Chapter 3

In the alleyway

There are many different heroes in this world. Some of them have powers, some of them do not. Some of them wear bright flashy costumes, some of them wear a uniform and others only wear normal clothing (except maybe during Halloween).

The man in front of the red sedan is a rare kind that had no powers and yet is called a superhero. A vigilante who normally fights those without powers but can still put up a fight against those with them. Some call him a menace, thinking that if he should fight crime at all it should be as a cop. His supporters claim that he is better then the cops and they wish for him to continue his efforts without a badge. Some claim that without him, the whole world would still be under tyrannical rule. While again, others say that the world would have been fine with or without him. Nevertheless, he has always fought for what he believes is right, whatever that might be.

The orange glow of the sky is proceeding to turn to a dark shade of blue. Mira stands there, with her mouth gaping, staring at the hero that stares back at her. At least, she thinks he is staring at her. It's hard to tell with the mask shrouding his face. Mira had never seen a superhero before and was so over come with shock that she could do nothing but stare. The minutes ticked by as neither one moves.

After a full three minutes had past the man sighs. He takes out a small device and directs it at the car. When he presses a small button the lights on the car's lights flash. After that he walks over to the side of the car, opens the door and starts poking around. He checks the devices within, probably checking to see whether anything was stolen from inside.

Mira finally gets a hold over her senses and thinks that she should say something. Although, she's not sure what to say. She can't even remember what the superhero's name is. She tries to think back to the name that the newspapers called him.

"R- Re- Red Hood-d?" she sputters her sudden recollection aloud.

"What gave me away?" he says while still searching through the car.

He finishes looking through the car shortly after. With another sigh he looks back to Mira. Again, it is hard for Mira to tell his expression or even if he is looking at her through the red dome that covers his head. She looks down to avoid his gaze, if he is giving one, and realises she is still holding the lug wrench that her brother handed her.

She looks up and quickly says, "I didn't do it."

She drops the lug wrench to the ground to hold her hands up. The tool just barely misses hitting her feet. Red Hood continues to stand there, not saying anything. Mira is nervous by his silence and continues.

"It was, was…" she starts to say, shakily pointing behind her, but then she remembers that it was wrong to be a snitch, "um, okay, it was me but I'll never do it again, I promise." She blurts out with her face getting pale and her hands curling up below her face.

Red Hood slowly walks towards her. Mira closes her eyes and covers her face and head. She started to imagine the beating she would get. She didn't know much about superheroes but she knew what they did to the villains.

When a few minutes past and nothing happened, she moves one of her arms out of the way to peek at the red caped man. She saw that Red Hood with a handkerchief in his palm. He holds it out to her and she slowly takes it from him. She wonders what it is for but then she notices that her face is wet. Apparently, she started to cry without realising it. She uses the handkerchief and her hands to wipe away her tears as fast as she can. One rule she had learned in her short life was that you should you never cry in front of other people, ever. After she is done she hands the handkerchief back to Red Hood while looking down again. He says nothing as he takes it back from her.

"I'm not going to do anything to you, you know that right?" he finally says. Mira looks up at him.

"What?" the little girl asks weakly.

"I'll let you off this one time, just don't go around blowing up any more banks." he says it in a pseudo serious voice while wagging his finger at her. She just stares at him with confused eyes. "No, seriously, I'm not going to do anything to you. You can go." he politely says to her.

At those words, Mira starts to slowly walk backwards. After she walking a few paces back she turns around and runs all the way to other the end of the alleyway.

Mira emerges onto Sixth Avenue panting, for the forth time that day, and sweating. She looks back down the alleyway. Despite the lessening sunlight, she can still see Red Hood with his car at the other end of the alley. The street lights start to turn on as she looks back. She was worried for a moment that Red Hood was just messing with her and wanted to chase her down the alleyway for fun. Mira is so relieved that he was honest and she could go. She's a little embarrassed at how worked up she got but nobody saw it any how so it's fine. She was about to cheerfully walk down Sixth Avenue and go to the house when she wonders about something.

Maybe she should go back. It's not everyday that a superhero is so close by. Maybe she could ask if he is willing to help her out. Superheroes are rich, right? On the other hand, he might not take too kindly to a little girl pestering him. In the end it has to be a battle between her child-like curiosity and her street smart instincts. Her curiosity tells her she should go investigate but her instincts tell her, well actually, her instincts told her to go investigate as well. It probably has something do with her not wanting to walk down a bad neighbourhood, at night, alone. At least near a vigilante she'd be slightly safer, she thinks.

Following her curiosity's encouragement (and her instinct's), Mira starts to walk up to the dead end of Sixth Avenue which is blocked off by the same chain link fence that Fifth Avenue is blocked off by. There, she heads back to Fifth Avenue by going through the little bit of space there is between the buildings and the fence. Her thinking is that it would be better if she went to talk to Red Hood on the street rather then in a alleyway.

Very soon she finds her self back on Fifth Avenue. She looks down the road and realise that a small Oldsmobile is parked by the curb that wasn't there before. Mira wonders when that pulled up. She hadn't been gone that long had she. Though, the building she just walked around was pretty big and it was slow moving coming back as she had to side step through the small gap. She figures it doesn't matter that is until she notices that two people are moving a couple of wheels from the back seat of the car. Peaking from behind the wall of the building she could see there faces very clearly. It didn't help that they wore sun glasses and baseball caps.

Mira wants to get a better look at the guys that are there. She starts to think that maybe Red Hood has some sort of special mechanics. She starts wondering how that would work, how does he pay them, do they know his idenity, do they know that wearing sun glasses at night looks very suspicious and many more questions. She figures the only way she's going to learn more is if she gets closer.

She quickly darts behind the car, hoping that they didn't see her. She peeks through the windows to see that Red Hood and the other two people are talking in a hushed manner as all three of them set to replace the wheels. She could just barely make out what they were saying to each other.

"I'll be sure to install some when we get back." one of the men can be heard saying. He sounds rather irritated.

"Yeah, then you could install one for the hood ornament." Red Hood remarks. Mira is surprised to find that Red Hood sounds like he thinks the situation is droll. He's not even finding it inconvenient.

The other man seemed to interrupt the first's reply with, "Okay, that's the last one."

Mira is bother shocked and scared that they did that so quickly. They already made are going back to the car. Now with them looking in her direction there isn't any way she can get out of there without them spotting her. One of the two men threw the tools they were using into the back seat, they were quietly chatting with each other as the one man opened the passenger side's door. She isn't listening to what they are saying, she is too concerned about the other man walking over to the driver seat. She panics, pulls open the back seat door and jumps in closing the door as the man at the passenger side closes his. Luckily for Mira, both men were too preoccupied talking to each other to notice her.

Mira is on the floor of the back seat praying that the driver doesn't spot her as he looks behind him. The car starts to move, it does a u-turn, and now is being driven away from the dead end. The little girl covers her mouth with her hands as she lets out a little whimper.