Hey guys. Here's the 4th chapter. Please, please, review!! I'm begging you!!


The next day, Rioko woke to find herself laying on the couch in her apartment. At first, she didn't remember the events of the night before, but as she moved and felt a severe aching throughout her body, she quickly remembered. "The docks!" She yelled as she jumped up from the couch, only to fall back down again. "What happened? That gas...it did something to me..." Rie stared at her now shaking hands and could feel something was different.

She slowly stood from her seat again and leaned on the back of the couch as she tried to stand up straight. Why do I feel so weak? after a few moments of struggle Rie managed to stand on her own and make her way to a mirror in her bedroom. "I look the same...so why to I feel so different?" She stood for nearly five minutes trying to figure out what this weird new feeling was until she finally found some evidence of change.

Concentrating hard on her reflection in the mirror, she noticed her eyes were changing color. The more she focused, the more they changed into a bright fiery red. Suddenly, she could feel her body heating up. Her temperature grew higher and higher and she began to see a slight smoke rising from her skin. "What's happening to me?!" Rie began to back away from the mirror, panicking at her own reflection. She stared at her hands as a red glow started emitting from them. "What's going on?" she concentrated harder; curious as to what would happen. Just then, as she focused as hard as she possibly could, brilliant red and gold flames engulfed her hands. Rie gasped; unsure how to react. Her hands were on fire, yet she felt no burning. What am I?

For a split second, Rioko's attention was drawn away from her flaming hands and smoking body to a raven sitting outside her window. As she watched it, she could feel a new feeling arising in her. Now what? she wondered. "Maybe if I focus on that feeling these flames will go away..." At that, Rie clenched her fists on concentrated deeply on the rouge feeling growing inside her. Within moments, she felt it arising; taking place of the burning sensation. A black flame-like shadow took hold of her; bringing her whole body into a strange darkness. She wasn't afraid though...instead; she embraced it and let the strange shadow consume her. It spun around her and mixed with the flames of her hands for only a few seconds until it began pulling back into her body. As it retreated, Rie no longer stood, but a strange black raven with fiery red eyes and mixed feathers took her place. The bird stood as if in shock, flapping its wings and testing its wobbly legs. Was this Rioko?

After a little bit of time went by, the same shadow that was seen before rose from the bird's body and spun around it until it began to decease; leaving only Rioko, back in her human form. Whoa. What a rush... Rie looked again at her hands and peered in the mirror. "That gas...it made me some kind of pyrokinetic-shapeshifting mutant! Cool…but a bit disturbing. I wonder if this happened to any of the others who were there last night?" Rie walked over to her television with a revived amount of energy and turned on the news.

"As you can see, the awful tragedy, now being called 'the big bang', at gate 10 of Dakota's docks last night has created what may be an innumerable amount of these metahumans." As the reporter spoke, Rie watched almost stunned to see some of the teens with her at the docks suffering in hospital beds as they change into many types of creatures. (One was becoming some type of ice monster, while another began sprouting wings and feathers like a bird.) She turned off the news and just stood thinking about those with her the previous night. Francis…Virgil…I pray you're alright…


K, that's it for this chap. Again, please review! I wanna know what u think!