So Not a Hero Read Free Page B

ripped the door off the car behind him and spun around to fling it into Behemoth’s face. Bone crunched and blood splattered as the big guy flew backwards and slid across the asphalt. His regeneration power would keep him from being down long, but in the meantime, the blue-clad hero was vaulting over the hood of the car after the Twins.
    When I turned my attention back to Nite-Star, he pointed at me and raised his hand over his head. Vertigo slammed into my stomach as I was ripped from gravity’s embrace and held thirty feet above the ground. He laughed and turned around towards the bus stop before throwing me back across the street.
    I tucked into a ball as I hit the bench I’d been sharing with the lady not ten minutes earlier. The exploding car had scorched some of the boards but it had otherwise remained intact. Until I landed on it, that is. The seat splintered and shattered, as did the concrete beneath. I lay there looking up at that clear blue sky again. This day was going to crap faster than I’d have believed possible.
    “Hey, you okay?”
    I rolled over and pushed myself to my feet. One of the teens was standing nearby, looking at me with a little less shock than he’d been wearing the last time I’d seen him. A second later, his friend popped up as well. Right behind him, the grandmother. What the hell? Doesn’t anyone listen to good advice anymore?
    “What the hell are you still doing here? You guys were supposed to get her someplace safe.”
    The taller of the two boys looked at his friend and then back to me. “Uh, actually you told us to wait here for the police and stuff. But no one’s come.” His eyes dropped from mine for a second and the brainless expression on his face grew into a happy smile. I glanced over to see his friend wearing the same expression. They both looked like they’d just stumbled onto a treasure chest full of gold.
    Or … adult magazines.
    I looked down to see that my crashing through the sharp wooden slats had done absolutely no damage to my flesh, but it’d ripped the hell out of my tank. The underside of one breast poked out through a tear on the side and the shoulder strap on the other side was sliced clean through. I was about thirty seconds away from a major wardrobe malfunction.
    “Really guys? I’m trying to keep your sorry asses from getting squished or blown up and all you can do is put a deposit in the spank ba–” My complaint was interrupted by a U.S. Postal Service mailbox slamming into my side like a freight train and knocking me away from the three civilians.
    I tumbled ass over teakettle down the sidewalk and came to a stop next to a streetlight. I shook my head and looked across the street as Nite-Star strolled towards me as if taking a leisurely tour of an art gallery.
    “You really should pay more attention to what’s going on around you. I put up with a lot of your smart-mouthed crap when you and the Doc were all tight. I mean, everyone wanted to bust your ass, but nobody was dumb enough to go against your boyfriend. But now that you’re not his squeeze anymore, I think it’s time for a reckoning.”
    “Someone’s been reading their thesaurus,” I said as I tried to get up.
    He gestured again, and the red, white, and blue steel rectangle pounded on me from above. “No, I ain’t done with your skinny ass by a long shot.” The mailbox came down three more times, each blow driving me a little deeper into the crater in the sidewalk. “Maybe when I’ve had enough fun kicking your ass, I’ll hand you over to some friends of mine to play with. I think they have a thing for Half-Jap-Poon.”
    He laughed and rammed me with the mailbox again. A piece of the dented letter holder snagged on my pants and ripped them up one leg from knee to hip. My brother had given me those pants as a birthday gift before he died. Picked them out by himself and bought them with his own allowance. My hands curled into tightly bound fists.
    Now, I was really