She was walking into a trap.
She knew it and so did the woman she was hunting. It was always a trap. The game had become repetitive for her, even though she had only been fighting crime officially for a little over a year now. She was running along a route that was close to her norm but she had been warned about patterns. Her teacher had taught her the dangers of becoming predictable. She was heading away from the court district towards the Thomas Industrial Park. She received a tip that the lead suspect from a series of bizarre occurrences in the Banks across town had set up an office and business and headquarters there.
That's why she knew it was a trap. This wasn't the movies. The only time a crime fighter got a reliable tip as to the whereabouts of a suspect it was so the bad guy could get the drop on the superhero. She was running towards a big unknown in who this girl was. The only thing she had was a group of bank tellers from different banks handing over thousands of dollars. Afterwards they had no real memory of what they had done or why exactly they had done it. Whoever she was, she had been very careful to leave no trace of her visits, no video surveillance, no eye witnesses. The only reason she knew it was a girl was because the tip she had received had said 'she'.
The night sky overhead was a faded dark blue. The city lights reflecting against the black void pouring cold incandescent light towards the heavens, making the stars look dull and listless. The brick and steel buildings below her were mostly dark with only a few lit windows. The city seemed cramped even in these nighttime hours.
She stopped her journey from rooftop to rooftop to lean over and gaze at the dark sparsely populated street below her. The widely spaced small elm trees were lush and green this time of summer and their rich foliage blocked her view of the sidewalk. It always made her happy to see the green of life down amid the dirt and squalor of civilization.
Looking to her left she tossed her long straight blond hair over her shoulder and saw a couple walking down the street. It was a relatively tall white man with a shorter dark skinned woman at her side. She had her arm snaked up her back to drape over her shoulder, while he hugged her midsection towards him comfortably. Looking down on the couple she sighed heavily. She knew that it wasn't their fault, they were in love. At the same time she had to envy them almost to the point of hatred. It hadn't been her idea to have these powers. But then she had to stop herself.
Her powers were something that she couldn't control. She didn't know where they had come from. One day she was a normal college student, pursuing a technical writing degree, and the next day she could see through just about anything and when she screamed she could break glass and knock people unconscious. The first time she had done that it had scared her half to death. She had gotten into an argument with an ex over something stupid and she had screamed. The next thing she knew, glasses were shattering all around her. She could almost see visible waves emanating from her and she couldn't stop. Her ex's eyes glazed over and he passed out right in front of her with blood running from her ears. The scream had lasted an insane amount of time. It seemed to last for hours before she could silence herself. Looking around and gasping hard for air she saw that the café where she was no longer had any windows still intact. She couldn't spot an undamaged glass anywhere and people were lying on the floor in various stages of consciousness, as if they had just survived a bomb blast. She was so scared that the only thing she could do was run.
When she had stopped, she buried herself in her dorm, refusing to come out for a week. The knock that had brought her out of herself imposed exile was not one she had heard before. It was forceful yet soft somehow. It reminded her of her dad and without thinking she had opened the door and looked at the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.
The woman was taller than she was. She had dark, rich, brown skin. Her wavy, full volume, black hair was long, down to her waist. She had the deepest most penetrating brown eyes, she had found it hard to look in them for too long. The woman introduced herself as Seema. The woman had ordered her to grab enough items for a few days. Without thinking she had grabbed a night bag and thrown in a few articles and hygiene things and had followed Seema into a car.
From there she had been introduced to the hard life of training and crime fighting. The crazy thing is, is that she had accepted everything Seema had told her and everything the older woman had asked of her. There had been times where she had wanted to stop but something inside her wouldn't let her quit. Seema had taught her how to control her new abilities and to train her body to do things that she never would have thought herself capable of a few weeks before. After several months Seema had given her a new name and a costume. Her name was "The Siren". She wore a black leotard with swaths of blue that went from her butt up to her underarm area. Helping to support her ample DD cup size, that hadn't shrunk at all throughout her training, she wore a dark purple, almost black, corset. Her tights were blue with slashes of black racing down them. Her boots ran half way up her thigh and had a reasonable heel, only about an inch or so high. She spent so many hours training in them she now found them more comfortable than tennis shoes. She had run across Seema several times since then and the dark powerful woman was always willing to help her young protégé. But she felt that the Siren needed to prove herself on her own and she hadn't been in contact with Seema for several weeks now.
Regardless of how she had been introduced to this life it ultimately had been her choice to pursue it. She had wanted, and still wanted to protect the innocent, like those two down on the street below her. She had trained hard to be in the shape that she was in and she had worked just as hard to be as successful as she was. Her powers were a gift that helped her to do what she wanted to do, nothing more. She lost sight of the couple as they walked under the wide lush branches of one of the elm trees. There was no point in trying to change what she herself had chosen, and it was time to go to work. Taking one last glance at where she had lost the couple under the tree she sprinted and leapt across the separation in the buildings to land on the one next to her and continued running.
She tried to get back into the rhythm of running along the rooftops but for some reason her mind kept wandering back to the couple on the street. She wanted a relationship but it was too dangerous. She had tried but it would just be putting her and the guy at risk. She had captured several criminals by herself. True she wasn't as flashy as, Thunder Struck, or Maiden Jade, but she was going to prove herself tonight. She was always having to prove herself, it was never easy and she didn't even get the glory that some of the other superheroes around the world got.
She stopped and crouched in the shadows of a roof air-conditioning unit on her building. She pulled out a pair of collapsible binoculars from her side pouch. She carefully leaned out and scoped out the building that had been pointed out to her from the anonymous tip. The building was completely black there was nothing to make it stand out from any other building. That was part of the trap too. She put the binoculars away. She repositioned her dark blue mask on her face. Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes. Are you sure you know what you're doing? She nodded and opened her deep blue eyes. She sprang from her crouching position and sprinted across the building. She raced from rooftop to rooftop closely the distance between her and her target. She almost didn't make that last separation between buildings. Catching herself from falling the dozen or so stories down.
After a slight struggle she was able to pull herself up onto the roof of her objective.
So far, so good. She was pretty sure she hadn't made too much noise but she looked down through the buildings levels just to make sure nothing was waiting for her. Four floors down from the roof there was a single woman sitting at a desk with a desk lamp on. Hope you are enjoying what you're doing. She said to her mentally, because I'm pretty sure you won't have to worry about it where you're going. This was going to be easier than she thought.
She looked around through the roof to see about any kind of entry point. She found a window that was left open right next to the fire escape. She slunk across the roof and swung easily over the railing to land silently on the metal grating of the fire escape. She slid down the rails quickly and ducked into the open window. She could see through just about anything but seeing in the dark was just as hard for her as the next girl. She had to pick her way through the top floor slowly so as not to make any sounds and alert her unsuspecting guest of her arrival. She made it to the stair well and crept down the three floors to where her target had been working.
She glanced through the walls to make sure she hadn't moved. She was still at the desk with the single desk lamp on working on a stack of paperwork. Maybe this girl wasn't who she was tipped off about. Well, she was already here and there was no point in doubting herself now, the truth would unfold itself to her after she had a good look at those documents she had been working on. A Technical Writing degree did serve a purpose, sometimes.
Moving through some outer rooms she pressed herself up against the wall outside of the woman's office. The carpeted floor swallowed the sounds of her footsteps perfectly. Taking one last deep breath she rushed into the room. "STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" She yelled, hoping to get some kind of reaction out of the girl. The woman simply sat up a little straighter in her chair. She made no sudden movements, nor did she make any attempt to speak. She just sat there. That's different, she thought. She kept her distance from the woman and her desk as she slowly crept around to get a good look at the woman's face.
What she saw was surprising to say the least. The woman had dark brown hair that swept down from her head over her shoulders in glossy waves that seemed to catch the light even though she wasn't moving. She had high cheek bones which may have given her a harsh appearance, but her eyes and full lips softened her appearance. The first thought she had was, damn, she's really pretty! She dumped the idea immediately; this girl could be a criminal and she was there to do a job.
The woman wore a short sleeve blouse that had a V-neck, showing off her generous cleavage. Her arms were toned and she looked like she was very much in shape. Siren remembered that Seema had warned her against people who were in shape. There was a big difference between big people and people who took care of themselves. She would have to be very careful. Her sharp blue eyes met hers. Her eyes were the same pure crystal blue color that Siren's eyes were.
She was about to say something when the woman spoke to her, breaking the silence. "May I help you, young lady?"
It had been a long time since Siren had been called a young lady. It wasn't condescending in the slightest and she was certain that she had been led on a wild goose chase all of a sudden. But since she was here there was no point in not looking over all this paperwork just to be sure. "I just dropped by to check on a few things." She glanced at the stacks of paperwork that swamped the woman's desk.
