The Adventures of Nitara's Cell Phone, and Dropkicking 101

Summary: Diana and Nitara beat the traffic systems of the streets of Queens, and run into their first common crime scene.

The next week was full of Nitara itching me to go back in public, somehow, anyhow, as the newly-cemented Nightmare. I didn't want to tell her, but it was the last thing on my mind. Madison has been uneasy, ever since that night. I keep thinking- what if she knew it was me? And then I remember that would be nearly impossible, unless she was that detective-person we saw. No one except Nitara has any lead that that would have been us. Well, the lady might have seen our faces, and the Vulture, but I didn't know them and they didn't know me.

The next Thursday night, Nitara had met me at the Queens Diner early- I was off at seven tonight, after starting right after school, which was odd. Usually Marty kept me later, because he and the cook were the only others on.

"Did you call Madison this time?" Nitara asked me on our way out, referring to the improv night I spent at her house.

"Yes. I told her two days ago, and I wrote it on the fridge. If that doesn't give her the hint, I don't know what will."

"If she's a detective, she would find out pretty easily," Nitara said.

I scowled. "She's not a detective. How many times do I have to say that?"

Nitara shrugged. "More than you already have. I still think it was her."

Nitara knew I wasn't fond of talking about that night. But Nitara being Nitara, she spoke about it anyway. I quickly turned away my white work gloves for my burgundy ones, that I had been getting good use of since I bought them. "I just can't stop thinking about it. Every time, I worry someone will find us, find out about me, and... I dunno. I don't want to wind up a lab rat."

"Don't sweat it," Nitara said, jaywalking to the wrong side of the street. I followed her, not because I agreed with jaywalking, but because I craved assurance. "We don't know who Vulture is, and he doesn't know us. And we've never even met that lady before. They're the only ones we've got to remotely worry about being on our trail."

I nodded. "I guess you're r..."

My mind was on rewind of the entire night. I was perplexed that I never realised this before. "God, we're so stupid!"

A lady passing by us on the sidewalk gave me a strange look, before adjusting her sunglasses and walking away. I grabbed Nitara's wrist. "Peter! We ran into him! Covered in blood! It's so obvious!"

Nitara was drained from words. "He... maybe he doesn't watch the news?"

I stared at her in disbelief in the middle of the sidewalk. "Only people who live under a rock in Queens haven't heard about it by now!"

Nitara pulled me along the street. "It's not like he mentioned it in class. If he was smart enough to connect us and that, we'd be the first people he'd ask. I'm sure."

I stared at Nitara. "Are you?"

"No."

"Give him credit," I said. "It doesn't take a genius to realise someone covered in blood and someone who beat up a villain are the same person."

What I was feeling before, about Madison, Vulture, or the woman finding out, was insignificant compared to the astronomical amount of stress pinning me down after realising we ran into Peter. "We should bring it up to him," I suggested, trying to find a way to break the chain. "He would never suspect us if we acted clueless like everybody else at school."

"We'll make up a story," Nitara said, adding on to my plan. "We'll say... you got your period, or something, and-"

"I said, give the boy some credit," I told Nitara. "I'm sure he knows how periods actually work."

Nitara shrugged. "Some guys don't."

We got to Nitara's apartment (by using purely the sidewalks) in good time, and I gave her father a nod when we left the kitchen for her room. Even though Nitara was at my house when he didn't know where she was, he only blamed Nitara. Which I felt bad for, of course, but I was also thankful, because Madison's wrath was enough to handle on its own.

Nitara's bedroom was warm and welcoming as I face planted into her canvas bed. Her salt lamp was the only source of light in the room, but it emitted a warm feeling. I didn't know whether those things worked or not- but in the events of the last week, It would take an awful lot to actually surprise me ever again.

"We could go out tonight," Nitara suggested, opening her curtains to unveil the limitless city streets. "Go find some more ass to kick."

"As much as I like kicking ass," I countered, "I'm not risking being seen by anyone. Remember? Lab rat? I don't want that."

Nitara opened her dresser drawers, restlessly shuffling through her clothes. "You're not going to go out there without an outfit, idiot. But don't worry- because what are the odds that your best friend is a practising seamstress?"

With that, Nitara ripped out some dark fabric from her top drawer. "I have a bunch of these. It's breathable, so it can go over your face. And you can wrap it around and under your hair. Curls don't matter. Every hero has a mask, Diana."

I slipped off the bed and held the material in my hands. Then, without thinking how, I arranged it over my head. It was long, and pitch black- I wrapped it under my nape, then around my crown. I was still able to let some hair drift over the top. But as I could see in Nitara's giant mirror, my face- except for my eyes- was hidden.

"I look like a burglar," I complained, although my words came out seamlessly, not at all muffled by the thin mask.

"D! Wait," Nitara said suddenly, going through her drawer again. "I have these gloves. They're fingerless, and thin but they'll do the job, if you want."

Not a moment later Nitara threw two gloves at me. Hesitantly, I slid them on while taking off my burgundy ones. These were lacy and sheer, and some purple pulsed through my fingertips, just wisping out of the tips of the fabric.

"Your leggings are good," Nitara said. The leggings I was wearing right now were new, thanks to Madison's pay raise. "I hope you aren't attached to them or anything. They might get ruined out there."

I felt bad, but I pushed the feeling to the back of my mind. "Forget about the leggings. We're seriously doing this? Going out there?"

Nitara whipped out a long sleeve black top from her drawer, and tossed it at me. "You bet. Last week, I thought you were nuts for helping that woman. But you... I don't know. It came so naturally to you. Helping people."

And if we were lucky, I thought, we would run into Vulture again. This time I knew what, exactly, I would be getting into. "I guess this would be good practise."

Nitara perked up. "For what?"

I swapped shirts that I was wearing into the stretchy black one Nitara passed me- the sleeves had a long vertical stripe with laces that I struggled to tie with the gloves, but managed. "Just for... getting used to it. What I can do. I still haven't really tried. It hurts."

Now Nitara was on the bed with me. "What do you mean, it hurts? You shouldn't be doing anything if it hurts- why didn't you mention it before?"

"It wasn't a big deal," I said. "And it's weird. It only, like, aches, that's all, when I'm not using them. The trails. Whatever. It's like it's building up inside me and wants out."

There. I just spit out all of my vulnerability at Nitara's feet. And I didn't feel any better about myself.

"Then let it out," Nitara said, finally passing me a pair of black Nikes.

Once I slipped on the shoes, I was dressed in all black. It really wasn't that great of a look, but it would hide me where I needed to hide.

"I hope it'll do before I can whip up something better," Nitara said, throwing on a navy blue Islanders baseball cap and another navy hoodie. "Where to?"

"Why are we on the roof again?"

The roof of Nitara's apartment was perfectly accessible- plus, I could see my apartment a couple blocks down. The door was never used, so no one would come up here. If we stayed away from the edge, we wouldn't be seen from below. I had shoved a brick in between the door and the frame to ensure we didn't get locked out.

"Look at all the space," I explained, twirling in a circle with my arms out. A cool wind pressed against my cheeks, and the cold night didn't phase me at all. "It's perfect up here. I want to warm up."

The clouds were splattered with pink and orange hues from the sun setting. It was just past eight- we spent a lot of time messing around in Nitara's room- and as summer left us, the sky got darker a lot quicker.

I sat crossed legged on the ground. I didn't take off the mask. It was, surprisingly, still breathable. I took off my gloves, and put them in the pocket of my pants, with the zipper done up tight. I tried to remember what I had done last week to trigger my attack.

The lady on the news said it was from my... back?

Made sense. That was where I got zapped.

I closed my eyes. Nitara mentioned something, but the wind blew her words away from my ears. My spine was bleeding violet. All I needed to do was call it back out.

I felt it happen gradually this time. I felt like an outlet in reverse. I could hear the low sparking of the trail from behind me.

And then there were more.

"This is so weird," I said, keeping my eyes closed. "I feel like a spider."

"You look like an octopus," Nitara said, and I opened my eyes to find hers nearly bulging out of her head. I couldn't see behind me, but I was surrounded by two, four, six brilliant purple trails of raw energy. It was like when the Vulture has used his gun, but steady streams of several feet of it came from me. I was the gun. I was the cloud, and I had lightning going every which way.

One on my left caught my eye. I tried to move it, like I would any other limb, and it worked. Up, down, side to side- I tried to pull it back over to me and it got shorter. Then longer again. Then two at once. All three on the left, all three on the right.

Nitara was wonderstruck.

"I think you're ready," she said, staring at the trails.

I felt so backwards, but in the right place at the same time. I was hit with this. It was supposed to kill me, right? And now I was using it.

I would be using it against Vulture.

"I want to try using them," I protested. I needed a feel for every aspect here, before I jumped into the city.

Nitara shrugged. "Try the door handle."

I willed a trail to swiftly wrap around the door handle. All I had to do was open the door. Piece of cake.

I pulled back, and the trail did too- but not without slicing the door handle in half.

"Shit!" Nitara yelped. "What are those? Blades?"

I walked over to the door and made sure the brick was still in place. "You would think."

Nitara was staring at the half of the silver door handle on the on the ground. "You just cut through metal. I think you're ready."

"Fine," I said, walking to the edge of the roof, and making sure my mask was in place. "But it's your fault if I accidentally slice you in half."

"I-"

"Kidding," I reassured Nitara. If we went down a few levels on the fire escape, we would be able to jump to the next roof's building.

It was important to stay near the ground, so that I could jump if needed, but I wanted to have a good view of the city around us. Seeing the tops of all the buildings around me was a totally different perspective than normal. I jumped onto the highest metal grate of the fire escape and landed with a clang, hopefully not alerting the people in that apartment. It was level with the next roof, which was a good seven foot jump.

I tried not to look down at the pavement six stories below.

There wasn't much room for a running start, but I figured I could put the arch of my foot against the edge of the platform for a powerful jump. If I stumbled, and didn't make it, I could push against the side of the brick wall and try to grab the fire escape rails on my way down. If that didn't work, I could-

"Whoo!" Nitara yelped, darting past me and landing clean on the next roof with a roll. I stared at her blankly, trying to comprehend that she didn't even stop to think about jumping.

Shaking my head, I took off after her. I obviously needed to take notes.

I was in the air for what felt like a whole minute, but was only seconds as I flew across the alley and landed abruptly on my feet and one hand, a good twelve inches from the edge of the roof. That did it. One building down, a bunch more to go.

Nitara scrambled onto her feet, looking slightly dazed but full of adrenaline. For a moment, I forgot we were in the city, and all I could see were the empty tops of roofs ahead of me and their surfaces being illuminated by the setting sun. This time, with confidence, I took off running to hop to the next roof. I could feel Nitara on my heels and knew I didn't have to look behind me to know she was there. Up here, it was windier, and my hair blew wildly in the unrestrained gale.

Nothing was real. The only sound battling the whips of the wind in my ears was the solid slapping of the loose soles of my shoes on the concrete roofs. My knees absorbed every shock of impact that jolted through my feet, and I didn't stop until nearly jumping off a building at the end of the street before realising I had reached the end of the line.

I skidded to a hasty stop, and flung my arms out beside me, in case Nitara kept running- but I heard her slow her pace when she saw me stop. The next rooftop was across the intersection, and on the next block, the stories of each building fluctuated with each.

"Well," Nitara said, her voice trembling after running half a block in the sky. "This was anticlimactic."

I scanned the road in front of me. Boldness sprouted from somewhere inside me the moment I jumped the first roof, and it only festered more when I stopped. My blood was pumping more than I was moving, and I had to run, I had to take off.

My eyes landed on a wrought iron pole on the building that would continue my adventure. It looked weak, like it was meant to hold flowers at one point but was evidently abandoned. Its location wasn't the best, considering the Sun didn't shine over it, with the exception of noon hour when its rays were all over the city. Then again, thanks to the tall buildings, it was hard to start a garden anywhere here in Queens.

The mask covering my face except for my eyes made me feel less like a criminal and more like a hero as my feet took off from the building. My hair flew around me, being whipped around in the wind, and I could hardly register the worried call of Nitara as I left the rooftop and soared over the intersection. Gravity wasn't on my side, and I could feel myself falling , but I extended a trail in midair to wrap around the wrought iron and hoped this wouldn't be a repeat of last time where it sliced clean through.

I tried to focus on that not happening again as I kept my form, reaching in the direction of the trail. I heard a car beneath me skid to a stop, but I didn't take my gaze from my target. The crackling violet wisp obeyed me like a lasso as it knotted around the iron, allowing me to swing from it like a tree branch. It propelled me enough to swing above the building's roof, and I veered myself to the right, landing on the new roof with a hard thump.

After regaining my footing, I turned and saw Nitara still stranded on the former building, waving her arms at me like I was a maniac. Maybe I was crazy to try using my trails as a lasso in a risky situation, but it had worked, hadn't it?

I saluted to Nitara, because I doubted she could hear me if I yelled across the intersection, but it was only a second before I felt my phone ringing in my pocket. Kind of exasperated, I took it out and answered Nitara's call.

"Are you insane?"

"No," I replied. "Just crazy."

"What if you fell into the street? That car down there would've recorded your death. Your only legacy would be a bloodstain on the pavement. We didn't even know if your electric rope things would work or not."

"Trails," I corrected.

"I don't care!" Nitara was waving her hands across the road to the sound of her petrified voice. "You could've died!"

"I didn't, though. Trust me. It just felt safe, so I did it. Whatever the hell these trails are, I trust them."

"With your life? Remember where they came from, Diana. From a murderous metal bird. You're trusting the creation of Vulture."

I shrugged, knowing Nitara could see even small actions from her rooftop. "I don't think he made this. The gun, sure, but... I don't know. This just feels so foreign, it couldn't have been done by him. It's not..." human. "I don't know."

Nitara huffed. "Whatever it is, it's dangerous. You need to be more careful."

"Says the girl who just flew across a block of rooftops with me." I bit my cheek. Nitara wasn't going to like what I had to say next. "I'm going to keep going."

"Wait," she pleaded. "I'll come over there. Or... or follow you on the street or something. You can play Tarzan or whatever across the intersections, and I'll run or something."

"Just meet me somewhere." I scanned the roads below me, going on for blocks. "I'm going over to Metropolian Avenue. It'll be smooth sailing across the rooftops from there. All the buildings are squished together. I'll go past the school, then come back in a circle around the diner. Sound good?"

Nitara sputtered on her end of the line. "No! How am I going to follow you?"

"I'll be at the school in twenty minutes, tops. You can take a cab or something. I don't know." Figure it out. "I'll see you then."

Without waiting for a response or wondering how Nitara was going to get off the roof, because the last building's fire escape was at least two stories from the roof, I hung up the phone so I could slide it somewhere safe while I jumped. It wasn't as easy as the movies made it, but every time I used a trail, it gave me an astronomical boost.

Getting tired of running and jumping didn't even occur to me, because whenever I did use a trail, it was like my energy bar was reset. I ended up reaching the school in fifteen minutes, not twenty, a pretty good feat considering I had to keep coming up with creative ways to jump intersections with my trails. Traffic lights, for one, were my new best friend.

Nitara would most likely show up out back, since the back gate was on the road she'd be coming down and the school never locked it like they were supposed to. The sky was growing an increasingly dark shade of indigo, which had me feeling even more out of place. I was standing on the roof of my school, unrecognisable, and it was almost nightfall.

I sighed, pacing across the roof, regretting my decision already. As if I didn't spend enough time here already. Additionally, there were definitely a bunch of cars that weren't pleased at me swooping across intersections in front of them. Maybe it was okay when someone like Spider-Man did it, but who was I compared to him? A disturbance to most.

I watched the last of the sun dip below the edge of Manhattan as a fence rattling stunned me like maracas to my ears. I spun around and looked at the back gate of the field, expecting Nitara to angrily slip in and give me a piece of her mind from the ground, but instead witnessed a boy about my age get absolutely pummeled into the metal by three others towering over him.

I didn't recognise the boy, but he could have been a freshman. Or, in someone like Harry's case, a transfer. Maybe even an exchange student. I glanced over at him again. It didn't matter- he was getting the living shit beat out of him.

In a moment of stupidity, I looked around for help and slapped my hand against my waist, grasping the shape of my phone to call for help before stopping. I looked over at the fight escalating at the gate. It was three against one, it seemed morally unjustified, and here I was, a proposed hero, watching it all go down from afar.

If there was anything I learned from my father dying in the Battle of New York, it was that ignorant heroes were just as big as a threat as the enemy. I was here to do better. To think of the little guy.

I activated my trails, which felt like breaking through a dam, and made a running leap off the building and towards the line of trees on the edge of school property. I could not miss. Right when I was flying at top speed through the air, I lassoed a trail to the biggest branch and swung.

It was like the wrought iron basket, but as soon as I propelled myself back through the air, I had to do it again and swing from the next tree. The second landing wasn't as synchronized, but I still let go at the perfect time to be sent foot first into the back of the tallest aggressor's head. I bounced back and flipped as he was sent into the grass, and although ungracefully, I managed to land with as much balance and pose as a stork. The aggressors looked bewildered, and appeared not to have seen me come from nowhere.

The boy, a blonde who did look familiar now that I was closer, scrambled from the ground and behind me. His hair was ruffled, his nose was bleeding, but other than that, he looked fine.

The three guys definitely didn't go to Midtown. They were all well above six feet, and had beards. Like, beards. I almost wanted to back away when I remembered that I had the upper hand. The two I hadn't gotten the chance to beat up were looming over me, intimidating and all, but the third that I dropkicked was curled on the ground in a ball clenching his head in his hands. Not so intimidating.

"Gentlemen," I addressed, hardly out of breath. "This hardly seems like a fair fight."

The tallest one cracked his knuckles. "Move it, bitch. This ain't your fight."

I arched an eyebrow, which was one of my only features that showed through the mask. "Is it not? Because two against two seems a lot better to me."

"Don't make us hit a girl," the second one said, looking down upon me as he moved closer. I wasn't going to lie- the way he towered over be brought the intimidation levels to a spike, but I held my ground.

"Don't worry," I breathed, but he was so close I knew he could hear my hollow voice, even through my mask. "I won't."

At that moment, I took the opportunity to activate my trails once again, and they only took a split second to zap to life and spread behind me like wings. I counted the presence of six- the low hum they made brought me to life, and when I brought them out it felt like I had triggered an outlet of power that was boiling inside of me with nowhere to go. This time, with grace, I wrapped two trails around the man, once, then twice.

It was different than the door on Nitara's roof. I didn't slice through the guy. Instead, I harnessed the wild rushing energy that travelled through the stems, that were already sparking purple in their electric grasp, and I sent the energy through them like a circuit.

I didn't know how, but this was different from when Vulture had shot the man and I with his gun. I controlled the energy output, not a trigger, and the man's face only briefly twisted between fear and pain (what I guessed wasn't even the half of what I had felt in the alley) before his eyes drifted shut and he fell unconscious to the grass as I released the trails.

At this point, his friend was terrified and backing away. "Mark?" He turned his attention to me. "You psycho bitch! Look what you- Mark! He's dead, isn't he?"

Mark's friend didn't break eye contact with me while he broke out his phone. "You fucking alien," he shouted. "Stay back, or I'll call the cops, and-"

I snorted. "And what? Confess to beating the shit out of some kid? I'll have you know, Mark here isn't dead," I sneered. "And I'm not from another planet. I'm just here to stop freaks like you."

And with that, I sent another surge of electricity through a couple trails, and shocked Mark's buddy. The remaining attacker was on the ground, still in a ball… crying. I nearly laughed. I hadn't kicked him too hard.

Now I pulled out my phone, and speed-dialled Nitara, who picked up in a nanosecond.

"You're nuts," she said, her voice shaking like she was running. "You're crazy. I love you. You annihilated that guy. Can I hire you as a bodyguard?"

My brow furrowed. How did Nitara know what happened? "Where are-"

I heard feet thumping on the grass, and I turned to look behind the blond kid to see Nitara running this way halfway across the field a couple hundred metres away. She had sweat glistening on her cheeks, and I almost felt bad knowing she had most likely been running for the past twenty minutes. I had never even seen Nitara run to school when we were late, but here she was, giving it her all.

When she reached us, she was out of breath, and the kid looked at her even weirder than he had been looking at me, if that was even possible. After taking a minute with her hands on her knees, Nitara looked up at me through her dark sunglasses and gasped, "Cops?"

"Be my guest."

Nitara, still holding her phone, dialled the police and stood a bit to the side. "Hi," she said, in shallow breaths. "I… I'm at Midtown High, and there was just a- a bad thing, I don't really know- there were these three guys beating up someone. No, he's okay, but I don't know about the other guys. Did I intervene?... hell no. It was Nightmare. I saw it all."

A pause came from Nitara. I could hear the man on the other end asking who Nightmare was.

"The girl on the news," she wheezed, kneeling over for what I assumed was a mad cramp. "How do I know her name? Uh, I… got here in time to ask?"

I turned to the kid while Nitara ranted to emergency services. "Are you okay? What was this all about?"

The blond spoke- he had a light, sunny voice. "I-I think they mentioned something about my mom," he said, his voice trembling still as he tried stemming the blood flow of his nose with his shirt. "My mom is a manager at OSCORP. She just laid a bunch of people off, and I think- they were talking about the one guy's brother. I don't know them, I just…"

I could begin to hear sirens wail, and that told me it was time to go. "The cops are coming," I told him, glancing at the road over my shoulder. "I'm high tailing it out of here. And if anyone asks, my name-"

A cop car swirled around the corner and stopped outside the fence gate, and at the same time a man and woman hopped out and started to jog over.

"-is Nightmare," I finished. "Good luck, kid." I started to grab Nitara's wrist as she hastily cut the man off and hung up the phone.

I had already fastened a tight grip around Nitara with a trail when I heard the kid yell, "We're practically the same age!"

"No we're not!" I shouted, and leapt off the ground without looking back. I left the field the way I came, by flying into the trees, and ignored the authorities yelling as I took Nitara, who was screaming, back onto the roof of Midtown High and across the street "Hang on!"

Nitara screamed.

I jumped across an intersection, with Nitara gripping my waist as a lifeline even though I had her perfectly content with my singular trail I had out, and soon shot out another to make it to the roof of the next building. We roof-hopped the way we came, and Nitara's voice was pretty worn out by the time we reached her apartment again.

"Shit," was all she could say. "Shit. Shit."

"Well," I commented, ignoring her and heading for the brick in the window. "That was productive."

"No," Nitara said. "I mean, shit. I used my cell phone to call the cops. They're probably tracing me this very minute. Do you think VPN's block caller identification? Because Dad installed one, but I have no idea how they work, and what if the cops come, what am I going to say to Dad-"

"Hey," I said, putting my arm around Nitara. "No. You'll be fine. The last thing the cops have time for is figuring out how to trace your call. If they really want to find me, they'll be able to try the next time I see them."

"I'm getting a new phone next month," Nitara said. "I could-throw this in a lake or something."

I frowned. "That's litter."

"Fuck, Diana, I don't know! I'm freaking out! What if they interrogate me to find out who you are? I'm pretty sure that, without credibility, being a superhero is illegal. Ever heard of the Sokovia Accords? Yeah, you'd be fucked."

"Okay," I said, trying to think. "Well, what if you turned on airplane mode? Or like, cleared your data or something?"

Nitara only took a second to press the home button. "There. Done."

I stared at her. Nitara stared back.

Then, she chucked her cell phone onto the cement roof of the complex, and her phone shattered into a zillion little pieces. "Dude!"

Nitara took a deep breath. "I'm okay."

Then, she walked through the apartment door, kicking the brick out of the way and holding it open long enough for me to follow behind. Once we were down the hall and it slammed shut behind us, I said, "are you?"

Nitara nodded. "I think I'll survive without a phone. I might buy a burner to make calls with later this week." She studied me, head to toe. "You mind if I do my streaks on your phone for a while?"

I groaned. "Fine. That's so stupid."

Nitara huffed. "Okay, enjoy making your own nine-one-one calls. Do you even know how stressed out it is, talking to those guys-"

I elbowed Nitara. "You don't mind. You're my sidekick. Hey, that reminds me. We need to think you up a name. How about, Islander Fan number one? Or the twenty-minute-runner? Or the twenty-minute-shouter? Or-"

Nitara rubbed her fist in my hair, making the mask all but fall off my face as I nearly fell down from laughing so hard. "I should probably call Madison," I said after calming down. "Duty calls. She'll have an aneurism if I don't let her know I didn't die while staying at your house."

Nitara grinned as she fumbled with her keys as we reached the door to her apartment, once again. "If only she knew."