WHAT'S WRONG WITH RALPH?

After the whole thing with the hot chick and the germy pigeon, I flew home to wash my hands… like twenty times. Then I took a shower. I'm sure by anyone else's standard, I was over reacting – but, oh well!

For some reason, my cell phone was ringing like crazy. Not that I wanted to ignore it, but I need to get clean first. Something about a giant pigeon just doesn’t make me feel so good… particularly when it’s a mutated giant pigeon.

Like most heroes should, I have more than a few costumes. It would just be dingy of me to only have one suit and wear it every time I fight crime. The process of showering and changing actually put more pep in my step. Today seemed really long and it wasn’t over. Probably an hour after I arrived home, I was back out on the streets. I was also contemplating what my reason would be to skip work tomorrow.

As I flew above the city, I tried to figure who would know something about hot chick and her comment about me still having my powers. Is someone out there stealing powers from the Urban 30 members? If so, who and how do we get them back?

I flipped open my phone to check my missed calls. 1 call from Mom and Dad, 3 calls from Ralph, 2 calls from the popcorn girl at the movie theater and 5 calls from Tony – I wonder what he wants.

Reluctantly, I called Tony back.

"Leroy, get over to Northern Avenue. Terra needs back up!" I don’t even think he said hello. Neither did I… I declined to assist Terra. She’s a big girl, I told him.

This time though, I wasn’t just being resistant, I actually wanted to try and piece together if there was someone really stealing out powers.

"Damn it Leroy, just do what I tell you. Nothing else is more important right now." Tony yelled through the phone, sort of like my mom would when she’d had enough. At that point, I was pissed off, too. What could be more important than finding out why our folks were suddenly depowering? I hung up the phone. I’ll just tell him its tough to hold a conversation while flying.

The phone rang back. This time it was Ralph, looking to do more for the night. Although I had no intention of heading over to Terra, I didn’t see why Ralph couldn’t go.

“Ralph, since you're finished helping Sha'Donna, shoot over to the museum on Northern Avenue. Terra needs back up.” I said, trying to speak above the wind blowing into the phone. Sometimes it’s tough to fly and hold a conversation.

Ralph obliged.

I didn’t last 20 minutes before I was bored with flying around. I honestly had no idea who I could talk to about hot chick. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I should meet up with some of the other U-30 members to see what kind of ideas we could come up with. With that, I decided to head toward Terra anyway.

Every thought in my head was about hot chick’s comments. What if I do lose my powers? What if I lose them right now and fall out of the sky? We needed to get to the bottom of this before things get messy.

I arrived just in time to see Terra standing over Ralph and a bunch of Egyptian dudes running down the street. As I landed, I greeted Terra, more focused on our fleeing bad guys.

"Hey Terra…. Are we going to chase them?" I said. I looked back to Terra, then down at Ralph. ”What's wrong with Ralph?"