Masked

Creepy Laughs and Pedophilic Murderers

"I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses."

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Silver City was dark as I walked home from skating practice. Once, it had been a small town in Maryland, but now it flourished, ever since the supers arrived. Yeah, my city has supers. There's only a few of them now, but they've pretty much taken over the city's security system. Most of our supers were good, but every now and then, a super villain popped up. Right now, our villain was a guy named Pitch. I thought it was a dumb name, but the rest of Silver City seemed to disagree.

I heard a dark laugh, and looked up. Crap. I had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and now I was in a dirty alleyway. Of course I was. The person who had laughed now stood behind me, and another guy in front of me, blocking any chance of escape.

"Do your parents know you're here?" The larger guy asked.

I stuttered, scared. "What kind of a question is that?."

"One that determines whether or not we do vile things to you and leave you in a pool of your own blood."

Ouch. "Well, then of course my parents know where I am. I just texted them."

The large guy turned to his friend. "I say she's lying."

The other guy laughed as he reached into a pocket in his coat. I gulped as he pulled out a long shining knife.

"Look, if you want money, I don't have any on me, but I can get you all that you want." It was true. My mom was the mayor of Silver City. Not that she ever shared information about her job with me. It was all pretty hush-hush. I was fine with that anyway. My mom and I didn't really like each other much.

The man with the knife grabbed me by the arm and spun me, so that my back was pressed against his chest. He placed the shining blade on my throat. My skating bag dropped on the pavement.

"What's your name?"

"A-Amber Coradetti." I replied, trembling.

"Well, Amber, it isn't money we want." The knife pressed closer into my neck. Why weren't there any supers around when I needed them? Weren't they always supposed to save the damsel in distress?

"What do you want with me, then?" I asked, my voice sounding weak and small.

"Murder is a powerful thing, Amber. Especially if the victim is the mayor's daughter."

I gave a short laugh, masking my fear for a few moments. "If you want to affect the mayor, you're going to have to do better than that. My mom has made it known that she doesn't like me."

"Oh, what a sad little story that is for you." The guy without the knife taunted. I shrugged, though I was trembling in fear.

"It's the truth." The knife dug into my neck, I felt warm blood trickle down from the shallow wound.

I knew that no matter what I said, they were going to kill me. I could only hope to distract them until the police or a super came around.

"Are you uh- working for someone, or just alone?" God, I was stupid. Why would a bad guy give away his employer?

The two men looked between each other, and the guy in front of me shook his head.

"Can't tell you that, even if we're going to kill you."

"I wouldn't bet on that." Came an unfamiliar confident voice. The man holding me whipped around, taking me with him.

In front of us was a super. He was dressed in a dark and silver super suit, an elegant masquerade-type mask covering half of his face. His gray eyes shone, and he winked at me before flying to the larger guy, the one that wasn't holding me. I heard a sickening crack, and then a thump as what I assumed was the bad guy's body as he landed on the pavement. The man holding me looked back, stunned. Taking advantage of his shock, I pushed the man's arm away from my neck and spun around while stepping back, so that I was now facing the guy. The super was busy tying up the first guy to notice the other man -the one who had the knife- reach into his apparently very large coat pocket and pull out a gun and point it at the super. I took a brief second to wonder why he hadn't simply shot me before moving into action.

Time seemed to freeze as I jumped on the man with the gun. The man fell face first on the pavement as I used my momentum to land and swing myself back up in a skating move that would have made my coach, Marina, proud. I walked over to the now unconscious man and picked up the gun. Oddly enough, it had begun snowing all around me, but not anywhere else in the alley. I looked over at the Super, who had finished tying up the first guy and was walking towards me.

"How are you doing that?" He asked me. His voice sounded like a teenager's, around my age of seventeen years.

I blinked, confused. "Doing what?"

"The snowstorm. That." He pointed to the swirling flakes of snow around me. "I- I don't know. I thought you were doing it. You're the super here."

He looked at me like I was dumb. "For some reason I doubt that. Come with me."

Not knowing why, I grabbed my skating bag and followed the Super. "Why? Who are you?"

"I'm Logan, also known as Silver Shadow. You're a Super."

A/N: Tell me, what do you all think so far? Comment, share, and vote! Thanks for reading!

~Anja