Chapter One(s) [COMPLETED]

Nothing Super (Teen Fiction/Sci-Fi)(COMPLETED)

Her face throbbed and she felt like falling over. Fighting the feeling, she returned to the darkened alley. Though she could have only been gone less than a minute, the mugger had fled. Sighing, Taylor moved to the stunned man. At her approach, he quivered, fearing the worse. Seeing his panic, she raised her hands.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The man could only gaze up at her in petrified silence.

"Did he take anything?" she asked.

When she got no response, she sighed again. Her head hurt, her body was aching with fatigue and all she wanted to do was pass out for the night, instead she had to deal with a drunken mute.

"Nod once if he took anything. A wallet? Watch? Car keys?"

These words seemed to register in the man's brain because he nodded.

"Alright," she said. She pulled out her phone and dialed a number.

After a single ring a voice sounded. It was low, eager and alert.

"What do you have for me, Shadow?"

Taylor rolled her eyes. The name the policeman had given her was stupid and she didn't want it, but after calling her person for the first month, she understood his need to put a name to her.

"Mugger escaped but I got his gun and a witness. The man will be outside Hal's bar. The gun will be on the rooftop. How fast can you get here?"

"Three minutes," Weston said.

"Good. I'm leaving then."

Before the policeman could question her more, Taylor hung up.

"Go sit outside Hal's bar. Someone will come take care of you?"

The man blinked, his words returning to him.

"Who are you?"

The question was one Taylor found unanswerable. Because there was no world where teenage-vigilante-with-a-calculus-test-the-next-morning would be taken seriously.

"A vague dream you'll barely remember tomorrow."

With that parting statement, she vanished.

After leaving the gun where she said it would be, she reappeared inside a dark room. Light from the moon fell into the window and illuminated an untidy bedroom. A chair in front of a chaotic desk had begun a clothes collection. A messy bed was hiding a dummy made of pillows and the walls were fighting contradicting ages with their decorations.

Taylor had stopped noticing these flaws the moment, she had taken up her late night activities. All she thought about as she climbed into bed were the five hours of sleep was going to catch before she would have to face the day.

*******************

The ringing of musical chimes, accompanied with the knocking at her door, woke Taylor a few hours later.

"Sweetheart, are you up?" a gentle voice asked.

Taylor turned over and shut off her alarm. As for the alarm that would not go away with the touch of a finger, she mumbled something into half her pillow.

"Taylor?" her mother said.

With more effort than it normally took, Taylor raised her head.

"I'm up."

When the she heard the retreating footsteps, she sank her head back into the pillow's fluffy folds. A tired moan escaped her lips. The day was just starting and all she wanted was for it to end. Fighting against every part of her that told her to stay in bed, she got up. She vaguely tossed her blankets over her pillows in some vain attempt at neatness. Snatching up a pair of jeans and a shirt that wasn't too badly wrinkled she moved to the bathroom.