\nIt was a dark, foggy night on the mean streets of the city, the kind of night that keeps most sensible, law-abiding citizens home, tucked safely in their beds. A night for villains. Maybe even a night for heroes, if the price is right.\n<\/p>\n
\nAn orange streetlamp flickered dolefully through the mist outside the diner where I sat sipping a coffee and attempting to use my largely decorative turquoise cape for warmth. Turquoise isn\u2019t really my color, but the fabric was on sale and anyway, none of the other superheroes were wearing that color. It made me distinctive. The Turquoise Teleporter\u2013or the Turquoise Terror, depending who you ask.\n<\/p>\n
\nIf you ask me, alliteration is an overused literary device.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe hunched form of an old woman scurried along the sidewalk just outside the window. She was there and gone in seconds, but those seconds were long enough for me and any villain in the city to see that she was loaded. She wore a long, elegant fur coat and had her hair coiffed in one of those styles that required a team of hair surgeons to pull off. I could have sworn I\u2019d seen something flashing at her ears, too\u2013diamonds, maybe. And even if all of that was fake, she was still making herself a target. Rich twit begging to be mugged: news at eleven.\n<\/p>\n
\nMy cue, in other words.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn a flash, I was on the sidewalk outside the diner, peering into the gloom for some sign of the woman. It was cold out here, too cold to be wearing what amounted to a swimsuit and cape, but I\u2019d learned the hard way that no one takes you seriously in this business if you wear sensible shoes and an overcoat.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe fog was too thick to see the woman, so I flashed down the sidewalk in roughly the direction the woman had been going. With visibility so low, it was the muffled cries that told me I\u2019d found the right place: a few feet ahead where an alley intersected the main road.\n<\/p>\n
\nPlease tell me she got dragged into that alley, because if she was stupid enough to try a shortcut, I don\u2019t think I can help her. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nIt wasn\u2019t true, of course. I would help her. It\u2019s what I did. But sometimes I wished I could do it for people who were just a little bit worthier. Where was my hot, objectified boy toy with a heart of gold whom I could rescue from a crashing plane? The closest I\u2019d ever gotten was this marketing manager who swore he could help me improve my image but who mostly seemed to want a cover to tell me I\u2019d look prettier if I smiled.\n<\/p>\n \nDon\u2019t you dare picture me with a smile. It\u2019s not happening. Not even for a fur-lined cape. Okay, maybe for a fur-lined cape.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I rounded the corner to the alley, all I could see was two silhouettes struggling against one another. The larger figure finally broke free and ran in my direction, skidding to a halt when he realized he had company. This put him about three feet from me, so I did what I do: I closed the distance, flashed us both to the top of the nearest tall building, and told him I\u2019d leave him there if he didn\u2019t hand back the purse and whatever else he\u2019d stolen. The whole business took about thirty seconds, then I dropped him at the nearest police station and flashed back to the alley.\n<\/p>\n \nNow came the hard part.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGive me back my purse,\u201d the woman said, stiffly. Not so much as a cursory thank you<\/em> here. Well, that did make things easier.\n<\/p>\n \nReaching inside the top of my swimsuit, I pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her. \u201cMy bill.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYour what?\u201d She snatched the piece of paper from me and scowled. \u201cI can\u2019t read this in the dark!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s all in order, an itemized list of services and fees. There\u2019s the interception, the recovery of goods, the delivery to the police station, and an after-hours surcharge. Altogether, that\u2019s two thousand dollars.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTwo thousand <\/em>dollars! I didn\u2019t agree to any of this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWould you like me to retrieve the mugger and hand him back the purse?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWell, then, I\u2019ve got to make a living.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re no hero. Heroes don\u2019t charge for their services.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cReally? What do you do?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m a doctor, a surgeon.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo real surgeons charge for their services?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe spluttered, which I assumed meant I\u2019d made my point.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI tell you what. I\u2019ll hold the purse as collateral. When I get your check at the address on the sheet, you get this back.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe spluttered some more, but I flashed away. Back to the diner, to my office, to my cup of coffee and my inadequate clothing. Outside the window, the fog was beginning to lift. Businesses were closing, lights going out. The night belonged to the villains now; I was clocking out.\n<\/p>\n Christine Amsden is the author of nine award-winning fantasy and science fiction novels, including the Cassie Scot Series. In addition to writing, she is a freelance editor and political activist. Disability advocacy is of particular interest to her; she has a rare genetic eye condition called Stargardt Macular Degeneration and has been legally blind since the age of eighteen. In her free time, she enjoys role playing, board games, and a good cup of tea. She lives in the Kansas City area with her husband and two kids. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was a dark, foggy night on the mean streets of the city, the kind of night that keeps most sensible, law-abiding citizens home, tucked safely in their beds. A night for villains. Maybe even a night for heroes, if the price is right. An orange streetlamp flickered dolefully through the mist outside the diner …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107878,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20133],"tags":[20134],"class_list":["post-140309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-50-winter-2024","tag-the-colored-lens-50-winter-2024","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140310,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140309\/revisions\/140310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}