[h2][i]Felicia Takashi[/i][/h2]
[hr]

Felicia had been enjoying snacking on a veggie wrap and glancing at a NEST agent to take in how they handled themselves when the gunshots had started. Her first instinct was to duck behind a garbage bin next to a bench and peak around the metal cage that surrounded it. She realized as she saw several tattooed men running past with guns to harry the crowds of people into forking over their material possessions, that this must be a gang. A large one. Even while she watched, some of them dragged a few young women by their hair into a shadowed alleyway to do repulsive things to them. She couldn't place who the tattooed thugs were, she wasn't familiar with the plentiful gangs in Verthaven, but she knew that they had already pissed her off. 

Being small was one advantage in a situation like this, as she just slid down further to hide herself between the garbage bin and bench to get her “costume” ready: A scarf secured around her head to hide her lower face, the hood of her hoodie pulled up and the strings pulled on to ensure it wouldn't move, and just as she went to reach for a charm on her bracelet, a loud creak sounded off behind her. She glanced up quickly and saw a tattooed man glaring down at her from the other side of the bench, his hand going for something out of her sight. [i]Oh hell no![/i] She thought furiously, grabbing for the garbage bin lid, only to find it tied down by steelwires. [i]Fucking hell![/i] She went to switch up her mode of attack, but the man already had a... wait, a glowing syringe? She stared in disbelief, shocked that it wasn't a gun or a knife. Whatever it was though, Felicia was sure it was bad news. 

He looked at the syringe, then at her, considering his options as he obviously surveyed that she was very small and seemed child-like, with no curves to speak of to add to her femininity. She could almost hear his thoughts [i]'Is it worth using my pretty glowy to stop an itty bitty kid?'[/i] During that moment of his lapse of judgment, Felicia felt for a specific charm on her bracelet. All of the sudden though, the man fell over with a cry as blood came cascading from his shoulder. Felicia looked over to see the NEST agent with her hand outstretched towards the man, and more NEST agents moving into position. She couldn't help but feel a bit of hero-worship for them, but she quickly ducked and started moving as fast as possible away from the chaos. The men in the alley with the young women were already being shut down by the formidable NEST agents, pincered in and forced to step away from the women. 

Felicia got to a nearly abandoned paved street amidst the chaos that surrounded it, and she finally extracted the charms she was looking for the entire time: Link's Master Sword and his Hyrulian Shield. Using her power tickled the back of her brain, beginning the onset of a headache, but the sword and shield grew to their respective sizes, and she rushed towards she was sure her parents must be. [i]Please be there![/i] She prayed fervently, her legs taking her as fast as they could.

Her heart stopped in her throat as six people were on their knees, one of them her very own father. The gang leader made him take off his Rollex, along with his jacket, before demanding that he start taking off his pants. A rush of rage made her clench her hands more tightly on the hilt of her sword and the strap of her shield, but surprise muted the rage when the entire gang standing there was suddenly … defeated? Her father ran off, screaming and attempting to pull his pants up. She breathed a sigh of relief and fought the urge to follow him. She needed to know where her mother was, and if she was still safe, so she continued towards the Gala Pavilion.

When she neared the area, she saw that it had been ransacked. As one of the places with the highest concentration of wealth in the entire Festival, it wasn't a surprise to her, but the sight unfolding in front of her left her breathless. The “doorsmen”, such as they were, had been dead for awhile, their hands outstretched towards handguns soaked in their own blood... with curious tear marks covering their bodies? Tables were flipped over, food piled in obscure and inedible looking lumps across the floor. None of the wealthy people were there though. [i]Are they safe?[/i] She was unable to continue that thought, as she was plowed into the cement, her shield luckily, blessedly, placed between her and her assailant. She wasn't able to get a good look at him, but she got the impression of: big mouth, lots of teeth. 

That was enough to send her into fight-or-flight, and she tried choking him by maneuvering her shield under his chin, but it was to no avail. He simply tried biting her shield ferociously, shaking it and her entire arm in violent motions. [i]What the fuck is he!?[/i] He was heavy enough that she felt herself struggling for each breath, but she managed kneeing him in his junk pretty hard, and that set him sprawling sideways off of her. She, herself, rolled in the opposite direction and hopped to her feet in a fluid motion. 

Felicia inspected her shield – moderate damage, gouges in the shape of teeth – and then looked back at him. His mouth was disjointed and ugly, chomping and gnawing at the air as if it had a mind of it's own. She hadn't ever faced off against... a metahuman? It wasn't more than a couple of seconds before he was back on his feet, his eyes rolled back up into his head as his mouth chomped down on nothing with a resounding CRRRREAK! Waves of disgust and fear rolled through Felicia when she realized that he must have chomped the armed “doorsmen” to death. [i]Nopeeee! Screw this, NEST can handle him![/i] And she promptly turned and ran. 

No sign of her mother was a good thing, and she knew her father was alive – which, even as bad as it sounds, mattered to her more in her heart-of-hearts – but she heard the footfalls of the monstrous man behind her, which was a very [i]not good[/i] thing. She moved her sword over to the hand gripping the strap of her shield, subsequently snatching up a nearby circular food tray as she kept running. She reduced it's size to that of a frisbee, her head throbbing painfully in the process, and she enhanced it's toughness, causing her to fall to her knees as the pain became momentarily too much for her to handle – she heard the food tray tell her to piss off through the buzz of pain, it was obviously not treated well.

She heard teeth-man before he descended on her, and she positioned the shit-talking tray so that it would lodge itself between his very, very scary teeth. She heard it cuss her out – <[i]Fuck you, you dumb broad. I'll make sure a pigeon shits on me before a [b]putain[/b] like you touches me again[/i]> – as she let go of it, silencing it's myriad of protests as she broke contact with it. It was effective though, only slightly bowing outwards as the scary-teeth-man tried to chomp down on it. She knew she didn't have much time, so she scooted backwards as his hands tried to grab for her, his mouth working on demolishing the very rude food tray. [b]“You, [i]sir[/i], need to bugger off!”[/b] She growled between her own clenched teeth and kicked his reaching hands away. 

Breathless moments later, Felicia got to her feet and ran as fast as she could. When she found herself a reasonable distance away, she ducked behind a stall with artsy craftsy things and puked up her lunch – the veggie wrap that had tasted [i]much[/i] better going down – as her head continued it's throbbing headache. The only thought that came to her mind was that last year's Festival had been much more enjoyable.