Luminous Beings

Calling All Heroes and Villains!

Unsure if I can join, time-wise, but are there still openings? I think I have a pretty funny idea for a power/character the roster is missing

also long time no see @Silver Carrot

@Pumpkinlord

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

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CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

Evelyn arched the sort of eyebrow men in the 1600s spent decades in conservatories learning to sculpt as the drink appeared in Chad’s hand. She couldn’t remember him having any sort of telekinesis, although there were plenty of amazing gifts in the world not borne of that meteor. She took it gingerly with a coquettish grin and sipped at it. It was as saccharine and unfulfilling as the recesses of Becky’s concave mind.

“This is fine,” Evelyn said, “Perfect to start with.” Evelyn for a moment started to say how she liked strawberry lemonade best, too, but as she watched Jaime fist-pound Chad (“if only you could, mon cheri”) Evelyn felt an odd jolt. It was like déjà vu, in a sense, a sudden realignment. I hate strawberry lemonade, Evelyn thought. The blue one’s the best.

Chad turned back to her and Evelyn sipped from her drink, the fizz more evanescent and the glass polished and clear as her lips touched the rim. She noticed Jaime stand up a touch straighter, and the tight jeans he wore were bluer than she remembered. “Nonsense,” Evelyn replied, “Any house with this much booze is the nicest in town.” The house was nice, she thought, the layout modern but not gauche. Cutting-edge, really. Had she disliked it before? The thought seemed quite silly, now.

Jaime made some inane half-fucked attempt at seducing Chad involving something about their calculus teacher, and the mention of something as useless as mathematics made Evelyn zone out for a moment. What a hideous centerpiece, she thought, glancing at the furniture. As she did, the Mayday Parade girl materialized from thin air. The boys around her started, and it made Evelyn smirk. What a useful talent, to be invisible. Evelyn couldn’t relate, although she did wish she had that gift, at times. She could feel it, almost, the sort of psychic pressure of eyes watching your every move. There were no camera flashes or paparazzi, sure, but she knew there were hushed whispers when she left the room, or discussion of what she’d done or said or worn on car rides home. People tried to hide it, but Evelyn was better at watching than they were at lying. That was something she’d learned early, the first time she’d worn a low-cut shirt in middle school and heard snickering in gym. There was always someone watching in Leesburgh. You couldn’t ever drop the act.

Evelyn’s side lit up with pain as someone bumped into her, but her fangs stayed in immaculate order. The invisible girl was talking to Titus, one of the few people who Evelyn did not feel entirely confident she could dominate sexually. For fuck’s sake, he nearly skull-fucked that rock thing. She didn’t let her eyes linger. Elle, she was sure, had no great love for Evelyn, but the feeling was not mutual. She found skater girl interesting, like a rare animal at the zoo. There were few people even in the city of freaks who dared to swim against the current. Evelyn had not yet deduced whether she did it merely to have her own little group of outsiders, or if she truly didn’t care.

Regardless, she was less appetizing than the host himself. “So Chad,” she said, overriding whatever Jaime had been saying about parabolas or something. “What’s in store for tonight?” As she spoke, she could feel the springtime surge start to jitter up her spine. The dull throbbing of the bandaged wound faded, and Evelyn felt her powers light up. It was not often she really flexed her radioactive muscles. Frankly, she seldom needed to. As she took her next sip, the music came through crisper and cleaner, the smell of sweat and liquor grew more tolerable, and the boy gripping the sides of Chad’s toilet in the bathroom down the hall found his stomach steadied. Upstairs, a particularly foolish pair of freshmen had their biological rhythms yanked into peak fertility at what would not only the most inopportune time possible for them, but also the set of triplets the girl would birth in nine months’ time. These, however, were distant concerns. Let’s give the butterflies in his stomach something to dance to. He certainly looked good, Evelyn thought, not remembering a time Chad had looked so nice. He wasn’t like Titus that she could remember – he must’ve worked for his body. “This is an awfully big party. Anything after beer pong?” She let her eyes and teeth glitter.

Chad started to reply, but paused as a theater kid on the other side of the living room started to sing along to the iPod on shuffle. He was hit with an aural wave of “shut the fuck up”’s and booos that briefly drowned out every other sound in the house. Evelyn took the moment to scan the room. It was second nature.

At the beer pong table, the lizard looked rattled for a moment. Interesting, Evelyn thought. Henry was in some ways inscrutable: scales were harder to read than skin, after all. Even so, the sag of shoulders, the hurried move to take a drink, the glance. He was a little cold-blooded island for that moment. Evelyn followed his slit-eyed gaze to the couch. Ah. The giant spoke to the invisible girl, and the couch visibly shifted as he sat down. Evelyn briefly attempted to remember if any of her father’s associates had ever dealt with any home issues. She quietly hoped the foundations of Chad’s McMansion were made of something sturdier than his mother’s décor tastes.

Evelyn blinked at that. The thought felt weird, foreign, like a sudden cold spot in the ocean on a warm day. She liked the style, she thought. The music swept over her again and she wondered if even she could put out enough springtime to make Jersey All Over get into Goliath’s kilt. And as soon as she’d wondered, Elle went up to go play beer pong. Very interesting, Evelyn mused, taking another sip. She normally didn’t drink this quickly.

The Firestarter boy: Chad’s house is truly fucked now. He didn’t show up often, which made Evelyn wonder what prompted this arrival. He was near Letitia Greene. Evelyn’s façade broke for a moment with visible surprise. Jesus, it’s like a Hufflepuff orgy tonight. He looked stiff as stone. Evelyn considered it odd how he could kill them all with a sneeze, and yet looked so scared of a little music.
Evelyn had never felt particularly insecure about not having been born with the world-breaking strength or outright destructive powers of some of Leesburgh’s other denizens. Chris Chandler there was proof enough none of that mattered. An odd duck indeed.

From the kitchen, she heard laughter. Behind Chad, she watched Titus snap at a girl. For a brief moment, Evelyn saw the stone face in front of her, jaw agape, and her side and her knuckles didn’t feel throbbing pain, they just felt cold, so fucking cold the springtime shine around her sputtered for a moment and unaltered reality crashed back around them until she blinked and brought it back.
Evelyn stepped closer to Chad. “You’re so sweet to organize all this,” she said, shifting to put him between her and the flesh golem.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

Evelyn Noblezada

The men in the back of the ambulance had on hazmat suits. Their faces were lost to Evelyn; someone else's looked back at her from the screens over their eyes. It had a passing resemblance to her own, she thought, but she did not ever look so rough. A sister? A mother?

"Not Leesburgh General," Evelyn said. She wriggled her fingers and toes. It was the most she could do without making the pain worse. She had to be ready if another one came, another rock. Something had taken a huge bite from her side, she thought, a bear, or the rock-beast. It had eaten her, finally, and this was all some fever dream. A boy had bitten her, once, making out, and she hadn't much cared for it. Had that happened?

The suits stopped moving for a moment, then began speaking to each other again. There was a swirl of machines beeping and monitors blooping.

Ignoring me, Evelyn thought, the glare through the back window shining for just a moment before it dulled entirely. "I didn't," Evelyn murmured, each breath a bit more difficult to take in. Her lungs didn't want to go all the way. "Fucking, fucking stutter. Leesburgh General - it - six times malpractice, I don't -" Evelyn blinked. The ambulance had gotten smaller. The edges were darker, the rock thing had begun to swallow it whole too. "I don't consent, I don't - "

Evelyn stared at the back doors, which were shrinking, being pulled further away. It had grabbed onto her face, wrapped something around the back of her head, and the air seemed thicker, sluggish. Someone, maybe outside the rock beast's mouth, said it didn't normally take this much.

Then she was asleep.

--

"Good morning, Miss Noblezada!"

Evelyn did not look up from her phone.

"How are you feeling today?"

"Really bored."

"Ah, well, I'm sorry to hear that. You need to stay here a few more days, however. You took a -"

The words faded. Evelyn scrolled. A few days? Hours, at the most, she thought.

"-and after you change the bandages at home, you - Oh my God!"

Evelyn glanced up. There was a deer with its nose pressed to the hospital window. St. James was near the woods. He had in his teeth some kind of roots that he dropped at the windowsill. The nurse blinked.

"He keeps coming by," Evelyn said. "It's honestly annoying."

"Um, I -"

Evelyn did not want this conversation to continue. She glanced at the nurse. She was old. Maybe 25. She had some tattoos on one arm, and none on the other. Removed. Evelyn let her eyes wander down to her fingers, where she found an uneven tan. Her eyes went back to the woman's chest. The clothes fit too loosely. She'd bought them a size up.

"You seeing anyone?" Evelyn asked, casually.

The woman fumbled with the IV. She left shortly afterwards.

---

Evelyn stood naked in front of her mirror. She had gotten out of the bath an hour ago, but none of the warmth and steam in the room had left.

The cane she'd been told to use for the next three weeks was sticking out of the trash can. The cut. Dark and red and inflamed and crooked like a broken bone. It throbbed as she stared. Her cheeks were defiled by a handful of scrapes and cuts, already near-healed, her hands cut and bruised in a few places, her knees skinned to the bone. But the cut. She let her finger trace it, the pain stabbing into her chest all over again.

When she blinked, sometimes, she was falling again, and the rock thing got her, it snapped off one of her legs and she could see half her bone jutting out from the red and the meat. Then she opened her eyes and she was talking to some fucking nurse.

Evelyn ran her finger along the scar. I always heal back, she thought, but in her mind, she sounded like Becky. She ran through the swimsuits in her mind. It was winter, soon, there would be heavy jackets and sweaters. Layers. She would have months before she was bared to the world again. The fucking idiot runner boy had passed out, he may not have remembered. She should've kicked his stupid head when he was on the ground. Hopkins wasn't dumb enough to say anything. Tattoos, she thought. Someone on the west side was sleazy enough to give one to a minor. It was so ugly and wrong, like when she had painted in the fourth grade and Tyreese Johnson had accidentally spilled his water bottle all over her painting of a puppy. Ruined. Mottled.

She stared. It was far too close to her breasts or her abdomen for comfort. She was so stupid. If she'd fallen a half second earlier, a half second later, she may well have wound up a bigger freak than Becky. As it was, it fell where Hopkins had those guns that hung under his shoulders.

From a certain angle, she supposed, it could be intimidating. Evelyn couldn't remember if she'd been running away or not when she fell.

---

Evelyn grimaced as she stepped out of the car. Her purse - worth more than all the clothes you're wearing now - hung under her right shoulder, the strap gripped closely by a mittened hand. Her knuckles were still bruised and swollen from punching the stupid thing's head. You were an idiot, she thought to herself, But smarter than that thing. Evelyn glanced up the driveway, where a mish-mash of hand-me-down cars were parked haphazardly. It was like a carousel of the pretenses of the middle class. She could turn on these radios if it came back, Evelyn thought, so suddenly and abruptly she was walking toward one of the door handles to see if it was locked before she caught herself. At the top of the hill, of course, was Charles. The house was fine, she supposed. Gaudy in all the subtle ways. New money, Evelyn thought, hoisting the handbag higher. Defending coal miners was what it was, but his dad didn't have the cunning of her father. After Friday, all the money in the world's going to be on some class-action when one of these mutants goes Columbine. Still, she couldn't imagine putting so much money down in Leesburgh no mater who you were. It was pretty boring, even with all that golem shit. The slight bulge from the bandages was masked quite thoroughly under her cardigan, and the bag was insurance. As she walked, the smell of weed drifted down the hill, and was immediately repulsed by a gust of warm air, giving Evelyn a scent sweeter than any perfume. A pristinely, HOA-mowed lawn, fresh-picked flowers.

She walked. She met up with Jamie Armistead, a gay kid at the edge of Evelyn's orbit. Junior, 5'8, also in theater, but a techie. Evelyn thought of him fondly; he was one of the few people neither trying to fuck her nor the guys she wanted to fuck, so there was a certain honesty between them she didn't find very often in school relationships. The two chatted as they meandered up the hill. There weren't people Evelyn really fully considered friends, she supposed, as Leesburgh was far too much a stepping stone to put down roots, but Jaime was probably the closest approximation. He was better than Becky, at least.

A drunk soccer player Evelyn allegedly sexted the past year stumbled up, smiling wide. His name was Mark or something. "Hey, Evie," he slurred.

Evie. In that moment, Evelyn could've punched through the golem head, had it been on Mark's body. A few years prior, Evelyn recalled one of the varsity players getting blown by Mark's sister at halftime. Now what had his name been? Evelyn gleamed with conversational ease. "Hi," Evelyn said, "Do you know where Alex is?"

The last happy smile Mark would have of that school year left his face. "Oh, uh - "

The two walked past. Jamie said nothing, but approved silently. Such was why Evelyn liked him. Evie. Evelyn hadn't had a boyfriend in a few months. It wasn't necessarily that she didn't enjoy the attention. But the gall. Evie.

As they stepped into the party, the energy noticeably improved. The sloppy drunks stood slightly straighter, the weed more biochemically potent, the alcohol smoother, sweeter. Evelyn could feel eyes upon her, not least of which was Chad. Sunglasses inside, Evelyn thought. And Oakleys at that. New money. Coke, maybe? Evelyn gave him a dazzling smile, admiring his jawline. He'd had three previous crushes on Asian girls, Evelyn knew, but she had always been one to help break down racial barriers in Leesburgh. Chad meandered through the crowd, pretend-casually, in their direction. Boys were cute when they tried. Chad was an upperclassman, and Evelyn a mere sophomore, yet being the Marlo of the school's sexual gang wars had done little to slow her social climbing. This was not the first upperclassman party Evelyn had been invited to. A dalliance with a baseball player the previous year had worked wonders for that last year, and these events were far more fun than hanging out with the amorphous cloud of Beckys that clung to her. There had been a brief pause to her party-going the previous year when the two broke up. Being found with weed after cheating on Evelyn was an unfortunate end to his college aspirations.

Her mind was alight with the joy of being out with people after the stay in the hospital, quiet and bleach-smelling and boring. Upstairs, Evelyn could distantly hear a girl faking an orgasm, and the gutshot-groan of some boy. There was a non-zero chance he was thinking of Evelyn, she supposed. She pulled the purse tighter to her side as she heard the bed shake, suddenly a bit cold.

She glimpsed Willow at the outer orbit of a conversation, perhaps looking for a break in, or maybe a break out. Evelyn didn't recall seeing her car in the driveway, and that monstrosity was memorable. Or is it the car of that other girl? Willow was an odd one. Kept to herself. She wasn't necessarily ugly, but she was like a child. Quiet, quiet, the sort of quiet you'd think meant there were schemes to shoot up third period if she'd been a boy. Evelyn watched her for a moment. She assumed Willow disliked her, though Evelyn had never really had much of an issue with her. Evelyn rarely had problems with people who didn't really threaten her in some way, which, as callous as it sounds, is probably more magnanimous than most would give her credit for. The little ghost girl was certainly weird, but she wasn't a 12 foot crocodile. Or someone visibly deformed or marred in some way.

Evelyn checked to make sure her jacket was zipped up. Jamie raised an eye at Evelyn as Chad drew closer. You can stay, Evelyn telepath'd with a nod of the head. Jamie smirked. Chad drew closer, and Evelyn admired the brief glimpse of his abs under his shirt, though she thought, adjusted for sex, hers were superior.

She turned to say something, twisting her torso, and her right side screamed with agony.

Evelyn did not flinch. She did not smell broken concrete and her throat did not feel so dry she thought she was going to choke to death. "Grab me a drink?" She said, sweet as summertime, toes digging into her shoes so forcefully she thought her feet might break. "I'm so glad you invited me. Have you met Jamie?"

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

Evelyn

It was possible Evelyn had not fully thought through her plan. As she scrambled her way up the pile of rubble, the combined bass-thumping of every car on the street made the rocks rumble beneath her, tripping her up as quickly as she could regain her balance. Wait, Evelyn thought. Music isn't that loud. She threw a glance over her shoulder the exact way you're not supposed to in a life-threatening situation and saw that not only was the lizard grappling it, the world's strongest ginger was as well. They were trying to rip the thing up, and as it convulsed in time with the music, smashing rocks and cars into the ground, her little shrapnel mountain shook with it. She couldn't get her balance. Every impact made something in the mountain shift, and one of those cars or building foundations collapsing on her would kill her just as dead as rock boy would. Evelyn had the unenviable choice of moving slowly across the rubble and letting the golem turn her into a blood paste (still a more popular blood paste than anyone else under twenty tons of concrete, however) or getting crucified by the broken remains of a Subaru.

"I fucking hate this town," Evelyn muttered to herself. Her friends in Seattle never had to deal with this kind of shit. Even in a short time, five or six cars and half of a flower shop had been knocked into the street, and loose stone and metal shifted under her step. "Hurry up," she told herself, reaching the top of the pile. She glanced back again and saw that the thing was starting to eat Titus. She blinked. It was eating him. The rock was sludging up his arms toward his chest.

Evelyn, half crawling to keep her balance on an up-ended Nissan Altima, grime and sweat and blood smudged across her face, stared back. It was eating him. She couldn't look away. It was eating him.

To the casual onlooker, it was not clear if the car shifting under her was from Evelyn springing up to run toward the golem or to run away.

Before she was fully upright, an armored personnel carrier tore straight through the minivan that annoying woman and her annoying baby had been in some five feet from her rubble pile. The shock and the impact tumbled Evelyn off the other side, where a chunk of rebar slashed her between the ribs before she rolled onto the ground. Gunfire thundered out on the other side of the garbage mountain and Evelyn curled into a ball, hands over her head. The motion made the right side of her ribs explode in pain, but no one could hear Evelyn Noblezada scream in the fusillade.

"FUCK!" Evelyn screamed, clutching a hand to her side. It came back scarlet. She blinked. They were eating him. They were eating both of them. My shirt, Evelyn thought. Mom bought this for me. It's ruined now. She blinked. She wasn't going to be able to get another one, her - the stores were all crushed. It was eating him. Her mom would be mad. Her hand was red. It's going to eat you too, fuckface, she heard a voice that sounded an awful lot like herself shout from the back of her skull. It was far away. Her hand was red. Really red. Does it eat you fast, Evelyn wondered. It doesn't have a face. Maybe you just go inside and get crushed to death. Or stuck under the earth until you drown in dirt. Evelyn couldn't breathe right now. Was it like that? Was it like that forever?

Something vibrated along the side of her skin and Evelyn rolled onto her back, the adrenaline numbing her to the broken glass and scattered rocks that dug into her as she did so. She turned her head and saw a small swarm of bumblebees buzzing next to her cut. They were gooey. Her side felt sticky. She was in a lot of pain. She did not think she had ever been in this much pain. Why were there bees?

The head of the golem fell three feet next to her and Evelyn punched it before she had time to think.

This hurt her hand and her side more than she could properly articulate, and Evelyn curled back up as tight as she could. She did not think her heart could've pounded any faster than it did when she was in the alleyway, but it was now. It's going to eat me, Evelyn thought. Everything inside her was shaking. She could feel her entrails slipping out her side, her guts and her bones pulling her heart and her lungs down and out onto the dusty street and they were screaming trying to stay in place. It couldn't eat her, Evelyn thought. It can't eat me. The music was supposed to stop it. It can't eat me. I can still hear the music. It's not fair, it's not -

A moment passed, and another. Evelyn turned. The head was there. The rest of it wasn't. Something had cut its head off. A big axe, Evelyn thought, and in the white haze of pain that had blanketed all her senses, that made complete logical sense.

There was some fucking loser who couldn't pay for college and wound up in the ASA screaming over a loudspeaker but Evelyn didn't listen. To her credit, she wasn't sure if she could. Her brain seized upon things for only half a second before it was just pain again. Evelyn grabbed the piece of rebar that had ripped her side and hoisted herself up to her feet.

Across the street, hidden behind a trash can, a girl named Brianna Roberts saw Evelyn stand up. She could not see Evelyn's pierced side. From her perspective, there had been a tremendous noise, and then she saw Evelyn Noblezada stand next to the severed head of the golem that destroyed Leesburgh. Brianna Roberts had left Evelyn's fifteenth birthday party with a severe hangover and an early-onset eating disorder. As she saw Evelyn stand, unharmed, triumphant, she wept.

Evelyn's legs melted, but her hand dug into the metal so hard the blood from her side mingled with the blood in her palm. You are not going to fucking collapse, she told herself. There was a girl who had collapsed at one of the games she coached because of diabetes or something. They'd all clapped for her, but once the game started up again, Evelyn's team had slaughtered that girl's team in the second half. Evelyn looked down at the head. It ate at least those two. Not me.The music was still blaring, making the pebbles on the ground vibrate across the broken street.

Evelyn felt something she was not sure she had ever truly felt before in her life. She could not have articulated it even if she hadn't been standing at ground zero. I won. The music thump-thumped. The golem head stared at her with stone eyes. If you were worth shit, you'd be made of diamonds.

Evelyn took a step forward, and then another. Each time it felt like someone had grabbed both sides of her wound and ripped in opposite directions like they were trying to open a particularly stubborn ziploc bag. She took a breath that made her ribs scream. Things were not as swimmy when she focused on the pain. The hand pressed to the bloody cut was shaking, but her mind was getting steadier. Her other hand hung limply at her side, the knuckles throbbing to the bone. So help me God, if you fucking fall over on main street. Evelyn chose her steps carefully. One or two at a time, always near something she could lean against if her balance gave way. Bees zoomed to her side, smeared honey, and zoomed away. If it weren't for the fact she was pretty sure it would have made her faint, she would've smacked the shit out of them. As they flew away, they stabbed uselessly at the golem head and fell dead beside it.

One of the APCs had the man whose chin had so deep a divide, rappers from both sides of it put diss tracks out on each other. "Hopkins," Evelyn said. The voice in her chest wasn't hers. It was rougher. My shirt, Evelyn thought. Mom liked that shirt. It's going to eat me. It ate them. It ate them. Evelyn dug her fingers into the wound and the pain drove everything else away. She clenched her legs as tight as she stood and stayed standing. Hopkins was a decent guy. Her dad had sued the shit out of the ASA a few times. He got on CNN for it once. Evelyn hadn't watched. "Get me to an ambulance before anyone sees me or I swear to Christ I'll say one of those bullets grazed me."

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

Evelyn

The rock thing turned around and Evelyn spat out a curse. "Oh, it has no eyes?" she whined, blinking as the seasonally uncharacteristic sunshine danced along all the glinting steel strewn across the street. Evelyn cocked her head to the side, curiosity replacing her pants-shitting terror for a moment. How does it get around? It can't smell or anything but it's been aiming at stuff the whole time. Then it stopped killing the lizard and turned to the opposite side of the street. Man even the rocks won't hang out with that guy for long.

As it moved, best Evelyn could see, the sidewalk started wobbling just where it was looking. "What the fuck," Evelyn muttered, peering out from behind a garbage can she would later insist she had never hidden behind - ew - and watching it for a moment. The robins and bluejays swirling above her head continued to chirp and shriek as loud as they could, even as she absentmindedly waved a hand at them to shut up. God they're worse than Becky.

Evelyn's eyes went as wide as Kelly B.'s unfortunately leaked pepperoni nips and she scrambled as far back down the alley as she could go, turning around the corner of the building and covering her head with the trash can lid as the sidewalk exploded up and smashed back down. The noise was louder than anything she had ever heard, and her parents had taken her to see the Killers no less than three times. She couldn't breathe. Her chest felt like the thing had wrapped its rebar claws around her and just kept tightening, her skull felt too small and she could hear her blood pumping everywhere, her eyes growing wet and her throat dry.

Then the impact hit. The force of it knocked Evelyn over into a discarded mess of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans. Disgust briefly flickered into her mind before the fear took back over. Evelyn stayed down for a moment, trying to push herself back up off the broken glass and crinkled aluminum. As best she could tell, it wasn't looking at her. "Of course not," Evelyn said. "It doesn't have any fucking eyes."

Evelyn pressed herself back up against the wall, peeking out. She wasn't able to run any farther - there was a flat brick wall at the end of the alley, and the fire escape on the building across from her had been knocked onto the roof of the one she stood behind. Evelyn took a deep breath, forcing herself to look back out further. It can't see you, Evelyn snapped at herself. Why even fucking hide? She felt like it was her first fucking sleepover all over again, and she'd been picked three times over for seven minutes in heaven, and she didn't know why, like everyone else knew but she didn't, just small and dumb and out of the loop.

Evelyn stared. It has no eyes. And it has no ears. Or nose. So it's not, like, seeing or smelling any shit. And it's so loud that even if it could hear it had to be as deaf as the rest of them. That made no sense. No it does, Evelyn heard herself say. She was talking to herself like she was the Becky of this situation, and no one treated her like Becky. Not even herself. "It's a rock whatever," she said. "It probably, like, sees the way moles do, or whatever." Maybe it felt vibrations or something. Was that why it hit the Verizon store?

"Literally don't be a dumbass," she told herself again, trying to think. That felt right though. It had to have some kind of, like, vision. Just no eyes. Or ears. And it was a rock thing. Like bats used echo-whatever.

At the moment, as best she could even tell, it was "turned" away from her. It was focusing on the store maybe a dozen yards to her left and a few doors over. If it turned back her way, it was going to smash all the bricks between her and it and kill her, and she was going to die surrounded by PBRs and the most unfuckable student to ever come through Jack Kirby High School, and then he'd probably lay eggs on her corpse or whatever lizards did.

Before she had time to talk herself out of it, Evelyn sprinted down the alleyway. She darted over the piles of bricks and rubble as easily as those hurdles in soccer practice - which, by the way, still bullshit she couldn't play varsity, because -

As soon as she started, she stopped, because as if God chose that moment to humble Evelyn's sense of athleticism, Dexter materialized in front of her, talking as fast as he ran and presumably, fu -

All the glass windows shattered in the building to her left and Evelyn screamed, pissed at herself for making noise, then remembering that the thing couldn't hear her, then remembering that everyone else still could, and that she would just blame it on Letitia or some shit if anyone mentioned it after. If they lived. If she lived.

Evelyn blinked, trying to process everything through a brain that was at the moment expending most of its energy trying to convince her she would be better suited to just curl up in a ball on the ground. She forced that thought away. "Dexter," she huffed, noting somewhere in the back of her mind that if any rumors of her freaking out when this happened spread, he was the rat. Of course he comes to the end of the world dressed like a Mormon. "I - my other idea sucked, listen - " she huffed for air, her throat too tight to breathe right. "It has no eyes, right, so like - it has to - like - forget the metal thing, that was dumb - " he said vibrations. Evelyn was about as sure of this hunch as she had been the sunlight, but it's not like the National Guard was rolling up the street anytime soon. "I think - it sees through the ground or some shit, so we gotta stop that." As she talked, her legs went from running water to frozen ice. More and more, the fear started changing to annoyance. This thing tried to kill her. On a Friday. "Try to find any cars you can and crank the bass way up or rumble the engine or something. It's all I got." She paused, thinking. "Oh - and if there's people in the cars we should probably get them, too." The golem twisted and raised a hunk of rock that could've doubled as the foundation for Evelyn's house. Well, maybe not her house. Maybe the pool house. Regardless, Evelyn decided she'd been standing still for too long. "Run!"

Evelyn came out onto the street, where the reek of sewage and spilling gasoline hit her before the cloud of spring sunshine caught up to her and whisked it away. Gasoline? Oh, great. Lovely. Now she'd die surrounded by melted PBRs. Evelyn took half a second to glance left and right. She was maybe fifteen feet from the thing. It was big. It was really big.

Move, fatass, Evelyn's inner Evelyn told herself. She remembered her plan. The sunshine hadn't worked. Whatever. Not her fault. She ran to the nearest car, going right past Henry without checking on if he was okay. He was either dead or not at this point, and the thing had moved on. A small part of her felt her stomach roll - it felt cold, nauseous, like she should stop and check, but it was accurate. He couldn't kill it and it wasn't like she could drag his ass away. There were people stuck in cars that couldn't bench press a school bus. Not that she was particularly concerned with the people, at that moment. It was the cars.

Evelyn went to the nearest car, an SUV that looked like a Hot Wheel that had gone through a garbage disposal and then the Vietnam war. A mom was screaming into her airbag trying to get out. Evelyn grabbed a brick off the ground and smashed out the window. She was pretty sure you were supposed to hit the windows away from the person stuck inside, but she was in a hurry, and this was a beggars and choosers type situation.

"Help, help - "

"Shut up, dear God," Evelyn muttered. She handed the lady a piece of glass, noticing absently there was blood on her hands. She'd cut her hands. Oh I better not scar. She moved over and smashed the backdoor glass out, reaching over and inside to the latch to open the car door, which she had to wedge open with both her legs and a sizable grunt. Fortunately, Evelyn's irritatingly in-shape quads calves and glutes were not for show. She was able to pry it open enough to wedge inside and yank the baby or whatever out the back. It was crying too.

"Ugh, you too?" she muttered. The mom, essentially a menopausal Becky, just a vague cloud of annoyance at the edge of her mind. A large part of her wanted to turn and run and run and run and just go, but some part of her wasn't. She wasn't sure why. There was a corner of her brain that just saw this as when her dumbass U12 team was down by like 6 at halftime and she wasn't going to lose the -0 on her scorecard. The lady fumbled out and fell face-first on the ground, clearly dizzy. Evelyn figured she probably should've stopped that from happening, but again, there were bigger issues. The longer Evelyn fumbled with the car, though, the lady seemed to regain her balance, the gloss melting from her eyes and the airbag burns on her face and arms dulling a bit. Evelyn half-handed, half-threw the baby at her and then gave them both a shove down the street away from the thing. I have to do everything around here, she thought, sparing a moment to look at the ground for the right sized brick she needed. There was another world-breaking smash and Evelyn jumped up, gulping down a yelp before yanking a ten or fifteen pound chunk of concrete off the ground with both her hands. She clambered into the front seat and grabbed at the dials, needing a minute to sift through the panic to remember the numbers. It took three seconds, then four, then it came. 104.8. The most hated channel by the Pennsylvania Quaker community. Evelyn's #3 preset on her car.

"-no good bloodsucker, fat motherfucker now look who's in -

Evelyn stretched as far as she could to reach the other dial, punching the button for settings, then bass, then turning it as far up as it would go along with the volume.

It occurred to Evelyn in that moment she probably should've planned this a bit better.

Immediately the subwoofers blared and the car, tilted at a 45 degree angle on the rubble. Evelyn thought her eardrums committed suicide. The ground started shaking beneath her. Everything started shaking. Evelyn glanced at the PRNDL, eyeballed the beast and twisted the wheel to match. Then she yanked it into drive and dropped the rock on the gas pedal. The car lurched and Evelyn was this time unable to suppress the yelp as she fell out on her ass, rolling on bits of historic downtown Leesburgh until she stopped. It stung pretty bad and sent a shooting pain down her legs, and peppered the rest of her like hornet stings. Though she did not notice, the songbirds were clutching her shirt with their tiny claws and flapping desperately to pull her away, their screaming song lost in the blasting rap music.

I need another car, Evelyn thought, the music and the screams and the crashing sounds so loud she could barely think. There has to be a fuckin' lowrider here somewhere, she thought.

There was a whoof and Evelyn blinked. Someone had lit the rock on fire. "There's gasoline everywhere, dipshit!" Evelyn tried to scream, but her Escalade-turned-bass-thumper drowned her out. Ugh. It occurred to her that she was still sitting on the ground, and she scrambled up on her feet before she had the chance to see if her plan worked. The lizard was somewhere to her left, forgotten, and that other 2/10 was throwing stuff at the golem from across the street.

Evelyn realized if it did work, this thing was going to be turning toward her, and probably be on fire, and probably kill her. She glanced to her right, where the alleyway was obliterated by a mountain of bricks. Just her luck. Ahead the lady and her stupid baby were stumbling along. She turned left, feeling the concrete shaking under her feet as the SUV screeched at the thing, smashing two other cars in the process. Evelyn whirled left and started clambering over the wreckage. There were too many cars piled up here, but maybe another one on the other side.

Do I go up or under? Evelyn thought, clenching as hard as she could to keep from pissing herself as the golem let out another scream. There was a mountain of broken cars and concrete and what looked like that statue of some important dude from a hundred years ago all dogpiled in the middle of the road. Or around?

She glanced back at the rock beast and then started climbing.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

Evelyn

The ground shook, and anyone who saw Evelyn stumble and fall was clearly addled by subterranean gases released from the fissure in the earth. Evelyn smacked onto her annoyingly-toned ass and bounced back up just as fast. She turned and saw what was almost the biggest load of bullshit she'd had to deal with that day crawling up out of the earth and ripping a lightpole out of the ground.

For a moment, the springtime ran from Evelyn's vein. It was just cold. She blinked again, her feet wobbling beneath her, a handful of scrapes and scratches from flying shards of rock screaming on her arms. This was not right. Things like this didn't happen. That thing was bigger than anything. It was really big. The sound the earth made when it split open was loud, like one giant rumbling shriek. She blinked. This -

One of the songbirds pecked at her collarbone hard enough to draw blood, and she started. "No," she told it briskly, turning back to the golem. The shock started its metamorphosis. That thing just bitchslapped the Moonbucks into a million pieces. She had just been there. Like, just been there. It could just as well have hit her. The audacity. The nerve of this motherfucker. There was a mom who had not lost the pregnancy weight yet carrying a baby in one hand and tugging along a girl in the other. She looked almost old enough to be on the team Evelyn coached.

Evelyn was halfway back to the site before she realized she was walking. The ground was broken and split apart, hills formed either of debris or where the earth was transmuted before their eyes. Where Evelyn stepped, poison ivy trickled out, before withering as she stepped away. The lizard was still standing there, looking up. Now he looked like a six year old next to that thing. What a bummer, this thing stole his whole shtick. Birds swirled around Evelyn's head like a feathery halo, chirping and singing wildly. She supposed they were trying to get her to run away. For a certainty, the nursery of racoons at her feet were tugging at her with their little paws was begging her to flee. "Literally stop it," Evelyn muttered, looking up at this thing. The sour smell of a broken sewer line had already flooded the street, and the waste bubbled up at the base of the golem. A gust of fresh air carried pollen and the sweet of rose petals and everything else along with it, diminishing the reek as she got closer. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Evelyn noticed the air was warmer, and each time she gulped back the urge to piss herself or sprint for the Pennsylvania border, the glare on the windows seemed to spark a bit brighter.

Evelyn blinked, looking over at the glare. She glanced back to the lizard. Was he cold-blooded, or whatever? Didn't - this thing looked like a snake. Or something. Its top was really big but it had, like, no abs. Where was that mouthbreather MacArthur when they needed him? He could've just hit it really hard at the bottom and cut it in half. What was the point of making out with him? It was still stuck in the ground. So it lived underground? Did it -

One of the birds pecked Evelyn back to reality again. She was standing in the open like a dumbass. Somewhere in her chest, her heart was hammering its way down into her stomach and twisting every organ it could find in there, but Evelyn was not about to throw up. Or get hit by this thing. Did you know you shit yourself when you die? She was not doing that. She scrambled courageously around the corner of an as-yet-untouched building, peering out at the thing. There were like a million people running and screaming, and it was still beating the shit out of that coffeeshop (Thank God it's not the espresso bar) so she felt relatively safe for the moment. If it turned her way she was just going to haul ass down the alley.

She had to squint - the glare off all the broken metal and glass was sharper, as if the September skies above had been replaced with noontime at July without her noticing. The ivy on the wall beside her twisted and squirmed as it grew a millimeter thicker, then two. She already felt a bit winded, which was weird, because she'd barely done anything yet. Her skin felt warm, as if she'd been out tanning all day. For a brief moment, the golem had knocked an awning out of place, and the sunlight hit what was left of the windows at a brutal angle. It smarted Evelyn's eyes and watered them before her power adjusted for it, and the sun-sharp glare was just as annoying as a fluorescent light.

She glanced up at the thing. She couldn't see its eyes, but weren't they, like, blind, or something? Or night vision? Like it lived underground. Did it even have eyes? Didn't they echolocate or something?

"Hey!" Evelyn whispered to the nerd with the scales as loud as she dared. It was drowned out by the screams. Oh, fuck it. She could outrun this thing if it heard her - as she wasn't junior varsity soccer captain for nothing. I mean, it was really big, but it was like that time in fourth grade they'd thrown a dodgeball at the kid in the wheelchair. Fuck was he going to do? Lord knows she fucking smoked Angela Whittingsworth at the last fitness exams, and this rock bitch didn't even have legs. So Evelyn upped it to a stage whisper, with force. "Henry! Get me like a big-ass piece of metal! Something shiny! Haul ass!" As she turned to him, the breeze came inexplicably from the alley she stood in, flooding warm crisp air at him. Every odor on the breeze sharpened, save the reek of the sewers and the iron tint of blood on the air that likely only he could pick up. Those melted away. It was just sunshine that jittered down his arms and warmed his muscles as if he'd been stretching for half an hour before this. She turned to the raccoons, which had not stopped clawing at her legs in an attempt to persuade her into finding shelter in the dumpster behind them. "Oh my God, you too. Go get me like a rearview mirror or some shit. I will tell my dad's janitor to stop leaving the garbage open at night, fucking go.."

They scampered. Evelyn ducked behind a trash can, which was positively nasty, I tell you - and started rummaging in her handbag. There was for sure at least one hand mirror in there.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

Evelyn Noblezada

The walk to main street was a quick one. The wind fell at Evelyn's back, the spots of shade from lurching branches gave way to warm sunlight as she passed through, and a small family of chipmunks peeked out from their burrow to briefly revere her as a messianic figure before she turned the corner.

Main Street of Leesburgh was fine. Functional. The Becky of civic architecture. There wasn't nearly enough shopping for Evelyn's liking, and what was there wasn't nice enough to constitute proper shopping. There was a movie theater, her dad's practice a considerable walk down the way, and a surge of people. Most were recognizable. There would be another hour or two where the high schoolers held supremacy over the few blocks that made for Leesburgh nightlife until people got off work and started going to bars. Idly, Evelyn wondered if her dad had already clocked out, and if so, what neck of town he was holed up in.

Evelyn stepped into Mooncash in characteristic fashion. As her foot crossed the threshold, the caffeine in everyone's coffee jittered with first-date nerves. The smell of roasted beans grew sharper, as if they'd been picked that morning off a Cuban mountainside and carried by fairies and woodland friends into the establishment. The glass of the windows fogged as the temperature inside grew warmer, pleasantly so, like a puppy on your lap or a mug of hot cocoa in your hands.

God this place is like church for virgins, Evelyn thought idly, scrolling through her phone as she approached the counter and told her order to some amorphous cloud of service worker that had dressed itself as an unremarkable female. She handed her metal card to the cashier, a small whirlwind of acne and stuttering, and sipped her strawberry frap for her phone's camera as she stepped outside. As the doors shut, the dinge of the counters murked back, and the air felt more stale, and the coffee cold. Save for the iced drinks, which were lukewarm, satisfying as saltwater.

Evelyn meandered down main street a short ways. The vibes in the cafe had been far too much like when she volunteered to coach middle school soccer. Little bitches. She found the patio of a restaurant a stone's throw away, where the smell of coffee could still reach her (oddly, the wind had been blowing down main street all afternoon, but as Evelyn sat to hold court a half block north, the breeze changed course). She had an excellent perch for people-watching. A few of the volleyball players moved past, hunched to whisper to each other like coyotes going past a fresh kill. A lone boy with long dark hair who Evelyn always smiled at so she wouldn't get shot to shit one of these days. A group of those anti-mutant activists that Evelyn took a pamphlet from and used as a bookmark for Looking for Alaska. She tucked it around page 200, the fresh paper smell of unopened text hitting her as she closed it back down and put it on the table, turned so the title was readable to passers-by. She watched. A waiter from inside the espresso bar brought her water and coffee periodically. Evelyn took some pictures there and tucked them away in case she needed something to post later. Evelyn Noblezada did not have to ask. Slowly, the sun inched down, although were an astronomer present they may have found its unusually slow progression to the horizon something of note. Across the street, at one of those virgin emporiums, the lizard kid walked out. Evelyn eyed him for a moment. She thought Green Giant was one unlucky bitch, but this guy may have taken the cake. She'd remembered seeing him at his dad's dinner parties when she was younger, and at actually fun parties once he started doing his gecko shit. Her meticulous eyebrows furrowed. He had siblings? Yeah. Younger or older, she couldn't remember, but the fact she couldn't remember told her all she needed to know about them. At least no one makes fun of him for being Asian anymore, Evelyn supposed. She was ever the optimist. It was remarkable he got to as many parties as he did given the fact he worked where he did. Sooner or later, Evelyn supposed, he would realize the reptiles in the tank get people to gawk, but they freeze fast when the lamp goes off. People would come and watch how many beers the ten feet lizard could drink at a party. And then they would walk away and go talk to their boyfriends.

Evelyn sipped at the espresso another faceless coffee lackey had brought her, feeling the rush startle down her fingers and toes. Some things were better than sunshine. A little robin hopped over to her and started pecking at her shoe.

"Go away," Evelyn said. She was watching a group of boys not far off, who were pretending not to be watching. One of them, she thought, was the cousin or something of a lawyer at her dad's firms. The other one she recognized as a boy who had been convinced he had to prove he was straight by eating a pair of Mandy Ellison's underwear in the sixth grade. By the looks of his waistline, he'd kept eating underwear.

The bird pecked at her ankle again, prompting Evelyn to stop drinking her coffee and look down. It chirped and shrieked and flew away.

Evelyn paused. Animals, much like people, had too much sense to fuck with her.

The bird came back, pecked at her, and started flying up the street. Evelyn slung her bag over her shoulder and started to follow, leaving The Hunger Games or whatever it had been on the table. The bird circled and landed next to the street, where it shrieked again and pecked at the ground. There was a fissure in the pavement. She glanced over at the lizard, who was not doing burpees or jumping up and down or anything similar to have caused this. Neither was that Letitia chick around. Odd.

She turned to the waiter, who was helping another waiter. "Who owns this building?" Evelyn asked. "Your walkway is not up to co-"

The Geeko started screaming about an earthquake, rudely interrupting her. A few other robins had joined the friend and started fluttering in a circle in front of her, nudging her ahead. "Literally no one was going into that store anyway," Evelyn muttered under her breath, before following the birds at a restrained pace. Evelyn had seldom been in life or death situations, which this one had a creeping feeling that it may be. A part of her wanted very desperately to start running, but the lizard boy had made everyone in earshot scream and start running, and she was not going to get her ass trampled to death because the city didn't have the money to put new asphalt down. For all she knew, another meteor hit one town over and they were going to get even more college essays writing themselves after this.

There was a park a block up, and she could sit somewhere where there weren't trees or whatever and just wait whatever dumb shit this was out. The fresh air snaked down the street to her, as if it were nudging her along with the birds. She went.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

"So glad everyone is okay!!" was on Facebook along with a picture of the traffic jam and car indentation within two minutes of the incident occurring.

Evelyn tucked away her iPhone without waiting to see the replies in much the same way Lebron can turn and jog away after letting go of a three point shot. She looked around the scene briefly, ignoring the nightingale that fluttered down and landed on her shoulder, chirping softly. Evelyn's dad had drilled into her what to do if there was ever a collision she was present at, even though in this case she couldn't really stand to gain or lose anything with an insurance claim afterwards. It looked to be Helen and Willow's car. Evelyn's eyes narrowed for a moment as she tried to remember - hadn't they named it? Dale? Doug. Fitting, as it was probably the only guy those two would ever get a ride on.

They had nearly hit Letitia, which wasn't a prospect that particularly upset Evelyn. Evelyn knew objectively that someone like that was an athlete on a caliber she couldn't really begin to compete with, but it was nonetheless annoying. At least everything I have, I work for, she thought, adjusting the strap of her designer bag as she moseyed away. A group was gathering, including a smattering of soccer boys, three of whom were checking her out. She wasn't particularly interested in any of them, but if they wanted to drive her social capital up, she also wasn't going to stop them. She really only suffered in situations like that if the absolute weirdos of the group were drawn to her, which Evelyn went to great efforts to avoid happening.

Someone - one of the baseball players, whose skin and personality could both be best compared to milk jogged up to her. "Hey, what - " he paused for a moment, blinking. The nightingale fluttered over his head and off and away, and Evelyn noticed that the grass by the sidewalk was inching up toward his cleats and her shoes. But why cleats, it's not baseball season. Ah. Soccer. He was too short, he'd never make it. But worth noting. "Hey - what - I heard someone scream?"

"Oh yeah," Evelyn said, turning back to where the jolly Green Giant, who was as much of a vegetable as her uncle after that train accident, was storming off. The wallflowers were still wilting in their car and a barrage of honking and cursing was coming from behind them, with the back of the line unsure at all about the cause of the hold-up, just knowing that there was a hold-up on a Friday afternoon. "Those two weren't paying attention and almost hit a few of us," Evelyn said. This wording was really only accurate under the most generous interpretation of "us" that exists, but Evelyn seemed to recall this baseball player - Cedric - being close with the baseball team's captain, who was one of the few suitable candidates for prom date, or if he was just a throwaway, maybe just the winter formal. "Thank you so much for asking, it's so sweet," Evelyn said, putting a hand on his arm for a brief moment. She thought the boy's acne cleared slightly as she did, although she had no intention of sticking around long enough to be his dermatologist. Or his anything.

"I - yeah," Cedric sputtered, blinking his eyes a bit. Evelyn assumed the glare behind her was harsher than she realized. If you're not prepared for the glare, you shouldn't come near the spotlight. She gave him a brief smile and shook her hair loose (a warm breeze accompanied it, and the paint alongside the gymnasium was a shade brighter for the blink of an eye), mulling over her options. She had a hike to the back parking lot, thanks to the Judas Iscariot that was Becky, and it gave her time to consider her options. There was always a movie later, which was a fairly safe social outing, and she'd made out with one of the ushers at the theater so she could be on her phone if the movie sucked. Well, not for that reason exclusively, but it was a factor. But the weather was lovely, and the weekend and night alike were young.

There was always coffee on Main Street, where a cute little espresso bar was opening up. Evelyn's mom went there for brunch sometimes, and by sometimes, I mean twice. Evelyn's mom was not an a.m. person. Drinking coffee in the afternoon made you look really European.

This was as solid a plan as any since Hannibal had crafted, and Evelyn hummed to herself as she walked, the birds mimicking as she went.

CHILDREN OF LEE - THE FIRST GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

Leesburgh, statistically speaking, in the year of our Lord 2010 A.D., would have been divided religiously as follows. Roughly 45 percent of the population would have been Protestant, with an above-average smattering of Quakers in the mix. A little over a fifth of the town would have been Catholic, a hearty 8 percent a mish-mash of non-denominational Christians. The Jewish members of town comprise a humble 2 percent, as do the Mormons. Others too splintered and scattered are lumped into the 5 whose god is listed as Miscellaneous, and 14 percent hold no god at all. I will leave it to you to calculate how many of the inhabitants of Leesburgh, powered or otherwise, recognize a God, or many, or none at all.

There is something that nationwide and Pennslyvania-specific surveys of faith are unable to account for, however. Had they surveyed, they would have found something curious in the town of Leesburgh as far as these statistics go.

Regardless of religious leanings, 100% of the 13,000 citizens of Leesburgh believe in the devil.

She was presently sitting in the back row of Mr. Algorizzo's study hall, chewing gum that she was not allowed to chew and swiping through Facebook, on a phone she was not allowed to swipe through. Evelyn Noblezada could have told you in precise detail information on the students in the class, or the teacher, or the rumors about the classroom itself (Jack Marsen and Kelly B. hooked up in it last Homecoming, because Mr. Algorizzo always left the windows open and forgot to shut them that Friday). Likely nothing that would have been really grounded in hard fact, or anything that they may have considered important, like genetic predispositions for heart conditions or the likelihood of their family needing to file for bankruptcy that year. She could, however, tell you other things.

When Vice Principal Withers took a moment to giggle at her own voice, Evelyn said to the girl beside her - one of the interchangeable crowd of disciples that curried favor with the premier information and shit-talk broker of Leesburgh - "You know she had a miscarriage last year?" Evelyn did not look up to see the girl's response, much in the same way Christ did not bother to poll the audience for their reactions to the Sermon on the Mount. As the announcements rolled past, Evelyn's mind chewed over each piece of information and swallowed it whole even as her eyes never left her phone. The Klefts? Doing a fundraiser? There's no way they could raise the money for good enough singing lessons to win state. Evelyn had done glee club one year, but been asked to leave by the teacher given certain elements of her personality that were considered less than gleeful. In a rare moment of mercy, Evelyn conceded this was pretty much fair. Picture Day next Tuesday. Evelyn idly recalled a handful of girls throwing up in the bathroom stalls after lunch. That tracked. She liked a post by someone who had just posted what song they were listening to and nothing else. Evelyn cheated off the girl in 3rd period, and needed to keep the gasoline away from that bridge until finals. Detention on a Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend? Must have been Mason Kirby. His parents may have bankrolled the school, or whatever, but they couldn't have raised more of a fuckup if the asteroid had hit him in his big ass forehead right in the natal ward.

The bell rang, and Evelyn stood up a few seconds after everyone else had, slinging her (designer) bag over her shoulder. There was no rush. "I'll see you this weekend," she said to Interchangeable Kissass 3. Her name is Becky. What a name. "Are you going to Chad's party?" she asked, giving Becky a hug and a smile.

Becky's own smile faltered. She looked for a moment almost punch-drunk. It was a look Evelyn was used to - she had been focused on her schoolwork, because Becky had about as much at work in her boobs as she did her brains, and she was just hit with the aura. Were Evelyn particularly intrigued, she would've noticed Becky's eyes dilate just a touch, her stance shift with a subtle wave of relaxation, the hint of the sort of glow that pregnant women (not VP Withers!) had. Her grip on Evelyn loosened with surprise, at the news or the dizzying rush, but in a more spiritual sense, it could not have been tighter. She looked like a drowning man reaching for the raft. "What party?"

"Oh, you hadn't heard?" Becky had been trying to fuck Chad for a good three months now. Becky had also, Evelyn had gathered, been the one to get Evelyn detention for parking in the senior lot in retaliation for not being invited to her spa weekend a few months back. "I'm sure he'll tell you. See you on Sunday!" Evelyn broke away from the embrace and meandered through the hall, offering no less than sixteen smiles, eight proclamations of "I love you!!", four bold-faced lies regarding the beauty of someone's current outfit, and one double-take at a football player who was honestly just fine as hell.

She emerged into the sunlight through the school doors. The sunshine rushed to her like a dog to the backdoor when his owner comes home. The air turned sweet, the crisp September smell of falling leaves sharpened and spread. The sunlight's glare seemed less harsh on the cars of the parking lot (Which I cannot help but notice, Becky, does not include *my* car), the air around her a pocket of warmth in the beginning of the autumn chill. Though she did not notice, a keen observer may have noted that the bushes outside the doors seemed to bend slightly toward Evelyn as she passed, like compasses pulled to true north, or crack addicts to an exposed copper wiring. The beauty of the analogies used to describe Evelyn Noblezada's effect on the world around her, metahuman or otherwise, varied wildly in their sweetness.

She spared a glance at a car rolling past. Evelyn had no concern for cars beyond which ones were sexy and which ones were not. This constituted the latter. She thought she spotted Willow in the shotgun seat, and Evelyn believed that car to be Helen's. In a town of literal superhuman freaks, those two somehow managed to not even fit in with the people who were literally not human.

Evelyn shook her head (her hair quite literally billowed as she did, and a butterfly settled on her shoulder as she pushed it back behind her ears) and took a moment to breathe, idling down the sidewalk as her phone buzzed and buzzed and buzzed and buzzed. They could wait, invitations to dinner, coffee, thirsty boys, the occasional thirsty girl.

You had to make them wait.