You launch off the ledge of the building and into the air. The wind whistles around you, while your cape flaps about for a moment.
You pushed and changed into nothing more than smoke and shadows. You had experimented with this, you had practiced in the ship's graveyard with many a failure where no one could see. You reached back and pulled your cape wide.
For a brief moment, you glided upwards. With the same momentum, but less mass, you flew. True, you didn't have an Alexandria package, but this was close enough to flying.
Your heart didn't beat, your blood didn't flow, but it was all you. The wind whipped around and as you darted by a fire escape. You pulled and reached out with an arm to the railing and grabbed on for a moment to kill your momentum. For the slightest of moment, you could feel your muscles straining, before gravity caught hold of you. And you pushed again as you fell downwards.
Like a shadow, you landed on the hood of the car that the ABB gangers had herded into the alley.
You could see a girl as she struggled beneath a man. Her father was screaming and tried to reach for her.
She looked at you, and you froze at the pleading look in her eyes. At that desperation, it was the same look you recalled making that night when...
Steve.
Dad... had died. He had died and you had ran. You had changed for the first time, desperate to get away. To escape.
You had cried. Had declared how you weren't weak, but you knew the truth. You were weak. You were a coward. And on your first outing, you were frozen. You couldn't save her.
You didn't dare move. You could only see yourself trapped under that man, begging to be let go.
And then she did what you couldn't do. She screamed and fought back and that brought you out of that trance of seeing her/yourself trapped beneath a man. Buckled the man off her, and reached out with one hand to claw his eye out.
You moved. There was no time for thought. No time for regrets. Only the beats of your heart as you moved.
You shot the woman thug threatening the father with your crossbow, and flicked at the gangers by the girl. You slammed the butt of your crossbow into the back of a ganger's head, swept the other back off his feet.
And you went after the girl egging the man. You darted around her attack by pushing for the slightest of moments, moving around her before pulling and your body restarted. You breathed, you sweated, more than that, you reached out and pulled her arm back and around into a hold before pulling further.
You spun about, becoming a shadow once more to avoid that moment of vulnerability, and you had a knife in your hand. You went after the ganger who had threatened the girl. The one who had hurt the girl.
It felt right as you stalked after the thug, to just reach out and take the other eye.
That left one.
You looked at him run and then you darted after him... low and in shadow form, moving so much faster than you could. The knight darted out once more and you crippled the runner.
Naturally, this wouldn't be enough, they would run. He could come back. And so you pinned him to a door, to make sure that she was safe.
That was how you met the girl you idolized. The girl who fought when you couldn't. You would learn her name later because she looked familiar.
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First Impressions
Worm
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Writer's note : Because Sophia needs love too. She's almost always cast in a bad light or suffers way too much...