After Bruno's
The new girl clutched her abdomen as she doubled over with the dry heaves. Thankfully she hadn't eaten anything before she left Bruno's in due haste, in a brisk trot that with every step was closer to being a fast run toward the nearest exit. It was only when she catapulted herself onto the sidewalk that she allowed herself the luxury of running pell-mell over three blocks before she ducked into an alley, gulping and sobbing for breath.
She held her hands to her temples and wanted to scream.
They'd all been there, normal teenagers, clustered around a table, being ignored by the waiter, having a great time. Teasing, flirting, talking sports. She'd relaxed for the first time in weeks since Aunt Sylvia ferried her out of Savannah and into Paragon City...no strangeness, no danger, nothing at her back.
Just...normal.
One minute, she was sitting in the booth, wondering what salad dressings the waiter would offer when he brought everyone's orders.
The next, everything stopped being normal.
She tried remembering their names through the terror that clawed through her. Ty. Jessiy. Alex. Luke. She didn't know who started it first. Lightning began dancing on fingertips and coiling into globes of azure in the middle of upturned palms, throwing eerie shadows, turning laughing faces into demonic eidolons. Her mind bifurcated as she tried to accept what was happening...they all had powers, right? That was the whole purpose of being at Saint Joseph's, to learn about powers...how to control them?
They weren't normal teenagers, and neither was she, but she didn't want to know that.
This is a restaurant, the back of her mind protested. Things like this don't happen in restaurants.
Things like this didn't happen to her. She didn't want them to happen to her.
Then the girl named Alex raised her arms with a smile and mischief in her eyes, and *something* appeared in the air above the table, something 'Del didn't comprehend, and which chilled her soul to see. Its attention wasn't on her, but nevertheless she could hear her sanity cracking almost audibly, like an ice floe in spring thaw.
Too much. This was WAY too much. It was one thing to see the gaily-costumed adventurers and oddly-dressed drifters showing off their abilities like some consensual four-color Cirque de Soleil, multicolored auras and rays filling the square, illuminating the perfected bodies with thunder rolling and high-pitched whines punctuating the babble of the crowd. 'Del could detach herself from it...look upon it like she was a bystander at a street performance. There was safety, in that the pedestrians of Paragon City seemed unafraid of the gathering of modern-day godlings at play.
But, alone, with them...She suddenly realized that they were all loaded guns that walked, talked, and had teenage angst. They could control the weather, set targets on fire, throw blasts of energy, lift tons over their heads...She could die in this life. She could die. If not from a burglar breaking into her bedroom, then from some super-powered malevolent lunatic, or maybe some student at Saint Joseph's who just got pissed off at her at the wrong moment.
They are nice, she told herself. Nice. Stop panicking.
Yet tears were flowing freely while she leaned against the alley wall, urging her body to move out of paralysis, as a quiet drizzling rain began to fall on the city and her shattered illusions.
After Bruno's
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