"They may suspect me, but they'll never see me. They may chase me, but they'll never catch me. Never, never, ever catch me."

~ Selina Kyle (Catwoman)

Following the unexpected visit from MASKED, I was on edge. It had been a week since the incident, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. No rouge villains had attacked me during my rounds, or the city for that fact. The only super villain attack had been by some dude called X, who was taken down by the Super Task Force in a matter of minutes.

Maybe Andromeda's strategy was to make me feel as safe as possible before she struck again. Maybe this was all some huge strategy to lure me into a false sense of security.

But if it wasn't, I was totally confused as to why my work had been cut in half regarding the safety of the city.

It was all the better for me, though, because our work at school had been doubled. It was the year of the SATs and ACTs, and our teachers were freaking out. Eldredge Academy was a nationally ranked school. If the students weren't as good as the school claimed, the rich and powerful parents that enrolled their kids into this school would pull them out immediately. The school needed to produce amazing results.

It was why we were taking our lunch as an impromptu study hour. There was a rumor of a surprise test in AP Biochemistry next, and I was intending to pass.

(Yes, our school offered Biochemistry as a course)

(An AP course no less)

The teacher might've been as cool as they come, but he was required to give us rigorous tests on the material. Even the best teachers gave hard tests.

"Olly, what did you get on number thirteen?" Heather asked from across the table.

I looked at my paper. "Umm . . . I got A, it was about that thing he taught yesterday, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Thanks"

Heather had finally taken my offer all that time ago to heart. She was now a permanent resident of our lunch table. Her normal entourage was only a couple yards away against the wall of the cafeteria. They were just staring silently ahead. I wondered for a moment when they ate or went to the bathroom. I'd never actually seen them eat a proper meal while at the school guarding Heather.

Ian had thankfully stopped bugging me about Heather's supposed crush on me. It was mostly because of the fact that Elise and I had officially become a couple.

"Olly, remind me again why we have to go to school." Ian complained, staring at his own paper with a blank expression.

"Isn't it obvious?" Mary huffed. "We go to school to get a good education to make it into a good college so we can get good jobs and provide for ourselves in the future. God, Ian. If you fail, I will murder you, mark my words."

Ian smirked lovingly at her, "Yes, but then you'd have to put up with mom and dad's constant whining about why you had to kill their favorite child."

"I am older than you, Ian. Remember the power I hold over you."

Ian chuckled, "Yes, such power my terrifying sister has over me. I can just feel myself waning in the presence of such detrimental power."

The table laughed at Ian's antics and Mary ignored her brother, furiously stabbing a piece of lettuce with her fork, per usual.

"At least I'm not a maniac obsessed with finding out the identity of every super in existence," Mary fired back.

"Really?" Heather piped up, interested.

"I thought you gave up searching for the identities of supers after your main project, you know, got ruined." I asked, referring to the fact that Captain Impossible's identity had been revealed when he died, ruining Ian's chances at being the first to tell the world who the nation's hero was.

Ian shrugged.

"Please, he has a whole wall in his room dedicated to tracking the movements of White Lightning and his suspects. He thinks that if he can track down and identify White Lightning, he will forever be indebted to him. Ian wants to be able to hold his identity over his head like blackmail, don't you Ian?" Mary accused.

Elise looked mortified.

"Why would you do that? What did White Lightning ever do to you?"

"Nothing. But wouldn't it be cool to have a super on your leash? I could get him to do so many cool things for me. Like maybe even take out Ms. Solace. Olly would appreciate that, wouldn't he?"

I scoffed, "Anyone who got rid of that batty administrator would win my respects."

"Exactly my point."

Mary sighed loudly and stabbed her salad a little bit more ferociously.

"But," I continued, "wouldn't that be kind of mean? How would you feel if someone held information like that over you?"

"Oh, come on!" Ian whined. "Not you! Why are you taking her side! And I thought we were best friends, bro."

"Well, I agree with him too." Elise countered.

"That's only because you're his girlfriend. You have to agree with him."

Elise narrowed her eyes. "Are you suggesting that I have to do what he says because I'm his property or something? Because that's sexist"

"No! I'm not being sexist!"

"Well," Heather provided, "I kind of agree with you."

Ian let out a breath of exclamation. "Thank you!"

"Heather!" I exclaimed with a breath of sarcasm. "I felt that like a blow to my heart."

She giggled at my antics, and I thought for a moment that I won her back to my side, but she soon stopped and turned back to Ian.

"I mean, it would be cool to be able to get help trying to escape from my entourage every once and a while. Being the First Daughter isn't the glamorous life the tabloids would want to lead you to believe."

I understood what she meant, but I still felt the thought of someone holding my identity over my head was quite scary. Tornado had to deal with that in the beginning of his career apparently. A super villain held his identity over his head, forcing him to rob banks and terrorize The Marvel until he finally broke free. I would not want to be forced into that situation.

"How close have you actually gotten to finding out his identity?" Mary asked.

"Well, after his fight with Andromeda last week, I'm assuming he got hurt really bad, and that's why he hasn't been seen lately. I'm cross referencing my suspects with recent enrollments into the hospital and people who have missed work or school for a couple of days in a row this week. I'm closer than ever, I'm sure this time."

I almost laughed out loud at that. Because of my super abilities and the handy blue flask Cody and MASKED had given me, I would never need to check into a hospital again. Besides, even if I hadn't gotten the blue substance, I would've just had Eric patch me up and I would still make an appearance at school. The way Ian was thinking was the same way every conspiracy theorist thought, and I planned to outsmart them in any way I could.

"Are you sure he would even enroll into a hospital?" I asked, being realistic. "I mean – this guy has been at it for what? Three years now? I'm sure he wouldn't be stupid enough to go to a hospital."

"Yeah," Elise agreed, "don't supers have like weird DNA and stuff? Going to a hospital would be a great way to get discovered."

"Well," Ian frowned, "you could've at least tried to support my theory."

The bell rang before anyone could argue about his theory. Ian, Heather, and I packed up our homework and walked off to Biochemistry with Mr. Tier, our next class coincidently.

Mr. Tier was obsessed with evolution and the advancements in genetic technology. I swear he's waiting for us to all grow up and become Scientists, like him.

"Today, class, we will be discovering the possibilities of gene mutations and DNA melding. With modern marvels today such as Calico and Hawk, we now know it is possible to mix animal qualities with human. Can anyone tell me why?"

Heather raised her hand, something that didn't happened often. "Calico was given some sort of cat DNA when experimented on in some sort of laboratory in Empire City. The same thing goes for Hawk, except he was experimented on before birth and given qualities of a bird with wings, hollow bones, and so forth in London."

"Very good, Heather. Now, if you would all look at page 126 in your textbooks . . ."

Halfway through the lecture, I asked to go to the bathroom. It was days like this in Mr. Tier's class that made me want to bang my head against a wall. I didn't know if there was ever a more pointless class to take. All we did was listen to Mr. Tier excitedly explain the possibilities of animal experimentation in science. I swore one day the man would turn himself into one of his experiments.

When I walked into the bathroom, I was met with a strange scene. Two guys that I recognized as sophomores were standing over a hunched figure on the floor, a kid who looked as scrawny as they come.

"Why don't you get up, huh? No wonder no one likes you, Dashner." The taller of the two boys spat.

"Hey!" I yelled at them. They turned. "What do you think you two are doing?"

"Teaching him a lesson." The second guy answered.

"By what? That kid is like half your size, what did he ever do to you?"

They had no answer to that, or at least no smart answer.

"Beat it. If I ever see you two beating up on defenseless kids again, I won't tolerate it." I warned.

"Oh, yeah?" the second guy tried. "What are you going to do to us?"

The first one turned to his friend and said in a not-so-quiet whisper, "Dude, that's Oliver Storm." The second one's eyes went wide and they both ran out of the bathroom.

Let's just say that there were perks to being a well-known junior at Eldredge Academy. Not only did I hold seniority over those sophomores, but I was pretty popular as well. No one would risk their popularity at this school.

I knelt down and helped the kid up to his feet. He was only a couple of inches shorter than me with brown hair and a pair of glasses. Now that he was off the floor, I recognized him as one of the freshmen. I frequently saw them gawking at the senior girls from their table at lunch.

"Are you okay?"

He gave me a wide-eyes gaze, "Why are you helping me?"

"What?" I was confused. I was being a nice person, as always. What kind of human being walked in on someone being bullied and didn't help them out?

"You're Oliver Storm. You're a junior who's friends with Ian Thompson and Heather Richards. You're not the kind of guy who would risk popularity to help out a freshman nerd."

I shrugged. "Maybe I'm not the kind of person everyone believes me to be. Besides, those two guys are jerks. Why would I let them keep being that way? What's your name by the way?"

"Aden Dashner."

"Well, Aden, if those two every give you trouble again, feel free to call me. I may be an upperclassman, but that doesn't mean I'd let bullies like them win in the end."

He smiled and I grinned. No one deserved to be bullied for any reason, and I was glad I could at least make this kid's day.

Besides, coming from a dirt poor family with brains, I knew how it felt to be picked on for something you couldn't control. I never wanted anyone else to have to feel like that. I guess it was part of the reason I wanted to become a hero: to take down the bad guys who picked on the smaller fish.

I wanted to be a hero to save people who couldn't save themselves.

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Just a warning about the next chapter. It will be in the point of view of Aden, the kid you just met. It probably won't make sense why I did that until the . . . sequel. You'll know.

And, also, about the last chapter. The epilogue of League of Legends said that they would get married and have kids, yes, but it never said when. Their relationship has to have some bumps in the road. Plus, you'll find out what happened between Arabella and Connor in a few chapters.