Cliché.
That is the only thing I can think of to call what my life had become.
My life, my boring, normal, nicely un-unique life, with my boring, normal, family. My friends were normal too. And so was the day all that norm was shot to hell.
It started out as a normal day off; I woke up around one in the afternoon, didn't bother to get dressed, and ate whatever left overs were in the fridge, Chinese if you care to know. From there I dropped into the couch my grandparents had been nice enough to give me and my roommate when we moved into the house I had moved out of when I was ten.
The house was one of the four on the block that was owned by my family, my great-grandmothers house was to the west of us, only a single story to my houses three, and to out east was the fourplex my grandparents owned, and then their own house as well, currently under the guardian ship of their friend while grandma and papa avoid the winter cold of Colorado in Arizona. Behind all four buildings is about five acres of now empty horse pasture, fenced off with barbed wire. Pine trees concealed the details of the pasture from those that didn't enter, and the tall grass in the broken up round pen acts as a perfect place for our beloved deer to rest. The entire place had been bought, build, and rented out by my grandfather, and since I was their favorite I got a discount on rent.
Anyway, when I got down to the second story, the living story, my aforementioned roommate was already gone, probably at work. She worked as assistant manager at Fiesta Mexicana, a few blocks south of us and, like the rest of the town, well within walking distance.
The TV was flicked on and sound met my ears, various shows flashing before my eyes for barely ten minutes before the door bell rung, interrupting everything else. I stood up and made my way off the carpet of the living room, hitting the hard wood of the hallway/dining room/entrance hall and pulled the heavy front door open, revealing my third oldest cousin.
"Ginny, what's up?" I asked, letting her walk in and closing the door behind her, almost locking it before stopping myself. No need to be that paranoid.
"Well I was helping BJ get all the paper work done at the shelter and someone came in with a box of puppies," I nodded, humming and waiting for her to continue. People usually bring puppies to animal shelters right? "and we don't have room for anymore. The dogs, they act weird, and John thinks it will be impossible to get them adopted. And since you have all this room in your house…"
"I don't know," I admitted, knowing Sophie wouldn't like it if I said yes right away. We had had a couple of cats when I was a kid, and the litter box and litter was still in the Hole, and we had had dogs all throughout my life and a good portion of the backyard was still fenced in.
"Come on Shell, I know you wouldn't just let them die. I would take them, but I don't have the room, and mama already has two cats, same with grandma and papa," Ginny reasoned, and I felt myself give in. I really needed to figure out how to say no.
"Alright, I'll take them," I watched my cousin grin happily and pull me into a hug, which I returned quickly before she started for the door.
"We need to go then, before John takes any to the vet," I nodded in agreement and ran to my room with a shout of 'just a minute' before throwing on jeans, pulling on boots and shrugging into my favorite trench coat before jogging back down the stairs to the middle floor and exiting through the garage door, descending those steps as well to the ground floor, which was just the garage and some storage space.
The door opened easily and Ginny was waiting for me, lacking her own car and having walked the distance between my house and the small animal shelter out town had. The drive was short, and when we got there we went in, straight to the desk and the greying haired woman behind it. BJ, my mom's best friend, looked up at us and seemed relieved. John came out of the back and had the same expression. I was going to regret this.
I just didn't know how much yet.
"Fuck!" a shout was heard, not uncommonly, from the mouth of a silver haired young man as he jumped back several feet alongside his cloth covered partner and the shorter red haired man, dodging an explosion that would have taken his head off, something even he couldn't afford to have happen right then.
Bombs went off and elements crashed through the air, weapons flashing and hundreds of opponents descended upon the group of red and black clad criminals. They were surrounded, strings of glowing blue cutting them off from the outside world as a perimeter was held up by unidentifiable men and women. The strings began glowing a second later and several other fighters appeared, holding pieces of paper and chanting rhythmically.
"What's going on, hm?" a blond boy, standing several feet to the left asked, singular visible eyes darting rapidly around them as the air crackled with energy and the previous excitement of fighting was replaced by a hair raising static and a burning heat. And then there was a light, and the strings, more like ropes, converged, slamming into them and sending a searing pain through ten bodies and world went black.
When they woke up the ten criminals found one hell of a surprise awaiting them, though the time they had been allowed to attempt to solve their new problem was cut off when they found themselves rounded up by men in uniforms and shipped off to sit in a cage for hours.
The door opened and the second Sophia Sinclaire entered her home she knew something was wrong. For one her lay about roommate was nowhere to be seen, and unless she had been called in to work early then there was no reason for her not to be either on the couch, in the kitchen, or thumping away upstairs as she tried to dig something out of the attic/closet. But she wasn't.
"Shells?" she called hesitantly, grabbing a baseball bat out from behind the hall tree and looking around wearily.
"In here!" Sophie relaxed ever so slightly, lowering the tip of the bat when she heard her friends voice emanate from the back storage room. She set the hard wood back after a moment's hesitation and pushed a hand through her short black hair, slipping off her shoes and walking to the room, socks slipping on wood and then tile when she crossed the kitchen and opened the door, freezing when she caught sight of what awaited her in the next room over.
"Shelly?" she asked quietly, shutting the door behind her and staring at the scene before her.
"Yes?" the other girl was squirming ever so slightly, on black ball of fluff held in her lap as she sat cross legged on the floor.
"Where in the hell did we get this many dogs?"
