No Heroes Left Behind (Book 1)

Chapter One: Welcome to Nightshade City

Tall buildings, busy streets, grouchy pedestrians: that is Nightshade City, the crime capitol of the world. Helicopter patrols, police sirens, and evil: what used to be a commonplace routine. Spandex, inhuman powers, heroism: what is currently a commonplace routine.

Nightshade City is a crazy, hectic mess of a city; it always has been, and probably always will be. But it is a place where the unthinkable is thinkable, and the impossible is possible.

For those who are curious, my name is Charlotte Moon. I am a seventeen year old girl living a not so ordinary life in a not so ordinary city. But thats only a part of it, and Charlotte Moon is only half of who I am. By night, or whenever there's danger nearby, I go by Scarlett.

No, I am not in a cheesy night-time theatre production, or in one of those role-playing clubs where you dress up and go play in the park.

That is my hero name, and I am a Superhero.

Any normal city would leave their crime fighting to the police, but Nightshade City is different. In the 1950's, a radioactive spill happened on the coastline, causing about ten percent of the population to have some sort of ramifications. Some died, some developed unknown illnesses, while some gained inhuman abilities.

The part that really baffled scientists, however, was that children were being born with abilities or developing them in their adolescent years, decades after the Great Change occurred.

It goes without saying that a vast majority chose to either hide their abilities, or put them to good use, but there are also many who chose to use their powers for evil. The police were unequipped to deal with it, so that is where we, the heroes, come in.

Let me tell you, the city is full of villains who, when given the chance, would try to take over Nightshade without batting an eyelash.

This means that, sometimes rather than doing homework to keep up with my secret identity known as Charlotte Moon, Scarlett has to go fight crime with other heroes who want to see the world become a better place, or who don't want to see their homes burnt to the ground by evil, cackling, gut wrenchingly vile, shiver inducing bafoons.

I know this may be shocking, but fighting crime and saving the city is not what I typically want to be doing on my Friday night.

But alas, the criminals never stop, which means I can never stop. Especially when I have a bunch of people looking up to me and expecting me to be the hero all the time.

And let me tell you...

...that's a lot of pressure.

~~~~~~~~~

"Charlotte!" a voice yells, rather loudly, startling me out of the deep sleep I was happily enjoying. But it's only at the realization there are muffled, angry footsteps approaching my door that I realize I am in imminent danger, causing my eyelids shoot open in fear.

The psychopath is on the warpath to my room, and I know I'm about to get an earful. I roll over in my bed and check the time, then bite my tongue to refrain from unleashing the sequence of curse words that fight to escape my mouth.

Instead, I let out a loud groan, scrunching my face up in annoyance and shutting my eyes again. It's always the moment where you know you should probably get up that you feel the most tired.

"What?" I mumble as I brush my messy hair out of my face and remove the drool from my cheek with a lazy swipe of my hand.

The stomping moves closer, the door swings open and hits the wall, and the footsteps move further into my room, stopping momentarily to most likely look over my half-dead body in disappointment.