Kacie Janacek dreams of having superpowers like her two fathers, the legendary superhero Almighty Orion and the evil henchman Onyx Spark.
After the media captures a photo of Orion saving Kacie from the clutches of a fight, she slowly becomes famous...
Orion's arms wrapped around me, catching me before I could hit the ground. The air whipped around my face. I winced and squeezed my stinging eyes shut. He swooped, bringing me down on the section underneath the overpass where I would hopefully be able to get far enough away.
He softly set me down on top of the rubble, patted my head and quietly told me, "Have a good day at school, Kace."
I didn't have time to respond, but there was also not much for me to say. Without as much as a glance, I turned on my heel and began a slow jog.
I'd always hated running. When we had gym class in middle school, I would always fake sick—Dad's handwriting could pass for a doctor's—in order to get out of running laps. Right now though, I had more important things to worry about than being horribly out of breath.
I wondered about whether Diamond would be okay. She'd seemed pretty beat up, but I knew she was indestructible. Surely Phantom couldn't be more powerful than her...
Each landmark I passed became a new personal record. I tried to distance myself from the fighting: Dad had made it pretty clear that I had no place there, but it wasn't my fault that I was waiting for the bus. This one, I was blaming on Dad, for banning me from the Belt, his so-called enhanced car. I guessed that in his mind, all I needed to do was press a button and the Belt-mobile would sprout wings, launch every rocket, and then explode. Which, I supposed, were things it could realistically do, so perhaps he wasn't totally mistaken.
I kept going, trudging by the cars' backed up bumper to bumper on the roads as they honked in a useless effort. The sound became distant as I cut through a gravel path which led me all the way to Rocky Road. Rather aptly named, the street was one of my personal favourites on the walk back home. From there, I waited patiently for the next bus and got on it, despite the lack of progress that any traffic seemed to be making. I sat back and relaxed into my seat as much as I possibly could.
***
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
***
The bus crawled across the busy street. Jax, I hoped, would not skewer me for leaving him, but I had better things to be doing than algebra. To be clear, anything was better than algebra, but it paid to have an excuse. I took a moment and texted him back.
Kacie: did you do it?
don't answer: 🚶♂️🚶♂️🚶♂️
Kacie: very funny did it work?
don't answer: what do u think
Kacie: that ur dumb
don't answer: um rude for your INFORMATION it didnt stop coming for me did you actually skip or
