The powers were really cool, until the insane monster attacked.

If you had told me, that at 17, in my senior year of high school, I was gonna have these awesome superpowers, like all the DC and Marvel characters I grew up watching, that would have been like, a dream come true. But if you had also told me those powers meant bloodthirsty monsters would be hunting me to eat my flesh, well, I would've checked my initial enthusiasm. But it's too late for that now.

"Charlie, Charlie... CHARLES," I hissed intensely at my best friend, who was dazed in thought.

"What, what man?" Charlie looked at me, visibly annoyed.

"We were going over how I'm going to stop that job on 5th, but you got all distracted as soon as the new girl walked in!" I said exasperatedly.

"Who, Ava? I don't know what you talking about, man, I'm not distracted by anyone," Charlie said, while clearly still sneaking glances at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Man, this is important. We've been working on this for months, if we don't stop this, innocent people will get hurt!"

"Will, relax. We've been over the plan a dozen times. Everything will be fine," Charlie continued.

Suddenly, Ava made her way over to us.

She was blonde with blue eyes, wearing a pink t-shirt with a jean jacket, black shorts and her hair in a ponytail. I really didn't see what the fuss was about, but Charlie was absolutely enamored.

"Hey guys, do you know where Miss Evans' class is? I have her for 4th period, but I'm a little lost," she says.

"Oh, I mean, I'm actually headed that way, I can just walk you there," Charlie said.

I bet he thought that came out a lot smoother than it actually did.

Ava had one of those, this wasn't what I was expecting kind of looks flash across her face but she gave Charlie a sweet smile and turned to let him walk her to class.

I flashed him a what the heck are you doing kind of look and he waved me off while mouthing "just meet there in 10,"

I rolled my eyes as he walked off. Would I have done the same thing if a girl I thought was cute asked for directions? I mean sure, but I'm the one who's about to put his life in imminent danger.

It was about five months ago, Charlie came over to hang out after dual enrollment like he always did. Since we were taking classes at the community college for high school credit, we got to leave campus halfway through the day. It was pretty cool but kinda changed the whole high school wasn't even like my mom asked if I wanted to do it, as soon as she heard "free college" she was hooked. We missed a lot of stuff not being there for half the day, so we ended up getting close when we realized we had similar classes.

Anyways, it was a few days before the semester started and we were hanging out in my backyard. We were talking about the usual, you know, superheroes, Pokemon and anime. Sometimes, we would write our own stories in comic format. And I can't explain why, but I always thought better outside, when I could feel the natural breeze. Well, the wind was pretty dormant on this particular day, but everytime I wrote something down, the wind just blew it away. Every time. It's like the breeze only started after I wrote something down, right when my story was coming together. We spent that whole afternoon grabbing flying papers, being completely confused. But later that night was when it really got weird.

We went to grab pizza and before he took me home, we stopped for gas. Being able to drive as a teenager is pretty cool and everything, but it's admittedly less awesome once you start paying for stuff. Anyway, he went in to pay while I waited in the car but he came out of the store with his hands up. I had no idea what was happening but my heart started racing as I feared the worse, and sure enough, it was confirmed when I saw the gun behind him. I could see Charlie was trying to stay calm, but underneath that steely resolve, he had to be scared out of his mind. I mean this guy was pointing a gun at a teenage kid. I knew I couldn't get out of the car and the throbbing in my temples was only making everything worse. I saw him walk Charlie over to their getaway car and motion for him to get in. So now they were adding kidnapping to their list. For personal reasons, I'm not too fond of criminals. So when one was about to kidnap my best friend I definitely was feeling some type of way about it and had to go save my friend.

But I couldn't stop staring at the gun. Like I knew I wanted to get out of the car to help somehow, but I was paralyzed by fear and couldn't move. I kept staring at that pistol. It's incredible how an object so small could cause so much fear. I feel like I couldn't take my eyes off it. Until suddenly, what sounded like howling wind came through the air and knocked it out of the criminals hands and the gun went clattering in the street. When Charlie saw the strange phenomenon, he promptly kicked the guy in the shin and ran toward our car.

Or at least, I knew he was running to the car. The gun happened to be in the same direction so our criminal friend must've thought Charlie was running for it. I had to get there first. So I jumped out of the car, but forgot I was still wearing my seatbelt. By the time I got out of the vehicle, Charlie had almost reached the car but the criminal had also reached the gun and was raising it up to fire. That's when I yelled.

Charlie says it was the most insane, surreal moment he'd ever seen but I blacked out for a minute. As it turns out, when I yelled, something that looked like a tornado picked the guy up and dropped him on his car. Police cars started racing in from the distance and Charlie said he drove me back home. Honestly, everything went blank after I yelled and I didn't wake up until I was getting checked out of the hospital.

So over the next few months we discovered I had aerokinetic superpowers. We don't know how, we don't know when, but somehow, I got the power to influence air currents at my will. At first, I couldn't really control it, it kind of just did what my subconscious needed. But as we kept practicing I figured out how to throw air blasts, push things away, pull things closer with a vacuum current and other cool stuff. I got so good at it, I decided I wanted to use my powers for more.

See I love superheroes, but I actually have a real life superhero origin story. I live with my mother but I never knew my father because he was killed during a bank robbery while she was pregnant. The thieves didn't just steal half a million dollars that day, they stole my relationship with my dad. She always said he was a hero when he died, but as I got older I started to wonder, did he not keep his hands up? Did he say something to them? Did they catch him pressing the alarm? My mom never gave me a straight answer. So it's been just me and her. And Charlie. His parents were like, genius billionaire inventors so they were always gone. They kind of left him to fend for himself. Which is probably why Charlie feels so much like a brother to me, we're essentially the only family we've got. So when we decided we were going to do this, we were going to do it together. I was going to use my powers to keep people from having to go through what I went through. So Charlie designed the costume, he was a bit of a genius himself, and I became my very own superhero - Airraider. And now, with our biggest job in months, I couldn't help but wonder where Charlie's focus was.

See, anytime I stopped a robbery, it was pretty cut and dry. It's very hard to fight what you can't see so throwing wind at criminals was a pretty seamless way to take them down. I could take their weapons out of their hands with ease, none of them would even get close to me. Just knock them out, when they'd wake up the police would be there. But then Charlie had this idea to go after a bigger fish. We knew there was more organized crime going on, but they were so fast, by the time I got there, they'd be gone. I needed inside scoop. So he developed a bug that I expertly dropped into a criminal's hair after letting them go. It took a couple of tries, but we had finally got something we could use. One of the organized crews was robbing a bank this afternoon. If I stopped it before they left, they would get caught red-handed by cops and potentially flip on their whole operation. We couldn't pass this opportunity up. At least, I understood the gravity of this, Charlie still looked love-dazed when we met 10 minutes by his car in the school parking lot.

"Bro, she's so chill and down to Earth! Like, she likes anime and I was like we should totally watch My Hero Academia sometime and I'm pretty sure she's down- ,"

"Charlie, focus up man, the job is at 3. We're still 20 minutes away," I replied.

"Right, right my bad man. I just... I just think she's really cool." He said as he started up the engine. "You'd like her too man, she kept asking us, how long we'd been friends, how we met, where you're from." A quizzical look came over his face. "She actually asked a lot about you." He turned to face me as I finished putting on my costume.

"What can I say, I have a very intriguing face," I replied. "Now, are we almost there?"

"Yeah, yeah," He said. "Whoever designed that suit did a bang-up job,"

A smirk came over my face at his shameless self-compliment, but he wasn't wrong. It was bang-up job.

The suit was a navy blue one piece with a light blue tornado in the chest. The hood featured a dark blue mask that covered my entire face except my eyes. It also held a scarf that spread out into an entire cape. I didn't carry any gadgets or anything on me, since all I needed was the air around me.

We arrived close to the bank.

"You got the cameras," I asked Charlie.

Again, with the genius. Charlie had come up with a way to tap into various cameras nearby using some kind of signal, that way he could keep an eye on me while I was doing my superhero thing. Even if the camera was disabled, his signal meant it was eyes for him to warn me about danger.

"Yeah mean, we're good to go," he replied.

"Perfect," I said. "Here they come,"

"You ready?" He asked.

I took a deep breath. "Ready," I said as the criminals burst through the bank doors.

This power was kind of new but proved to be quite helpful for getting and out of places. Not only did I learn I could control the breeze, I could actually become one. I had to calm myself and work hard to keep my molecules all in place when I reformed. I learned that the hard way the first time I tried it, fortunately I was only missing a clump of hair rather than like a finger or a kidney. For this, all I had to do was focus on the energy of the air and become one with it. And then, I literally would become air, I'd become a breeze. But the longer I did it, the harder it was to keep myself together so I only used it for an extremely brief period. I had to imagine myself as a gas, but also as solid matter in order to reform into myself, which is not as easy as it sounds. The suit Charlie designed made it a lot easier to keep myself together so I actually really owe him for that.

So anyway, I became a breeze and floated through the doors right as the robbers entered, shouting orders and waving their guns. Once they got everyone down on their knees, I materialized in the air and slammed the ground, making a shockwave through the air that angled up to knock the guns from the robber's hands. From there it was pretty much a wrap as it usually is. One well placed air blast to the chest and the first five guys were knocked out. Now usually when I knock these guys out, they get annoyed, try to grab their gun, cuss me out or some combination of the three. But the sixth guy, he just kept staring at me. It was super weird, like he was looking into my soul. But the weirder they are, the harder they fall, I guess. I readied another air blast and hurled it right at his chest.

This is when it got weirder.

The blast hit him, but instead of flying across the room like the other guys, he just got knocked onto his legs and steadied himself with his right arm. Then he got up and looked at me, again. It was so odd, I barely heard the "Duck!" from behind me.

Fortunately, being so attuned to the wind, I could feel shifts in the air before things would happen. Kind of like a spidey sense. So I had already instinctively ducked as I felt the arrow about to go over my head. But what I was not prepared to see was when it embedded itself in the tail that was now sprouting from the sixth guy's backside. He howled in pain until his whole body began transforming. His limbs turn into paws with claws. His tail unfolded into a scorpion-looking appendage. His body began amassing fur and he turned to look at me with the mane of a lion surrounding his face. I jumped back in fear until I was standing next to the archer.

After seeing a man turn into a lion-scorpion hybrid, you'd think not much could surprise me. But I turned to see who the archer was and it was none other than Ava, wearing combat boots, jeans with spikes on them, a t-shirt and a leather jacket with a bow drawn tight and slowly walking toward the monster.

"...Ava? Is that you...?" I asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?! What it going on?!" I continued, getting more hysterical with each question. "And what is THAT?!" I finished, pointing at, whatever that thing was.

Despite the insanity of the situation, Ava responded calmly without taking her hand off the bow or her eye off the freaky beast.

"I'm a Hunter of Artemis. That is a manticore. And it's here because you, Will, are a demigod. The one I've been looking for,"