How Dog Girl...

Author’s note: In my attempt to incorporate most of the prompts into one story, there ended up being too much going on for it to be in one piece, so then I just decided to split it in half. Including the title, because I thought it’d be funny. With that, here’s the first part.

No one had told Avery how hard it was to be a superhero in high school.

Not that the comics or movies made it look like a piece of cake, of course (unless there was someone out there whose superpowers actually involved cake, in which case that was awesome), but it was way different when it was happening in your life and not just something you watched in the media.

Honestly though, who could have told her that stopping your first bank robbery would provide such a rush that you would immediately want to go hunting for more crime to put an end to, but you shouldn’t spend your entire weekend patrolling the city or else on Monday you would fall asleep in the middle of biology class during an important lesson on mitosis? Or that during track practice, you had to use all your self-control to hold yourself back from using greyhound speed to beat everyone else? And you definitely couldn’t just go around listing every individual ingredient you smelled in food because that was just weird.

These were only a few of the things she’d had to figure out on her own in the few weeks since Avery had decided to finally put the secret powers she’d had for most of the fourteen years of her life (and counting) to use as Dog Girl. And that was fine; those were simple enough. But if she wanted to find where the real action was, she would have to team up with a superhero who knew what they were doing, because this wandering-around-the-city-looking-for-people-to-help-thing was taking up too much time to be sustainable in the long run.

Which was why today, she had spent all of her free time (or rather, the small amount of time she’d had left after going to school and then rescuing a family’s puppy trapped in a house fire) sticking up flyers in random places all around Brighton City—places that would be nearly or completely impossible for a normal person to reach but light work for someone with superpowers.

Are you a superhero looking for a sidekick? the flyers said. Call Dog Girl now! (Literally just call my name or something, I would say use a dog whistle but there are too many civilians with dogs around here and that would just make things confusing for all of us)

Now she leaped through her open bedroom window, collapsed back on her bed with a sigh, and stared at poster on the wall of her favorite superhero. “How did you do it?” she murmured.

Long before she was born, Gray Wolf had been Brighton City’s sworn protector. Even though he’d barely been older than she was now when he had gotten his superpowers due to some science project that had gone wrong, he’d immediately jumped at the chance to be a hero. At least, that was his origin story according to the comics. No one actually knew where he came from, or anything about who he was behind the mask. He had been that good at keeping his secret identity secret. And since he was gone now, no one would ever know.

Avery heard footsteps approaching her room from the far end of the hall, and had just enough time to change out of her dog costume and shove it underneath her bed before her sister opened the door.

Audrey surveyed the room and scrunched up her nose. “Smells like a campfire in here. What are you up to?”

Avery had her excuse ready this time. “Science project.”

“What, does it involve playing with matches?”

“No, but have you ever heard of knocking?”

“It’s my room too, and arsonists don’t get knocking privileges,” Audrey said in her annoying-big-sister voice that she knew would have gotten Avery’s hackles up if she’d had any. “Anyway, Mom says come down for dinner.”

The hardest part about being a superhero was living like Dog Girl and Avery Gray were two different people. So during dinner, when Dad asked how everyone’s day went, she gnawed on a piece of garlic bread and tried to recall something interesting from today that had nothing to do with her running all over the city in a mask and a furry dog costume.

At least her siblings were doing enough of the talking in the meantime. “I got the lead role in our drama club play!” Audrey squealed.

“Congratulations, sweetie! That’s wonderful,” Mom praised.

Audrey chattered on until Aiden interrupted. “Tomorrow my class is having a pet show-and-tell and I have nothing to bring!” he whined.

“What about a stuffed animal?” Dad suggested. “That counts.”

Mom nodded. “Your teacher will understand.”

Aiden scowled. “But that’s boring.”

Audrey snickered. “Bring Avery. She’s a peculiar specimen.”

“Audrey!” Mom scolded.

Avery didn’t mind. She looked straight across the table at her sister and deadpanned, “Woof.”

“Ugh, see what I mean?”

“Speaking of Avery, what about you, pup?” Dad asked, using the nickname he’d had for her pretty much since she was born. “You’ve been pretty quiet lately. Everything okay?”

Her fork clattered on her plate as she scrambled to stop it from slipping out of her hand. “What? Who, me? Oh, I’m good, everything’s good, everything’s normal, the city is safe.”

She pretended not to notice the curious look Dad was giving her. “What do you mean, the city is safe?” he asked.

“Nothing, I was just pointing out that it is. Because, well, it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Dad just looked more confused. “Exactly.”

Avery nodded, and then she realized she was doing it much too enthusiastically, and so she stopped. “Exactly!”

“Of course the city is safe!” Aiden jumped in. “We have Dog Girl now!”

“Whoever she is, she could’ve picked a better name, if you asked me,” Audrey said.

Avery couldn’t help herself. “Then good thing no one asked you. I think Dog Girl is a great name and I—uh, she—should stick with it. She’s a girl whose powers resemble the natural abilities of dogs, right? The best super names are the most straightforward. Everyone knows that.”

The silence that followed as her whole family stared at her was so palpable that Avery wished she could stab it with her fork.

Bad Avery! she scolded herself. Why did you have to say all that? Now they’ll be suspicious!

“GoodnightI’mgoingtobed,” she mumbled, because the only option now was to make a swift exit from the table before she did anything else that could expose her secret identity.

A breeze was drifting through her room when she entered, making her realize that the window was still left open from earlier. She went over to close it and spotted something fluttering on the windowsill—a small piece of paper taped there. She pulled it off. It was a note.

Found your flyer near the top of the Brighton City water tower. I’m interested. Meet me outside the power plant at 8pm tomorrow. We’ll talk then. -GW