Helen Bradley walked slowly through one of the lonelier streets of London. She was a short woman with curly dark brown hair and tired, dark brown eyes. It was just a couple of weeks after her thirtieth birthday, and her life up to that point had been, if anything, uneventful and unhappy. Taken off of the streets as a baby, she was sent to an orphanage to spend the rest of her childhood. She at one time had a couple of friends, but the unusually quick traffic kept her from developing any lasting relationships. Even the staff was extremely distant with her, even after eighteen years of her presence. She wondered in later years how such uncaring people could be left with children to care for.
The exception was Miss Marvin, who became somewhat of a surrogate mother to her. She was the one who would talk to her outside of regular duties, who gave attention to her, something which the other staff were either unwilling to do, or otherwise focused on other kids. In retrospect, she wondered if the staff didn't play favorites, and that Miss Marvin simply did this with her. Still, she had always felt that Miss Marvin had always had a more caring disposition than her coworkers.
After secondary school, Helen left the orphanage to attend a university. While her grades from high school were good, they were not scholarship material. It was by luck (and her unfortunate background) that she was given a grant from a government program to attend for awhile while she earned money to hopefully stay long enough to earn a degree; her dream was to become a forensics expert. She struggled her first year, and had trouble keeping a steady job while continuing her studies.
Eventually, the grant ran out. Miss Marvin had stayed in contact with her, and reached into her own savings to try to keep Helen in school. Unfortunately, Miss Marvin's pockets only ran so deep, and Helen had to forbid her from paying for more of her classes after a semester. And so she went to search for a job. Hopefully, even without a degree, she would be able to scrape by, she thought. Alas, she did very poorly with job interviews, and even when she acquired a job, she found it to be dead end, and could not keep any for more than a year. At the time, she was unemployed. She had been laid off from her job at a bookstore a month ago, and had held several interviews with potential employers in the past couple of weeks, scrambling to find a source of income to keep herself from falling onto skid row. She was walking away from an office that she correctly expected to never return to. She flubbed half of the questions, could not stop stuttering, and to cap off the disaster, tripped and broke the leg off of a wooden table on her way out.
She stopped by the post office, where she found a solitary letter from Miss Marvin. She opened it and a check fell out. Miss Marvin had not stopped sending her money after Helen had asked her not to, though she sent less to try to appease her. Depending on Helen's mood, she either pocketed the checks or tore them up. Today, she was too dejected to tear the check up, and pocketed it. She walked down the lonely street towards her apartment building. With no job on the horizon, she had to pack up her things and move out. She did not know where she would go. She figured that if she couldn't land a job, she'd have to ask Miss Marvin to support her for the time being. She could not see any other solution, but she hated the idea after having told her years ago to stop paying for her education, and for years telling her that she didn't need her constant checks. She continued walking, becoming slower and slower, perhaps hoping not to have to come to her apartment, which she would have to clear out of.
Suddenly, someone barreled into her from behind. She fell forward, hitting the pavement with her hands and knees. She looked up and saw a man running away from her.
"STOP!"
A man's voice shouted from behind her and passed her, chasing after the other man. They turned a corner, running out of sight. This sudden shock incensed her, and she ran towards the corner in a fit of anger. By the time she reached what turned out to be a short dead end, her anger had shrunk into annoyed curiosity. She peeked around the corner, and saw two very odd men. The one which had knocked her over was wearing what seemed to be a leather jacket and a pair of long underwear. He seemed to have run into a brick wall too tall to climb. From the back, the other appeared to be wearing some sort of cape which obscured his clothing from her sight. Both were inexplicably holding sticks, neither which could have been longer than a foot.
The first man turned around. He was dirty and unkempt, with long messy black hair and a thin, but scruffy-looking beard. He raised the hand with holding the stick, as if he were about to throw it. To Helen's complete shock, he slashed through the air with it, sending a wave of colorful light at the caped man. The caped man reflexively flicked his own stick, deflecting the light to the side. Not a second had passed after it hit the wall when he sent a red jet of light at the bearded man. It made contact, and the man was blasted back. He hit the brick wall, and collapsed onto the ground. The caped man pocketed his stick, and walked towards the bearded man, who seemed unconscious.
Suddenly, she sneezed. The caped man turned quickly on the spot, making her jump back and land flat on her buttocks. She slowly stood up, rubbing them tenderly. She looked up and saw the caped man point his stick at her, causing her to back off quickly in fright, her hands jumping above her head. Before she could say anything, the man spoke.
"Obliviate," he muttered.
She felt an odd sensation in her head, and then she heard a loud "CRACK". She regained her senses quickly, only to find that the man was gone. She didn't see him leave, she didn't even seem to remember him leaving her sight. She had been dazed, and the only thing that seemed to fit in her memory was the man disappearing. She heard another loud "CRACK" from around the corner. She looked around, expecting to see the bearded man, lying unconscious. There was not a sign of life left. She thought back to the caped man. He had appeared to be in his thirties; he had blue eyes and sleek and shiny black hair. The cape had turned out not to be a cape at all, but some sort of full-body cloak.
She contemplated it for several minutes, decided that she'd probably forget it by the next day, and walked back towards her apartment, the grief that she had previously felt slowly returning. How wrong she was.