"Thanks bro." Cait said through the spliff hanging between her lips. As the flame from Prince's lighter ignited the end of her vice, she drew in a long, smooth breath. She held her breath for a few seconds, allowing the flavor and substance of the roll to sit on her tongue before turning away to exhale into open space. The effect of the cannabis was almost immediate; her tolerance had taken a dip since her run with the police, due to her folks deciding to cut her off from any drugs or alcohol. Her head lightened and her eyes glazed a bit. A lighthearted chuckle pumped out of her chest. "The best hash, as usual from you," she said, raised the spliff like she was toasting to a drink. She took another hit, this time, a quicker one. "That's twice I owe you."

By that point the pair had arrived at a still-tagged bench. Cait, masking the loopiness of the high with an exagggerated, forced straight face, knelt down and pried her can open and dipped the brush in. She gave the pain a few wuick stirs and pulled the brush out and began painting. Others nearby had began singing an old Marley tune, setting a relaxing mood to the affair. "They damn near caught the whole crew," she explained to Prince. "Late night sesh over in the Royal Parks. Hit up some spots, dodged a few cops along the way. They finally caught up with us tricking off the Matilda Fountain." She burst out a laugh and took another hit off of her spliff. "Guess they thought the same as you thought: that I was the best skater of the lot; sent some new upstart to chase me down on a bike. I almost fuckin' faceplanted when my wheels hit his baton." She sighed. "So yeah... 'defacing' a historic monument, plus charges for public intoxicatoion. And here I am." She gently glided her paint brush across the seat of the bench, and puffed on the spliff.

"Yeah. I suppose they do. Between you and I, that's two talents they got right." Cait's mood about the community service stint was starting to lighten as she talked to Prince. She drew in another hit off of her spliff, and pulled into a genuine smile as she continued painting the bench. Her grin faded slightly when she saw the door to the community center open and Tony strode out in all of his glory. "Task master incoming," she mouthed with a laugh to Prince, who hadn't even picked up his brush. But it was already two late, and she found herself with a front row seat to a hardknock scolding by Drill Sergeant Tony.

She began to chuckle a bit at her friend's expense.

But the sound of something heavy landing on a car nearby cut her off. Her amusement intensified when Tony revealed it was his own car, fresh back from the shop, that had just been crushed under the weight of a cannonball of hail. Cait laughed out hard, nearly spitting out her spliff; her laugher masked by the blaring alarm from Tony's car. Then a second chunk of hail slammed into the ground nearby; Cait's amusement ceased almost immediately when a third chunk crashed onto the bench she had just been painting, causing her to stumble back in shock. The others had already gotten their head start on Tony's order, running back to safety of the community center. Cait reached up to to take Prince's hand, hauling herself back to her feet with his assistance, and bolting towards the building, spliff still miraculously between her lips.

Her hand slid out from Prince's. Another chunk of hail touched down just behind her. Then a surge passed through her, the electrical current running through her from behind. She fell forward, losing her smoke, and took a hard landing against the concrete before she faded out of consciousness.

Darkness

Pure, unending, and all-consuming.

That was what had taken Cait as her head knocked against the cement walk. She felt her eyes passing back and forth, looking for anything other than the veil of pitch black that had thrown itself over her face. Was she even seeing anything? Or were her eyes closed? She tried to move her arm, and then her leg; neither budged, weighed down as though literal tons had been added to them. No. Her muscles, her bones, every facet of strength had been taken from her; in that moment, her body had shut down, stripped of all but its most essential purposes. She lay there, unable to move or speak. But where the fuck is here? She was sure she hadn't left the lot of the Community Center. Was this "place" just a dream? A sightless vision brought about by her unconscious state?

Wait... She had felt numb; so much so that it hadn't registered with her until she began feeling something again. It started faintly as a gentle vibration passing through her body, resonating out from her centre like a ripple from a stone tosse dropped into a pond. The vibration intensified steadily, until it felt like something similar to an electric shock passing through her. That's right... the lightning. She recalled the bolting hitting her, falling and arcing with intent, almost as if it had meant to strike her specifically. With the increasing intensity of the vibration came something akin to noise: a low tone rumbling beneath her eardrums; the kind of pitch no ear could normally hear because the waking mind couldn't focus on it properly.

Cait felt herself groan as both the feeling through her body and the sound in her ears developed and changed. The low tone became drowned out be higher pitches layering in over it until she could barely hear it; eventually, the dull murmur of distinguishable voices, muffled as though she were listening from beneath water, sounded above the random, ringing tones. The vibrating sensation gave way to a sort of fatigue, and then to soreness; it peaked at an almost painful clip, like the sharp discomfort of tendonitis passing through every muscle of her body. In tandem, the vision of darkness faded, first to an ever-lightening gray, and eventually to a bright, hot white before more familiar paterns, shapes, and figures formed.

And then...

"Whoa!" Cait entire front side pressed against the warm surface she had fallen onto. She felt as though she had just been dropped; she didn't realize that as she came to, her body had lurched no less than an inch off the ground through no force she had produced. She rolled over onto her backside in time to find Prince standing over her. "Yeah, yeah. I'm awake." The pains she had been feeling began to subside, though some fatigue still lingered. "But I should probably go back to sleep." She grasped her forehead. "I feel like I have a migraine or something." She felt around the ground near her, splaying her arms and hands out frantically. With a sudden jolt, she put herself upright, ignoring the throbbing in her head.

She spun around, looked down, and scowled. _Fuck... Her spliff had gotten caught underneath her when she fell, and now sat flattened on the ground, its contents coming loose from the roll. She tried to gather it back together, but it was too far gone to be brought back to a proper spliff. What remained when she was done was little more than a roach. She examined the stub of of a smoke, and shrugged. "Better than nothing." She sat herself more comfortably, and motioned for Prince to hand her his light, assuming he still had it. "So... the fuck happend? Where's the hardass? Did anyone else get struck?" She took a look around at her fellow 'troublemakers' and noted the answer to her own question; they were all lethargically getting themselves back onto their feet. "Eh. Don't answer that last one. Still... what happened? Like, I'm not the only one that thinks that was weird, right?" She directed her last question to the group, her head whipping about for some form of agreement or validation.