Story - The Secret Identity

The Secret Identity By ParaGirl

Originally posted in the Wheelchair Fiction yahoo group

One minute, the bank robbers were standing there pointing automatic weapons at the bank tellers. The next - there was a blur of magenta and gold and the four armed thugs lay in a pile, unconscious, with their weapons bent or broken on the floor.

Everyone looked around and saw the magenta-clad Destiny Girl floating in mid-air, her cape shimmering as she hovered, smiling. Her eyes sparked gold under her magenta and black domino mask.

“Is anyone hurt?” she asked the crowd, who were still in shock at the turn of events. They looked over one another and the bank manager finally stepped forward.

“I - I think we’re OK, Destiny Girl.” he said with a stammer. “They were so fast, We.. We didn’t even have time to hit the silent alarm. How did you know?”

“It’s my job to know, sir.” she said with a flourish, then added “I think the police will be able to handle it from here - I’ve already alerted them, I hear the sirens already. I’m glad nobody got hurt.” and with that, she flew out the open doors and into the midday sky.

Destiny Girl (Whose real name was Danielle) looked around carefully to make sure nobody was looking, then quickly grabbed the duffel bad holding her clothes and changed in a lightning-fast maneuver that most people would have only seen as a blur. She lowered herself into her titanium sport wheelchair and arranged her limp legs, freshened her hair, fastened the nylon padded lap belt, and wheeled out into the midday sun. She wheeled down the sidewalk to the cafe across from the bank, where she had been trying to get her iced mocha latte before she was so rudely interrupted.

“Hey Danielle, you just missed her!” Carlos said behind the counter, already mixing her drink.

“Missed who, Lady GaGa?” Danielle said as she wheeled up to the counter and put her credit card through the machine.

“No, Destiny Girl.” Carlos said, an exasperated smile across his face. Danielle loved to tease him and they constantly bantered back and forth about her. Danielle thought it was cute how in love Carlos was with her super-powered alter-ego, even though he was very openly gay.

“Oh her - what was she doing, making a deposit?” Danielle loved to goad him on.

“Try saving the bank from like a dozen heavily armed bank robbers.” he said, his eyes glassing over as he imaged the daring scene. “I heard one of them had a bazooka, but it didn’t even phase her, she laughed it off.”

Danielle was always amazed at how her exploits grew almost exponentially as people retold them. In less than 15 minutes she had already laughed off a bazooka attack. She smiled up at Carlos.

“I’m sure she was awesome Carlos - almost as awesome as your mocha latte.” She smiled. “So, has Destiny girl ever come in for a coffee?” She chided, pointing at the hand lettered sign in the window saying ‘No Charge for Destiny Girl’.

“No.” He sighed. “But some day I’m sure she will, I just know it!”

“I’m sure she will.” Danielle said. “I hope I’m here to see it.”

Danielle wheeled down the street, managing to avoid ignorant pedestrians paying more attention to their cell phones than the woman in the wheelchair, at the same time sipping her perfect mocha latte. She really could save some money if she took some of these shopkeepers up on their offers - half the businesses in town had put signs up proclaiming ‘No charge for Destiny Girl’ since her debut ten months before, stopping a runaway bus from plunging into the river. She had been tempted, definitely, but that was a slippery slope that, at best, would look like she was endorsing businesses or products and, at worst, could even result in someone recognizing her from the neighborhood.

She still worried that, some day, Carlos or someone else she had daily dealings with would see her up close as Destiny Girl and would recognize her. She’d just have to rely on her secret identity - and the fact that there were no other heroes (that she knew of, anyway) who were paraplegics. Blind, sure - she knew three off the top of her head. Amputees, too - they always got the high tech bionic augmentations, like ‘Scissorkick’ with his ultra high tech legs and ‘WhipCrack’ with the extend-able whips that came out of his prosthetic hands. She thought she knew a super-villain too, ‘Crimson Claw’, who had his hands replaced with razor-sharp claws of some indestructible space alloy, but she wasn’t completely sure about that one.

Danielle made it to her apartment and wheeled around the back. One of the great ironies of her life - the amazing Destiny Girl, unstoppable by anything but a short flight of stairs at the front door.

Finally in her apartment, she tossed the empty latte cup in the trash and put her bag down, then wheeled to her computer. By day, when she wasn’t busting criminals, she was a blogger and disability rights expert who wrote for several publications, both online and in print. She logged into her latest article, about a new public building that had somehow been built without a ramp, and then took out her notepad with several juicy quotes from the building contractor who had somehow ‘misplaced’ the original plans for the building. He assured her - all the time looking nervously at her wheelchair and wringing his hands - that the building would be fully accessible within two months.

Three hours later and the article was finished and sent to her editor and she was headed for the gym. She packed her gym bag with the basics and wheeled out to meet sheila, her personal trainer.

“Hey Sheila.” she said with a smile, wheeling into the well equipped gym. Sheila smiled that warm, special smile of hers and said hello back.”

“So what are we going to work on today?” Danielle asked, taking a quick swig from her sports bottle.

“Last time we worked the shoulders hard, today we’ll go with biceps and triceps.” she said, setting up a padded bench and taking out some weights.

“I was thinking we could work on my legs.” Danielle teased, wheeling up to the bench. Sheila grabbed her limp legs and helped her transfer onto the weight bench, then strapping her on.

“I think we’d need a private session for that.” Sheila said, without missing a beat, her cheeks turning red. Danielle knew Sheila was a devotee, though the topic had never ‘officially’ come up. She wasn’t ready to talk about it, but Danielle kept hinting. Danielle didn’t identify with ‘lesbian’ or ‘heterosexual’, she just wanted a date, someone who could look beyond the chair and, maybe some day, beyond the secret identity. Another irony of her life, she mused - Destiny Girl could defeat Captain Chaos and his mechanical minions in an afternoon, but Danielle couldn’t land a date with a woman who actually had a fetish for paralyzed legs. She laughed to herself.

“What’s so funny?” Sheila said, helping Danielle with the weights. Danielle had to remember to appear like she was straining a bit with the twenty pound dumbbells.

“Just thinking.” she said with a smile. “I will get you over to my apartment some day.”

“I know you will...” said Sheila, then seemed to make a decision. “How about Friday?”

“How about tonight.” Danielle said without skipping a beat, doing slow measured curls with the weights as she spoke. She had thought about this scene a hundred times, and she knew if she gave Sheila the opportunity to think about it too much, she’s chicken out. She wanted to strike with the fire was still hot, as it were. She realized she had used similar tactics against Baron Nocturna a month before. Her life was really complicated.

“Sure.” Sheila said, her voice a little shaky. “Tonight, seven o’clock.”

“You know where I live?” Danielle asked, suddenly feeling excited and, could it be, nervous? She could fight giant killer robots from Mars without breaking a nail, but a date with a pretty girl had her palms sweating. Complicated life indeed.

For the rest of the workout Danielle talked about dinner plans and Sheila tried to turn the date into a ‘friends getting together’ kind of meetup, but by the end of the session Danielle was teasing Sheila by asking what she wanted for breakfast and Sheila had just given in and said ‘Waffles with a side of you’ with a big pink-cheeked embarrassed grin.

Danielle quickly wheeled into the adapted shower and cleaned up, then headed home to order a dinner delivery and tidy things up for Sheila. She wanted everything to be just perfect, and she decided it would be easiest to close all the blinds tight and use a little ‘super speed’ to clean the place up. It was risky - anyone seeing her floating about the apartment out of her wheelchair would immediately know she was a super - but for this, her first date since the accident, she wanted everything to be perfect.

And that’s when it all went wrong...

“Urgent call for Destiny Girl - there is a bomb in Metro Hospital, we need your help.” came across the special radio frequency that she had set up with local law enforcement. They only used it when it was truly a crisis, and this sounded like a big one, bomb in a hospital was pretty bad. She looked at the clock - 5:55. Just over an hour before Sheila was going to be there.

Danielle sighed and shook her head, then floated out of her wheelchair and changed into her Destiny Girl costume in a flash, then shot out of the apartment headed to Metro Hospital. Just over an hour - it was possible she’d be done by then, but she wouldn't have too much time to clean up. She flew at near supersonic speeds and hoped this would be a quick one...