As we lead Francis through a maze of sewer tunnels I fall back into the rear of the line to walk with Francis.
"You exited?" I ask. She doesn't respond. She looks straight ahead. "You ok?" I place my hand on her shoulder.
"Hu? Oh, yah I'm fine." she lets out a small sigh. "What exactly are stories?" she asks
"Oh, um, well it's like we can make up stories or when we tell people about things that happened it's a story."
"So what kind of stories are we going to be telling?"
"Well I have a couple stories about my brothers that are really funny, and true." she giggles and we both fall silent until we see a light ahead.
"Is that…" her voice trails off
"Yep." I say and she runs for the light. And I run after her.
When we reach the end of the tunnel where the light was coming from Leo shouts,
"Wait!" Frances and I stop in our tracks. She looks longingly towards the light the shifts her gaze to Leo who is approaching quickly.
"What?" Francis says impatiently.
"We need to establish some ground rules."
"Like what?" I ask as the rest catch up.
"Like, we need to stick together. Raph knows a good place to set a campfire so we can tell ghost stories, so we need to follow him." Raph walks up to us, then pushes between us making us stumble backwards. One by one everyone goes up the ramp to the surface. And me and Frances stand watching for a moment.
"You ok?" I ask for the second time
"Well, It's just I kinda wanted to explore the surface not go to some empty lot and tell stories around a campfire. I want to see the shops and the cars. I want to feel the adrenaline of sneaking around in dark alleyways and jumping from rooftop to rooftop." she lets out a sharp and short sigh and her head drops. I can tell she's disappointed.
"He I'll tell ya what," I place my hand on her shoulder and she looks into my eyes. "Tomorrow I'll take you to the surface to do all those things." she gives me a small smile before hugging me and we both run to catch up with the others.
We reach the top of the ramp and we overlook a small mostly abandoned street. All the others wait for us. Which is very unusual as well. They always leave me behind to catch up.
"Now can we go?" Casey asks
"Let's go." Raph grunts and heads for the roof tops. Looks like frances will get one of her wishes after all.
First we climb up a fire escape. I let Frances go in front of me so I can watch her progress. We jump from floor to floor and then hop onto the top of the building. We run to the opposite side we climbed up and leap to the next building. Frances's mask tails flutter in the wind as she leaps across and sticks the landing. Then I leap across and land next to her. We look at each other as we stand up. She challenges me with her eyes. The race is on.
We race across the rooftop as we follow the others. We jump across three more gaps between buildings then the path changes. We jump off the building down to the ground. Frances tucks and rolls into the landing and it looks awesome. We continue to follow Raph along the edge of the street into a new part of town. The buildings are older and the windows are all boarded up.