Omniscience

Vigilante: Part Five

Turns out, doing missions is even more annoying than I thought it would be with another person following your every move.
I shoot a glare at Zane. He merely looked mildly back at me.
At first, I thought I'd just wait it out. But I underestimated him. Wherever I went, he followed. I couldn't lose him, he always showed up after a few seconds of glee. Even worse, he wouldn't let me use my powers to air walk. Which was annoying.
Huffing, I decide to retrieve my bag. I mean, he already knew my biggest secret. Who cares if he see my backpack?
Only one problem though: he wouldn't let me air walk.
Well, let's try anyway. What could go wrong?

"Hey!" Zane shouts. "No-"
I was gone, into the sky. For a few seconds, I was free. Unfortunately, he quickly caught up using his weird shadow powers.
"What were you thinking?" He says. "Air walking in public?"
"I did it before as well." I point out helpfully. "You didn't say anything then."
He sighs. "Then I wasn't supposed to make sure you didn't get into any trouble. What if you get arrested?"
I snort. "Yeah, right. When pigs fly. Police have bigger things to worry about here."
"Yeah, I know that." He says exasperatedly. "I live here, you know."
"Doesn't mean you know everything about this place." I say, descending from the air into the alley where I'd left my backpack.
It had been kicked into the wall, it's contents spilled across the alley. I felt a stab of useless irritation. Couldn't anyone leave anything alone? I crossed the alley and started picking things up.
"What is that?" He asks after a few blissful minutes of silence. He sounded hilariously scandalized.
"A freeze-thingy." I say, plucking it off the ground and putting it back into the bag.
"And that?" He says, sounding even more scandalized.
I sigh. "Capture Net."
"And that?"
"That's... Wait a minute." I sit back on my haunches, pondering. I hadn't had all this stuff in my bag.
"HEY!"
I turn, standing up as I did so.
"THIEVES!"
Oops. Time to run. Two thugs appear out of nowhere, as if they'd been waiting for someone to try and steal their things. I hadn't, not intentionally at least, but I might have been onto something...
The thugs were acting sort of strangely, as if they'd practiced for this. What if they had? It would be incredibly stupid, but what if they'd set this up?
Well, either way, Zane was sort of amazing. He managed to make them calm down and returned the items int he backpack politely. It made me respect him a little more, honestly. At least he wasn't totally talentless.

"Where are you going?" I ask.
He turns. "Do you mind if we go to my home? I want to start on homework."
I cross my arms. "Aren't you supposed to be following me?"
He said, "Well, yeah. But you're not going to manage to do any, uh, vigilante stuff when I'm watching you, right? So we might as well go somewhere."
"Ugh. Can't we go somewhere else first?" I groan. I am not up for making a good impression with more adults so they don't turn me in. At all. "Please?"
He sighs, "Fine."
We end up going to a market in District 5. It was... Nice. Zane didn't act so stuffy. Probably because we were finally doing something fun. Together, we browsed the various stalls, pointing out cool objects or interesting food. This did, however, bring up some uncomfortable topics.
"If you like it so much, why don't you just buy it?" He asked after I'd admired a pretty white lamp with silver wind patterns for the better part of an hour while he explored the rest of the shop.
I flinched. I wasn't one of those sob stories you hear about, by the way. I had a home, derelict though it was. I was capable of getting enough food to survive. But I definitely did not have money to spend on stuff like this. I mean, most of my stuff came from the dump, same as with the other Phantoms. "Um."
He realize it before I could stop him. "Oh. You're...." Not even worthy of a word, that's what I was.
I bristled, annoyed once again. "Just buzz off, will ya?"
He didn't move. "I'm sorry if I upset you."
"Whatever." I turned and left the shop. "Let's go see your parents."