Night passed by uneventfully for Hal. He slept like a log, undisturbed by even his alarm—his parents were away on a business trip, leaving the house to himself. Of course, the fact that he slept through his alarm meant he was also late for school when he finally woke up.

Rushing around the house, Hal assembled all his stuff and stuffed a piece of half-toasted bread into his mouth. It wasn't exactly the most sustaining of breakfasts, but it worked. His parents would never let him live it down if he didn't eat anything before heading out to school.

After slinging his backpack over his shoulder, Hal hurried out the door. He'd missed the bus—of course—and was forced to walk. Not to mention the fact that the sky was overcast and threatening rain. Hal was convinced that his red hair brought ill fortune upon him, every time. It was annoying, to say the least.

He pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt as he went outside. Of course, the instant he stepped from under the awning over his front door, the rain started to fall. Hal blew a curl of his hair out of his eyes in irritation. Most definitely the bad luck of the redheads. It hadn't rained in a week.

He walked along the sidewalk, his head bowed, trying to ignore the rain dripping down the back of his neck. His backpack weighed heavily on his back, and one of his mismatched socks was digging in between two of his toes. All in all, it was a sorely uncomfortable situation Hal found himself in.

"Hal!" The feminine voice was entirely unexpected. Hal turned to look across the street and saw Diana Crocious hurrying towards him. He slowed his pace to let her catch up to him. "Diana?" he said. "You're going to be late for school."

"So are you," she replied.

There really wasn't a good answer to that, and Hal pursed his lips. They kept walking in silence for a few minutes before Hal got up the courage to speak. "So, about that geometry help ... my make-up test is due two days from now, so ... you can help, right?"

Diana looked momentarily confused, and Hal had a shock of fear that she might not want to help anymore. Then she smiled. "Oh, yes, of course. How are you with history?"

"History?" Hal kept walking, glancing at her. He had a C in history, so he didn't need too much help with that. Was she implying that he was horrible at every subject? He resented that. "I'm good with history, Diana. It's geometry I really need help with."

"Are you sure?" Diana stepped in front of him, blocking his way. He instinctively scratched the back of his neck, feeling uncomfortable. This was getting weird way too fast. Maybe he was still dreaming ... "This might be some history you don't know."

Hal heaved a sigh, hoping to end the awkward conversation before it went on for too much longer. "Alright, shoot. Go ahead and tell me."

She didn't move from her position blockading him, and her expression was unreadable. "Twelve years ago, supers came into the world. Nobody knew where they'd come from or how they got their powers. Maybe it was minerals, or radioactivity, or illegal experiments. It was just one day, they were there. And people were amazed. Comics had depicted superheroes since World War II, but nobody thought they would actually be real. Until one day, a hero turned up and saved people. Everyone was so excited. And for a while, the supers reacted as people assumed they would. They were heroes, saviors. From pulling children from car wrecks, to stopping terrorists from crashing airplanes, they were everybody's heroes. Then, about a year after the supers cropped up, supervillains started appearing as well. When heroes and villains fought, innocents died, yet the humans refused to see the supers as their enemies. They considered them to be their only protection against the villains, and started to rely on their 'heroes' more and more."

Hal shifted uncomfortably. He didn't like the talk of supers; conversations like that tended to become awkward and ugly very quickly. There were many people who still considered the heroes to be just that, and not the cruel people that the government made them out to be. As for Hal, he couldn't care less. The supers were dead and gone. "Diana, we're learning about the Civil War in history. This doesn't ..."

"I'm still talking," Diana snapped, in a sharper tone than Hal had ever heard her use. "It happened ten years ago. When the humans finally learned the truth about their 'heroes'. Right here in this very town, in fact. At the apartment building that's shell still remains as a salute to those who were killed in a horrific attack. Right at the foot of that apartment building, the greatest super went there for an unknown reason. He stood at the foot there, and for no reason at all, he exploded. He committed suicide and destroyed the building as well as taking two hundred innocent lives in the process. Does that sound like the kind of good hero the humans that he had been to you?"

"Diana, please," Hal begged. The conversation was veering into dangerous territory. "I'm going to be late for school." He attempted to move past her uncomfortably.

Quicker than a wink, Diana's hand shot out and wrapped around Hal's wrist. Her grip was far stronger than he would have expected of a girl of her build. "Di, let me go!" he said, tugging against her.

. . . . . . . . . .

From across the street, Art and Storm watched from the abandoned house. Art was narrowing his eyes when Diana grabbed Hal's wrist. "Our little Diana is getting claws," he commented, though the humor of his words failed to reach his tone.

Storm inclined her head, watching from the corner of her eye. "Hmm. Something funny is going on here," she put in.

"You mean that shy, quiet little Diana is practically attacking her human friend?" Art replied. "I agree. We might need to take a hand, Stormy."

"Thorn, Art," she said. "Call me Thorn. We're on a mission, remember?"

"Then you call me Eagle," he reminded her. "Should we take a hand, Thorn?"

Storm nodded, standing up straight. She swept her coat back, revealing the two pistols she wore there, just in case. "Yes. I'm very afraid something is terribly wrong."

. . . . . . . . . .

"I'm not finished with you yet," Diana told Hal crossly. "Do you know what happened after Solar killed all those innocents?"

"I don't care!" Hal said, struggling like crazy to escape her iron grasp. "Diana, I'm going to be late and my parents are going to kill me!"

"Oh, it's not your parents who are going to kill you, Hal Whittaker," Diana told him. Her grip was becoming painful. "The supers were persecuted, and driven into hiding—those that didn't die, that is. Solar had set a precedent. The supers couldn't be trusted. They would turn on us in an instant. Imprisonment was too good for them. Their sentence ... execution." In one swift movement, the girl had grabbed Hal's throat with her other hand and started squeezing.

Hal gasped for breath, thrashing around in her grasp. "Diana, what the heck?" he rasped out, kicking at her. He may as well have been kicking a car. Her skin felt ... oddly enough, like metal.

"You have been tried as a super, convicted, and sentenced," Diana intoned. "Your sentence ... execution."

Hal struggled and fought, but it was useless. The edges of his vision were starting to go black, and he found that he couldn't even breathe. Was this what death felt like? He didn't like it very much.

"Let him go, Diana!" The unexpected voice caused Diana's grip to loosen briefly. Hal swiftly tore at her fingers and got her to release him, collapsing to the ground, gasping for breath. He wheezed in a raspy tone, struggling to draw in precious air. He had no idea what was going on.

The man and woman standing on the sidewalk a few feet away wore oddly-identical clothes. A white T-shirt, blue jeans, and a long black coat. The woman's black curls bounced against her shoulders, her startling clear eyes snapping with anger. She was short, though that didn't stop her from being intimidating. On the flip side, the man with her was tall, about Hal's own height, with rumpled brown hair and a grizzled face that suggested he hadn't shaved in two days. His eyes were black, giving no indication where his iris ended and his pupil began. What really got Hal were the strange beams of golden light he held in his hands. "Diana Crocious, what in the world are you doing?" the man demanded.

"Eagle and Thorn," Diana said, her amusement obvious. Hal crab-walked backwards, hoping to avoid her attention. He planned on running as soon as he thought he could make it. "I was wondering when you'd show up. It's a pity you didn't uphold your end of the bargain with Diana."

"Oh, blast it," the man said dispassionately, and one of the beams of light shot out at her. Diana dove out of the way and Hal scrambled to his feet, intent on running away. Before he could get two paces, something wrapped around his waist and jerked him back. He flew through the air and landed beside the woman while the man ran after Diana.

"Are you alright?" the woman asked, reaching down and pulling Hal to his feet. Contrary to her small frame, she was stronger than she looked.

"What—how—" Hal's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as he watched Diana and the man fight. The man was using his energy things like swords, slashing at the girl. "What's going on?!"

"I'm Thorn," the woman said. "That's Eagle. We've been watching Diana Crocious for several days now. We wanted to bring her somewhere safe, but she delayed, claiming she was looking for the most powerful super in the world since Solar."

"Whoa, wait," Hal said, waving his hands frantically. "You people are supers?"

"Diana, too," Thorn confirmed. A vine sprouted from the ground at her feet and waved at him, like it was expecting a high-five.

Hal couldn't even process that information. "Why me?" he groaned.

At that point in the conversation, Diana dealt Eagle a stunning punch to the face, causing the man to topple back to the ground. In an instant, Thorn had shoved Hal to the ground and pulled two pistols off her waist. "You're not Diana Crocious," she said quietly before firing once, twice, three times.

Diana moved to dive out of the way of the shots, but vines shot out from the concrete, wrapping around her legs and waist and holding her in place. All three bullets hit and Diana fell backwards. "Diana!" Hal cried. Even though she'd just tried to kill him, seeing her being shot was still ... hard for him to process. Everything about this situation was hard to process.

"It's not her," Thorn assured him. "Eagle!" She raised her voice. "We need to clear out. We've got to find Diana."

Eagle scrambled to his feet, his nose broken and bleeding. "That's not happening," he sputtered, blood caking his upper lip. "We've got company, honey."

Thorn cursed as two cars roared around the corner at opposite ends of the street. "We've attracted too much attention," she said. She gave Hal a push. "Run, kid!"

That was one thing that Hal could obey. He sprinted down the street, back towards his house, panicking mentally. His perfect world was coming toppling down around him. What he wouldn't give to just be concerned about geometry again!

Diana's words rung in his ears. "You have been tried as a super, convicted, and sentenced. Your sentence ... execution." But Hal wasn't a super. If he was a super, his ordinary, boring life wouldn't be so ... boring. But then he remembered Thorn's words as well. "She was looking for the most powerful super in the world since Solar."

Solar ... the one who had destroyed the apartment building. The one who had killed two hundred people. And Diana—or the fake Diana, whatever she had been—seemed to believe that Hal was the super the real Diana had been looking for. He couldn't wrap his head around it.

The car coming from his side of the street screeched as it put on the brakes, stopping next to Hal. Before he could even register that, the doors slammed open and he heard what sounded like an explosion. All the blood rushed to his ears. He hoped it hadn't been Thorn and Eagle who had been shot. They'd seemed nice. And they'd saved him, which was a bonus.

A familiar voice screamed from the inside of the car. "Hal!"

"D-Diana?" Hal stared at the car. He'd seen her shot. How had she ended up in the car?

"No! Leave him alone. Please!" It sounded like Diana was crying. Why should she be crying? And had he spilled something on his shirt?

Reaching down, Hal felt something sticky on his shirt, just above his belly button. When he pulled his hand away, he found it was red with blood. Realization struck him like a lightning bolt. It hadn't been Thorn or Eagle who had been shot. It had been Hal himself.

Redheads really didn't have any luck, Hal reflected as he collapsed to the sidewalk.