Chapter 7: In Over Your Head
Tears streaked down the little girl's face. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you-"
"Yeah, yeah, don't mention it. Let's keep this secret, okay?" Hope waved the girl off as she handed the child her cat. "The last thing I want is your mom or dad seeing me and getting the wrong idea."
With the existence of heroes and villains, Oleander City, as well as dozens of other cities, had been torn down so many times now that they were almost a mesh of designs and styles. Her part of the city, being the poor part, didn't have the giant skyscrapers or massive roadways that the better parts of town had. The buildings here were still tall but not reaching the sky.
Even still, if someone were to see her, it would have been a strange sight indeed. "Okay. Now try not to let him escape again. I might not be able to go and get him a second time." She explained. She clung to the sixth floor of a large apartment. She had taken her shoes off, and her toes quite literally dug into the stone of the building and held her weight up. She might not have been blessed with wall-climbing powers or bug powers like the hero Golden Weaver, but she was making do.
The little girl nodded her head several times, taking the pet. "I'll take better care of him, I swear! Thank you, Ms. Hero!"
"I'm not a hero quite yet." She gave a salute to the girl and leaned back, letting gravity do the rest. She tried to show off and flip backwards as she dropped, in an effort to come off as 'cool' or 'hip' in front of the girl, but only managed to land head first on the pavement below. "Ow..."
"Are you okay!" The girl yelled.
"Yep. Fine." She slowly stood back up and gave another wave before she began running off. She moved fast; there were almost no cars on the roads, allowing her to truly go all out. For the first time in forever, she truly felt free. "Having powers really is the best!"
She had created a costume of sorts. It wasn't anything crazy, but after saving the first lost cat, she somehow got roped into saving others. All over the city, people were constantly yelling for their house pets to come back. It wasn't any big superhero work, but it was still work.
Her current outfit consisted of a basic jacket she had zipped up and her makeshift mask. She also kept her hood up in order to hide her hair and wore a simple face mask that she had swiped from her mother's purse.
She would by no means be winning any awards or anything for her costume, but it was still fun to be running around in it. As kids, she and Armin used to play superheroes all the time. He would always pretend to be Max Lightning, while she constantly dressed up as heroes like the Victorian or Lady Time.