Chapter 2

On Fifth Avenue

The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Avenues are old and litter infested streets. The buildings there are in disrepair and they reek of gasoline and burnt garbage. There is almost always someone sleeping on the streets' curbs and their alleyways are seldom travelled, except for the occasional thief or homeless person.

These streets use to be home to many different super gangs, not all at the same time though. Nearly every week a different gang was calling this area their "turf" back when times were tougher. Nowadays, the gangs had ether moved on to another part of the city or the groups had split up then left. Some would think that would make the area more hospitable but it only made the place more open to normal criminals. The turmoil that had been caused by the super gangs had left a permanent reputation on the area. This in turn, made many leave their residence or establishment for "safer" parts of the city. The left over buildings then became good places for the poor to reside or for others to hide out in. Thus, this section of the city also became a okay place for Mira to live.

Mira stands hunched over with her hands on her knees. She's breathing heavily as she had to run most of the way to get to here. After getting her breathing under control she stretches herself to relax her muscles. She frowns as she notices how orange the sky is getting. She hadn't thought she had been gone that long. Though, she'd have never gotten there at all if Bullock hadn't got distracted and the Police Officers weren't too busy to notice or stop her.

After one more gulp of air, she starts to walk up the street she had arrived on. She starts to mull over the events of the day and begins to worry because of them. She lost all the change she had received on the streets that day, then she got caught by the police and now she was really late in coming back home. He usually got upset when she failed to get any money and getting caught was the one thing he told her she was never suppose to let happen. He wouldn't be angry about her coming late though. She had been gone for three days once and he didn't even seem to notice. She only worried about being late because she didn't like to be on Fifth Avenue after dark. She tried to put those fears away, she had to focus on getting back to the house right now.

She gingerly walks up the street towards the house; she wants to run but she knows that would draw attention to herself. So, she walks by the homeless man and the bunch of scary looking teenagers while resisting her urge to bolt.

A few minutes later she was at the front of the house. It's a ratty old house with broken windows and an illegible text spray painted across the front wall. She walks through the house as cautiously as she had walked through the streets. There was a good chance that while she was gone, others had moved into the house. After a thorough inspection of the house she deems that no one was there. She''s happy about that for a second until she realises that meant Darrel wasn't there ether.

Mira takes to the streets again, walking back down Fifth Avenue this time. Darrel was a tough guy, more then capable of taking care of himself, but she couldn't help worry about him when it got dark. She doesn't go very far when she sees the group of teenagers she saw from before. Taking a closer look at them now she recognizes them as being friends of Darrel's.

"Have you seen my brother?" she asks the teens as nonchalantly as she could muster.

"Uh, your brother? Let's see, um, oh yeah! He and the mechanics are searching for parts around the other end of the street." The male teenager sitting in the middle of the group says then points towards the direction she came from.

"Oh no, not again." Mira thinks to herself before saying "Okay, thank you." she says before running off in the direction the teen indicated.

She hears laughter coming from the teens as she leaves. People always seemed to find something funny whenever she was not in earshot to hear their joke. It annoyed her but she ignored it.

Reaching the halfway point of the street she remembers that it isn't a good idea to run. She didn't stop running though. If her brother is doing what she thinks he is doing then she has to hurry to stop him.

Mira stands at the end of the street, panting for the third time that day. She frantically looks around her. The end of Fifth Avenue had several alleyways and was cut off by a large length of chain link fence. Upon hearing the sound of clanging tools coming from one of the alleyways she decides to investigate even though she knows what she'll find.

There are about eight different boys crouched around the back of a bright red coloured car that is parked in the alleyway. They are working together to get off all the tires from the car. The front of the car, which Mira is standing at, had it's two wheels already taken off and replaced with blocks. The boys are in the process of getting the back two wheels off.

The boy on look out notices Mira first but doesn't know whether to say anything as she slowly walks around the right side of the car. As she moves, a few of the boys look up at her, but they just go back to work after seeing her except for one who nudges another guy. The nudged teen looks up and furrows his eyebrows at the sight of her.

"Mira, what are you doing here?" the boy says, his voice hushed and annoyed.

"What are you doing?" she whispers back to him, she tried to sound angry but instead she comes off as sounding scared.

"I'm being a good Samaritan and giving this guy free car insurance." he jokes and then goes back to doing his work.

Mira clenches her fists and her face turns red. She angrily whispers back, "Darrel, stop this right now."

"Why should I?" he says while focusing on loosening a bolt.

"Because, you could get in trouble."

"With who? The cops? They never catch us."

Mira knows that's true. She also knows it's probably useless to try and reason with her brother but she had become nervous after getting caught by that cop.

"Well, what about the owner of the car?" she tries to refute.

Darrel rolls his eyes, annoyed at her attempt to change his ways, yet again. He decides to play along, for now.

"Pfft, what's he going to do?" he says without taking his eyes from his work.

Mira knows the answer is 'nothing' so she decides to try from another angle "don't you think he needs those wheels?"

"Everybody needs wheels but not everybody has a license."

Several of the guys chuckle at that. Mira stares down at the car, silently fuming. It was then that she notices that something about the interior of the car isn't normal. She cups her hands on the window and peers in; none of the boys noticing her doing so. It looks like someone had taken out the radio and replaced it with their own weird looking radio. It also looks like they put in an assortment of other buttons, levels and other devices in it that Mira couldn't imagine what they did.

"Snap!" she thought, she pushes herself away from the car as she realises whom it belonged to. "Darrel. This is that guy's car." she whispers in shock.

"Who's car?"

"That vigilante guy's car. The one that's always in the newspapers." Mira couldn't remember the name (mostly because she had trouble reading) but she recognises the car from the pictures.

Darrel now standing in front of her, looks at her with an amused look, "Uh huh, so, let me get this straight. A masked guy who reportedly is a force to be reckoned with, travels in a bright red sedan." he says, smirking as though he just told a funny joke.

He thinks Mira is clearly just making up stuff to keep him from swiping the wheels. It's a pretty feeble excuse, but it doesn't really matter now any how, he says to himself.

"But…" she's about to point out the electronics inside the car but realizes that if she did that it probably wouldn't deter him. It would more likely make him want to break into the car and steal the electronics too.

"Exactly, he wouldn't." Darrel said, misreading her pause, "Now go home already."

He likes watching his sister get all flustered because of him but right now he was tired of her.

"Well, um, but… You, have to stop, because, because, it's the wrong thing to do." she whispered exasperated. She tries one last argument though it isn't very good She's not exactly a great debater but then who is at that age. Getting nervous about the vigilante coming back to get his car isn't helping ether. She couldn't help but dart her head around nervously.

Her remark, in the meantime, made Darrel look at her dumbfounded before he spouts into a stifled laugh.

"Are you serious?" Darrel says after managing to get his laughter under control.

By this point Mira is so angry she almost forgets to whisper, "Yes, I am. You don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you." She wanted to say something like that to Darrel for ages but she could never think of a way to say it that didn't make it sound, corny. She still couldn't make it sound serious but her nerves tended to made her say very childish things.

Darrel was going to laugh again but he doesn't want to make his sister so angry that she starts yelling so he just says, "Mira, you are way too much like a girl scout." He holds out a large wrench towards Mira's hands, which she grabs by instinct, and then Darrel runs off down to the other end of the alleyway.

Mira then realizes that the boys had finished taking the wheels from the car a while ago. Darrel seemed to have stayed behind only to finish the conversation he was having with her. Mira cheeks blush with embarrassment and anger. Embarrassment for not realising it sooner and anger for Darrel leaving her behind. She was going to shout at Darrel for running off on her but then she feels a presence behind her. She whirls around to see a caped individual standing in front of the car.