Adventures of A Superhero - Part 2
A Practice Session
Monday morning rolled around a lot faster than Anna liked.
In less than forty-eight hours she had partied like a wild girl with her friends, and then she was abducted, poked and prodded by a faceless alien named Axion. She couldn’t even say he had a face a mother would love. For all she knew, him and his kind had no mothers.
She knew it wasn’t some crazy drunken dream she had, for the outfit he provided her along with the boots were where she left them, on her chair in front of her computer.
Sitting up in bed, she shrugged her shoulders, stretched her arms over her head, gave out a healthy morning yawn, then clamored out of bed and went to the bathroom, turned on the shower and jumped in.
Ten minutes later she was out, drying herself off when she decided it was time to test one of her newly given talents. Sliding into a robe, she walked to the kitchen, started the coffee-maker then went to her large ever-spacious living room and stared out across the way at the Langhorn’s home. Barry and Ethel, no children that she knew of. He works at an industrial plant and Ethel, she works at not working, other than in her flower garden when the weather is good.
Concentrating all she could, she was able to zero in on their conversation.
“The kids are coming back in two weeks Barry and I’m going to need some help rearranging things.”
“What for? Makes no sense to me. It’s the same as it was when they left to go out to California to work and raise their own. Now that’s what doesn’t make sense to me. They could have stayed here and done the same thing. Beats me nowadays why kids think they have to go 3,000 something miles to do something that’s practically right in their own backyard. And I’ll tell you another thing ….”
Okay, enough of that, thought Anna. So they did have kids, just all grown up and on their own. Anna decided to try something harder. She let her mind open up to somewhere far away. Europe maybe, or, India!
She focused her energy and within seconds she could hear two people talking.
“Akankah kamu menjual ayam atau tidak?”
“Saya harus memikirkannya terlebih dahulu.”
“Apa yang harus dipikirkan, saya punya rupiah.”
“Saya pikir Anda mengambil ayam untuk makanan bukan untuk telur.”
Okay, she thought, that was odd. Arguing over a chicken. Wait! Anna shook her head in disbelief.
“How did I know what they were talking about? Hmmm ... must be all that stuff Axion put in my head as well as my body.”
Then she focused on France, Belgium, Russia, China, and Poland, along with eight other smaller countries. Every person she listened to, she understood exactly what they were saying.
“Wow. This is so cool. I wish I had this when I was in college. I could have aced my French class instead of getting a D.”
Going back to the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of coffee, cream, no sugar and sat down at her dining room table. Anna still had the rest of this week off for her vacation. She had a whole week to explore other things she could do.
Finishing her coffee, she went back to her bedroom and dressed. She looked at the color of the outfit and thought, blue, red or black would have been a better choice, Axion. Anything but white. Although, I do look good in any of those colors. Doesn’t matter which one. Just as she was about to step into the legging part, her eyes became as around as a saucer. The fabric changed and was a mixture of all three colors she mentioned. She started laughing, only now realizing she could change anything she wanted just from thought alone. Then she remembered when she looked in the mirror and saw her best friend’s face, Alexis, staring back at her. All because of a thought.
“This is going to be so good. I can change my appearance to anyone and never be recognized as me. Talk about a cool identity. Yeah, just call me Change Girl.” Saying that, her brown, dark long locks immediately shortened and became a burnish-red color. Her eyes went from hazel to blue, and her face altered just enough with a slight rise in the cheek bones and a squarer chin line, that even her own mother wouldn’t know her.
Once she finished dressing, she grabbed her car keys, she went outside to her Jetta, started it up and drove nearly fifty miles to the beach. The day was already warm, and it was expected to be in the mid-90′s.
Anna loves the water, but Anna has a problem; she can’t swim.
Parking the car not far from an entrance to the beach, she slowly walked across already hot sand until she was less than ten feet from where the water curled in, then slowly retreated to where it came from. No one was around that was close, so her little experiment went unnoticed. Tentatively, she took small steps across the wet brown sand and she watched as the water would slide across the already dampened sand, and her boots started to be overrun by water. When she looked a second time, the water was nearly at the top of her boots. She sighed, closed her eyes tightly, and with a firm resolve, opened them and continued walking. In less than a minute, she was up to her neck in water.
“Guess now’s the time to find out. It’s either sink or swim. Ohmygod, why did I say that!” Anna lowered her head in the water and started something that resembled a dog paddle, only underwater. She went faster and faster until she broke free to take in air but continued swimming at an exhilarated pace. Before she realized, she had swam ten miles!
Now treading water, she started laughing. “This was easier than I thought it would be. Hell, I can do anything! I just have to think it, and I can do it!”
She turned around in the water and swam back to where she started, then walked out and back onto dry sand.
“I, I ... wow! This is incredible. The suit is bone dry and so are the boots. Must be water-repellant. Pretty jazzy.”
As she was making her way to her car, she had another idea. Running.
Just how fast could she go? She didn’t have a stop-watch or anything, so, she could only gauge how long it would take her to run a mile. Stopping next to the driver side, she thought now was a good time to put it to the test. Facing toward the rear of her Jetta, she focused on a building a good hundred yards away. Bending down like a runner does in track meets, she inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly, then counted, “3 ... 2 ... 1 ... GO!”
Off she went. She was laughing as she felt the rush of air caress her face, and everything she passed became a blur. She saw the building one second, and in the next second, she couldn’t. Stopping, she looked around, confused. She couldn’t see the building anywhere.
“Okay, I give up. Where did it go? It was right over ... huh?”
Where she looked there was a sign posted that read: NO TRESPASSING BY THE ORDER of the L.A. BOARD of COMMISSIONERS.
L.A.? That’s insane. Or is it?
Anna looked at her watch. “No freaking way! No way I could have run from Wilmington to here in less than eight seconds. That’s impossible!” Then she remembered what Axion told her.
Instructions as in written ones, no. Your decisions are your instructions. You’re actions are your instructions. When any crisis is caused, your decisions will determine what needs to be done.
“I’m starting to understand now. I can do anything, probably even fly, but I’m not going there just yet. I need to get back home and think through a bunch of options.”
As Anna spun around and was ready to run back where her car was parked, she heard a scream, and a man yelling. Looking in the direction it was coming from, she saw a tall man and a woman, a good foot shorter, just outside the park’s entrance opposite where she stood. He held onto her arm too tightly and slapped her twice across the face.
“I said you ain’t leaving me, Wendy! You just go on back home and do what your ... HEYYyyyyyyyyyy!”
“What, you don’t like the fresh air up here?”
“Wha ... huh ... who are ... how did I ... oh shit, lady, don’t drop me!” Looking down, the man in tow, Ralph, could see he was a good three-hundred feet in the air.
“Listen to me and listen good. Wendy is going to leave you. If you try to stop her, I will come back, only next time, we take the flight a little higher up. But I might get dizzy so far up in the air, I might get clumsy and lose my grip. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure thing, anything you say, just put me back on the ground, please!”
Anna did just that, depositing him, well not exactly on the ground but close to it. She sat him on a tree branch about thirty feet above the middle of the closed park.
Ralph was shaking like a leaf and his pants were wet, but he didn’t move off that limb. That is not until twenty minutes later when the police came by and arrested him for being in violation of a city ordinance.
Anna walked over to Wendy. “You can take it from me he won’t be bothering you any longer. You’re free to do what you want.”
Wendy, whose mouth shut for the first time after seeing Ralph plucked into the air, finally found her voice.
“Thank ... you. Who are you? What are you? You an alien or something?”
Anna laughed. “No. but don’t wonder about me, you just go on and take care of you. I have to go.”
Turning around, she took off at a speed she wasn’t sure anyone could figure out. Once she was back at her car and behind the wheel, she felt excited, and she wasn’t the least bit tired. She could fly!
“Oh, Axion, you gave me something awesome, man, just awesome. If you had lips, I’d kiss you.”
Then she remembered Wendy’s question. Who are you? Anna didn’t know what to call herself. All superhero’s have really cool names. Now, she had to come up with on.
Tomorrow, she would test out some other thoughts running through her pretty little head.
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https://theprose.com/post/219055/birth-of-a-super-hero-the-beginning
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Indonesian translation:
“Will you sell me the chicken or not?”
“I must think on it.”
“What is there to think? I have the rupiah.”
“I think you take chicken for food not to have eggs.”