Collision

Pretz closed the book she was reading and sighed. She ran her fingers through her spiky black hair. How could Kris read things like this in one day? She'd ask her, but Kris wasn't exactly speaking to her, which wasn't surprising. Besides, Kris was a total nerd, and Pretz was only in on-level courses so she probably read faster.

"I told her not to touch me." Pretz said out loud. In her agitation she whipped her furry tail out from its normal place of concealment wrapped around her waist. The day before Kris had been threatening to poke her, and she had told her that it wouldn't be a very good idea, but Kris didn't listen. She was knocked unconscious the instant her hand brushed against Pretz's bare arm. She'd woken up an hour later, and freaked out when Pretz came near her.

Pretz stared at her hands for a second. What was she? She'd known since she was very young that she wasn't entirely human, everything indicated it. Her disproportionate strength, the teleporting, her tail, those she'd known about and knew how to control. This was different. She distractedly traced the scar on her forehead that had caused her to end up with the nickname Harriet because of its lightning bolt shape. That too, was nothing new. It'd been there as long as she could remember. This thing, with touching people and them falling unconscious, had started about a week ago at her friend Lance's house. His little brother Todd, nicknamed Toad after the X- Men: Evolution character, was being his typical annoying self, this time he'd stolen her notebook. Pretz punched him, being careful not to use enough force to break anything, and he went flying across the room. However, instead of getting up and running away like usual, he just lay there, and weird thoughts were floating around Pretz's head that she knew were not her own. "What the Hell?" Lanced asked. "He's out cold. You didn't hit him hard enough to do that!"

"I know. I was careful not to. You know Rouge? What she does? I think this might be the same sorta thing." She replied.

Since then, she'd tried to avoid touching people, and she had managed well enough. Until yesterday when Kris wouldn't leave her alone. She couldn't focus on Jurassic Park, despite its focus on dinosaurs, one of her favorite things. "Mom, I'm going to Lance's!" she yelled down the stairs. The mom she spoke to was her adoptive mother, who'd adopted her when she was one.

"Fine, just be back for dinner!" Her mom yelled back.

Pretz teleported to the garage and grabbed her skateboard, then teleported into Lance's bedroom, five miles away. It occasionally scared the heck out of him, but it was the only place where she was positive no one else would notice. Lance was fifteen years old and a sophomore at her school's rival school. He was sitting at his desk doing his homework when there was a familiar "bamf" behind him. He turned, looking from her skateboard to her outfit and said, "I hope you've got a belt for those pants by now." Pretz was wearing a pair of baggy black pants with a red stripe down each leg. The cuff had gotten stuck on her skateboard's wheel last time she'd worn them, causing her to fall flat on her face.

Pretz rolled her eyes. "Will you shut up about that? As a matter of fact, I bought one at Hot Topic last night. Let's go attack that monster hill of yours, we'll talk later." Lance's neighborhood featured one huge, steep hill that it was suicide to try to skate all the way to the bottom of, but there was grass on either side of the road, so it wasn't a big deal to jump off. She and Lance ran downstairs and Pretz waited impatiently as Lance got his bike.

A few minutes later, they were racing down the hill and Lance was screaming at the top of his lungs, as usual. Out here, focusing on when she had to jump off to keep from hitting the SUV at the bottom of the hill, wind streaming past her face, Pretz could forget the entire incident with Kris and the one with Toad, even. She almost understood why Lance did this every day. Suddenly, a white-haired boy ran into her path. There was no way she could stop in time. Desperately trying to stop, she was rushing toward the boy, who wasn't paying any attention to her. "Slam!" Skateboarder and pedestrian met.

"Damn it! Why didn't he get out of the way?" She muttered, pulling herself up. The white-haired boy didn't move. His skin was a dark tan, a striking contrast with his hair. He appeared to be unconscious. Pretz groaned. With any luck, he'd think the collision had knocked him out, though the thoughts whirling around in her head declared otherwise. From those thoughts she caught a name. Pietro. She groaned again.