:: San Francisco - 4:56 AM :: It was fresh and windy that night (or morning, depending on perspectives) on the beach. The cloudless sky, though no longer shrouded with the veil of darkness that it had earlier, wasn't quite lit up yet either, still lingering in the marine blue hues of dusk as it waited for the sun to lazily make it's appearance. The Golden Gate Bridge stood proud in the horizon, dotted with flickers of activity from the early morning traffic. The shoreline was shrouded in an aura of complete silence, broken only by the faint echoes of the awakening city in the distance. Balancing precariously on a dry, water beaten old log, stood a lone human figure, arms spread wide as she carefully placed one foot in front of the other, lost in her own little world.
Keran Valkesh, for that was what the aforementioned figure called itself, was a barefooted androgynous teenager, dressed in only a simple pair of black boy's swimming trunks with a red line on the side and a form fitting black t-shirt, worn over a more traditional female bathing suit. She and a few of her friends were on vacation in the city for the spring break, crashing in a small, inexpensive hotel room in one of the seedier parts of the city. It wasn't particularly glamorous, but it was all they could afford on their collective student's salaries. Her companions had decided to head for bed earlier, exhausted from a night of partying, but Keran, with her notoriously inexhaustible reserves of energy, had instead elected to go for a calm, leisurely walk on the now empty shoreline.
Or at least that had been her excuse. In truth, she had just wanted to take the opportunity to use her power for a bit, while it was still sufficiently dark outside. That's right, superpower. More specifically, she had a preternatural control over darkness, allowing her to manifest tendrils, blades and other physical items made of what appeared to be pure solid shadows. Well, technically, she couldn't really get the dark constructs to form into blades sharp enough to actually hurt someone yet, but they did look
wicked cool. She could also wrap herself in a shroud of darkness which allowed her to hover, cling to walls like a spider or become virtually invisible at night.
However, that was not what she was contemplating right now. Instead, her mind had fixated on a stranger, even deeper mystery:
How the hell did this log even get here? There aren't any trees planted around, it's way too heavy for the water to have dragged it this far inland. Hell, it's not even native to California. It looks more like some sort Canadian tree, or something. At least she thought so. She'd been in the boy scouts when she was younger and slightly remembered some of it... Kind of. She didn't exactly have the longest attention span.
Maybe it was like a tornado or something that was so strong that it threw it all the way here. (God that would be so wicked!)... Probably not. Maybe it was aliens? If she had her own flying saucer, she knew that she'd definitely be messing around with the tractor beam, causing random havoc all around the country just for the heck of it. Speaking of which, she wished she could fly faster using her power, like a bird! As it was, all she could use it for was hover around slowly, except when the wind picked up. She could kick off walls or rooftops to go faster, but she couldn't really speed up mid-air without it, which she thought kind of sucked.
She jumped off the end of her impromptu balancing beam and sat down on the sand, laying her back against it as she watched the sun slowly drift into view in the horizon.
"Enjoying the sunrise, Keran?"If the teenager had been wearing any socks, she would have definitely jumped right out of them right then. Scrambling to her feet after a vaguely acrobatic motion of questionable gracefulness, she turned spun around to see who surprised her. She was met with the sight of a fairly athletic man in his late 30s wearing a seemingly very expensive suit which looked almost amusingly out of place for a walk on the beach. Immediately, she got a bad feeling.
"Jesus, buddy, you scared the-... Crap. This is going to be one of those "tell me where the bad man touched you" kind of days, isn't it?""Nothing of the sort, I assure you." the man said appeasingly.
"How did you know my name?""I have my ways." he chuckled unhelpfully.
"What do you want?"Instead of answering, the man reached into his shirt and pulled out a very official looking envelope and offered it to her.
"This will explain everything. Read it somewhere safe then destroy it. The information it contains is... sensitive." = = =
:: San Francisco Airport- 13:10 ::
Keran looked around nervously as she went through airport security. Leaving like this had probably been the hardest thing she had ever done, emotionally speaking. After the man in black knockoff had left, she had quickly found a more isolated location and opened the letter. She has used her power to do so, just in case it contained anthrax or something, but it had turned out to be perfectly clean. It had contained a short letter and a plane ticket leaving for Haiti the same afternoon. She would never get the chance to explain it to her parents. They would be devastated. Hell, once they got the news, they'd probably never let the twins leave the town in their lives. She could have called and tried to explain, but the results would probably have been pretty much the same, minus getting them to think she'd gone crazy.
She took a nearly imperceptible sigh sigh and drank a long shot of coffee from the cheap paper cup. Although externally she still held the same perky and energetic façade as she always wore, on the inside she felt completely and utterly drained. Her disguise was by no means perfect, of course. Underneath her sunglasses, her eyes were bloodshot, and had deep, dark circles underneath them. Although she'd done her best to put it in order, her hair was messy and unkempt, although that probably didn't differ from her usual style anyways.
She was still wearing the same black t-shirt as she had been earlier, although she had replaced the swim trunks with a worn pair of utilitarian looking brown cargo pants. Over the t-shirt, she wore a simple dark green hoodie with black lining on the inside, zippered halfway up her chest with the sleeves rolled up. A pair of black running shoes adorned her feet. Not exactly the most fashionable of outfits, even by her standards, but she didn't particularly care at that moment. Her only luggage was what she had brought with her on the trip, a small black backpack of personal effects and a blue duffel bag containing a few clothes and utilities.
By the time she had finished her coffee, the plane was about to start boarding. She entered the plane and quickly found her assigned seat. She had been on a few plane trips in the past, when she went to visit family in Armenia, but she had never travelled first class. Somehow, however, she felt that she could have done without that particular experience, given the circumstances.
"Would you like anything to eat or drink sir?" It almost didn't register with at first that someone had asked her a question.
Fuck it, I need more coffee."Some coffee would be great."she said with a pleasant smile which did nothing to reflect the turmoil in her mind.
