Felicity loved a good mid-afternoon run. Her mentor at the Academy of Heroic Arts had been one of those Yoda-Miagi types who insisted that they NOT use their powers whenever possible. As a result, she'd been sent on many a training mission, expected to run, but not allowed to warp space while she did so. She still thought the whole idea had been idiotic. The result was, that, at the end of the year, she'd had no more control over her powers of speed than she'd had going in--even if she had lost the college fifteen--and then some. On the other hand, she'd come to enjoy running--the normal, slow way--to the point where she was now addicted to that euphoric feeling you got after doing about a mile or so.
Her phone was going off. She stopped, pulling it from her waistband.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Feliss?" came her roommate's voice. "It's Bella. Um...there's something going on over here that you should check out."
"What is it?"
"Just some kind of disturbance at the metro on Thomas Street. I'd go, but my powers aren't exactly..."
Felicity rolled her eyes. Bella called herself "Freya" after the Norse goddess of love and beauty. Really, the only thing she was able to do with her power was cause men to drool and go momentarily comatose. She was surprised she had ever graduated, and even more surprised that she had managed to stop a supervillain, once. Felicity, called "The Blur," had stopped about twenty-three, by contrast.
"Sure, Bell. I'll be right over."
First, she thought, a quick change. She loved her power, she thought, as a warp field formed around her, and immediately she was running up the street, opening the door of her house, washing her hair, (admiring--for less than a second--her lean, muscular figure, heart-shaped face with its thin, graceful lips, framed by long brown hair), sliding on her favorite jeans, sneakers and costume top (people only wore the leotards for photo ops), and now she was The Blur, speeding down Aiken toward Thomas Street, where her perfect, blonde roommate was waiting for her in a tiny yellow summer dress. In all, the journey took about a minute.
"What kept you so long?" teased Bella.
"Screw you. What's the problem?"
"Damned if I know," Bella said, tossing her curls, dismissively. "Sounds explosivey."
Felicity looked over to the metro entrance. People, spooked, streamed out, along with smoke, but no one looked injured yet. "Hmm. Looks explosivey," she said. "I'll be right back."
The metro entrance, people and steps blurred past her. The smoke seemed to come from a door somewhere beyond the tracks, which she was able to gain enough momentum to leap over. She rocketed through the door, noticed, with a shudder, the crouching forms of the LOST crouching around a dead man. She realized with a chill that they were eating him, but she still couldn't see what the source of the explosion was. She raced past them, reluctant to turn her back. She was in a laboratory of some kind, where a voluminous amount of smoke issued from an entire panel of machinery.
"I didn't know technology still looked like that," Blur said. "I guess that's the answer to our riddle. Now, I guess I'd better grab that poor man's body. What was he doing back here? What is this place? And...what is that?" A bright light, issuing from one of the more odd-looking machines, seemed to be bouncing off metal walls. And now, it came toward her. Blur was fast, and though she could see light moving, it often moved quicker than her.
As she turned to run, she felt something strike her on the back of her head, knocking her over. Getting up, she ran past the ghouls in the hallway, who were just turning their heads in her direction, out of the metro and into the sun.