First the signs, then the strange, falling from the sky mask-thing, and now this?


  She hadn’t been sure what to expect earlier, walking through Lightbridge, feet aching as she walked past her usual stop, past the crowded bars packed tight into the city centre, past the boarded up shops plastered with graffiti and god-knows what else. It had been a blur of neon and darkness, and then she’d gone down the steps.


 Hushed silence, anticipation, a sense of shear [i]exhaustion[/i]. Saffron was there, so was Anni, alone. Kate wondered if her mom knew where her daughter was, her heart skipped a beat when she realised that no, she probably didn’t. There were other people too - that kid that stared at Saffron whenever he came in and looked downright disappointed if it was just Kate and Johnny working, he was with his sister, or the person Kate assumed was his his sister. A few other regulars, a few people she’d seen around Lightbridge, all just kinda… gathered round.


 And then, the girl had arrived. 



 The crowd had seemingly exploded into life - question upon question fired at the girl standing in front of them. She’d just let them sink in, bounce off, whatever - unperturbed. The things she’d said were… off. Of course she’d heard [i]things[/i], fringe scientists in the back-end of nowhere, the slightly more stereotype-adhering of her lecturers talking animatedly but quietly to select groups of interested students as she walked past and pretended not to listen in, the rumours that poured out of the (in)famous Talos Building as a near-daily occurrence, but this? This was actually insane. Not one word out of that girl’s mouth was true, or even coherent.


 What she said next was… well, worse. 


 And people were actually going along with it? What? Did they not realise that this… whoever she was, was obviously just some kind of… of…cult-person? Or something similar - persuasive, ethereal, apparently pretty good at special effects or whatever it was that had been going on earlier. She didn’t blame them, whoever this girl was, she was clearly [i]very good[/i] at whatever she was trying to do. But still, did none of them realise that they were about to become a news story? 


And then Anni - oh god, what was she doing? She should stop her, right? That’s what a sane person would do - try to stop the fifteen year old girl from dragging a possibly unconscious and definitely out-of-it woman in front of an oncoming train, but-


But-


Her feet were frozen to the floor, as if the gum-spotted concrete of the platform was reaching up, wrapping around her ankles, her legs, her throat, stilling her tongue into silence. She couldn’t really do anything but wait, stand there in her spot near the back of the small gathering, and watch the events unfold. 


Which was when the police officer spoke. Finally, someone making sense. Officer Micheal Kaehi. Lightbridge PD. A lot of swearing. It was... a comfort. Maybe they’d all get to escape this relatively unscathed - perhaps a little worse for wear given the strange girl’s creepy-brain-washing tactics, but at least they’d get a good story out of it. Authority. Reason. If everything went according to plan, he would diffuse the situation, and they’d all get to go ho-


He pulled the gun out of his jacket.


[color=fdc68a]"...to stop a crime in progress."[/color]


 If he said anything after that, she didn’t hear it. He wasn’t pointing it, but - all she saw was a man, holding a gun, and threatening a teenaged girl.


 Her feet were unstuck.


 Her foot were moving.


Her feet were standing, directly between the man and Anni, and-


In the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow shift. 

Hands up, eyes wide, she could feel the perspiration collecting at her hairline. God, this was stupid. So stupid. Why was she-? She probably looked like an idiot. She [i]was[/i] an idiot. You didn’t run in front of people with guns, regardless of whether they were intending to use them or not, you certainly didn’t-


[color=81FFF0]“Wait!”[/color] her tongue was ash in her mouth, [color=81FFF0]“you can’t- you can’t shoot them! F-for christ’s sake, she’s fifteen!” [/color]