, Summer ended up walking to the nearest bus stop. The bus route was fairly close to a car dealership.
Riding the bus was a bit stressful. She had to constantly watch for her stop, and the cord that ran along the side of the bus used to signal it to stop, was harder to pull than it looked. Once she got off at the correct stop, Summer resolved she would not be leaving without a car. She did not want to deal with that again.
She still had to walk a while from the bus stop to reach the dealership, and after checking to make sure she had absolutely everything she needed she found herself watching her own shadow on the sidewalk.
Shadows were such strange things. Depending on the direction of the light they could make you taller or shorter, or even a little of both. Summer reached out her hand and wriggled her fingers, watching as the shadow’s fingers stretched so thin they almost vanished. Perhaps it was because fingers were already naturally thin, the light from the sun almost went right through them.
Summer suddenly paused as she realized what she was thinking about. Shadows were caused by light. If she could control light, did that also mean she could control shadows? She glanced around quickly to make sure no one was watching before she began to test her theory. The finite shape control she was imagining was more difficult than she thought, but completely blocking her shadow with a larger blob of shadow, or erasing her shadow with seamless light was easy enough. Both of those things actually seemed useful, if only slightly.
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She would have to practice more when she wasn’t standing on a public sidewalk on her way to buy a new car. Now with a mission in mind, Summer threw herself into car shopping. It took quite some time to find a car she liked. She preferred them on the smaller side, but she couldn’t help but think the size and weight of her previous car was a large part of why she no longer had it. That is why she decided to go for a nice four wheel drive SUV instead. Perhaps due to the overly sparkly and gold invite she had recently received, she had gained a sudden aversion to gold and similar metallics.
The paperwork was surprisingly not as bad as she thought, but it was still a lot of paperwork. Just in case, she made sure to get Super Insurance added to the package. Unfortunately she had neglected that on her last vehicle. By the time she finished all of the paperwork, the car was ready for her to take home. That was one item of business down.
Now with a car and the ability to go wherever she wanted, Summer tried to think of a good place to practice manipulating light and shadow. A park was a bit too public. She didn’t want to scare anyone with living shadows. Where was another place with lots of natural shadows? Or maybe she was thinking about this all wrong. Shadow she be trying to create shadows in a place without any? Should she go for somewhere dark or light?
Dark would likely be easier, both to find and to create the shadows. Easy was a good place to start. Or maybe she was already jumping too far into this. Summer got herself something to eat and did a quick search on how shadows worked. She should at least know the basics of how to naturally manipulate shadows before she started trying to create them with her power.
Summer was interrupted by a concerned phone call from her mother. “Summer? Where are you?”
“Sorry,” she apologized, suddenly realizing she hadn’t told anyone where she would be going. It was a bit different leaving by foot than taking a car, and as far as her mother knew she didn’t have one, “I went to buy myself a new car.”
“How?” her mother asked.
“Well, I took the bus,” Summer explained. She told her the tale of her travels, and even ended up telling her all about her discovery with the shadows.
“Really? That sounds fun. I bet you could make an impressive shadow puppet show,” she told her.
Shadow puppet show, huh. Summer decided to look into that as well. Shadow puppeteers would know more about how to make shadows work than anyone else. There might even be someone else with shadow related powers as well. How did someone even meet a shadow puppeteer? For now she would have to rely on watching videos from home again.
Since it was getting fairly late, Summer returned home and showed off her new car to her parents. Mr. Aster was more concerned about her adventure and how potentially dangerous it could be to be out on her own so late. After calming her father’s worries she took a few photos of her new ride and sent them to Ashton.
“Got a new car! Good night and good luck tomorrow!”
Speaking of tomorrow, she couldn’t let her new shadowy discovery distract her from studying business. The last thing she wanted to do now let her father down. Besides, business was far more reliable than the dangerous life of a hero. Especially the new brand of heroes.