"I don't like bullies, I don't care where they're from."

~Steve Rogers (Captain America)

"Alright, so who has their opinion on how the Remedists will affect politics, because we all know that I don't care." Ian asked, leaning back in his chair.

"This project is supposed to be a group effort, Ian." Elise scolded, much like Mary would have done if she was here.

"I know, I'm providing group moral. Go team!"

Heather sighed. "All I know is that we need to get this done."

I nodded, "Yeah, which means we all need to put our heads together."

It was the middle of the week in Political Sciences class, and we were given a day to go over our projects. Our group, obviously, was getting nowhere.

"Why don't we take a group poll?" Ian suggested. "Who else thinks the Remedists are full of crap and shouldn't even matter in the world of politics?"

Everyone raised their hands. Heather because, well, Richard Head was running against her dad for the presidency, and I because of their anti-super policies. Elise because, well, she was a good person.

"Great, so we can all agree that this project doesn't matter as well."

"Not so fast, Ian." Elise glared. "We still need this grade, no matter our opinion on the subject."

"C'mon! She does know that we'll never need this knowledge on politics in real life?" Ian complained.

"We live in Washington DC." I reminded him.

He scoffed. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I'll stay here. This place is a soul sucker if I ever saw one. I want to be able to move away when I grow up, maybe Empire City. Maybe I'll run into The Marvel, wouldn't that be cool?"

I'd actually met The Marvel once before. He came around to help Captain Impossible a year ago, before the whole identity fiasco and after their defeat of Sonic's father, the old mayor. He gave me his number in case we ever needed him again, and I still had it. A superhero's number wasn't something you threw away.

"Yeah, but we're talking reality here. What are the chances you'll ever meet a real life super?" asked Elise.

Heather tilted her head, "but I thought you met Captain Impossible and White Lightning the day he died, on your brother's birthday?"

"Yeah," she blushed and looked down, "but I'll probably never see White Lightning again. I doubt he'll want to see me again anyways."

"Who knows? Supers make house calls too." I commented.

I made a mental note to keep that promise. I liked hanging around Elise and she wasn't as shy when I was around her as White Lightning at her brother's birthday party. Besides, I heard The Marvel made house calls to Arabella Jones before she became Sonic. What harm could visiting a friend do?

Besides, I found that the hero work got boring without someone to talk to. I mean, sure, I had Eric, but he was still in a very bad mood from what happened to Daniel and even otherwise he's not the most optimistic person.

I figured I missed Daniel's self-absorbed and cheesy comments more than I thought I would. I even missed his reckless driving. I haven't even taken out the Captain Cruiser because it reminded me too much of him. I guess it's going to need a new paint job and a new name though. The red, white, and blue didn't go to well with my white and silver spandex.

I skated through the rest of the day without incident. It was after school when I got into problems. Eric had promised to take care of my shifts for the day if I agreed to be the one to stock the shelves tomorrow, so I was on super duty.

I normally run around on rooftops or in the disguised Captain Cruiser to get around town, and today I had stupidly chosen to leave the vehicle at home. I couldn't fly or teleport or run at the speed of sound, so I was stuck running around in the darkness hoping I could get to wherever I needed to be in time.

Eric called in that there was a robbery at another bank at about six in the afternoon. It was a hostage situation, but it looked like the robbers were human, not super, so it would be an easy takedown.

I reached the bank to find almost the same sight that I saw when I first arrived at the First National Bank all those days ago to help Captain Impossible take down the clown guys. It brought back so many painful memories that I had to take a moment to myself before running up to Detective Pearson to ask about the situation inside.

"What does it look like in there?"

He sighed. "Some idiot ran in there with a gun and yelled that he wanted all the money. We would be in there already if it wasn't for the hostages he's got. It looks like the daughter of the Secretary of State and the daughter of the White House Physician in there."

Oh, you've got to be joking. Mary and Elise were both in there?

"They probably ran in there to avoid the rain that stopped a couple minutes ago, but now we have to deal with the aftermath. If the memory of the bank is too painful for you, we can always take this one on our own." Detective Pearson suggested.

I shook my head.

"No, I'll help."

I walked up to the bank and opened the door. The robber, who was sporting a stereotypical black mask, didn't seem to notice my entrance. He was too busy pacing back and forth and talking to himself.

The hostages noticed me though. I counted twenty five people, two of which were Mary and Elise. Elise looked to be comforting Mary, who was freaking out.

The robber turned around and looked at me with a strange smile. "Hello, White Lightning."

"Sir, in cooperation with the Super Ordinance, I'm going to have to take you in. Attempted robbery isn't exactly legal."

The robber smiled and gave me a look that suggested that he wasn't totally sane in the head. "I've been looking for you. I've read all about you, White Lightning."

Oh no.

You remember earlier when I talked about the nut-jobs who were obsessed with finding out my identity? Well, there was also the sub-group of people who basically worshiped the supers. They were about the extreme version of the super fan club. Occasionally they would bother the town, making trouble just to meet Captain Impossible or I. But now that Captain Impossible was gone, they were all obsessed with me, fun.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to lower the weapon or I'll have to apprehend you."

He then came running at me so fast that it took me a moment to realize I was a super, and I had powers. I electrocuted him as soon as he got three feet from me. The power was enough to knock the guy out on the floor.

The detectives and police force ran in right as I was calming down the hostages. Apparently they had expected the man to put up more of a fight than he did. They took away the robber to a waiting ambulance and checked out the hostages one by one. I stayed behind to make sure Mary and Elise were okay.

"Are you two okay?" I asked.

Mary just about fainted.

"You . . . super . . . fan . . . I . . ."

Elise stepped forward, "Sorry about my friend, she's a bit star-struck."

Mary stuttered some more before asking for my autograph, which I gave to her gladly. She then asked for a selfie, which I also posed for. I was sure she was about to ask for my number or something before Elise finally pulled her back.

"C'mon, Mary, we've got to go. White Lightning probably has some important business to attend to, like save the city from crime." Said Elise in a tone that I could've mistaken for dread.

Mary nodded, even if she seemed reluctant to leave. Once I made sure they made it back to their car safely, I headed out to go home and eat dinner before I went out again. I couldn't save lives on an empty stomach after all.

At dinner, my mom seemed a bit different. She absolutely didn't want to talk about anything super related, but she did seem interested in Chad. I told her I knew little to nothing about him, but she kept pushing. If I didn't know any better, I'd think she had a crush on him.

(Yuck. No kid wants to think of that, am I right?)

After dinner, I started to get worried. Elise and Mary had been hostages in a robbery, though an ineffective one. Mary had seemed shaken up, but my visit had definitely cheered her up. I was more worried about Elise, who never showed her emotions. She must've been terrified on the inside.

I remembered the comment I made to her at school, about supers making house calls. Why couldn't I visit her now? I could see how she was doing and it would be super fun seeing her as a savior, not just her friend from school.

I changed into my super suit and headed out into the night. I took an hour to circle the city, stopping a robbery near Elise's house and saving a cat from a tree.

When I got to her house, I came up with another predicament. Elise's family was rich, which meant that they most likely had security. How was I going to get in without sounding the alarms?

(And that's when it occurred to me that I was currently breaking and entering.)

I walked around the house to the back, glad that Elise's room was on the first floor. I looked in the window and saw a light on by her desk, which meant she was doing homework. I caught a look at the paper and saw that it was the pre-calculus homework I had finished during lunch.

I knocked on the window, hoping that if she let me in the alarms wouldn't sound. Because, how embarrassing would it be to be found 'breaking into' a teenage girl's room? It's not like we needed any more bad publicity for the supers, am I right?

She looked over her shoulder and her eyes bulged out. Seeing a super outside your bedroom window must've been some kind of shock.

She hurried over and opened the window, but her body was blocking the way for me to enter the room.

"White Lightning? What are you doing here . . . at my house?"

"Umm . . . well, you see . . . I just wanted to check up on you. You know, most people are shaken up after being held hostage at gunpoint." I explained.

She gave me a blank stare.

"Well, I'm fine, thank you very much."

I was shocked by her tone of words. I mean – that's not how you react when you meet your savior, is it?

"Wow. I mean – I put on this tight spandex and get beat up every day and I don't even get a simple thanks in return for my heroic save? It makes me not want to continue this line of work to be honest, Elise." I deadpanned.

"How'd you know my name?" she questioned. "In fact, how'd you know which room was mine?"

"Ahh . . . I just guessed." I lied.

She crossed her arms. "And what if you'd walked in on my mother changing, or my father as he's watching football? You just decided to take that massive chance because you wanted to see me?"

I scratched the back of my head, "Well, that kind of puts it in a different perspective."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you were infatuated with me."

Woah. Gone was the shy and innocent soul I was used to. She acted extremely different in front of White Lightning than she did in front of Oliver Storm.

"Of course not." I argued. "I just wanted to check up on you. That's all."

"So you check up on every damsel in distress you save?"

"Well . . . You see, I don't really save that many damsels . . ."

She let out a good hardy laugh. "Glad to know I'm special. What about my friend, Mary?"

"She seemed perfectly fine when I left her. It seemed that meeting me might've cheered her up a bit."

Elise laughed again, "A bit? Man, then you haven't met Mary. You've been her new obsession ever since . . . you know . . ." she trailed off, implying about Captain Impossible's death.

"Yeah, I've witnessed a lot of people switching sides and hanging all over me now instead. It makes me quite miss the guy." I admitted, playing off the fact that I was always overshadowed by him.

Elise shrugged. "Well, at least the people are rallying behind you. Most of the time, power shift like that don't go too well."

"What do you mean?"

"The people believed in Captain Impossible and his ideologies, but they didn't really believe in you. You have to prove that you're just as much of a hero as he was, and since you haven't done anything big yet, I'm surprised they still haven't revealed their doubts about you. Maybe they're hoping you'll do something soon to usurp the Remedists."

"Yeah," I scoffed, "I was much closer to that before Delinquent burned his office. I don't know what she was thinking."

"Maybe she wanted to prove a point." Elise suggested thoughtfully.

I shook my head at her suggestion.

"No. Any rational human being and super doesn't make our enemy hate us more. She wasn't thinking and she only proved the Remedists' points. Never trust a villain, Elise."

"Why?"

I sighed. This conversation was going somewhere else. I had no intentions of alerting Elise to my midnight rendezvous with a known villain, I trusted her as Oliver Storm, but as White Lightning, who knew if she would go blabbing to the police? So now that I made sure she was alright, and Mary as well, I thought it was a right time to leave.

I looked at my watch and back up at her. "Sorry about that, I have to go. I've got a previous commitment to keep. I'll see you soon, okay Elise?"

She looked upset that I didn't answer her question, but nodded. I quickly ducked out of her window and ran around her yard. I turned back just in time to see her light go out.

A smile lifted across my face as I ran back to the Captain Cruiser. I was finding that I like Elise more and more, both in and out of costume. Was it possible that my current obsession with seeing her as White Lightning had something to do with the fact that I could be around her without being me?

Did I like Elise as more than a friend now?