Smoke and Mirrors

Don't touch my lighter. That's rule number one.
Rule number two: don't speak when I'm trying to think. In fact, don't even breathe. It's annoying.
And the infamous third rule: don't mention my family. Ever.

I'm Valerie Murray. I'm not going to explain the third rule, because if I did, I would most likely have to kill you, or at least send you into a coma for the rest of your miserable life. But the first and second are fairly easy.

#1: Touch the lighter and you die.

The lighter was a present from my mother. Her name is Roxanne, and she's a Shifter, like me. That is the end of the discussion about her.
The lighter itself is nice. It's a nondescript silver color, but the etchings on the bottom say otherwise. It has my name there, and my date of birth. Since I obtained it, I have carved spirals and swirls into the sides of it, whenever I'm bored or have free time. That's not often.
But the reason no one touches it is because it serves a far greater purpose than just making a small candle flame. According to my mother, will tell me when I've found my father. I'm still trying to figure out how exactly a lighter will speak to me, but finding my father is something I've been trying to do for three years or so.

#2: Don't move, don't speak, don't breathe.

Don't blink. Ha ha. Anyone see what I did there? No?
Yeah, don't interrupt me while I'm trying to plan something. It would be best for you to not even think, because even that bothers me. I'm no Whisperer, but neural activity disrupts me just the same. It's one of the downsides of being a super.
A super. Superhuman, not superhero. Superheros tend to be male, and they wear a lot of tight fitting clothing. Seriously, no one wants to see that. Superhumans are a lot easier to deal with. They could be anybody, anywhere. Some may not even know they have powers until a certain age, or until something happens to them.

Me, I've known my whole life I was different. And not just because my mother raised me that way. When I'm angry, bad things tend to happen. Once when I was in the second grade, a girl threw sand at me. I got mad, and the entire sandbox around her turned into a pool of lava. It wasn't real, of course, but it gratified my small mind to see her scream. As a Shifter, I can't actually turn one thing into another. Not on the scale of a sandbox, anyway. I've been practicing with smaller objects, but I still haven't gotten the hang of it.
What I can do is change the appearance of things. I can turn what a simple wallet into what you would perceive to be a grenade. But for me, it's much larger than just a wallet. Most Shifters can't change things on a large scale, but I can. I've been able to turn cottages into a backdrop of trees, a chain-link fence into an impassable wall. It's very useful in my line of work.
Which is serial killing.

* * * * *

Istanbul, Turkey

I wrapped my coat tighter around my form as I stepped out of the hotel and into the cold air. Fumbling with the zipper, I pulled it up to my chin, then reached for a cigarette that I always kept available in my left pocket. My hands were steady as I flicked the lighter on. I held the flame to the end of the cigarette, then sucked on the other end. Releasing the smoke into the cold night, I snapped the lighter closed and returned it to my jeans pocket.

No one would find the body until morning. That gave me a little under six hours until daylight broke over the skyline. I took another drag on the cigarette, then let out a sigh of relief. This was the time when I felt most alive, after I had taken another life. It made me feel strong, free, invincible. If I could kill a fully grown person, themselves equipped with powers similar to my own, then I could do anything.

It had helped that I had found the time to teach myself a bit of Stealthing, bending light waves to make myself invisible. That was one of the reasons why the Mirage was so elusive. It's not hard to hide when no one can see you.

I laughed out loud. And they actually thought the Mirage was a man! No man could accomplish what I had in the last three years.

The mark this time had been a Wiper, a man who had cleaned the minds of many former Division agents. I had felt justified as I sent the bullet into his body. He would destroy no more. But my next target was going to be much harder to reach. She had proved herself elusive, gliding swiftly under my radar. That was why I decided to take the chance and call on my cousin. It wasn't often that I disturbed him, but it wasn't often that I needed help.

But Leon Foster owed me a favor. And I was counting on him to repay me.

Things That Are Bad For One's Cognitive State

Trigonometry does horrible things to a person's mental state. Well, that, and not being able to scream for fear of killing someone on accident. Which is why, as you would conceive, looking up and seeing some girl's gun pointed at my forehead from scribbling my Maths homework just might cause some neural panic. And of course, you might wonder why I can't scream and possibly kill the strange woman before I get shot. I'm not sure if it'll kill me, too. It's not like I actually know why I caused my father's murderer to fall down and simply die ten years ago. For all I know, he could have had some sort of brain tumor or something. But I'm not going to take a chance.

Usually, when one stands in front of you and points a gun to your face, she wants to say something. Because if she wanted to kill you straight away, she would have done it some other way. Sniped you, or something. Poisoned you. Stabbed you in the back. So I stared right back at the woman and tried to hide my fear. "Er, hi." I felt like I should at least say something. "Do I know you?"

The woman, who really looked quite young to be going around killing people, to be honest, narrowed her eyes and unlocked the safety on the pistol. "You killed my colleague."

"Did I really?" How old was she when I killed that good-for-nothing son of a b*tch who murdered my father? She couldn't look over twenty. I shrugged. "He killed my father."
She smiled coldly, and I felt like this was the moment in the movies when she would ask you for your last words and then create a nice bullet-sized hole in your forehead. "And now, I will kill you."

"Well, isn't that nice?" I grinned brightly, before flipping the table I was working at upwards, shielding myself from the bullet and knocking the gun from her hands. The back of my mind registered that I lived on the second floor, and would most likely survive the drop.

So, as I run for the window and break it with the meat tenderizer on the kitchen counter I was working next to, I'll take a moment to introduce myself.

My name is Kate Marre. Not Caitlyn Marre. God knows what kind of name that is. I am a native London-er, and have been all my life. And yes, it has occurred to me that whoever was looking to kill my father is probably after me too. Which, you know, is why I changed my last name from Ferridge to my mother's middle name, Marre.

No, I have never encountered a gun before. No, I have never jumped out of a window before. What do you think? I'm sixteen years old, a little too aggressive, and has all but one similarly crazy friend. You might think otherwise, but excelling in English and History, having won competitions in video gaming , and being the top of your kickboxing class doesn't mean you gain instant friends (or get to have the pleasure of owning a gun or jump out the window). Did you know? The word 'fenestration' describes the act throw someone out the window.

Falling out the window is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Sort of like riding a roller coaster without restraints. Or a seat. Or anything, really, except the weird wooshy feeling, and you feel like your stomach has leapt into your throat. I land on my feet, but it doesn't work all too well, because in the next millisecond, I find myself on the floor. My legs are wobbly when I stand up, but I have to keep going. I charge out of the alleyway and onto the street, hoping nobody saw me. As I race to the first place I can think of, I realize that in my right hand I am still holding the meat tenderizer.

(Hope it will suffice, since she is the 'loner' and is completely clueless. Where should she go?)

Beginning: And an Important Discovery

    Twenty years ago, Lucie and Daniel's parents, Xander, Nan, and Afton's parents, and a group of some of the world's most accomplished on-the-run supers singlehandedly crushed an entire piece of the government. Most people just called it the Division, but relatively few people knew it by its true name: the Superhuman Investigative and Correctional Division of the United States Government. Only months before the Downfall, members of the United States Congress--the only ones who really knew anything about the SICD--were beginning to question the existence of supers. Many times these days, people don't believe in things they can't see.

    Point: if the group of supers hadn't destroyed the Division, the government would most likely have disbanded it literally a few months later. But that isn't important. What is important is that they took down the Division, and many of them lived to tell the tale.

    My mother--well, she never helped them. That wasn't her fault, of course. It would be hard to help, in her state. It's difficult to get on the bad side of Shockers and survive. They're tricky to deal with, Shockers are. As often as not, they let their tempers get the better of them. Mum had scars. Branching, veinlike scars. And besides those, she was never able to Move anymore. The effects of a gang of Shockers attacking one of the most powerful Movers in the world, I guess.

    Oh! I'm Amelia, by the way. Amelia Friedstrom, Mover, on the run from Claudia Cooper. See, Claudia didn't like my mother. So she killed her. And then she realized that I was just as dangerous when I nearly killed her, so now she's after me. Go figure.

*******

Berlin, Germany

    My back was to the wall, resting on years of graffiti from the people of the west side of Berlin and others from around the world. The history of this wall was etched into the history of Germany. And I was here, running from one woman like the citizens of East Germany tried to run from the people who ruled over them.

    My phone suddenly rang. Flipping it open quickly without bothering to look at the caller ID, I put it to my ear and cautiously whispered a "Hello" into the receiving end of it.

    "Happy birthday, Amelia!" Xander's familiar voice shouted, nearly exploding my eardrum. I narrowly avoided dropping the phone in surprise.

    "Ow! For heaven's sake, Cooper, don't shout!" I cried before realizing that I was still (kind of) hiding. Lowering my voice to a murmur, I said, "You nearly made me deaf, idiot!"

    "Sorry, Amelia. But I miss you, that's all," he replied, his voice crackling through the worn-out speaker of my beat-up phone. "Where are you right now, anyway?"

    I grinned in spite of myself. "Berlin," I told him. "Leaning against the Berlin Wall, as it were. I'll take a picture for you, shall I?"

    "Do it," he responded. I could hear the smile in his voice. Then: "How's about this? You take your picture, hop on over to Dublin and fetch Lucie and Danny, then the three of you come on over here to celebrate your birthday. Maybe if you go fetch Rachel, wherever she is, she'll take you here."

    Rolling my eyes, I aimed my camera at myself and snapped a picture for Xander, then stood up and stretched, warily scanning the people milling about the sidewalk for anyone who looked even remotely like Claudia. When I caught sight of strawberry-blond hair, freckles, and a grin that I recognized, I muttered a profane word in my favorite language--German--and forced my energy at the sidewalk under my feet. My energy, unable to Move the ground away from me, rebounded off the ground and propelled me up to the top of the wall.

    "Amelia? What's wrong?" I heard Xander ask.

    "If I'm not at JFK International within 48 hours, assume the worst!" With those words, I hung up the phone, tossed it into my messenger bag, and began running atop the wall. Wishing with all my heart I could just be at the O'Nealls' house in Ireland to fetch Luce and Daniel right then and there, I jumped-- and landed on the O'Nealls' couch.

~Amelia Friedstrom

*NOTICE*

Two things:

1. The glossary has been updated with new information. Look this over, please. There are new super types that I have discovered that you may use and change your current characters to, if you wish. :)
2. I will be deleting all old material this Wednesday, if I have time. If you want to Copy-Paste-Save anything, do so now.

Thanks!

P.S.-- New post currently in the works! Stay tuned! :D