Dirt piled onto me, dashing across my open mouth and eyes, clinging to my teeth and tongue as I tried to scream out in panic.

I'm being buried alive!

Air sirens blared across the fields. Screams rang out from the nearby farmers. A wave of heat slammed into me, even as more dirt was shoveled onto my face and body. I clawed at the open grave, my tiny hands churning the soil. Something slammed into my chest, pinning me back into the hole.

A hand.

Slick, red flesh covered five spindly fingers, pressing me down.

Before I could process what was happening, another wave of heat splashed across my exposed skin. I cried out in breathless pain.

It burns! It hurts so bad! Is this it? Is this how I die? Buried and burned alive at the same time?

The weight of my unfulfilled superhero dreams crashed down upon me, heavier than the soil burying me alive.

Just minutes earlier, I had been holding hands with my mother as we strolled along the canal.

"I'm too old to hold hands with my mom," I had whined.

She had only smiled. "Just this last time?"

She always said that, and I always gave in. The truth was, it made me feel better when she asked, like I was doing her a favor.

It certainly wasn't because I enjoyed the smooth warmth of her skin. And I absolutely did not get a thrill from the subtle tingle of her power's natural expression on my palm.

Holding hands was for babies, and I was just doing her a favor.

Thoughts of soft skin and pleasant tingles had been wiped away when the first person noticed the supers flying in low on the horizon.

"Who's that?" a nearby woman asked, pointing at the V-formation just cresting the distant trees.

My mom's grip tightened on my hand, and I tried to pull it away. She might not have been strength-based, but any A-ranked super had deadly strength in their body.

"Ow! Mom, you're hurting me."

She ignored me, her eyes snapping to my dad across the field. He had been talking with one of the farmers until that moment. But something about my mom's gaze sent him flying into action. He began barking orders in Ghoulish, then repeated them in English. His super-enhanced voice echoed across the fields.

"Alpha one and two, delay. Alpha three on me. Alpha four on the princess. Alpha five with my son."

My dad's voice had always carried a tone of command that I almost considered a superpower. I had heard it many times in my life and even practiced it in the mirror when I was alone. Though I adored my mom's powers, the one thing I wanted to inherit from my dad was the power of that voice.

But in that moment, that tone I had known for a lifetime had been tinged with something else, something I had never heard in the man's voice.

Fear.

"What is it, Mom?" Her eyes cast about the field, seeming to take in the entire situation in a single glance. When she looked down at me, there were no whites in her eyes. Instead, opaque orbs of silver stared back at me.

When she spoke, it wasn't as my mom, but as a superhero.

"We're being attacked."

Attacked? The word was strange in my mind. But what she said next had me clutching her in a panic.

"Crunch will take you to safety while your dad and I hold them off."

"No! I wanna stay with you!" I hated the fear in my voice. I wasn't a kid anymore.

Then why was it that all I wanted to do was cling to my mom's waist while she stroked my hair and told me everything would be alright?

"I know, sweetie. I'm sorry, but there's no time." Powerful arms wrapped around me. And they weren't my mom's. "Take him out of here. Hurry!"

Crunch's grating voice answered. "Yes, princess."

I was ripped away from my mom, my hands clutching tightly to her clothes before she gently pulled them free.

"Mom! No, Mom! I wanna stay with you!"

But her back was to me now. I was hoisted onto Crunch's shoulder as the ghoul raced away at superhuman speed. The air was knocked from my chest as I bounced up and down. I tried to cry out, but my voice wouldn't come.

Then my eyes caught on the sun glinting off the incoming supers, and I gasped.

Five shapes approached in the distance. They were flying low, swooping over the trees and down toward the fields. If I didn't know all of these supers by heart, I wouldn't have believed it.

The Knights of Solar!

Though Crunch was carrying me away faster than any normie could ever run, the Knights were still gaining on us. As they neared, I was able to spot out the individual supers from their costumes—I knew them all down to the smallest stitch.

I spotted Lirian, the Siren, in the back, her sapphire-blue costume resembling the scales of a mermaid. Across from her, Tenebrous, the Shadow, broke from the formation and disappeared into the forest. In front of the Siren was Savage, the Primordial Man. He was a Duelist-class super, with burnt-orange fur covering him head to toe. Opposite him, the Scourge, who wore an emerald-green costume embossed with insects and spiders crawling up his arms and chest.

And finally, the glittering jewel of the formation, Solar, or should I say, Sol himself. Golden chainmail covered the leader of the Knights, seeming to draw in strands of visible sunlight with a magnetic pull.

The formation was suddenly sent into disarray as two ghouls were thrown into the air by my dad like human-sized cannonballs. In the moment before impact, they unfurled from a tucked position, spreading their limbs wide, dagger-like claws extended. One ghoul bounced off Savage as the super lashed out with a powerful strike. The other was hit in the chest by a beam of golden light, smoke rising from its body as it tumbled back to the earth.

A moment later, Sol, Siren, and Scourge turned to face my dad. Savage continued onward, falling to the ground as he left Sol's aura and lost the super-given power of flight. That didn't stop the Primordial Man, who simply crouched in the dirt, then leaped into the air. A car-sized crater was left behind by the super's leap.

I watched as the fur-covered man arced impossibly high into the air, before his trajectory flipped and he began falling back to the ground.

What is he doing? I wondered. Why is he abandoning the fight—

My thoughts jumbled as an impossible idea began to form.

Is he coming for me?