At the same time, in a FEMA camp located just outside San Francisco proper, the President's address was playing over a radio. There were people celebrating it, and there were people quietly concerned by it.
"Fucking hell." was Jennifer's response. Not for the first time, she wished the citywide destruction had spared the British embassy, so she had some way of getting travel papers, or even to claim asylum there. Her one attempt to try and explain her situation to an authority figure (Was he a cop? A soldier? Was there a difference right now?) had resulted in her being cuffed, placed in a 'Temporary holding cell' and a lot of talk of 'Illegal aliens'. She'd waited for the enforcer to be distracted, then turned into water and flowed to freedom, resolving not to try again until sanity returned. It seemed she'd be waiting some time.
In the meantime, Jennifer was keeping herself busy. She had three tasks her time was divided between. First, she'd made herself useful to locals with her knowlege of certain aspects of science.
"All that matters for this bit is that the water is cool. Doesn't need to be drinkable, so we can hijack the grey water pipes and it goes right back in again, just a little warmer so they won't even notice we're using it. Wrap the hose round this pipe, that's it, so it cools off the vapour. And that, mates, is a still."
This little improvement to the local black-market brewery had earned her some time with a smartphone. Signal and data were extremely limited, all she could really do was send her mother another 'Still alive, still stranded' email, and read the reply to her previous one promising that they were all trying their best to send help.
Secondly, she was using her skills as they were intended. A group of kids sitting on the ground listened as she used chalk and a wall to explain the structure of an atom. The lessons were more to keep the kids ocupied, give their parents a break and let them feel like some things were going back to normal, and the class was younger than she usually taught. The older kids had to grow up quick and help out at home. For this service, Jennifer was paid in supplies. A bit of food, a bottle of water, some old clothes, things people could spare. Which still wasn't much.
Jennifer's third and final job was as a scavenger. Or looter, depending on how generous you were feeling. Most scavengers went off with dust-masks (Which also helped hide one's face) and empty bags, sneaking into the fenced-off and poorly-guarded ruins to gather anything that looked useful. Store shelves were all picked clean, of course, but there were still treasures. Wires, pipes, firewood, all sorts of things had value.
All of which was a cover for what Jennifer really got up to. She snuck into the ruins, but made her way to a collapsed hotel, it's underground car park blocked off with tons of rubble it would take heavy construction equipment to shift. But an air duct was still clear. Making sure nobody was about, Jennifer stripped naked and hid her gear from other scavengers. Then she turned into mist, swept through the vent and emerged into her own private 'Batcave'.
Any self-respecting superhero would be ashamed to call it a lair, it's only gadget being an array of headlights hooked up to a car battery. Jennifer turned into phosphorus long enough to see as she switched it on, then began training. New elements, new shapes, faster transformations, everything she'd learned about her powers had come from sessions like these. Like learning she didn't need to breathe when she wasn't human. Not like solid granite had alveoli or mucous membranes after all.
A humanoid shape was optional too. Becoming mercury, she formed herself into a sphere, then became titanium and rolled in small circles. Where was the motion and momentum coming from? Another mystery.
She'd learned she could leave pieces of herself behind, a wet cement form patching up some cracks in the walls, but she felt hungry after doing it. Jennifer suspected that if she'd had access to scales, she'd find herself lighter afterwards.
And finally, she'd learned how to keep herself fed. After tossing chunks of masonry into a well-worn crated in the floor, Jennifer took her 'wrecking ball' form once more and began grinding it to powder. Then she became water and swirled, stirring and mixing it and herself into grey mud. Finally, she became human again. It tasted like a mouthful of dust, and her throat felt dry as a bone, but it would assimilate into the rest of herself and keep her 'fed'.
And then she'd leave the way she entered, once again make sure nobody was around as she reformed and redressed (Resolving once again to work out how to morph clothes) and scavenge enough to maintain her cover when she returned to the tents. Sometimes she spent a few days at a time in the ruins. It wasn't unusual not to see someone for a time, and people were secretive about where they lived. Tents weren't exactly hard to break into if someone wanted trouble.
