<i>My name is Molly Hayes. I am twenty years old and I’m an awful writer. If you’re reading this, I’ve been taken and if the rumors are true, I’m probably dead. You might have noticed a real lack of girl power as of late. Lots of criminal activity on the rise and all. It’s because all that was left of the super gals these last couple weeks was me and my friend Trance. But he got her too. Now I’m all that’s left for miles. I’m afraid to send out an S.O.S because I don’t want to put more heroines at risk. I talked to Rictor but he, and most of the male supers think ‘The Hunter’ is just a myth. I thought the same thing until Trance went missing…and I’d only just seen her moments before it must have happened.<br/>
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Whoever you are, I hope you’ll use my secrets wisely. You’ve seen me around your city. I’ve saved cops and civilians alike. You know me under a few names: ‘The Bruiser,’ ‘Princess Powerful’ or as the city has more affectionately nicknamed me, ‘Powergirl.’ I am an unregistered mutant graduate. Yeah you know the school. But I knew I’d be fighting crime since I was eleven years old. Of course you can just release all this information, my identity and whatever else to the media. It’s probably worth a little cash to those who still think us mutants are a problem…but I hope you would instead give this to someone who can help. I’m not the kind of girl who’s really ever needed a hero…but if I’m still alive, I guess I’d want to at least hope that someone’s looking for me.<br/>
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Yours truly, whoever you may be, Princess P.</i><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>With a sigh, Molly lifted her pen from the paper. Her handwriting was shit. She frowned at the note for a moment before rolling her eyes and setting it on the side table by her apartment’s front door. Just about anyone she knew would have told her she was being hella dramatic and that’s because, like, ninety three percent of the time she definitely was.<br/><br/><br/>‘The Hunter’ had become somewhat of a local urban legend in the last couple months. More of a whisper than anything. When Blaize went missing, no one was really all that surprised. She was bullheaded and a little nuts and rumor had it that she was a party animal. Next went Crackle who was probably the happiest vigilante Mols had ever met. The twins were sort the turning point where Molly began to suspect that maybe these rumors were something she ought to pay attention to. Then Sanctuary went missing and before Molly could even gain her bearings, Trance was snatched up on one of their outings just to help pick up the slack. Whether or not this ‘Hunter’ could be credited to all of these disappearances, Molly really didn’t know. At this point it was kind of just…one of those ‘feelings.’ One of those really friggen bad ones.<br/><br/><br/>The note set aside, Molly looked at herself in the hall mirror. Forget all the damn spandex and ruffles. Maybe it was just time to cut the crap and go out there as herself. Molly didn’t believe that her real identity was a weakness like many of her crime-fighting co-workers tended to. She sported some ripped jeans, some studded knee high boots, a gray panda tee shirt that said ‘work hard, sleep harder’ and a couple of wrist bands. Man, was her hair getting long and with it being a breezy but sunny summer, the strawberry in the blonde was practically on fire. Molly sighed again. Maybe. Just MAYBE there was a chance she’d come out of this alive, or like, NOT missing or whatever. If that was the case, maybe it really was best to protect her identity. She grabbed her white cropped vest and buttoned it over the top half of her tee, and then she tied on her slightly altered bandana…with eye holes, black pink and white in color, so that it rested over the top of her head and had tails that hung down with her hair. The mirror pretty much told her flat out. She could never actually be just ‘Molly.’ All those other names were just as much her as her real one.<br/><br/><br/>Satisfied, Molly made her way out into the night. Most people thought that cities looked more beautiful and alive at night with all of the lights…but Molly? She knew where the light didn’t touch. She knew the kinds of things that lurked in the dark out there and she was headed there on her own to greet it. She was headed to the place it went down. The same place she’d been with Trance when the girl’d gone missing and coincidentally not far from where some of the others were last seen before they too disappeared. Even as she went into what some of the local underground called ‘the network’ Molly had the distinct feeling that she was walking directly into a spiderweb. ‘The Network’ was a series of narrow alley ways that connected to a few different fronts with little unsuspecting stores in between. It was one of the biggest blocks in the city and was close to the center of it. It had this bizarre shape that made these alleys a labyrinth. Coincidentally, it was where a lot of questionable traffic tended to happen. Molly was personally part of the team that saw to a slow down on that a few years back. There were about eighteen buildings all around this block, and a good portion of them hid shady operation. Trance was always the one to keep Molly centered, to remind her that just walking into the basement of a call center front and punching the shit out of everyone wouldn’t do much to stop the business at hand. Now as Molly walked these unlit alleyways, all on her own, every building looked so much taller and far more sinister than it ever had. She paused, her eyes zeroing in on a flat roof ledge where she’d thought she’d seen movement.