Jacob didn't understand what was happening to him. He thought he had won their little chase. He had reached Larkin and cornered her. There was no way she could escape.

As he sunk through the asphalt of the alleyway, he frantically glanced around. No words could come out of his mouth as he slowly disappeared from the world above. He felt light as a feather as Larkin took him below ground.

When his body was clear of the earth above, he abruptly dropped the rest of the way to the floor.

Jacob landed in a heap and let out a muffled groan. He glanced up and saw Larkin standing over him in her super suit, smirking.

"That was so unfair," he complained, standing up and dusting off his khaki shorts.

Larkin smiled. "I win." She then turned-tail and began to skip down the dimly lit hallway.

Jacob called out for her to wait, so she skipped at a slightly less strenuous pace. As he began to follow her, he noticed his surroundings. The walls were a pale grey color, lined with a type of corrugated metal. The occasional LED bulb would light the tunnel. The floor was plain dirt, brown and dirty as it should be. There were no doors or turns in sight. He wondered if it ever ended.

After what had to have been at least ten minutes of moderate jogging, Jacob pulled himself to a stop behind Larkin.

"Is this it?" he asked. There wasn't a door anywhere in sight. Not even a crack in the walls to speak of. "If your top secret hideout is a tunnel that doesn't have any rooms attached to it, why didn't we stop back where you dumped me on the ground?" He could see the end of the tunnel from here. Only a few steps further and they would run into a wall of dirt.

Larkin smirked again, and, at this point, Jacob decided that she did that much too often.

"You see, this is my secret hideout," she explained, putting emphasis on secret. "No one is supposed to have access to this place except for the one and only Coalescence. Now come on. I don't want to spend all night here. I do have to be home tomorrow, or my parents will know something's up."

She held out her palm for Jacob to hold onto.

"I don't need to hold your hand," he scoffed. Jacob's pride clouded his understanding.

"If you want to stand out here, then no, you don't. If you wish to go in my secret lair, then I suggest you stop being a baby," she quipped. Larkin didn't waste another second before taking his hand in hers and stepping through the wall.

Again, Jacob felt the unnerving sensation of being lighter than he really was as he was dragged through a no-longer solid object. How fun. Twice in one day, he thought.

()()()

It only took Larkin a couple of seconds to step through the wall into her secret base. She felt Jacob stumble along after her.

"That is very disconcerting. Please warn me next time," he whined.

"Look at you, using big words," she quipped. Larkin dropped his hand and stepped into the interior of her base, her home away from home.

She walked over to a stiff backed chair in front of a double monitor computer and sat down. Jacob simply stood where she had left him, gaping. She had to admit, her base was pretty impressive.

The two of them stood on the main level, deep in the earth. The room was perfectly square, with an extremely high ceiling. Jacob craned his neck to look up at the girders and catwalks crossing the ceiling. At the same level as the catwalks, massive glass cases hugged the walls. Jacob would come to learn that they were stuffed with an assortment of odds and ends. At ground level, a desk sat in one corner. Next to the desk, a projector sat with a stack of newspapers on top. There was also an enormous bookshelf, filled to the very edges. There were various news clipping hanging in frames on the walls, all relating to heroes or villains in some way.

"This is one sick pad," Jacob breathed.

"Thanks," Larkin said, smiling. "I've been adding and renovating for about two years now. Did you know that it's not that difficult to buy a bunch of steel plating on E-bay? 'Cause it's not."

She glanced over towards a wall that was covered in steel plating. Underneath the layer of steel was a layer of carbon fiber composite materials.

"Why do you need a wall of steel?"

"Training," she replied. "I like to be prepared. Guns, knives, plus my powers."

Jacob nodded, looking slightly uncomfortable.

Larkin chuckled. "I didn't bring you here to kill you. I could have done that in the park. Now, on to the real reason why I brought you here."

"The reason why you can see me."

Larkin motioned for Jacob to come sit at the desk chair next to hers. He tentatively walked over to the chair and sat, facing her. She began as soon as he was seated.

"You see," she stated, "I don't want this information to spread. It gives me the upper hand in most situations. Other supers' powers don't affect me." She paused for a moment, trying to remember the first time she realized that fact. It had been a few years. "I was in eighth grade. I had had my powers for almost a whole year. I did some minor stuff, you know, stopped the occasional bank robbery, intervened when parties got a little out of hand, nothing that great."

Jacob interrupted her speech. "You call that minor stuff? As an eighth grader all I did was think about how cool high school would be."

"Let me finish before you start casting judgement upon me," she growled. "Anyway, I was an eighth grader who did the occasional superhero job. At the time, my powers weren't quite at the level they are now. So try to imagine little Larkin, out on a nightly patrol, when she comes across a very sketchy figure in a dark alley. Her instinct is to stop evil, and this guy looks pretty evil. The first thing she does—"

Jacob cuts her off this time.

"Could you stop with the third person crap and get along with it?"

"Fine. I shall comply with your demands just this once. As I was saying, I saw a man in an alley. I walked down the alley and almost got beaten half to death. Long story short, the man had minor super strength. I did not, so I had absolutely no chance of winning. Right before I was about to be beaten to a pulp, I discovered that I could fight back. He couldn't hold me down and punch me anymore because his strength didn't affect me."

Larkin watched as Jacob processed the story. His furrowed brows hinted at his confusion.

"So are you saying that you simply developed another power on the fly? Like, it just popped up, when you needed it the most?" Jacob asked.

"I guess," she stated. "The way I look at it, I got that power because I was in need. I had been doing my hero duty and was let down by my powers. The more good I do, the more powerful I will become, the more abilities I will receive, and, therefore, good will prevail." Larkin finished her explanation with her arms raised into the air and a look of triumph etched onto her face. She lowered her arms with a sigh before spinning around in her chair. She decided that spinny chairs had been a good investment, after all.

She stopped spinning when she noticed that Jacob was sitting up straight, as rigid as bone.

"Do you think the same thing could happen with villains?" he questioned. "Like, the more bad things they do, the more evil they will get."

Larkin shrugged. "I suppose it could be true."

Jacob shrugged, too. They stared at each other until Larkin looked away. She didn't like the unsettling feeling he gave her. Before it could get anymore awkward, Larkin rose from her chair and strode across the room.

"We're leaving now," she announced.

()()()

After escorting Jacob out of her lair, Larkin began her journey home. Right now, she was in the middle of town, in the middle of the night. She decided to remove her suit for the sake of anonymity, and walk home peacefully. As Larkin made her way along Walnut Street, which was about seven blocks from her home, she could hear a faint rustling in the air.

It must be the trees she concluded. Larkin crossed over to North Elm Street, one block closer to the end of a very long day and her soft, warm bed.

She was still walking when she began to hear the light pattering of feet on the cobblestone sidewalk. Her muscles tensed, and her heartbeat became erratic. A follower.

When she heard the feet approach her position on the sidewalk, she stopped abruptly and spun around. She spun quickly. Almost too quickly. Normal people can't move that fast.

About ten paces behind her, Black Lightning had stopped his pursuit and looked on at Larkin in shock. His mouth was agape and his eyes were wide. Definitely too quickly, thought Larkin, remembering her mistake.

"Hey," she mumbled, not making eye contact with the boy standing in front of her.

He stepped closer. "Do I know you?" Even in the dark, Larkin could see the quizzical look on his face.

She panicked. She couldn't be recognized. If he's a super at all, then he'll hear my erratic heartbeat. He'll know something's wrong with me. He'll know. So Larkin blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"I hate bananas, I really do," she sputtered.

"What?"

Larkin waved her hand feebly in the air. "I'm the crazy banana girl. From that gas station. Remember?" After saying this, she relaxed. It was the truth.

A small smile infiltrated his face. "I remember that. Sorry for blasting you. I usually don't do that to law-abiding citizens." He sheepishly stepped forward and offered Larkin his hand. "Black Lightning, at your service."

She grinned in reply and shook with a firm grip. Not too firm though. She had learned her lesson. "Larkin Knolls, and thank you, but your services are unnecessary," she said, not unkindly. "I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

Black Lightning's smile dropped from his face. Larkin thought he looked almost disappointed.

"I can't let you do that," he insisted. "I don't let unprotected people walk these streets alone! I've already stopped, like, four crimes tonight! I'm not going to let you go off alone and get mugged."

Larkin held back a smirk. He had no idea what she was capable of. She was about to refuse again when both of her hands fell asleep. I hate this. Why now? She despised the tingly feeling one got when one's hands fell asleep.

While shaking both of her hands to wake them up, Larkin sighed and turned to face the direction she had been going before Black Lightning stopped her.

"Come on," she called out, not waiting for him to catch up. She was slapping both of her hands on her legs now, rather forcefully, when Black Lightning finally noticed.

"Are you okay?" he asked. Larkin could see him squint his eyes in the faint light.

She instantly stopped slapping her legs. "Oh, me? Yeah I'm fine. My hands just fell asleep. Both of them."

He laughed. It was a boyish laugh, light and refreshing. Larkin looked up at his mask-covered face and studied what she could see in the dim light. She tried to make out the color of his eyes. They might have been blue, or maybe even green. She wasn't really sure. She glanced away before he noticed her staring at him.

"Where do you live?"

"Just a few blocks down," she answered.

As the two got further away from the center of the city, the stars grew brighter in the sky. Larkin glanced up, shocked by their luminescence.

"I've never seen stars this bright," said Black Lightning.

"You know, I was just going to say the same thing," Larkin said.

She lifted a hand and pointed towards the moon. "It's full tonight." Then, dragging her still tingling hand across the sky, she pointed towards a constellation of five stars. "And Cassiopeia's awfully bright as well."

Larkin dropped her hand, and that's when she saw something out of the corner of her eye, high in the sky.

Apparently, Black Lightning saw it, too.

"Was that a meteor?" A hint of wonder had crept into his voice. He had his head tilted all the way back, looking straight up.

Larkin craned her neck upwards just as another one trailed across the sky. It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen. "I do believe so."

They had stopped walking completely. Larkin stared ungraciously up at the sky, not even blinking. The sky was a beautiful navy backdrop for the pinpricks of light. She raised her hand to point out another constellation when a magnificent green light lit up the horizon. What on earth?

Black Lightning did a double take. "Is that the aurora borealis?"

Larkin was shocked as well. "It can't be. We're not far enough north." She dropped her hand and the ethereal glow went away. That's when she realized that her hand had stopped tingling.

Just as an experiment, she raised her hand again. The swirling green light reappeared. Her eyes widened and she froze. It's another power. Oh goodness. I'm right in front of Black Lightning. He knows. He knows. There's no more secret. She was panicking and had no idea what to do. She dropped her hand and started to walk again.

"Hey! Hey, wait. Do you realize what this means? You're a super. Like me. Like Coalescence." Black Lightning jogged to catch up to Larkin's speed walking. "Don't run away! This is a big deal!" He grabbed her wrist, and Larkin whipped around.

"I know very well what it means. Please release my wrist," she commanded.

He let go of her wrist with a frown. "I'm sorry if I offended you, but this isn't something you can just let go. If you have this power, more are sure to follow."

She snapped. "I know that! I know how power development works! I know about superheroes!" she yelled. Then, lowering her voice, she stepped closer to Black Lightning and continued. "I am one."