Damsel[ed]: Some Rescue Required (#2 of the Damsel[ed] series)

Chapter One: A Recap

So here's a tip: if you ever find yourself jammed in a hybrid Prius beside an ex-supervillain enemy, love interest, tormenter, life saver (it's complicated) and your cat-guy best friend, bring some conversation starters. Because it gets awkward. Fast. "Guess how much a polar bear weighs?" I ask. Silence. "Enough to break the ice."

Storm chuckles, but Gats dips his chicken nugget in his barbecue sauce without casting so much as a glance in my direction. He sits across me, a napkin draped across his lap and each sauce spread in a strategic circle on his knees. It's like Clash of Clans: McDonald's edition. Bah. Dainty eater. I finished my four Quarter Pounders as soon as I got them. What can I say? I'm finally up for this Olympic eating stuff.

Between us, Jaylin stares cryptically at the ceiling in true Jaylin fashion, back straight, hands clasped, exposed arms coffee-filter pale. So stiff and frozen, she reminds me of a garden statue, or an ice sculpture, or another inanimate object that's supposed to be stiff and frozen. I risk another glance. Her hands shake. If I say something to her, I don't know if I'll see her Catalyst side or Jaylin side. Just the perks of hanging with a psychologically damaged sociopath. I'm no better, I guess, with Dark Side and all.

I decide I'll do anything to kill the silence, even the unthinkable: stealing food. I snatch Gats' nugget box. I wolf down two pieces, chewing loudly, slurping grease off my fingers. "Hey!" Gats lunges over Jaylin. I lift the nugget box over his head. "You barbarian!" he shrieks. I burst out laughing. "Give it back!"

"Boys," June says, her voice laced with venom.

"Why don't we talk about it?" I ask. He flails, his seatbelt holding him back from strangling me. His face has gone all red, eyes buggy. There's so much rage there I sigh and hand him back his food. He hisses as he snatches the box, cradling it to his chest like a beloved pooch. Jaylin shifts in her seat, grumbling under her breath. "What?" I ask. "Am I too immature for you?"

"That and a hundred other million things." She sounds like an old lady.

"Too...sexy?" I wink. Four groans erupt around me in response. When no one says anything else, I keep talking. "Can someone say something, please?"

Gats explodes. "I'm trying to mentally prepare! What if I can't wake Hev up? What if she wakes up and realizes I'm just a cat freak that doesn't deserve her? She's a superhero, for Starlight's sake! Maybe she won't even wake up at--"

"Chill," Jaylin says, "he wants a conversation, not your self-esteem issues."

I shrug, my wings tingling against my back. "I'll take self-esteem issues. Why don't we talk about feelings or crap? I don't know." Anything's better than sitting in this silence. I thump my leg.

"Okay," Jay says, "I feel Angel's an idiot who looks like a pirate-demon."

"Yo-ho-ho," Gats says under his breath. I roll my good eye, recoiling on the inside.

"Jaylin," June says, "you know he's sensitive about that!" I cringe. I want to ask her to stop talking, but the words stick in my throat. Truth is, between the eye-patch and the glowing wings I spent forty minutes stuffing under my coat, Jaylin's 'pirate-demon' description is pretty darn accurate.

You see, in the last installment of "Life of a teenage supervillain eugenics experiment," my mother poked out my eye and I grew wings. If you're staring at your screen, question marks blazing in your eyes, I'll try to explain this whole situation real quick.

There's me and Gats, we're two supervillain experiments. Only he has cat ears and a weird tendency to meow stuff when he's scared, and I have wings and a Dark Side that likes to show up when I'm mad. My supervillain biological parents want to kidnap us, but we're just so uncooperative and cool like that we spent 90,000 or so words kicking their sorry butts (Well, maybe they were doing the most kicking, but we got in a punch or two). But enough about us guys. Jaylin's here too, pretty and scary as heck. She's an ex-supervillain and, well, it's complicated. Then there's Heaven. She's a superhero who sacrificed herself to save Gats, and now she's in the hospital asleep in some sort of healing coma. So there you have it. Our fierce foursome.