--15:30 local time --Lost Haven Outskirts Three hundred damn miles, and Nicole had finally made it to Lost Haven, the city she planned to make her new home, and hopefully where her nightmares would cease. Any normal person would probably toss down their bag and pass out in the first comfortable spot they could find, but the fifteen year old didn't even remember the last time she slept, or even felt tired. [color=azure][i]"Or hungry,"[/i][/color] she thought idly as she walked past a diner in the suburban style area on the west side of what she vaguely recalled being named Carver. For a moment she considered trying to beg some food off of the people inside, just for something to taste, but she swiftly shrugged it off and continued making her way towards the centre of the city. As she went, things became more and more like back home in the Kitchen, and her mind started recalling that day a month ago. She shook her head, trying to clear her brain. Time enough for recollection and introspection later, for now she had to find out where the hell in this city she could look up a superhero. Or a scientist. Hell, [i]anyone[/i] who could tell her how to fix this would be good, though after the journey here she wasn't precisely sure any more whether that was still her goal. After watching Icon and the rest stop the Pax Metahumana on the news, on the radio, and from the street itself, she knew she had to get here, but an ingrained sense of distrust for authority figures had stopped her from going to the shelters and asking for help. After all, she wasn't going supernova or slinging lightning bolts accidentally or turned into some animal person. She was just...[color=azure][i]"Damn, after two months and I still don't know how to explain this."[/i][/color] All she really knew was that she seemed to be like someone out of the comic books. Thinking about her condition, coupled with the noise of the afternoon street traffic and the smells of the city wafting along with her meandering path finally tore down her internal defences and dropped her mind back into introspection mode. The car driving past back-fired noisily and she wavered on her feet and slumped against the warm brick wall of an alley entrance and slid down into a sitting position, no longer really controlling her body as her mind completely flashed back to that fateful day three months ago. [i]It was getting dark, street lights just now flickering to life, as she struggled with the flimsy plastic bags and made her way home. Mentally, she ticked off her grocery list in case she forgot anything, though she had spent nearly an hour double checking herself anyway. Dad was probably going to be a little miffed it had taken her this long. Being distracted by this checklist meant she missed the shouting until she rounded the corner of her block and came full into view of the fight. Ten guys on one side, maybe twelve on the other, spread out in two opposing lines, showing colours she knew to stay away from. They occupied the whole damn street, and were between her and her building. Other bystanders wee already scattering as the first shots rang out, and she ducked behind the dumpster next to her, clutching at the food in her arms and hoping it would end quickly. The scent of fermenting garbage did nothing to make her more comfortable. Thankfully the gun shots did cease fairly quickly, but when she realised she was clenching her eyes shut and opened them, it was not to see a few bodies and an empty street. A sort of green, hazy light filled the street, and thins were happening that nearly broke her brain right then and there. One of the fighters had begun sprouting awful looking set of bug arms, one was starting to crackle with electricity. Several others were doing even more weird stuff. Looking down at her hands, she realised her vision had gone blurry, and thought that maybe she had been drugged. And then her mind had gone, and she spent the next twelve centuries or eighteen seconds or three galactic ages or a single heartbeat seeing everything that had ever happened, was happening, or was going to happen. And as suddenly as it had started, her vast, expanded consciousness collapsed back into itself, coming a second time very close to completely destroying her mind. She felt queasy, and as her vision cleared, she looked up to see some guy flying at her from across the street, flaring like a firework. And everything exploded.[/i] Nicole came back to the present shaking uncontrollably under her clothes, still slumped against the wall and pale in the face. Several people were staring from across the street, and she knew she must look like a junkie or something. She struggled to her feet, snatched up the duffel bag she carried her few meagre belongings in, and set off as fast as she could without looking like a freak back towards down town. [color=azure][i]"Stupid stupid stupid,"[/i][/color] she thought at herself angrily. [color=azure][i]"Way to keep a low profile, dumbass."[/i][/color] Not that she could control it. Her mind had been torturing her all the way across the country, and it didn't look like it was going to let up any time soon. [color=azure][i]"Just gotta keep moving."[/i][/color] Not having a cell phone was costing her, though. With no GPS, and having left the interstate with its helpful signs pointing the way, she had no idea where she was going. A sense of purpose had driven her from the funeral all the way here, and paranoia grounded in being a rebellious and underage girl out by herself in the world had kept her away from any sort of police or anything else. Some helpful asshole was bound to peg her as a runaway and take her in if she wasn't careful, and though she had ditched her ID and everything else that could identify her except the family photo tucked into her vest, she knew that somehow her luck would run out soon enough. She [i]had[/i] to reach someone that could help her before then. --19:10 --Lost Haven Interior, between Little Sicily and Chinatown With evening closing in rapidly, Nicole made her way across the bridge from Carver into Olympia warily. She flinched for cover every time she saw a police cruiser, trying to both stay out of sight [i]and[/i] not look suspicious at the same time, though however weird she must look doing so, she must have pulled it off because none of them bothered stopping. Stepping off of the walkway and onto the normal streets again, she glanced up and down, noting a number of places that marked this as some sort of Italian district, though she had no idea where the borders of it might be. All she really knew for the moment was that she was going to have to find a place to bunker down before a more enterprising peace officer decided to investigate the lost looking teen wandering around as night wore on. In fact, noting a somewhat more marked police presence in the area than she was used to seeing on normal streets, she flipped a mental coin and pressed on towards what she figured was south, moving through alleyways and trying to avoid knots of people. [color=azure][i]“When did it get dark,”[/i][/color] she thought, looking around as she climbed a ladder behind what smelled like a Chinese restaurant. Getting to the top, she saw only vent ducts and a shoddy looking air conditioning unit, which would probably make for a decent back rest while she slept. She was just about to mount the top of the ladder and poke around on the roof when the sound of shattering glass caught her attention. As swiftly and quietly as she could, she moved to the front of the building behind a sign for the restaurant and looked down. Several men in dark clothes stood around, arguing in harsh whispers in some foreign language The last phrase had been said by a really beefy looking guy off to one side. Unlike the rest, he didn't have a gun. All of them looked Asian, and she could swear they were speaking Japanese or Chinese, but she didn't know any foreign languages at all. Not that it mattered. [color=azure][i]“Who robs a friggin' restaurant,”[/i][/color] she asked herself under her breath. Another guy climbed out of the window, this one covered in tattoos underneath his cheap suit. Nicole's world went loud and white for a brief moment, and she felt herself flying through the air without any sense of direction before hitting the ground. As her eyes adjusted to the new light conditions, she noticed that she was now lying in the street, covered in brick dust, and the roar of flames and falling debris filled her head. She tried fighting it for a second, but her mind flickered back to memories again. [i]She woke up buried under a layer of broken bricks, water pouring down to clog her nostrils from a broken pipe somewhere up above her, though she was upside down. Someone nearby was screaming, though she couldn't tell if it was from panic or pain and she was too disoriented to sort it out. She shifted and a brick fell away from her face, revealing a street covered in rubble and bodies. Even upside down, she recognised Miss Tuttle, broken and bloody, lying twenty feet away, her eighty-three year old eyes staring sightlessly into the sky. Which meant she was in the corner of her own building. Panic overtook her and she struggled out of her awkward position, chunks of apartment falling around her, and she slid down a cascade of ruined lives to rest on another body, covered in gang colours and blood. Distant sounds of fighting and panicked mobs reached her ears, and distantly in her mind she recognized that the green haze had gone away, leaving everything much darker than it had been before she had lost consciousness. She had no idea how long it had been, and everything was blurry. Painstakingly slowly, she turned her head, dreading what she knew she was going to see. Her apartment, where she had been born and raised for fifteen years, was a smoking crater in the side of the building. Apartment 212, just below hers, was a pile of rubble. The floor of Miss Tuttle's apartment had collapsed into hers, the oven from the old lady's kitchen dangling from what was probably an open and leaking gas line. And there, sticking out of the ruined wall of her room, was her older sister Abby's arm, recognisable only because of the bangle bracelet Nicole had given her just two months ago for her birthday. Nicole's vision went red with rage.[/i] Coming back to the present, she heard the jabber of the foreigners again. She shook her head and pushed herself off of her face. Still nothing hurt, just like always. Looking beneath and behind her, there was a clear trail from where she had slid through broken building chunks that had, presumably, come with her as the restaurant exploded. There was broken glass [i]everywhere[/i] from the sign she had been hiding behind. Just next to her was the tattooed guy, who was also getting up, though he looked considerably worse for wear and probably had a broken leg from the way he was moving. A word clicked into Nicole's brain, which she uttered out loud without thinking, venom dripping from every syllable as rage consumed her mind. [color=azure]“Yakuza.”[/color] The guy looked up and sneered at her. “The fuck you talking about, little [i]kwailo biaozi[/i]?” He spat blood on the ground in front of him and struggled to his knees, wincing from some internal injury. He held up his jacket, revealing a green silk shirt. “[i]Yu zhizhu[/i] and very much better than those Japanese dogs.” Nicole slammed her fist into the ground and nearly threw herself to her feet. Her head felt fuzzy. She knew she was baring her teeth. [color=azure]“Japanese or you jee joo or [i]whatever[/i] you are. I'm gonna beat the [i]piss[/i] out of you for that.”[/color] She jabbed her finger at the blown apart structure to her right, lit now only by flickering flames. The man laughed and then immediately coughed out a wad of bloody phlegm, bent over double by pain. “[i]Haaaaa[/i]. What're you goin to do, huh?” He raised his head to grin at her again, only for his face to meet her fist coming the other direction at high speed, sending his badly balanced form back to the ground. Nicole was not heavy. Nor was she a trained fighter. All she had going for her in any fight had been an Irish temper and moxy. But now, she didn't have to worry about breaking her fingers or bruising herself, and with her mind flooded with pure adrenaline and fury, she didn't even spare a thought for what might happen. As soon as her fist carried through with the first hit, she pulled it back and slammed it into the side of the guy's head. This repeated for several strikes before [i]something[/i] slammed into her side and carried her away from the man. She vaguely recognised it as a really big arm in a torn suit before her vision jerked. Her brain found an answer as a fist slammed into her gut, though she only felt a slight pressure from the blow. [color=azure][i]“The big guy is hitting me. And he [b]tackled[/b] me.”[/i][/color] Furious both at the interruption and the presence of another bomber, she began flailing wildly with both arms, trying to land any sort of damage on the bastard. In return, he grabbed her by the neck with one meaty fist and slammed her down onto the pavement. Even as he did so, her left foot swung up and caught his knee. Her soccer training had given her a kick like a mule, and he buckled and backed up, grimacing. She got up, took up what she thought might look like a serious fighting pose, and grinned at him while he favoured one leg and spat at her. [color=azure][i]“Looks like a fun night out now,”[/i][/color] she thought, and went in swinging.