AN: Hey there! This is my first fanfic in quite a while, and one that I intend to see through. Enjoy and please leave reviews!

-Symbiotic.

Chapter 1

San Antonio, Texas, United States of Liberion
1993

The Greyhound bus hissed as it came to a stop at the station. The hissing sound continued for a few moments as the bus inched closer to its stop, It's breaks squealed as the large bus pulled into its spot in and began to sit still, halting its movement abruptly as its passengers lurched forward. Once it came to a stop, the bus driver called out that they had arrived in San Antonio and that was the last stop on the route the bus was taking. The passengers slowly began to grab their bags from under the seats and began to file off the bus. Most would stop at the under side of the bus to grab some larger bags that would not have fit inside under the seats or in an overhead compartment before continuing on to another bus or going about their way in San Antonio.

Michelle Taranto fell into the latter of the two camps of people. She had been on the bus all the way from the Liberion state of Colorado, having bought a ticket in its capital city of Denver and riding the bus just over 1300 miles all the way to San Antonio. She did not have any larger bags to carry with her. All her belongings were in a green rucksack she carried upon her at all times. Quietly, she stretched her arms upright and made a silent yawn from the slumber she had taken during her long journey. She took time to dust the shoulders off of her denim patch vest, a vest she had constructed herself since the 1980s with numerous patches of heavy metal bands such as Testament, Possessed, and Metallica before reaching up up to the overhead compartment to grab her rucksack. Unzipping the rucksack, she reached inside and pulled out a Sony Walkman mobile cassette player and rummaged around for her cassette tapes. Once she found some of the tapes she reached in and pulled out the one she was looking for; Sepultura's 1991 album Arise. She put the headphones over her brown hair and straightened them before pressing play on the tape. She held the Walkman in her hands as she left the bus and went out to the bus station.

It was Michelle's first time in San Antonio, a city which seemed a far cry from Denver. She decided to come to the city for its warmer climate and the fact that it was a burgeoning metropolis benefiting from the early 1990s economic boom. Michelle figured it would be a good place to settle down for a time before continuing to somewhere else. She intended to only stay for a few weeks at most unless found a places to sleep, at which point she would extend her stay for as long as she felt she was not overstaying her welcome or she felt comfortable. It was part of a pattern that she had created for herself over the past few years, one she had become adept at carrying out.

It was just past six o'clock in the evening in San Antonio and had recently just rained. The bus arrived at just the right time for Michelle to experience the sight of San Antonio's Aztecan inspired architecture under the full glow of the pseudo gas lamps of the streets that made its streets so famous. Her stomach grumbled at the sight of seeing couples and young families out and about at the numerous restaurants, dining out on what was an otherwise perfect spring evening. She wondered about stopping in one of the restaurants herself, but she knew that she hardly had the cash to spend on such places. She would pick herself up a small meal from a local convenience store at best before she engaged in another pickpocket, but for now that was the spending limit that she placed upon herself.

As she walked down the streets of San Antonio Michelle reached into her pocket and pulled out a black trifold wallet. She looked down at the contents of the wallet. It contained a few credit cards, a debit card, and a Colorado driver's license for a man named Donald Bradford. Opening up the cash pocket, she found a total of fifty dollars cash sitting inside and smirked. She had done well on her last pickpocket, the wallet being a decent score that she could rely on for a little while before she had to steal another wallet from some unknowing soul. Best of all the bills were divided up neatly between a twenty, two tens, a five, and a few singles. Whoever Donald Bradford was obviously made use of cash and appreciated the value of having bills of many types, which made it easier for Michelle to engage in basic transactions. The debit card and credit cards would be of little use to her; making a massive withdrawal with the debit card in San Antonio or using the credit cards would appear on statements and they were sure to be canceled once Donald Bradford discovered his wallet was missing. Michelle figured she would attempt to make one withdrawal with the debit card at most, but that would be all.

Michelle resolved that the first her first place to stop in San Antonio would be a laundromat. She had not washed her clothes since she left for San Antonio, and she made a conscious effort to wash her clothes at least once every Tuesday. She extended that for an additional two days beyond her Tuesday deadline knowing she was headed on the road. Her clothes subsequently began to smell and have an unenviable stickiness to them from the sweat accumulated in theif fibers which Michelle found uncomfortable. Now with cash on hand she could swap for quarters Michelle figured now was the best time to rid her clothing of the rank stench of being on the road for days at a time and perhaps even clean herself up, though that would have to wait.

She walked down the streets for a moment, searching about for any sign of a laundromat or a convenience store where she could grab something quick to eat. She walked about for a few blocks from the bus station, keeping her eyes peeled closely. After getting several blocks away from the Greyhound station, she came across a small laundromat with the name "Suds". Michelle smirked and began to cross the street. Her Walkman blocked out the sounds from an oncoming car, which Michelle just noticed out of the corner of her eye. Michelle jumped, diving for the ground away from the car before she could be impacted. She succeeded in evading the car, holding held her head in her hands, shivering and laying on the ground as the car lights shined on her body. The lights of the car hung on her body for a few brief moments, people on the streets looking out at the scene unfolding.

Michelle remained on the ground, shivering and holding her head until she felt someone tapping on her shoulder. Michelle looked up from the fetal position she had curled herself in and saw an auburn haired woman standing over her. She appeared to be in her late forties. The woman wore a white blouse, buttoned up but unable to hide the line of a voluptuous bust that Michelle had not seen anything like in some time. She bore a concerned look on her face, looking down upon Michelle wondering what exactly what wrong.

"Are you okay?" the woman asked. A concerned tone slipped off her voice.

Michelle looked up at the woman before she looked over at the street and then at the woman's car. Upon the asphalt she saw her Walkman, shattered into many pieces, the cassette player having fallen under the weight of her body when she dove onto the street. Several of Michelle's articles of clothing, as well as most of her tapes, were scattered about onto the street and were sitting in puddles. Michelle then looked up and saw the woman's car. It was a red Porsche sports car, a car typically only affordable to the wealthiest members of society. In her mind Michelle began to piece together what had happened. A rich woman who felt entitled to use the streets because she drove a fancy car was feigning sympathy upon her for nearly running her over and causing a scene.

Michelle decided she was going to have none of it and promptly slapped away the woman's hand when she reached out to help pick her up off the street. "You think you own this street or something?" she questioned angrily.

"Excuse me?" the woman said. She was taken aback by the reaction Michelle gave her.

"You heard me," Michelle said. She quickly reached over for her clothes and cassette tapes, frantically trying to pick everything up before they became too waterlogged to use. The woman went to grab one of t-shirts, but Michelle began picking everything up frantically and she didn't get a chance. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I'm just trying to help," the woman stated. "I saw you fall in the street and..."

Michelle cursed at the woman. "Yeah I fell down. So what? You think you own this place because you drive a fucking Porsche?" She picked up the shattered remnants of her Walkman and shoved some her clothes back into the rucksack.

The woman went to pick up the remaining belongings before Michelle shouted one more profanity laden declaration at her."Fuck off! I don't need your help."

Balling up the remainder of her clothes and standing up, Michelle took time to put her hand under her chin and throw a few middle fingers the woman's direction. The woman remained crouched on the street in front of her Porsche, a shocked look on her face upon experiencing the reaction that Michelle had given her.

The Porsche 959 pulled into the driveway of the large mansion and went toward the garage. Once inside, its driver stepped out and made her way toward the large house which the garage was attached to, a seven bedroom six bathroom mansion that housed one couple. The driver of the 959 unlocked the front door and turned the lights on before making her way over to the kitchen to make herself some leftover pasta from the previous few nights. At even sixty five years old, Charlotte "Shirley" Yeager could appreciate some leftover pasta. She hadn't forgotten the tastes cultivated in Romagna from her years serving during the Second Neuroi War.

As she went to heat up the pasta in her microwave, the phone in the kitchen began to ring. Shirley went over and grabbed the phone. "Charlotte Yeager," she answered.

"Hase," a voice with a Karlsandic accent said over the phone. "How are you?"

Shirley smiled and leaned against the counter at the sound of her wife's voice. "I had a good day, Trude," Shirley said to her sixty seven year old wife. She pulled the pasta out of the microwave and began to eat it out of the plastic container it rested in.

"Oh?" Gertrud Barkhorn said on the other end. "What did you do?"

"Well I got a manicure and a pedicure and I feel so refreshed," Shirley said with a smile. "And Elmira, that girl at the salon who cuts your hair? Her boyfriend proposed to her and we're invited to the wedding! Isn't that wonderful? Young love always gives me butterflies."

"That is wonderful, Hase," Gertrud replied. Shirley blushed at the nickname, a Karslandic word meaning "bunny". It was a term of endearment that Shirley had grown to greatly appreciate over the years and still made her get butterflies of her own in her stomach. "What else happened today?"

Shirley continued to recount the events of the day. "I had a nice phone call with Francesca today. She's wants us to visit Romagna soon and says hi." She cut herself a slice of a meatball and took a bite with some of the pasta. "I also took your car out for a drive which was oh so nice."

"Which car of yours did you take out today?"

"The 959. And its your car by the way, not mine," Shirley remarked.

"You know all I need is my pickup truck," Trude stated over the phone.

"And you know what I say, Trude," Shirley remarked with a smirk. She took another bite of her pasta before cutting up a meatball in the container to eat.

"You can never have too many sports cars," both women said in unison over the phone.

"Did you have fun driving it at least?" Trude questioned exasperatedly.

"I hit 195 one the freeway when no one was around," Shirley said with glee. She heard Gertrud sigh over the phone and snickered at her wife's exasperation. Shirley kept numerous sports cars to her wife's questionable tolerance to the practice, and she drove them in a manner that Gertrud did not always approve of.. She took another bite of the pasta with a meatball placed on her fork. "I wish you were there to experience it. It was fun!"

"Please don't die in a fireball on the side of the highway, Hase," Gertrud ordered.

Shirley laughed at her wife's exaggerated statement. "I'm not going to die in a fireball on the side of the highway. Besides, it seems like at my age I'm more likely to run someone over like I nearly did today then die in a high speed crash."

"Wait wait wait, rewind that sentence please," Gertrud demanded. "You nearly did what today?!"

Shirley sighed and began to calmly explain the situation to her wife while she munched on the pasta. "I nearly had an incident while I was coming back from shopping downtown. Some girl listening to a Walkman strolled out into the street and she didn't hear me. She must've seen my lights though because she jumped out of the way before I could hit her."

"Please tell me there weren't witnesses," Gertrud begged. "I sure hope no one saw this."

"It was a crowded street so yes there were witnesses," Shirley explained. "But like I said, I didn't do anything to the girl except make her drop a bunch of clothes. In fact, the only thing that was even somewhat hurt were my feelings. The girl told me to fuck off when I was trying to help her and then just left in a huff. Can you believe that? I swear she didn't look much older than twenty one. Is that how these Generation X kids are turning out? They sure have foul mouths if that is the case."

"That's not the point!" Gertrud shot back. "You nearly killed someone today. Do you know what that could've meant for you? Gosh sometimes you worry me when you get behind the wheel."

"Trude, I wasn't trying to hurt anyone," Shirley sighed. "And I'm still very..."

"I mean it, Shirley," Gertrud interrupted. Shirley smiled at the seriousness coming off of her wife's voice. She had come to expect it over the years whenever she had done something risky. "You're far too old to be fooling around with cars the way you do."

"Aww Trude," Shirley said with a smile. "I love when you worry about me. Honestly though, I know what I'm doing. I stay well within the car's capabilities and I'm certainly not going to go outside of those limits. And I always obey the speed limits in the city. Besides, you're one to talk. You still play with guns at your age and you're older than me!"

"I'm just making sure my firearm skills and knowledge stay sharp," Gertrud said.

"Don't you already have enough of that knowledge," Shirley quipped. "You know as much about guns as I know about cars."

"I know so much so I can protect you," Gertrud stated. "If anyone tried to hurt you I wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet through their skull. I hope you know that."

Shirley couldn't help but laugh into the receiver at her wife's assurance and make a joke out of her declaration. "Gosh Trude, that has to be the most romantic thing you've said to me in forty eight years." She took one last bite of her pasta before going to wash out the container in her sink.

"You know I'm serious!"

"I know you are," Shirley said with a half sigh and a smile. Her wife could be incredibly overprotective of her. "It's why I..." Shirley paused for a brief moment and looked out her window. The pause was long enough that Gertrud took time to speak up.

"Hase?" she said. Still no response. Gertrud grew nervous on the other end of the line. "Shirley? You there?" This second questioning was said with a greater hint of worry in her voice.

"I'm here," Shirley said, straightening the phone receiver against her face. "I just thought I saw something out the window."

"What did you see?" Gertrud questioned.

"Trude..." Shirley sighed. She did not want her wife to be so worried about her constantly.

"What did you see, Shirley?"

Shirley sighed at the urgent tone coming off of her wife's voice and she slightly cursed herself for giving Gertrud the impression that something dangerous was happening. "You know that motion light we installed over the garage recently? It just went on for some reason. Now normally it only comes on when one of us pulls into the driveway late, but you're not home and I got out of my car at least fifteen minutes ago."

"Where are you now?" Gertrud asked.

"I'm in the kitchen. Why?"

"Lock all the doors and windows," Gertrud ordered. "Stay where you are. I'll be home soon."

"Trude, its probably just a bird or some other animal that got in front of the light."

"Just do it, okay! I'll be home soon." Both women stayed silent briefly on the phone before Gertrud spoke up in a gentle tone. "Ich liebe dich, Hase."

"Love you too," Shirley said with an exasperated laugh. She hung up the phone and continued washing the Tupperware container her pasta was in. Her wife could go overkill sometimes.

"Stupid fucking bitch," Michelle cursed to herself. "Fuck her and her stupid Porsche."

She trudged along the street with the shattered remnants of her Walkman in her hands. The Fusan portable cassette player was now completely useless. The tape deck lid hung like a severed limb from one of the hinges that it rested upon. The buttons had become dislodges and were scarred from falling upon the asphalt. The headphones were the only thing still intact from the fall, but even they were completely useless without the device to play music from. Michelle continued to curse the woman who had nearly hit her.

The Walkman was one of her most prized possessions. She had saved up tip money from a several month stint as a waitress working at a diner in Salt Lake City to purchase it. It was the only legitimate job that she had worked in recent memory, and what few funds she could scrounge from the job were pumped into having the Walkman and buying more cassette tapes. It was an escape device from the world around her, along with the valued cassette tapes that she carried around with her. Not only was the Walkman damaged, but several of her tapes were now waterlogged and probably could no longer play even if the Walkman was not damaged. Furious at the incident that had occurred and berating herself over the fact that she had fallen in the street in such a manner that the Walkman was crushed, she wound up her arm and chucked the remnants of the device into a wooded patch of the neighborhood that she found herself walking in. She muttered a few more profanities to herself about the woman who had nearly hit her and then continued on her way.

Michelle looked at the neighborhood around her. She did not have a map of San Antonio handy, so she figured just wandering about and exploring about before she got her bearings. As a result she ended up in a very wealthy neighborhood lined with massive castle like homes surrounded by wrought iron gates and brick fencing. Michelle looked up at the houses and held in a mix of awe and jealousy at the people who lived in those houses. Many of them probably did not deserve to live in those homes, she felt. They probably were corporate executives or athletes, people Michelle felt made too much money for their own good.

Normally Michelle would normally never walk around through such a neighborhood, as walking around with her typical look would surely attract undo attention from nervous wealthy types who were all too eager to call the police upon what they saw as a disturbance to their peaceful communities. But she was curious and had nowhere in particular to go in the city, so she figured exploring was totally within the realm of reason. The neighborhood seemed to have a few wooded sections, probably for the privacy of some of its residents, and those wooded areas always were a decent place to bivouac for at least one night before she continued on to a slightly more hospitable neighborhood in San Antonio. Suburbs around here did at least have a few good places to hide out, she said to herself. She wondered if perhaps it was possible to set up a small encampment for herself in the forested areas. If that was possible life would be much easier.

From the other side of the street coming at her was the headlights of a car. Michelle quickly ducked behind a transformer box on the sidewalk, doing her best to not get caught. She peered around the corner and looked at the lights coming in and raised her eyebrows. Pulling into the driveway of one of the homes was none other than the red Porsche that had nearly hit her. Michelle peaked up just over the transformer box and watched it pull into what seemed like the lone driveway on the street that did not have a gate in front of it. It was the last thing she expected to see in the neighborhood, and it gave her several ideas.

Slowly she rose up from behind the transformer box and snuck over to the woman's driveway, walking Native Liberion style in a crouched position to minimize both her profile and her noise levels. It was not the first time she had put the survival skills she acquired to good use, but it was one of the most vital times. She ducked behind a dog statue atop a brick and mortar pillar at the front of the driveway. Michelle poked her head slightly over the post, watching as the woman who nearly hit her pulled the Porsche into the garage and walked toward her front door. She hid behind the pillar until the motion light off and the woman was inside the house and had shut the door behind her. Only then Michelle made her move.

Still walking Native Liberion style and walking in a crouch, she set her rucksack down to minimize the amount of noise she was making and began to creep up the driveway. She walked up assuredly but somewhat nervous, trying to get quietly but quickly out of the coverless driveway and under a shadow so that way she would not expose herself. She took time to stop and lay upon the ground, keeping out of the sightline of windows she saw over the house. A light was on from one of the windows, and Michelle could see the auburn haired woman inside eating something out of a container while talking on the phone. Getting back up and walking Native style, careful to place her toes before her heels, she moved quietly through the driveway. It was not till she got close that she nearly blew her cover. The motion light that she had seen activate before when the Porsche pulled into the garage turned back on, illuminating the whole front of the garage in a bright glow. Gasping, she quickly hid behind a corner wall that was out of the range of the light on the side of the garage. From the corner, she was able to see the woman in the kitchen of the house glance out the window. Michelle remained absolutely still.

When she was certain that the woman was no longer looking out the window, she looked around the corner and saw a side entrance to the garage. Looking up to see there was not a motion sensitive light over the door, she reached for the door and twisted the knob. To her surprise it turned over easily and opened with nary a creak in the hinges. Shocked by this discovery, she crouched and slipped into the garage before quietly closing the door behind her. The garage was dimly lit by a plugged in night that was near a light switch. Cautiously she snuck over to the light switch and turned it on, careful to check the window of the garage for any sign that the woman was still there. There was no sight of her to be seen.

When the lights flickered on in the garage Michelle was greeted with a sight not even she expected. Inside the garage, backed up against one another, were four different cars, all of them seat sports cars that she had only seen passing by or in magazines. She held her breath and put her hand over her mouth to contain the gasp as she looked out at the vehicles present. Amongst them were not only the red Porsche that Michelle did not recognize from a model perspective but with its sleek bodywork and golden shield badging she knew was valuable. Next to it was another red car, but unlike the curvaceous Porsche it was angled sharply with a large wing and a hump on its back. A yellow badge with a prancing horse graced its front which Michelle immediately recognized as the badge of the prestigious Romagnan sports car manufacturer Ferrari. On the left of the Porsche and behind it sat two other cars that immediately recognized, a 1969 Chevrolet Corvette and a Ford Mustang with the badging indicating it was not just any Ford but a high performance Shelby GT350.

"This lady must be really loaded," Michelle said out loud to herself.

"That she is," a foreign accented voice said.

At that moment the most feared sound in the world ripped through the air and penetrated Michelle's ears; the sound of a pump action shotgun being cocked. Michelle nervously froze and turned around at the sound. Standing before her was a 5'3" woman with greying black hair and standing before her. Like the woman who nearly ran her over she did not look older than her mid forties, her face bearing few signs of aging in the form of wrinkles. She was dressed in a black tank top and green BDUs and wore a digital watch on her wrist. In her hands was a black Mossberg 500 shotgun. It rested carefully against her shoulders and had a flashlight on the end of its long barrel.

"I-I-I'm s-s-sorry," Michelle stuttered. "I think I'll just be..."

Michelle swallowed at the woman's woman turned a laser sight onto the shotgun and shined it on Michelle's head. She immediately gasped. "I have every right to blow your head off," the woman said firmly. "If you value your life in any way, shape, or form you'll do as I say. Understand?" Michelle nervously nodded and swallowed deeply. Her mind could hardly piece together even a hypothetical situation that could possibly occur.

The woman with the shotgun began to speak up again and Michelle hung onto every word she said. "First, you'll turn around," she ordered. Michelle immediately complied and turned to face the cars. "Now you'll get down on your knees at once." Michelle quickly followed the orders and fell to her knees, resting them upon the linoleum floor of the garage. "Put your hands behind your head, lock them together, and keep them that way. Understand?"

Michelle nodded nervously and put her hands behind her head, interlocking her fingers with one another. She swallowed tightly and felt sweat bead up upon her forehead. "I don't know if you're just lost or really stupid, but you picked the wrong garage to try to sneak into."

"I-I-I'm sorry," Michelle said nervously. "I don't know what I was thinking. Please don't..."

"Trude?" a voice called out from inside the house. Michelle looked up at the door that attached the garage to the house. After a few agonizingly long turns of the doorknob it opened to reveal the auburn haired, voluptuous woman standing in the door. "Is that you? I heard some shouting in the garage. Is everything okay?"

"Hase, go inside and call the police," the woman named Trude ordered.

"Huh?" the auburn haired woman said. She stepped into the garage from a small staircase that the door was placed atop of and Michelle swallowed even deeper. "What's going on here, Trude?"

As she walked into the garage and the sound of her shoes grew closer and closer, Michelle and the auburn haired woman finally locked eyes at Michelle's position at the side of the red Porsche. Michelle watched as the woman's jaw dropped and a hand went to her face. "Oh my gosh," the auburn haired woman said. "You're the girl I nearly hit today!"

"Excuse me?" Trude said, keeping her eyes on Michelle and keeping the shotgun pointed at the back of her head. "This is the girl you nearly hit with your car?"

"Yeah," the auburn haired woman replied. "That's her. How the hell did she get in here?"

"Through the side door you conveniently left unlocked again! After how many times I've reminded you to lock it?" Trude explained in an irritated voice. She growled one more time while maintaining her aim on the back of the girl's head. "Go call the police already. I'd rather not spend my evening standing in the garage with a shotgun pointed at an intruder's head."

Michelle swallowed as the auburn haired woman sprinted back into the house and began to dial the phone. She had no idea what her fate would be.