“How did you do that?” Alex demanded, struggling to his feet. Another fiery explosion rocked the outside yard and Cora threw herself forward, grabbing him by the arm of his shirt and pulling him back down.

“Stay down!” she hissed. “It’s complicated, okay? I’ll explain later, but right now we have to get to safety. Follow me and stay close.”

Before Alex could argue she stood up, urgently gesturing at them to follow. Dusty and Alex rose in pursuit, but almost instantly another volley of fireballs came soaring through the window. With a wave of her hand she redirected them into the corner of the room; a torrent of flames illuminated the darkened restaurant as they collided with the walls, prompting screams from a few of the other diners.

“Everyone remain calm,” Cora called. “Keep close to the ground and stay away from the windows, there’s a door leading outside in the kitchen, make your way towards it as quickly as you can in an organized manner!”

Alex had never seen her like this before, so serious, so authoritative. For a moment he wondered whether this was actually happening or if this wasn’t all some strangely vivid dream. Cora made to usher them along once again but stopped as a woman huddled on the ground in front of them reached up to grab the hem of her jeans. A closer look revealed that it was the waitress who had tended to them earlier.

“That door is locked,” she said in a terrified whisper. “Our manager says we have to close it when it’s not in use, to keep the raccoons from coming inside. The keys were hung up near the entrance, but…” She trailed off, casting a desperate look towards the kitchen. The area behind the counter was in ruins. Small fires were burning here and there and all the equipment was scattered across the floor.

“There’s no way we can find the key in that mess,” moaned the waitress, who now had tears streaming down her face. Cora leaned down and grabbed her. It took Alex a few seconds to realize she was hugging her, trying to comfort her.

“It’s okay, just stay calm,” she said in a soothing voice. The woman was curled up in her arms like a child. Cora patted her gently on the back, then her eyes flicked up towards the door visible in the kitchen, and she squinted. The door was blown off its hinges with the force of a hurricane, though nothing had made contact with it. The waitress screamed, along with nearly everyone else in the room.

“The door’s open,” said Cora. “Go on, and remember, stay low.”

“How did that happen?” The waitress looked bewildered. “I swear, it was just locked.”

“Does it matter?” Dusty said loudly, to their collective surprise. “It’s open, just get out of here!”

The waitress looked startled, but she followed his command regardless, hurrying off behind the other diners.

“The two of you should go too.” Cora nodded at the door.

“What about you?” Alex asked.

“Don’t worry about me, just get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving without you!”

“I don’t have time to argue, just go!”

She pushed them off towards the door and darted off, out into the chaos unfolding beyond.

“Wait!” Alex called, rushing to follow, but he found himself impeded by a hand on his shoulder pulling him back. “What are you doing? Let me go —”

“To do what? You’d get burned to a crisp the second you stepped outside! She has superpowers, she’ll be fine. We have to go!”

Alex looked into Dusty’s oddly determined face. He didn’t like it, but he eventually accepted that he was right. However it had happened, Cora had obviously obtained abilities of her own. She would be more than capable of taking care of herself, at least he hoped. Alex nodded, then the two of them crossed the room, keeping their heads bowed as they joined the line of stragglers waiting to go outside.

The wait was only two minutes, but under these circumstances it felt like two hours. Fireballs were still being tossed about outside, followed by sounds of crashes and heavy thuds.

Finally the people in front of them managed to slip through the door and out into the night, screaming wildly. Dusty and Alex turned down the left path, where his father had dropped them off earlier, and they ran. Alex’s chest heaved with effort as the two boys hurtled down the path, coughing as they ran through plumes of smoke. He glanced to his left. The men were still battling, fire and black smoke being lobbed from side to side as if they were playing a strange game of volleyball.

“Wait, I recognize those two,” said Dusty, who had taken an unexpected stop.

“What are you doing? We have to get out of here!”

Dusty squinted into the distance, taking a few steps closer for a better look. “Yeah… that’s Wildfire and Shadow Shifter! The Elementals!”

Against his better judgement Alex too turned to look. Dusty was right. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t noticed before, but there was no doubt about it. Wildfire, a superhero whose powers were oriented around fire, and Shadow Shifter, a villain who controlled darkness and shadows. As they watched, Wildfire generated three massive plumes of spiraling flame, which flew towards the villain. Shadow Shifter pelted away from the scene, feet pounding against the ground as the flame tornadoes laid the environment behind him to waste.

Alex grabbed Dusty rather roughly on the shoulder. “Come on, we’ve gotta go.”

Fortunately he opted to follow, and the two hurried off again. Almost everyone else from inside the restaurant had disappeared by now, leaving only the two of them and a few stragglers up ahead. Briefly he wondered where Cora was, whether she too had managed to escape or if she was thinking about joining the confrontation to assist Wildfi —

A gasp erupted from his mouth as he suddenly went tumbling towards the ground. He fell hard onto the cold stone surface, and judging by the “oomph!” he had let out, so had Dusty. His foot had slammed into something solid and he collapsed face-first, but how neither he nor Dusty had managed to see what they had tripped over was something he couldn’t understand.

“You okay?” he said to Dusty.

“Fine, but — what the —” Dusty’s panicked screams filled the air as he began to struggle against something on the ground. Alex reached over to help, but found something was restricting his movements as well. Something thick, black and strong, coiling around him like an anaconda, exerting an uncomfortable amount of pressure on his ribs. He gasped again as he felt himself rising into the air, realizing what was happening as light from the street lamps that were still in tact spilled onto them. The very shadows underneath their feet had come alive, writhing like snakes and hoisting them into the air.

Out ahead, silence had fallen as Wildfire stopped lobbing fireballs. It was then that Alex realized his gaze was turned towards him and Dusty.

“What’s it gonna be, Blake?” said a figure standing not too far away. It was Shadow Shifter, his hand outstretched in their direction. “You gonna bring me in, or save the civvies instead?”

“They’re kids, you weasel!” Wildfire shouted. “This is between you and me, leave the civilians out of this!”

“Make a decision, hero! Them or me!”

Wildfire’s eyes flicked from the two boys to his nemesis, and then, to Alex’s surprise, he made his decision. He took a running leap forward, shooting streams of fire from his knuckles at Shadow Shifter. The villain retaliated, raising more strands of darkness from the ground and solidifying them into physical objects: knives, throwing stars, even swords. This was one of his powers; based on the research Alex had conducted, Shadow Shifter was able to condense and solidify shadows into physical objects, which mimicked the texture and density of their real-life counterparts, which meant they could inflict the same damage as the actual weapons they were modeled after.

The weapons came soaring towards the two of them, while Shadow Shifter erected a massive wall of darkness in front of him to block the blast. Alex and Dusty screamed, trying with all their might to break the sinew-like strands of darkness holding them in place, but it was futile. The weapons were closing in, but just before they made contact, a large piece of the pavement broke off from the whole and flipped over in the air, absorbing most of the blows.

Most of them. A few of the smaller weapons managed to zip past the rock and nicked at their skins. Alex hissed in pain, while Dusty swore. Pain welled in his body, fierce and unrelenting, but Alex pushed past it, ignoring the way tears had formed in his eyes. Looking out he saw a third figure approaching, her hair bobbing in the wind.

“I told you to get out of here!” Cora snapped.

“We were trying!” Alex said just as hotly.

Cora stopped right in front of them, concentrating deeply on the shadowy ropes. It seemed to take more effort than anything else she had done so far, because now she seemed to be in actual pain, though the ropes of shadow eventually snapped. Alex and Dusty tumbled to the ground, but they managed to reorient themselves in time to catch her before she fell.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You okay?” Alex asked her.

“Fine,” she said, though she looked anything but. “Prolonged usage… takes a bit out me. But it’s no problem.” She shook her head, trying to steady herself. “Come on, let’s get out of he —”

Shock again erupted as a whip of solid blackness snapped out of the ground and sent her rolling across the ground, unconscious.

“Cora!” Alex started towards her, but again the strands of shadow coiled around him, ensnaring his body. Shadow Shifter was laughing manically in the distance. It seemed the tide of the battle had shifted in his favour, because Wildfire was the one on the run now while Shadow Shifter sent more weapons of darkness at him, hacking and slashing. The darkness wasn’t just restricting them now, it seemed it was trying to crush them, pressing so hard against their chests that it was becoming harder to breathe.

Alex gasped out a breath, his eyes bulging out of his head under the intense pressure. It felt as if a rib was a second or two from breaking. Breath was being stolen from his lungs, forcibly wrenched out, his head felt as if it were about to explode. His eyes were closing as he steadily lost consciousness, his vision fading into black… Then, a burst of fire, jerking him awake. But it didn’t come from Wildfire.

This time it had originated under his very feet, igniting the darkness around them. The ropes of shadow cringed away from the warmth and light, but Alex couldn’t understand why or where it had come from.

The ropes redoubled in effort, tightening around his legs once more, and as the pain renewed, the flames erupted again. This time he could make out the source precisely. Pillars of flame were shooting from the soles of his feet, like he was some kind of strange, fleshy rocket. The flames increased in intensity, completely consuming the soles of his sneakers but at the same time scorching the black tendrils, which let go of him at last. Alex fell out of the air again, but the strange flames gushing from his feet pushed him forward instead of allowing him to fall, so that he did a kind of jerky pirouette in the air.

“Wo-woah! What — is — going — oooooonnn?” His last word issued as a scream, as the propulsive flames, which had been jerking him to and fro, suddenly sent him rocketing on a collision course with the closest figure. Shadow Shifter.

The villain wheeled around at the noise, bewildered. His confusion only lasted a moment, changing rapidly to determination as he made thrusting movements at the ground. Below, the shadows stirred; they coalesced, transforming into massive black spires that shot up from the ground.

Alex yelled again in horror, desperately trying to swerve from side-to-side as the spires launched up like nightmarish stalagmites, trying to impale him. He didn’t know how he was doing it, but as jerkily as he was moving, he was somehow managing to dodge them. The wind ruffled his hair, pleasantly whooshing against his face. Under different circumstances, this could have been exciting, even fun. But not now as more projectiles came launching up from the ground, this time smaller and faster. He was still managing to dodge, but it was getting more and more narrow with every escape until, with a crashing blow, one of them collided with his stomach. The force of the hit knocked the wind out of him and the torrent of flames erupting from his feet sputtered to a halt.

The momentum of the last push sailed him along just a few more feet, and then he went down. The wind rushed in his ears, drowning out the sound of his own terrified voice as the very solid ground drew closer and closer. In a few more seconds, he would be nothing more than a stain on the earth, body broken beyond repair.

“Come on, come on!” he said desperately, trying to summon the flames once more. Nothing responded to his mental pleas, however. He was going to fall, to crash into the solid earth… But as he braced for the inevitable collision, his body jerked violently in the air, stopping just a few feet from the ground, like the arms of an invisible giant cradling him in midair.

Shadow Shifter looked around, bemused once more, and both his and Alex’s eyes landed on Cora, who was holding him aloft. Shadow Shifter gritted his teeth, preparing one more strike. The flames he had been trying to conjure finally responded, bursting from the soles of his feet, and Cora launched Alex forward. He flew straight at the villain and slammed into him with the force of a charging rhino, knocking the breath out of him. The two of them went skidding across the ground, coming to land just a few feet from one another.

Shadow Shifter, of course, was the first to recover. Alex looked up to see him standing over him, the heavy heel of his boot positioned over his head, his lips twisted in a grimace of fury. He was about to bring his foot stomping down when something crashed into his back and a jolt of purple electricity engulfed his body.

The electricity crackled violently for several seconds as Shadow Shifter screamed in pure agony, then he fell to the earth, unconscious. Behind him was a figure floating several feet off the ground, a woman with flowing violet hair that danced in the wind, who was wearing an elaborate uniform of metallic purple and blue.

“Meta-Martian,” Alex whispered. But he felt no fear this time, for this woman was a hero as well. It seemed the cavalry had arrived at last. The sound of something skidding across the ground met his ears and a man materialized beside him, sending pebbles flying into the distance like bullets. A man in an icy blue suit, whose head was almost completely covered by a cowl, leaving only his piercing blue eyes and his mouth exposed.

“You okay, kid?”

“Oh my God…You’re Mercury! I have your action figure!” Alex said. It occurred to him that that wasn’t, perhaps, the most appropriate reaction given the circumstances, but his sheer excitement had completely overpowered his sense of logic.

“That I am,” said Mercury, holding out a hand to pull him up and flashing a dazzling smile. “Always nice to meet a fan.”

Meta-Martian drifted onto the scene, clearing her throat with obvious disapproval.

“Right, right. Time and place. So, you all right?” he repeated.

“Aside from the fact I just got clobbered by a block of solid darkness and shot fire from my feet, I’m doing great,” Alex said. He couldn’t believe it. He had read comics of these two, followed their journeys extensively on the internet, now he was meeting them in real life. But the excitement faded quite soon, like a candle being extinguished by a high wind. “Wait, what about my sister, and my friend? Are they —”

“No worries kid, your sister’s fine, just a little out of it. And your friend is over there, with our resident healer. The shadow tendrils did some serious damage, but I pulled them off of him in time, while my partner handled him.” He nodded with disdain at Shadow Shifter, who was still out of it.

Alex breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. Wait, what about Wildfire, what happened to him?”

“Uh — well, he’s with our healer too. Apparently Shadow Shifter did quite a number on him. But him and your friends will be fine. We just got to get you out of here before —”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

“Too late,” Mercury said, with a groan. Meta-Martian stepped forward. Purple energy sparked at her palms and fell onto the villain, encircling him like a rope. She rose into the air, bringing Shadow Shifter with her.

“I’ll deal with him. You get them out of here.”

Before Alex could ask why they needed to leave so urgently, Mercury’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Ever travel by superspeed before?”

“N-no.”

“Then I suggest you hold on. This could get bumpy,” Mercury said with a smirk. He didn’t give Alex any further time to respond, seizing him firmly by the shoulder and then speeding off, a blur of colour on the wind.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

A half hour later, Alex, Dusty and Cora were sitting on hard-backed wooden chairs in a small, otherwise empty room. The other two had arrived a few minutes after he had, and when he had first set down all had seemed well, until a few seconds later, when a violent urge to be sick overcame him and he retched all over the front steps. The same fate befell Dusty, but not Cora, who was oddly quiet. The heroes Meta-Martian and Mercury told them to sit still for a few minutes while they had a brief meeting in another room.

The moment they had left, Dusty and Alex turned to Cora.

“What just happened?” Alex demanded. “Since when do you have superpowers? Is this why you didn’t come home this summer?’

Cora inhaled deeply, looking as if she was bracing herself for the start of a long, treacherous journey. “My powers manifested when I was fourteen, and yes, that is partially why I didn’t come home this summer.”

“Fourteen?” Alex stared at her. “You left for boarding school when you were fifteen, what happened during the period in between?”

“It’s complicated —”

“So simplify it.”

Cora sighed. “Look, at the time no one was supposed to know. You may have noticed that during that period I kept to my room a lot.”

“Yeah… but I just thought that was you being weird.”

“That was me trying to keep the household items from flying off into orbit,” she corrected. “My powers are telekinetic in nature, and at the time, because I couldn’t control it things would randomly start levitating around me, sometimes people too. It happened a few times in public as well and it drew the attention of a group of people from a… special place. They said they could help, and when you thought I was going to school, I was with them, trying to get some semblance of control.”

“Special place…?” And then, it finally dawned on him. “You don’t go to an all-girls boarding school, do you? You’re in some kind of superhero training program.”

“Something like that. Though not exactly.”

“How could you never tell me about this? You, or Mom and Dad?”

“They didn’t want to tell you, because they weren’t sure if it would happen to you too. They didn’t want you to think you would get powers and then be disappointed if you didn’t. Besides, it hasn’t exactly been a dream for me either.

“The idea of powers is cool, but that’s only after months, maybe even years of rigorous training to get them under control. I saw you flying, imagine walking to get ice-cream from the kitchen and fire randomly explodes from your feet and catapults you into the air every six seconds like you’re walking on a landmine. Doesn’t sound fun, does it?”

“I guess not,” Alex said quietly.

“But you do have powers now,” Dusty said excitedly. “I mean, you suck at using them, but all you really need is practice.”

“Thanks a lot, Dusty.”

“No problem,” he said, completely missing the sarcasm.

“I wonder though, is that the only power I have? The rocket jets thing? How do I know if there’s more?”

Cora opened her mouth to respond but she was cut off abruptly by the sound of raised voices from the room beyond. After Dusty and Cora arrived with Mercury, he had gone back to fetch Wildfire. The heroes had converged in the room ahead and had remained relatively silent until now. A few moments later the door was violently wrenched open and Wildfire stomped out.

His blonde hair was messy, his uniform was cut in several places and stained by splotches of blood and he was clutching his shoulder. He looked furious. Completely ignoring the three of them, he pulled open the door and stepped out into the night, slamming the door behind him.

Mercury trailed out after him, hands on his hips and sighing. “We’re ready for you now.”

Alex, Dusty and Cora all stood.

“Ready for what?” Alex said suspiciously. He imagined they would be questioned, but the atmosphere had changed rather dramatically. Now it seemed like there was something more serious looming.

“The Chancellor wants to speak with you three.”

“The Chancellor?” Dusty looked bemused. “Is that like a superhero name?”

“No.” The answer came from Cora. “He means an actual Chancellor. You always said you wanted to know more about my school right?” she asked Alex. “Well, now’s your chance to get some answers. Coming?”

Alex shared a look with Dusty, who shrugged, then the trio stepped into the office.