Before I could say anything, Fortitude had already reached the shattered face of the building. The phone store's glass was strewn everywhere from the great blowout that the villains had created. I could see them inside filling up sacks with what had to be hundreds of pounds of electronics.

I stopped short of my approach as I came close enough to the glass which littered the parking lot. While I had been able to steal a jumpsuit from the Station, I hadn't found any shoes. Looking at my scaled over skin, I knew what I had to do, the thought simply filled me with dread.

After I'd said an insincere prayer, I took my next steps forward. The glass crunched under the toughened soles of my feet. I could feel each piece and expected the pain and blood to come. Yet, it never did.

Adding one more thing to the column of tiny consolation prizes, I finished catching up to Fortitude.

The villains had noticed us outside and were preparing their response, getting the last of their loot in place for a getaway. There was two of them, not one as my Heroic crush had thought.

There wasn't time now for her to tell me who the other villain was, but I could easily identify Ignition. He was the one who, with a flourish, pointed his finger at us with fire following. No surprise.

I was able to throw myself to the side, while Fortitude stood in place. I didn't see her Power activate, but she remained unscathed. As she pressed forward, I could only assume she still saw this situation as tenable.

It took all of the willpower I had to remind myself that I was safe. That the pain I was about to feel was no more serious than a papercut and that I could heal it. To overcome my survival instinct, I couldn't use rational thought, I learned. I simply had to shut up and run towards danger.

Inside the phone shop the display tables provided cover for Fortitude and I once we had cleared the initial volley of fire from Ignition. The other villain had yet to show his power. For a short time after we had found cover, no one did anything. The villains were more than happy to bide their time and wait for pickup. We were the ones who had to come to them, to win. They, on the other hand, only had to stay up.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way!" I shouted. When my partner inevitably expressed her lack of amusement, I just shrugged. If I was going to do this Superhero thing, I was going to get my mileage out of it. "It's your choice, badguys!"

The reply they gave was not family friendly. Fortitude decided to cut to the chase to keep us moving. "Can you move up? I'll cover you," she whispered.

"You know what? Why the hell not," I said. The area seemed clear. All I had to do was stand up.

Without hesitation, Ignition poked his little finger gun out of cover and fired. I thought I could see what looked like a tiny line trace through the air at mach speed. When it impacted my chest, the expected happened. I lit on fire.

All this time, there had been a threat hanging in the back of my mind. I swore, if God had made me as ugly as I was without any purpose, I was going to do something truly heinous. For once, though, the big man had come through.

While the entire upper body of my jumpsuit combusted and burnt away, I was left completely unharmed. The tongues of fire had no effect on my bare skin. Not even discomfort.

"You're lucky I'm not taking any of this seriously," I called out. Ignition's bald head popped up to see what I meant. "Because the fact that you really just tried to kill me is super screwed up. I've felt what it's like to be on fire, man! You just hand that shit out for free, huh?"

"You don't burn too good you damn cotton-pickin' jigaboo!" Ignition shouted in frustration. "Ya'll can't do anything right, can ya!?"

Fortitude hadn't expected me to stand up so fast. She was rightfully concerned that I had just burst into flames. "Creep, watch out!"

I waved her off. "Are you seriously being racist to me right now?" I demanded. When no response came, I looked down at the dark pigment of my scales and realized why. "You- are you some kind of moron?!" I briefly wondered if it was okay that I was upset for being mistaken as black. In order to distract myself from the answer to that question, I started back on my march forward, more than ready to kick some ass.

Fortitude's Power was the creation of energy spheres which she could throw out. These spheres would hit an object and crash over it like water, solidifying milliseconds later to create a form-fitting and immovable barrier. She used this against Ignition when he attempted his next impotent attack.

The shield hit his finger-gun dead on and, as it locked in place, it kept him from going back into cover. He struggled to pull free as I approached, but the shape of his thumb made it especially possible without breaking bones. Neither could he bend or twist his arm to duck down.

Not sure what else to do, I reared back for a punch. That was what Heroes did, of course. Punch people.

Just as I was about to connect, my fist was caught. It was not the strength of the blocker's hand which caused me to miss, however. It was because my feet had picked up completely from the ground that my hand flew past Ignition's terrified face.

His friend, a fat little bearded bastard, had gravity powers. My back smashing through the drop tile paneling on the ceiling told me so. The roof could barely take the impact of my body, the downside of muscle being that I weighed a hell of a lot more.

"Fortitude!" I yelled. It was dark and full of spiderwebs where I was. My inner ear was about to have a fit. "Fortitude how long does this last?!"

Through the hole I'd left in the ceiling I could see her shields being thrown. But, I could also see the villains leave cover. They were going to go on the offensive now that there was only one of us. For the first time, I was stricken with the fact that Fortitude might get hurt.

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Quickly, I stood up and tried to reorient myself. The ceilings had been twelve foot to start with, and that was before I was wading knee deep in paneling. I could still reach the villains if they stood up straight, but getting to them was torture.

Fortitude's shield had worn off and Ignition was being far more cautious now. They traded fire, which caused him to start keeping cover again, outside my reach. Worse still, I was not exactly sneaking up on them, stumbling dizzily.

He had the sadistic idea to begin firing at the ceiling around me, which was happy to burn for him. If the heat became too much, I realized, it might give way.

I had always wanted to fly, but I wasn't ready to learn whether I could survive terminal velocity today.

Stuck and with no other options, there was a terrible choice to make. If I missed, the roof would almost certainly give up the ghost. But if I didn't try, it was only a matter of time.

Before Fortitude was forced into abandoning her last piece of cover to take to the open parking lot, I grit my teeth and jumped.

My fingers slipped into Ignition's shirt collar and I held on for dear life. As I weighed a good fifty pounds more, he quickly began to rise.

"Billy!" he screamed for help. His fat friend quickly tackled him before he could float away. His head slipped through the hole before the fabric caught in his armpits.

Ignition raised up his arms to let the shirt slide free, but that was only the perfect opportunity.

For me, to get an iron vice on his wrist, and for Fortitude to really let loose. At full speed, she could produce a flurry of orbs, each one rolling over the last to create an ever-more encompassing layer of binding shields over her target.

Ignition was practically buried in the yellow glowing field of energy her attack had created. The other villain seemed not have warranted her attention. She merely pointed at him. "Drop my partner now, Turvy, or you get a visit from Maximal in the tank."

Sure enough, I was set free, bouncing off of immovable shields and an iPhone kiosk on the way down. It was my face this time that impacted the sales floor carpet and I was tempted to take a nap there. Fortunately, concussions seemed to be covered under my healing.

Fortitude had both the villains cuffed by the time I was up. She punched me in the shoulder, hyped for the win. "Not bad for a first time! A pretty smooth victory for a pretty smooth set of Heroes, don't you think?"

"It was exciting, I'll give it that," I said, catching my breath. She could have let loose with her shields a little earlier, I thought, but I didn't want to complain. I'd bitched enough for one life. "Felt good to achieve something, even if it was just saving some phones."

"Oh this is the tip of the iceberg, my scalie friend. Wait until you stop your first rampager or do a Baron bust. That's the good stuff," she said.

Her enthusiasm was contagious, but I kept a level head. Taking out my frustrations with socially sanctioned violence was rewarding, I could admit. I wouldn't forget that I was here against my will, though. This was not my dream, it was somebody else's. My dream was property and open air. I wanted to sail the world. I just had to stick this out a little longer while I figured that out. "So what now, we load them into the truck?"

"No. We need to keep them on the move so their Transporter can't do anything s-"

As Fortitude was speaking, a rush of wind crashed through the store. It nearly knocked us over, but we recovered and faced the source. There, a spindly fellow in overalls had just appeared. As disappointment quickly showed on his face, he took in the situation. "Ya'll done shit the bed again, I take it."

The fat gravity manipulator made no excuses. "Just get us the hell out of here!"

"After the haul, dumbass." With that, the Teleporter simply picked up one of the bags full of phones. Before we could even get a word in, he whiffed away in a rush of wind.

"Quick, dump the bags!" Fortitude yelled. Meanwhile, she cuffed herself to the kiosk.

Not thinking why, I ran over to start pouring out the phones and electronics on the floor. When the Teleporter came back, he scowled at me. There was still one bag left between the two of us. Both of us made our move, but I mistakenly thought we each were going for the bag. Instead, he dove past it and towards me.

As soon as he hit me, everything went black. For a second, we were both falling through the air, I thought, but I quickly realized it was just me falling. The Teleporter had come and gone in a blast of wind, leaving me in exactly the place I hadn't wanted to be. About a hundred feet up in the air, heading rapidly in the direction of solid concrete.

I didn't have long to freak out. The ground was eager to meet me and give my power a run for its money.

Death was a new experience for me. I had failed to right myself in the air, causing me to land head first on the asphalt surrounding the store. When I hit, there was an instant where I could feel my skull cave in, followed by the total cessation of all thought and sensation.

Again I had visions of nature. Without commentary or affect, I heard a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains. I saw a breaker foaming on the rocky shore, crashing up the cliffs. Ancient mangroves rose and fell with the tide. In all, the vision was pretty brief. As soon as I found myself beginning to question it; to judge and grasp at its reason, reality came back to me.

There was blood all over the ground where I laid. My bones were still crackling back into place and my head was fighting to dispel a horrendous pressure. It felt exactly like I had been hit by a truck, only it was my own body that had done the impacting.

The shouting that was still going on in the phone store let me know it wasn't too late to help. With my thoughts still putting themselves back together into some semblance of selfhood, I stumbled back inside.

The Teleporter had an electric grinder in his hands and he was working slowly to free his comrades from their bulky handcuffs. Fortitude was attempting to gum up the works by heaping shields on them, but they were cuffed on opposite sides of the kiosk, which provided some cover.

She stopped when she saw me. The grinder hid the sound of my approach and as I came up from behind, the villains had no idea. With great satisfaction, I reared back again to punch the Teleporter in the side of the head. The hit landed without a hitch and he was out like a light.

"Damn that feels good!" I hollered and kicked the next one in the side, doubling him over. With my own handcuffs, I made sure none of them could get away. I threw the grinder away and pounded on the kiosk in triumph. "That'll teach you to drop people from the sky. It's just not a nice thing to do!"

Fortitude was safe to free herself at last and she congratulated me. "Hot work, lizard boy."

"You think?" Dammit, my emotions were getting the better of me. The rush was like nothing else I'd felt. All my years of bookishness and supposed intellectualism, I'd never known the full extent of my physical existence. My Power, as much as I hated it, had brought me into that light. "I was pretty pissed after that fall."

"I bet so..." She leaned in over the kiosk, putting a hand on my bare chest. "Now you see how great the action can be in this job, huh?"

"Heh, yeah," I said, wondering if my face could still turn red.

Ignition was still conscious below, and increasingly unhappy. "Disgustin'..."

Fortitude pulled back and laughed. "Help me get these guys in the truck, Creep. The sun's about to rise and we've still got a lot of work to do! The night is still young."

Nothing had ultimately changed. I was still certain of my plan, but I could let myself enjoy this while it lasted. At least for tonight, I was going to be the best darn Junior Superhero in the district. We had to mop up this villainous gang and bring peace back to the city, I thought, rolling my eyes.

For Truth, Justice, and the American way!