Item: Fragment from "Hero, The Story of the Woman Who Wore a Mask To Reveal Her True Identity", memoir of Caroline “Dragonfly” King, 2017

. . . In those days, I was less of a recluse; which is to say that I spoke to somebody besides myself more than every once in a while. In fact, if I may beat a dead metaphor, I was something of a social butterfly – lighting upon the pretty flower of friendship, sipping the sweet nectar of romance. Always, however, in the service of what I used to call, with a straight face mind you, my civic duty.

Back then, of course, it was difficult to separate the civic and the social. At least, if one’s civic duty was fighting crime. The early nineties, being the days in question here, saw the formation of “adventure clubs” – on both sides of and often completely outside, the law - in numbers not seen since the heyday of the superhero and villain groups of the late sixties and early seventies. Between 1990 and 1995, I was affiliated with three such groups: Otto Standish’s Team 13, Heroes International (San Diego Chapter), and the unfortunately titled Defiant Five.

The fact that I was involved in three of these groups at one time might seem compelling evidence to some that I was overextending myself, precipitating what the press so charitably termed my breakdown in the spring of 1996. I certainly didn’t feel overextended at the time. When one is young and superhuman, the concept of overextending one’s physical or mental energies is simply not present. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

- Transcribed by Richard Cody -