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City of Heroes, City of Villains, Paragon City, Rogue Isles, Crey Industries, Countess Crey, Paragon City Police Department, Longbow, and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cryptic Studios and NCsoft Corporation. No infringement of said trademark/copyright is intended or implied, and no profit may be made from this work by anybody except Cryptic Studios and/or NCsoft Corporation.
Wyldfire and all original characters are property of the author and her family, and may not be used elsewhere -- and anyway, why would one want to steal these when it's so much easier to instead make new characters in the City of... franchise?
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The sun was nearly at its peak before the silver-skinned teenager awoke. He pushed upright out of the piled leaves immediately -- probably they itched -- and stared around, wide-eyed.
I ought to say something comforting to him. He may not be able to see me up here.
Nevertheless, the only sound for the next few minutes was the rustle of leaves as he patted his surroundings, testing (perhaps) for hard spots where one of the previous day's travelling companions might still be burrowed in, asleep. When that turned up nothing, he thought for a moment, then turned -- almost as if drawn by a magnet -- to look up into the oak tree near his back. "Jarissa," he said in his calmest tone, "where did the others go?"
The brown cat-eyes meeting his blinked once, but never wavered from his face as their owner carefully picked her way down to a lower tree limb. "They wandered off," she said hoarsely, "in different directions, over the night."
He thought about that while combing his fingers through unruly white locks of hair. "Do you think they're coming back?"
Without pause for reflection, her ears flicked back and her whiskers drooped. "No. I think they feel safer splitting apart. Single travellers are harder to hunt than groups."
He had to concentrate only a little to understand her words, a noticeable improvement from the struggle yesterday when she was explaining how to board a moving train and why, despite Ironhorse's snarling objections, it would be safest for them all to do so immediately and together.
"But you stayed here with me," he observed.
She looked away long enough to glance around the clearing, ears twitching. "You'd have woke up alone. I won't do that to you. We didn't survive the escape, and clinging to the top of a moving train car through three states, just so any of us could go back to having no clue what's safe." She shrugged one shoulder, and her tail made a similar upward-fllicking motion. "Besides. I had no idea where I'd go, and I'm too tired to figure it out. And hungry."
"Yeah, I'm hungry too. Thanks, Rissa. Did you ever figure out where we are?"
Jarissa navigated slowly down to the forest floor. "I don't know. Wolf said he saw a road sign for someplace called Paragon, during that last stretch where the train went along a highway."
"Paragon City?" He became excited immediately, his blue eyes glowing more brightly at the thought. "In Rhode Island? Cool! I wonder if we'll see any heroes. Hey, we could be heroes! We just need costumes. And heroic names. I could be Silverwing -- no, wait, I remember a really famous hero named Silver Wing, so it's taken already. Silver Mercury, then. Or Silver Valor. I'm not sure what all my powers will be so I don't want to name myself after a trademark move, I'd have to create one first and that takes too long. What name are you gonna use, Rissa?"
She stared at him unblinkingly for a few heartbeats, whiskers drawn back and both ears pointed toward him. The more excited he got, the faster he talked, to the point that she almost couldn't follow him. "I, uhm, the only thing I can think of is a name from a comic I used to read," she offered apologetically. "I don't want to get sued, Blue Eyes, like that poor guy in the eighties. And anything based on my appearance is too, well, too hokey. I'll go catch us some breakfast, be back soon, okay?"