Dating The S-Rank Heroine

Cole Cazagaro lowered the sun visor on his busted-down truck as he drove east on Jeffrey’s Neck Road, wincing as the sun peeked over the horizon. His truck bed was filled with bags of cement, gravel, and paving stones. The morning autumn air was starting to bite, warning winter was on its way.

To avoid staring directly at the sun, he looked left and took in The Great Marsh, its rows of parallel channels leading out to the Atlantic Ocean, stuffed full of saltmeadow cordgrass. In the summer, the marsh stunk of sulfur, but now, with the cooler weather, the rotting seaweed didn't smell as bad.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a falling star, a glowing fireball hurtling to the ground. He turned just in time to see it hit the ground. Where the meteor landed, mud and grass exploded, sending chunks in all directions. Cole heard the crack of the impact a second after seeing it. A blaring car horn made him look ahead, and he swerved his truck off the road to avoid hitting a van coming the other way.

He got out of the truck and walked to the other side; clods of dirt kept falling onto the marsh like an artillery shell had hit it. Cole pulled off his Bruins ball cap and scratched his wavy black hair.

“That was fucking cool,” he said, nodding and smiling. “Maddy’s never going to believe this.” His eyes widened, and he fished for his ancient smartphone, recording as the last bits of mud fell from the sky, then pulled his sweatshirt hood over his head to shield himself. Curiosity took hold of him, and he began to run through the marsh to get a better look at the crater and a better shot.

As he ran, he saw a fluttering black cloud, tinged with neon red, shoot from the sky and stop at the edge of the crater. When it landed, the cloud dissipated, leaving a woman in a black bodysuit with red piping and a red cape. Her lustrous auburn hair fluttered in the breeze.

He recognized her face from the news. It was a supervillain named Tephra. The last thing Cole had read about her was that she had punched a hole in a dam in the Pacific Northwest, flooding a town below it. He stopped, letting his boots sink an inch into the mud, hoping she hadn’t seen him.

“I finally got you, Aphelia,” she yelled down into the crater. “Now I’m going to put everything I have into this last shot. We’ll see how tough that skin of yours is.” Tephra pointed her palms down into the crater. Wisps of orange energy appeared around her hands, then gathered in her palms, forming bright orange spheres. Her red hair began to float, and chunks of dirt around her lifted off the ground.

“Fuck, Aphelia’s down there?” he said, slipping his phone into his sweatshirt’s pocket. “I really like her.” He even had a poster of her hanging up in his apartment. His hands opened and closed as he looked at the crater, then back at his truck. No one would blame him for running away; he was just an ordinary man.

The orange energy grew, then a glowing blue wave shot out from Tephra. When the wave passed over him, it made his ears ring and his vision blur. A piercing pain cracked in his mind and shot through every inch of him, knocking him to his back. His body thrummed with an indescribable feeling. It was as if that shockwave had knocked something loose inside him, and now his body felt unshackled. The ground squelched as he got back on his feet; the pain subsided and was replaced by that shimmering power. He was still afraid of the superpowered woman in front of him, but something told him to at least try to save Aphelia.

Cole’s eyebrows furrowed as he bent his legs. He heard a whip crack as he ran, his hand cocked back. The marsh flew under his feet, and he closed in on the woman in an instant. His hand shot out and connected with Tephra’s jaw. All his momentum transferred from his fist into her face; he stopped dead, and she launched, cartwheeling through the marsh, then hitting center channel like a skipping stone, only to tear up more marshland on the other side.

He looked at his hand, his mouth dropping open. Now at the edge of the crater, he turned to look. The pit was filling with seawater. At the bottom of the pool, he could make out a black cape. He stepped over the edge and slid down the pit wall, his hand clawing at the dirt to keep from falling into the water. As he slid, his phone jostled out of his pocket, bounced down the side of the crater, and plunged into the center of the pool.

He muttered, “Fuck, that’s gone forever,” before he covered his mouth to keep from retching from the stink the impact had kicked up.

Cole reached the cape and tugged. An unconscious woman in a green and black supersuit emerged. She was covered in stinking black mud, but he knew it was her, and his stomach did a backflip.

“Shit, Aphelia, wake up!” he said, shaking her as the water rose over his work boots. Cole pulled her out of the water and put his hands under her legs and back. He lifted her into a princess carry and trudged up the slope. He heard the roar of jet fighters overhead as he pushed her over the lip of the crater, then crawled out himself. He shook his head and looked back down, amazed he wasn’t winded at all.

He picked her up again and walked back to the truck. As he walked, he couldn’t help but take a look at her body. Her full breasts shook with every step he took; he felt how soft her body was underneath her supersuit. He wondered what she looked like behind her black eye mask.

When he reached the road, her lids fluttered open, and he looked into her intense blue eyes. She turned her head and coughed a few times, groaned, and put a hand to her side.

“You’re going to be alright, lady,” he said, trying to smile.

“You saved me?” she whispered. “She was going to blast me.”

“Me? Don’t worry about it,” he said as he lowered the tailgate on his truck. He laid her down on the truck bed and said, “I’m going to call 911, and they’ll take you to the hospital.”

Cole felt the wind blast down on him as a helicopter roared overhead. He looked up to see four military helicopters land along the road and dozens of soldiers pour out of them with their guns leveled at him. Two of the men brought out a stretcher.

“Get down on the ground!” the lead man yelled.

Cole dropped to the ground and put his hands behind his head. He turned to look back at the marsh. Tephra’s black-and-red cloud leaped into the sky as helicopters approached.

“She’s getting away!” Cole said.

The men lifted Aphelia off the truck and put her down on the stretcher. She looked at him and said, “Do I at least get to know your name?”

“I’m Cole Cazagaro. Welcome to Ipswich,” he said with a wave.

“Goodbye, Mr. Cazagaro,” she said before starting to cough.

The men pulled away from his truck and returned to the helicopters. Their turbines spun faster, and the whine made Cole plug his ears with his fingers. He shut his eyes and mouth as sand and dirt kicked up from the downdraft.

When they flew away, Cole stood up and looked around. The only evidence of the fight was the crater. Dusting himself off, he said, “And no one will ever believe me, will they?”

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