Liz sighed as Christinialynne came out from behind the curtain dressed in a too large shirt and pajama bottoms, and wished there was something she could do to make her feel better. There wasn't though. Suddenly their situation was really stressing the older girl out and the only thing useful she had dreamed up in days was a bracelet that she'd pawned just an hour ago to refill the first aid kit, and despite that she was feeling perfectly useless.
They had the chamomile tea, though. That had come from a wonderful day dream Dream (as Liz often went by) had had two weeks earlier involving a large house for The Runaways in the middle of nowhere during a thunderstorm, and each and everyone of them curled up on comfy furniture in front of a roaring fire sipping…chamomile tea. In all honesty she would have rather had the comfy furniture or the deed to that house, as opposed to twelve boxes of Hemlocks favorite tea and personalized cups and saucers for everyone, but she wasn't about to argue when it could have easily been the roaring fire, and them without a fireplace. Where would they be if this coffee shop burned to the ground like her house had?
"You can use my sleeping bag tonight, if you want, 'Magic." She made the offer knowing she wouldn't be taken up on it. The sleeping bag was wonderful, another thing she'd dreamed up just a few weeks before she'd run into Roller, when the weather had really begun to turn. She offered it to somebody new every other day, and BlackMagic always refused, insisting that it hers and hers alone as she'd 'conjured' it before she'd met the rest of them.
"No, Dream. I'm not going to take your sleeping bag." The standard answer, that was okay. It was the usual after all, and Chrstinia wasn't getting a choice tonight. Katie had decided to give basic self-defense lessons all day long, so for two nights in a row the ringleader of The Runaways was going to bed sore. All Dream needed to do was stay up later than her, something she was sure to do tonight considering 'Magic was already dressed for bed and exhausted, and then switch out some blankets. The others would help, for sure.
Sometimes she loved her powers. Other times (like when the house burnt down and her mother had realized just how dangerous she really was) she hated them.
She was a day dreamer in the most extreme sense. When she had been little she'd played Pretend all the time, and then around first or second grade Pretend had moved into her head, silent and powerful, entertaining for hours. Harmless.
In her freshman year things had started appearing. The first had been a pair of wicked gauntlets. Leather, free-fingered, with metal tipped knuckles, and elbow pads, gauntlets which she wore almost constantly to this day. Liz had dabbled in karate for two years before then and often dreamed of happily kicking some real bad guy ass al la Final Fantasy. She'd been in the car with her mother at the time. They'd nearly hit the car in front of them.
After that it'd been small things, cupcakes when her birthday neared, more fighting accessories (a staff that she still had, more interesting clothes than her standard white uniform, and a generic but deadly looking dagger her mother had no idea about), buckets of ice in the summer, and rakes in the fall. But then she'd dreamt of having a fireplace, and the house went up in smoke, as did her mother's tolerance. Not so harmless, now.
When the word mutant flew through her mother's lips she grabbed her gym bag and gunned it, staff in hand. She'd been in the city two days when her lack of proper sense of self-preservation and timing had gotten her into serious trouble, and a week when she met Roller in a pawn shop trying to sell the man a digital camera he said he'd found sitting, forgotten on a park bench. He followed her to the condemned where house she'd been squatting in and asked her, calm as you please, why she'd run away from home.
Now the coffee shop was home and she was a Runaway, with a capital R.
Sighing, Liz curled her hands around her mug as BlackMagic, sat on her bedding pile and took the tea Hemlock offered. There was a yellow bruise on her face where before had been a nasty cute, and more peaked out from under her clothes, and made Liz want to hunt down the creeps who had done it. Katie obviously felt the same. The two girls were the only ones of the group who went against their 'run away' nature, and would fight their way out of a jam as soon as turn tail, and were generally the ones who would jump a group of assailants from behind should they happen upon anyone ganging up on their friends. They were always more than willing to hunt down the ones they'd missed.
Unfortunately a day had already passed and even if the thugs who had attacked Chrissy had remained near last night, they would be gone by now. It was too bad. Dream had been jittery and itching to fight all day, and even now, sitting on her bed, she was expecting (wanting) a fight.
The room shook violently and a rotting piece of flooring from above their heads fell and landed inches from Monster's head, while Liz jumped from her seat spilling her tea.
"WHAT THE FUCK!" Katie raged as she sprang forwards.
She ran to the stairs which lead to the ground floor of the coffee shop, followed closely by Liz and reluctantly by the rest, who would no sooner allow themselves to be crushed by falling floorboards than they would be jumped if they had any choice.