They had called it the World City. A sprawling mass of roads and buildings that amassed the history and culture of the entire world within its border wall. The largest city on the planet - and the most well-defended - with only one way in and out. The towering gates at the north end of the city hadn't been opened in over a decade, yet still, somehow, an outsider got in. And now her home was in flames.
The city was divided into sectors: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and so on. She crouched in the rubble of a building in the Northern Europe sector, trying to hide among the broken stones. Her whole life she had lived in the World City, in a Swedish-speaking district of the Northern Europe sector. Of course, she could speak English too. For reasons beyond her, the first council of the city had elected to make it the standard tongue, but that didn't mean that other languages were dead. In fact, they had thrived with the city, helping it to flourish as the capital of diversity in the world. Not that being bilingual helped her now, though, when her home was in ruins and the streets were emptied.
A gunshot, followed by a dull thud. With the outsider had come 'soldiers', wielding weapons and technology far more advanced than anything she had ever heard of. From somewhere in the street, a second person sobbed and wailed, and she pushed herself closer to the stones as if they could hide her. Her hair had once been long and glorious - somehow, it was now matted with filth and blood. Blood of her family and friends and neighbours who had been forced onto their knees in the streets and slaughtered with bullets through their heads.
She had been shot too. When they broke into her home, they had grabbed her mother and grandmother first, and then her. Her grandmother had fallen first, her blown-out skull a gruesome sight to see sprayed out across the concrete. Her blood was a colour that had stalked her nightmares since then. After her, they had toyed cruelly with her and her mother before the bullet ripped through her mother's head. And then they had tried to shoot her, and by some harsh twist of fate, she had lived. The bullet had wedged into her skull and should have gone all of the way through. She should be dead. She had wanted to be dead. Yet when it forced its way into her bone, something in her blood had roared and burned. Gold and blue flashed across her vision before the pain subsided and she had twisted in her ropes to see the bullet - stained crimson with her own blood - fallen harmlessly onto the ground behind her. They had fired into her skull, and some freakish, supernatural monster in her body had spat it back out before it could pierce through her skull.
Since that day, she had ran, dodging people who hunted for the 'immortal girl', the one who couldn't be killed. Yet she was always drawn back to that ruined street where her family's screams had rang clear and sharp into the twilight. Where she should have bled out with them, and instead was rejected by death itself and forced to shoulder the weight of their bodies for the rest of her miserable life.
Wrapped in flashing colours of black and red and silver and storms, she almost didn't hear the shouting from the street that followed another gunshot. Alert, she dared a look past her rubble shield and forced her eyes upon the sight, where three men and two women lay freshly murdered on the road. A younger girl, perhaps the same age as herself, was trembling on the ground, sobs wracking her body. And on the ground beside her-
Even from the distance she was at, she could make out the harsh reflection of sunlight off of a metal bullet on the ground. A bullet steaming with blood that matted the girl's strawberry-blonde hair. It was the men with the guns who were shouting and cursing.
"Shit! There's another freak here!" one hissed, kicking the girl away from him in obvious hatred, "I thought we'd already ratted out the other bitch who could do this!"
The other bitch. That was her, cowering in the remnants of her former home.
"Calm yourself, Soren," a second man growled, "Just throw her in the river or something, like we should have done with the other one. If she can't be bloody shot, just drown the rat instead. It's not like she has gills or anything."
Another scream of rage from the first man, Soren. "Fine! Throw her in the river, through her under a truck, throw her off a building for all I care! Just find a way to kill these immortal pests!"
Something in her began to waver, and when she saw gold and blue rimming her vision, that 'something' became a concoction of panic, terror and anger. The sobbing girl was like her. She had rejected their weapons and been rejected by death. She was like her. She cried like her and bled like her and was forced to live like her. They were the same.
Her entire vision turned to those wonderfully powerful hues of gold and blue as she emerged from behind her shield and stalked forwards to unleash her rage upon the world.