Free First Superhero 1: The Second Super by Logan Rutherford

her and then pulled the suit on over my clothes. I put the suit on so fast Mom and Dad couldn’t even see me do it. To them, I was their son one second, and someone in a super suit the next.
    “Keep an eye on the news,” I told them as I walked to the front door.
    “Don’t worry, we’ll be glued to our seats cheering you on from here,” Dad said.
    I smiled at them and then walked out the door. I stood on the front lawn and took a deep breath. It’s showtime, I thought to myself, before launching into the air and beginning my flight to Ebon.
    It took only a few seconds to reach Ebon, but that’s all it took to shift my focus away from my parents and on to finding Richter.
    Ebon isn’t a very large city, so it took only two quick scans before I saw Richter hovering a few hundred feet over downtown. He was a couple of miles away, but with my superhearing mixed with him amplifying his voice, it wasn’t hard to hear what he was saying at all.
    “…you’re out there, come face me. I will tear this city apart if I have to in order to find you. And if you’re not here, I will tear another, and another, and another. I’ll tear this whole damn world apart if I have to.”
    Well, you’re not going to have to, I thought to myself. I focused in on Richter and launched myself right at him, fists at the ready.
    I flew as fast as I could, which was a huge mistake. There was a loud sonic boom as I broke the sound barrier, which gave myself away to Richter. Given his own super-speed and reflexes, he was able to duck down. As I flew over him, he reached up and grabbed my suit, and, using my momentum against me, he shifted my course and sent me spiraling straight toward the ground.
    I threw on the brakes as hard as I could, but I didn’t have much room to stop. I stopped myself just inches from a cameraman, who had his giant camera pointing directly at my face. I was so thankful for my suit and glowing eyes, because if it wasn’t for them, my bare face would’ve been filling the screens of televisions and computers around the world.
    I turned around just in time to see Richter barreling down at me, going full speed. Using my speed and reflexes, I kicked him right in the jaw once he got in range. This knocked him off course, so instead of him crashing into me and, subsequently, the camera crew behind me, he went flying through a ten-story building that was in the middle of construction. Part of the building collapsed, sending dirt flying everywhere and dust billowing into the street.
    “Shit!” I shouted, angry with myself. I might have just saved the camera crew, but sending Richter through a building wasn’t exactly the safest thing ever. I hoped that the construction crew had the day off, or were in the side of the building that didn’t collapse.
    Richter used that distraction to his advantage. It felt as if I’d been hit by a freight train, as Richter barreled into me as fast as he could, and he wasn’t stopping. I was in too much shock and pain to fight back as the world flew by around me at Mach speeds. Richter pulled me back and then threw me down into a mountain. A deafening boom shot through the air as the Earth exploded around me. The side of the mountain had been obliterated by my impact, and I was lying at the bottom of a giant hole I’d punched into the Earth.
    I screamed in pain as I felt my bones popping back into place and fusing back together. Bones that had been obliterated and turned to dust regrew in the matter of seconds. I was alive, but just barely. My body repaired itself just enough to keep it that way, but given the blood I was coughing up and the incredible amount of pain I was in, it’d be a while before I was fully recovered.
    The hole I was in was filled with dust, but the sides were perfectly round and smooth, as if someone had taken a hole-puncher and punched a perfect hole into the ground. I looked up, and I could barely see a pinhole of light far, far away. That tiny pinhole was