Title: Pulse of the City
Author: Harper Kingsley
World: Heroes & Villains
Series: Supergroup
Genre: teenaged superhero, drama
Word count: 51,890 (207 manuscript pages)
Rating: teen
Summary: Susie Smith has no idea where she came from or who she used to be. Even her name is one she was given at the hospital where she woke up after a serious brain injury.
The only thing she knows about herself is that she was caught in a super battle and was just one of the collateral victims of Malice’s attack on the Megalopolous parade. One among hundreds of wounded people, no one stepped forward to claim her and she was eventually shuffled off into foster care.
Then, while hanging out with her friends, the mall is attacked and Susie comes face-to-face with the Teen Demis. And they seem to know her…
Now she must remember who she used to be and find the person that betrayed her and left her for dead.
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EXCERPT:
She was standing in front of the trashcan, her empty tray still in her hand, when there was a loud CRASH! then the blare of alarms.
She turned to see what was going on, and the tray slipped from her hand when she saw what was happening.
She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. It felt as if her whole body had been turned to stone.
A man on a flying disc was hurling balls of light at different stores from his position high against the ceiling. He was dressed in a black and green jester costume and had a maniacal grin on his face as he watched the explosions.
Though she was sure she had never seen him before, there was a flash of recognition in her. His name was the Jester. He was a supervillain that had already killed a double handful of people during his short career. He was certifiably insane, had in fact escaped from an asylum so that he could start his career in senseless violence.
He was raising another ball of destruction in his hand when there was a rush of displaced air next to the Foot Locker. Suddenly, six figures in a lot of formfitting spandex and body armor were standing poised there.
“Stop, Jester!” the leader of the Demis, Powergirl, called. She stood with her hands on her hips, looking like a teen superhero poster come to life. Her boots were even spit shined.
He gave a cackle. “And what will you do if I just say NO?!” He flung the ball, not at her, but at a large storage crate nobody had seen in a shadowed corner.
There was a crack of shattering wood, then a rush of skittering feet and hungry growls.
Whatever the creatures were, they had a lot of fur and teeth and sharp cutting claws. And they were fast, almost too fast to see, as they flung themselves toward the Teen Demis.
“Oh crap!” Queen Midnight yelped, throwing out one hand. A wave of shadow whipped out to smack two of the creatures away. Which didn’t do a whole lot of good when there were about a hundred of the cat-sized monsters.
Susie whimpered and ducked down next to the trashcan. She could hear people screaming and running, but something kept her in her place. She just had to watch.
The creatures moved in a blur, their clawed feet clicking across the floor like a skitter of bugs. Powergirl gave a yell as they swarmed over her, their teeth nipping and biting, unable to break through her nearly impenetrable flesh. Though they seemed to be gaining strength with every second they were out of their prison box as she was unable to just throw them off even with her metahuman strength.
Queen Midnight rose up in the air, a few of the creatures leaping up with gnashing jaws to tatter the ends of her cape. She had a horrified look on her face and her hands were pressed against her mouth. “Get away!”
Shadows whipped around her, trying to shove the creatures back but they were swarming at her too fast and too strong. It was only a matter of time until she was completely overwhelmed.
Susie’s mouth was open in horror, but there really wasn’t anything she could do. They were superheroes, and she was just a girl, so what could she ever do to help them?
That’s when she saw Teen Steel flung across the mall to slam headfirst into a supporting pillar. The cement cracked and chunks of ceiling fell on top of him.
He didn’t get back up.
He lay there, limp and broken looking, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. She wondered if that was how she had looked when she was found.
A bunch of those horrible creatures began to gather around him, making an odd, chittering-clacking sound as they seemed to communicate to each other. Then they came swarming up over his legs and chest, drawn to the blood on his face.
Susie looked around frantically, but the rest of the Teen Demis were on the other side of the mall. They were busy dealing with a bunch of the creatures that had somehow become three or four times as large as they’d been when they first came out of the crate. Jester was flinging those exploding energy balls whenever any of the Demis looked like they were going to free themselves.
Susie bit her lip. Teen Steel’s body was almost completely covered by the creatures and she could see them nipping and biting at his clothes and flesh, skittering and leaping toward his face. They were going to eat him alive and he couldn’t even activate his powers because he was unconscious.
Her head turned back and forth from the Teen Demis being distracted by Jester and his creatures, back to Teen Steel who was going to die without help. And there was nothing she could do because she was just a girl.
There was nothing she could do. She was just a girl. There was nothing she could do. She… was… just… a… girl…
Something fierce seemed to shift and move in her chest. It felt like a pressure was building at the back of her throat from deep inside, pushing and PUSHING, swelling up and out of her until…
“NO!” she yelled.
It felt as though her throat expanded impossibly wide and that something–whatever it was–deep inside of her was forced through. The sound escaped her in an echoing roar, like thunder caught in a soda can. It was just this burst of pressure and raw power.
She could almost see the waves of concussive force rippling through the air before striking the creatures, flinging them off of Teen Steel and high into the air before they were dropped to the ground, their bodies broken, their bones pulped and shattered. A few managed to survive, stumbling back to their feet after a second, but they seemed dazed and confused, their clawed hands scrabbling at their ears where their ruptured eardrums bled.
What… Susie was shocked by what she had done, but there was no time for lengthy introspection. She had somehow managed to stop the creatures attacking Teen Steel, but he could still be bleeding into his brain or something, dying because there was no one to help him.
No one but her.
The soles of her oxfords clattered against the floor as she ran toward Teen Steel, her skirt swishing around her bare knees. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but there was no way she could just let him die.
She knelt down next to him, reaching out to lift one of his eyelids and see if there was any reaction. His eyeball was rolled up so only the white showed. He was completely out of it.
“Dammit,” she muttered.
Carefully holding his head still, she laid him flat on the floor. She tried not to touch his neck too much and hoped he wasn’t going to end up paralyzed or something.
“You idiot, why didn’t you have your powers active?” she asked. If he had, then he wouldn’t have gotten hurt. A little throw like that would have had him bouncing right off the wall and back on his feet, ready to go again.
His dark blue mask covered his eyes and most of his nose, but from the shape of his lips she could tell that he was really good looking. Though why he bothered to wear a mask that didn’t have those weird lens things to cover up his eye color, she didn’t know.
Like there were all that many six-foot-four, brown-eyed, dark haired muscular teenagers running around the city. How hard would it be for some supervillain to go to the DMV and compile a list they could work their way through? So why make things easy for them by leaving your eyes and most of your face uncovered?
“You are kind of an idiot, aren’t you?” She shook her head. Good-looking, not-too-bright… he sounded like the perfect boyfriend for her foster sister, Natasha.
Almost as though he’d heard her, his fingers twitched and his eyelids fluttered.
Susie’s breath caught in her throat and she leaned closer. “Are you waking up? Are you all right?”
His eyes opened slowly. They were glazed and a little bloodshot, but he blurrily focused on her face. A faint frown pulled down the corners of his mouth.
/ EXCERPT
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