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Chapter 34
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Judy formed a ball of electricity with her hands and dropped it into the hole. She hoped that the tunnel hadn’t already been blocked off. She didn’t care if the entire Arachne Regime was down there. If the tunnel was open, she was going to run after her friend.

The ball illuminated the hole until it touched the bottom and fizzled out. There were rocks and other materials present from what she could see.

A door open, and Judy whipped her head around to see one of the hall supervisors walk in. A voice broadcast incoherently over her radio for the first couple seconds of their visit to the office. The supervisor saw the numerous bodies in shock and pointed at Judy. She shook her head at the supervisor, who looked like she was about to yell or scream.

Down the short hall that went from the back of the office’s main lobby to a few other rooms, a bathroom door opened. The sound of a toilet flushing and someone whistling echoed until a man in Arachne soldier armor entered the main room.

He stopped suddenly. Someone had been left behind.

Judy screamed and felt her power rage through her entire body. The secretary’s computer on the desk between them helped her cross the distance more quickly as she zapped in and out of it in a flash. The Arachne agent didn’t know what hit him.

“Where did they take her?” Judy yelled as she tackled and wailed on the man.

She thrust off his helmet and hit him again. The lights above them were exploding from her power surging, and her arms screamed with the need to recoil from the strength of every blow she dealt.

“Tell me!”

Again and again, she struck the man.

“Where?!”

However, the Arachne agent was out cold. Judy’s body shook. She wasn’t sure if she could hold up her body any longer, and her power surged on, even through every tear.

As the paramedics came and carted the Arachne soldier away, Judy heard one of them utter something about the man being lucky that Judy had stopped hitting him when she did. She was sitting on a chair, having already talked to a few police officers and telling each one of them the same thing as the last.

Robin and Henry hurried into the office where one officer stopped them, never mind the police barricade outside of the office already.

“Judy!” they said, and they hustled over to her.

“I’m so sorry,” said Judy. “I should have come with her. I could have prevented this.”

“Don’t say that,” Robin said. “You’re a strong girl, but there’s nothing you could have done.”

Judy flung herself forward, and wrapped her arms around Robin. She felt Henry’s hand rub her back.

“We called your mom,” Henry said. “She’s on her way. I won’t rest until the Mayor puts together a task force to find Denise, and she’s back home with us.”

“There already is one,” Judy said. “I’m on it. We’re supposed to be stopping some big plot by the Arachne Regime, but we don’t know where to find them. We don’t know what they want with these girls.”

“Girls? Denise wasn’t the first taken by them?”

“No.”

“And you’re fifteen. What are you doing serving on a task force?”

“Trying to make a difference. Trying, and failing miserably.”

Robin and Henry shared a sad look with one another.

More of the school’s staff exited the building over time, whether because they’d regained consciousness and were walked out or because they had to be carted out like the Arachne agent had been. Judy’s mom entered the office, with Walter close behind her.

“Oh, my baby girl,” Judy’s mom said, hugging and nearly squeezing the life out of her. “You really need to stop scaring me like this. Did anyone hurt you? Are you OK?”

“Mom. Mom, please!” Judy pleaded.

Walter said, “Everyone who’s on duty is doing what they can to find answers, as well as your friend.”

“Hopefully we’ll get closer this time. It happened less than an hour ago, so that should make a difference, shouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but now you have a decision to make. You have probably realized by now that your hero identity is slipping out, a little here and a little there.”

“I don’t care.”

“Your career as a superhero might depend on it, Judy. If you want to keep saving lives, you’ll need to decide now how you want to proceed with it, or else your secret identity will be gone without anything you can do about it. Then what will you do?”

“I just told you that I don’t care! Walter, I know you like to plan for things, and that you care more than any of us about a lot of things, but the only thing I care about right now is getting my friend back. If that means telling the whole world that I’m Pixeletta, then I’ll do that in a heartbeat. You’re not going to stop me.”

Walter said, “No, I don’t suppose I could without doing some things I wouldn’t be too proud of. When your head is clearer, and you’re not angry, sad, pushing to do what feels right at the moment, do you think you’ll say the same thing?”

“Yes.”

“I think that’s enough, Walter,” said Judy’s mom. “She might be one of the better heroes in the city right now, but she’s still my little girl, not one of your soldiers. I do not want you confronting her conviction when her best friend is who-knows-where by now, and in untold danger. Are you going to help her, or will I have to handle things myself?”

Walter replied, “There’s no need, Mai. You’re right, but now I have to rethink everything between Judy’s decision, and the reporters gathering outside.”

Judy stood up from her chair. No more planning. It wasn’t getting anyone anywhere so far, and she somehow knew what she needed to do.

“Mom,” she said, “do you have any of my spare masks in your purse?”

The reporters and their camera crews were set up outside by the pick-up area in the front. They were nearly finished interviewing the principal when Judy entered earshot of them all. She stopped behind an ajar door and both watched and listened to the end of the man’s interview.

His story was that he was caught by surprise and told that if he wanted the survival of himself and everyone else working in the office, that he would do everything that he was told that day. He was told never to reveal any sign that he was a hostage, nor to divulge who was behind the attack even now.

Judy clenched the domino mask in her hand.

As the principal walked away, guided by an officer, Judy walked to the reporters. She looked at a few of them in the eye.

One asked, “Uh, can we help you?”

Another whispered away from a microphone, “Maybe she knows the victim.”

“Oh, were you a friend of the kidnap victim?”

The microphones and cameras were on her faster than she could respond. Reporters were not known for super speed, but their reflexes for a story were showing.

Judy said, “Her name was Denise Grandt. And yes, she was my friend.”

“How does her sudden abduction make you feel?” a reporter asked.

“That’s why I’m here. I have a statement I wish to make.”

A few people scoffed silently.

“A statement? Really? Well, that sounds bold of you.”

Rather than accept being mocked on live television by a reporter, Judy put on her mask. She continued to push back the flood of tears and outrage.

Most of the outrage.

“My name is Pixeletta, and this one goes out to the Arachne Regime. You told the principal not to say who you are, but I’m not him. You have taken the wrong girls, Stone. Return them all at once, and I promise you that I’ll go easy on you when I kick your butts.”

“Stone?” a reporter asked. “Black Stone? Stone Driver? Riley Stone?”

All names of people who had nothing to do with the Arachne Regime. It was like the media wanted to pretend that Harvey didn’t exist.

“None of them,” said Pixeletta. “The Arachne Regime, and Stone himself, know who I’m talking about. So I say to you, to Stone and everyone in the Arachne Regime, that if you do not return them safe and sound then I will tear you down harder than you've ever known. You've taken my best friend, and that's the worst mistake you could have made.”

She walked away from them, and let the reporters discern for themselves who or what she meant. Pixeletta reached Walter in the parking lot.

Walter said, “You know there’s no turning back now.”

“At this point,” she said, “I don’t care if there is one or not.”