Sapphire Angel - Superheroine

Chapter 4 - Powers

She fell through the opening face first. As Beth dropped through the air, she heard John's scream.

"No!"

In the air, instinct took over. She twisted her body, and a split second later her feet hit the floor. Beth flexed her knees, absorbing the impact, before standing to her full height. She waited for pain to come. Like with the gunshots, it never did.

John's footsteps pounded down the stairwell. As she looked up, the guard's face peered at her through the gap, thirty feet above her. He froze as he took in the sight of her. The dim light of the room shimmered off her blond hair and the stretchy material of her costume, radiating an almost mesmerizing aura around her. The blue and white outfit hugged her slender form, revealing her toned arms and flat stomach. The short skirt only accentuated her long legs.

Beth looked ahead as John rushed to her. His mouth hung open, but no words came out. The footsteps sounded on the stairs above them. Beth whipped her head to the right and spotted a glass door. A dark city street waited on the other side.

"Move!" she yelled to John. When he didn't move, she pushed him toward the door.

He lumbered toward the exit, reaching it as the two guards turned the corner at the bottom of the stairwell. John leaned against the push bar and stumbled outside when the door opened. Beth turned back toward their pursuers.

The first guard was upon her. As her icy blue eyes locked with his, she tried to call up memories of a few martial arts courses from college. She wished she had taken them seriously.

The man reached for her and she pivoted, grabbing his arm and using his momentum to slam him into the wall next to the door. He hit it with a crunch, and blood flew from his face as he hit the floor.

She spun, acting on instinct, and lashed out with a kick. Her foot connected with the ribs of the second guard, driving him backward. He landed on his back and his head whipped into the floor. He lay unmoving.

Beth tensed for another attack, but none came. No other guards had found them yet. She rushed through the doorway, not noticing the cold air of the autumn night. John looked at her with his mouth still hanging open, and confusion in his eyes.

"Let's go," she said.

------

Beth drove John's car as they left the Fizzure building behind them. She needed to get medical care for John.

"What the hell was that?" he asked.

"That was the consequence of going somewhere we shouldn't have," she replied. "I should have listened to you."

"That's not what I mean. Beth, you just fell from thirty or forty feet up. They shot you multiple times. You got into fights with men much bigger than you. Yet you don't have a scratch on you. What is going on?"

"I have no idea, but I'm driving you to the hospital." Thoughts of the gunshots and her fall edged into her consciousness, but she forced them back.

"I feel better already," John said. "It must have been something I ate."

She glanced at him. "Really?" she asked with a frown. "You were in agony back there."

"I just have a minor ache in my stomach. I don't want to deal with a hospital tonight. It will be a zoo. And you can't go wearing that. The men there will love it. You might not."

She glanced down at herself, remembering she still wore her superheroine costume.

"Oh, yeah," she said with a murmur. "Okay, but promise me if you don't feel better in an hour, we're going."