"Come on Tiger. Wake up!"
His voice didn't let me drift away, I fought my own body until I flung my resisting eyes open.
A blurred black mask, parted pink lips and then glowing hair, now appeared crystal clear.

"Ow, Lee.." Barb hopped at me, holding my back.

"Neon..." I mumbled, but it only came out as a hoarse and tired hush. I managed to sit upright, but struggled to stand up. He swiftly wrapped his arms around my shoulders and helped me stand. My feet shuffled to hold the ground, I leaned onto him.

His ear device beeped again, he hurriedly pressed a button behind his ear. I stepped away from him, struggling to stand stiff, letting go of his supporting arms. Before he had opened his mouth and told anything, I had already said, "duty calls," mimicking his tone.

He sighed dropping his stiff shoulders down, his mind torn between us and White-hawk.

I took in a long breath, before I opened my mouth to speak,
"thankyou for everything. I think we can manage now. Go on, White-hawk needs you."

"Are you sure?" He asked, his eyebrows arching in worry.

"Totally." I assured, nodding my head.
He hesitantly turned around and within no second, he swooshed away towards the smoky sky, where the combat was still going on.

To my astounding eyes, there was another mysterious figure -with a long black cloak and a skull like mask- in the air, apart from all the four of them.

The skull faced super dramatically raised his arms and the dirt, plastics, dried up leaves from the ground slowly started raising and concentrating around all of them, like a swirling thunder-storm.

Neon's green silhouette escaped out of the swirl of dirt, he Shook his head, wiping his eyes under the tinted glass of mask. But, the swirling storm sucked him back again into itself like a vacuum suction. The same process of either White-hawk or Neon escaping out of the storm and getting sucked back into it, went on for minutes.

I clenched my fists as I stood there, biting my lips, unable to help them, as much as I desperately wanted to.

But I had to make a decision​ -to flee and save ourselves; or to stand and watch helplessly doing nothing. I preferred the first, Neon was a super after all.

'He is strong and can save himself, yeah totally!'

I ground my teeth assuring myself and held Barb's hand. With no second thought, we left to save ourselves.

'Gosh! I hope nothing happens to him.'

Soon wobbling became jogging, jogging became running, then sprinting, until Barb couldn't hold up with me. We stopped at the foot of an arched entrance of the mall, panting, nose flaring in and out and eyes warm and blood shot. I scanned around, there was less smoke and flame, as compared to the parking lot.

"Where are cops and fire-fighters at?"
I muttered panting, as I remembered the other day. They had come to rescue a single man. Now that we all were in distress, where the hell were they? As if on cue, a huge fire extinguisher truck and many police patrol cars arrived. That at least calmed a tad-bit of my apprehension.

A maroon car rushed across the road, only to stop at us. We jerked back as its wheels squealed to pause at our feet. I saw her pixie brown hair, I recalled her face from the interview, the other day.
"Donna!" I shrieked,"thank goodness!"

"Hop in." she motioned her head. I didn't dilly-dally a bit to get into the business. I dragged Barb inside and made her sit on my lap.

"Liam Chan!" Another shrilly cry broke through my tired and vibrating vocal cords, as I saw him sitting beside her in the front seat. He turned around and grinned, his eyes almost got buried in his smooth pink face.

"Seat belts." Liam pointed his thin index.

"Yeah, yeah." I buckled myself and Barb did hers.

"Lollipop?" He turned around again, to offer a green sheathed lolly to Barb, but she denied shaking her head.

"No, thanks."

"It's okay, Barb." I took it from his hands and passed it over. My defense teachings of 'Dont take candies from strangers' -was totally working its magic. She licked her pillowy lips and took the lollipop sheepishly, she was definitely hungry. Hell! I was damn hungry.

"What were you guys doing here?" I asked.

"We came to the mall to play some bowling. It's the weekend, right? But the parking lot was full, so we had to leave the car for the valet. And, I swear to god, that was the luckiest part, my goodness!" Donna Chuckled looking at my reflection in the rear view mirror. "Oh, did your car burn too?"

I nodded silently, thinking of what would Kiara say. My fingers wrapped into each other and the nervous tick of cracking my knuckles began.

'Whether she knows about these things at all? Should I call her?'

I took the cell phone out from my pocket, but it was dead.

Great!
I cursed under my breath and slipped it back inside.

Finally, as we were about to near the house, I thanked them for about a thousand times, totally embarrassing the shit out of them.
"It's okay, you don't have to thank us. You would have helped us too, right?" said Donna, smiling. A metallic bead pierced into her lower lip twinkled.

"Yeah" I nodded, "totally...and which school do you guys go to? Maybe we can catch up later." I asked out of curiosity.

"School? Oh dear, we go to college. Robotic engineering, first year." Donna turned the ignition off, as we reached our not-so-sweet-house.

"Oh!" I was shaken by the fact that both of them looked so young.
"So, see you guys at Nova-Gen!"

"See ya." Donna waved and drove away, the maroon of car slowly faded into the green of tree leaves and brown of branches hiding the asphalt of the roadway ahead.

I would of invited them for a cup of coffee, but my mind was out of order. All I could picture was smoke, storm, fire and ash.

"Do you know them?" Barb tugged my shirt with her tiny fingers knocking me back to the scene, whilst she slurped juices from her melon flavoured lollipop.

I nodded, as I sighed at our hostile looks. Our faces were smudged with soot and our clothes were rumpled and smelt funny. The door behind us creaked open and a panic stricken shrilly voice hollered at us, "Barb!"

"Mommy!"

"Are you hurt? God, I was worried!" Kiara rocked her and rubbed her back, heaving her chest in deep breaths.

"Why didn't you pick up my call? I was scared to death!" She glared at my face.

I was too tired to answer, or maybe I pretended to be so. I walked past her and started climbing up the stairs to my room. But my legs wobbled and ached, dragging and slowing me down.

"I said, why didn't you answer my calls for god's sake?" She scoffed behind me, her face was more worried than angry.

"Phone died, and..." I paused collecting my courage to speak, "the car, it's gone."

Kiara squeezed my hand that was holding the railing of staircase,
"Oh Lee, don't think about the car. It's...It's all over the news, I called cops, I called you. Oh my god...and and..." She buried her face in her hands.

I stood there motionless, silent, thinking of how difficult it was for us to barely escape from the death's mouth and there she was.
Sigh! As if...
'She is genuinely worried for Barb at least. Yeah, that's apparent.'

I nodded and left for my room. I tore my dress off impatiently and toed-off my shoes. I stood under the hot sprinkling shower. It soothed my aching muscles, as it washed the burnt smell and dirty soot off of my skin. I had never felt that tired before, not even after having to practice karate for a whole freaking day during inter-school tournaments. But then again, escaping from a blazing arson-fire and the coughing episode with dizziness that I had earlier, was probably too much for my body to handle in one single day. That's why I was tired, or so I thought.