Chapter One: First Day

Autumn Chase was walking down the street when all the adults vanished. It was like something out of a film or a book-or, she realised with a terrible sense of foreboding, the Perdido Beach Anomaly that had come down three months before in California.

But this was Trenton, she thought. Trenton, Worcestershire, England, the most boring place in the world. Surely this wasn't happening.

The only other person on the Blakely Road was Twilight Darcore. Twilight was in Autumn's year at school, but they'd never really spoken. To be fair to Autumn, the black-clad other girl never really spoke to anyone, apparently preferring her own company.

What the Hell, Autumn figured, she's the only other person here.

"Hey! Did you see that?" she yelled across the street. Twilight searched briefly for the source of the voice, noticed Autumn and nodded curtly.

Autumn sighed and ran across the road to her. There were hardly ever any cars down the Blakely Road; the only reason Autumn was even there was that it was a shortcut to Main Street from where she lived on School Lane.

"Tell me I'm not hallucinating," she told Twilight, and got an eye-roll and a curt reply.

"You're not hallucinating. Happy?"

"Sorry. Maybe it's like what happened in California? The Perdido Beach Anomaly? All the adults vanishing."

Twilight shrugged "Probably. If you're right, I should go and find my sister."

Autumn offered to go with her, but was shut down and told to leave Twilight alone.

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Twilight walked away from Autumn as quickly as she could without seeming afraid. Quava, her fourteen-year-old sister, would probably be at home right now, since it was a Saturday. Either that or at a friend's house, but Twilight figured that home was more likely.

She broke into a run as soon as she was out of Autumn's sight. She didn't know Autumn all that well, but there was no need to damage her reputation as tough, now, was there? Especially if this really was a repeat of the Perdido Beach Anomaly, or the FAYZ, as she'd heard the kids inside had heard it. She'd heard horror stories of kids with powers, of crazed psychopaths with whips for arms.

Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. The concert…

Twilight hated three things in particular: light, loud noises, and crowds. She'd been dragged to the concert by her mother and Quava and she'd had a panic attack. She'd begged to leave, but her mother hadn't heard over the screamingly loud music. She'd got progressively more panicked, and, finally, screamed. The entire area had suddenly been thrust into darkness, and the concert had been proclaimed over.

Oh, my God, Twilight thought, did I do that?

It was impossible, surely, but then again all the adults had just disappeared. That wasn't exactly normal, either.

Twilight decided to forget about it for now and find Quava. Her sister might well be intimidatingly clever, but she was better than Autumn, and familiar.

She ran all the way to her house, and fumbled to get her key into the lock.

"Quava? Mum? Dad?"

She wasn't entirely surprised when only Quava answered.

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Cassie Bayes wasn't having the best day of her life. Sure, it had started off decent, but then both her parents had vanished off the face of the bloody Earth in front of her very eyes, which wasn't exactly great. She ran out of the door and spotted Autumn, who happened to be a friend.

"Hey! Autumn!"

"Cassie?" Autumn seemed unnerved, almost on the point of crying

Cassie gripped her by the shoulders. "Okay, Autumn, just calm down. You're all right, you're okay, I promise."

"I think… you remember what happened in California? Last year?"

"Oh, dear Lord," Cassie whispered, before pulling herself together. "Okay. Who knows?"

"Uh, I saw Twilight Darcore, but she ran off to find her sister. Anyway, you know what she's like."

Cassie wasn't listening. "Babies."

"Sorry?"

"If there are no adults, we need to find babies. Little kids, too. Without their parents, they'll starve. Or accidentally kill themselves drinking paracetamol, or set fire to their house when they decide that lighters look like fun."

"Oh, my God, you're right. And people must be panicking. We should get everyone in one place. Maybe the church or the school."

Cassie ran her hand through her short blonde hair. "Right. Remember when the dome came down in America? They were all… I can't even describe it. Wild-looking. Maybe this time we can avoid that. It's not as if we really have any bullies in Trenton."

"So… what if we look for little kids first, then see if we can get everyone in the assembly hall at school?"

"Okay. You know anywhere to start?"

Autumn thought for a second "The Joneses down my street have a two-year-old. His name's Daniel. I babysat for them once."

"We should start there, then."

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Woop woop! I got this up! Okay, it's not that long, but hopefully you like quality over quantity, and it's surprisingly hard working with other people's characters (I'm a big fan of writing the OC genre of fanfiction, even if I'm weirdly hypocritical when it comes to reading it.) Thanks to Yonna9queen for Autumn, RandomBlackberry for Twilight (and for answering all my subsequent questions) and to iristmr for Cassie! Lovely characters, everyone, and I hope to get more!

Also, if you read The Curious Adventures of One Hope Winchester, I am so sorry and I'll try to update. Alas, writer's block-no, I'm calling it writer's passivity, I know exactly where I'm going-has overtaken me.

-threelittleclouds