Jen sat bolt upright, stifling a scream, clutching the sheets. Sweat stuck the baggy ZorTel Industries T-shirt to her skin, and her hair was plastered to her forehead.
3:27, flashed the clock on the table. The heavy drapes were drawn, but she could hear the muffled sounds of Steel Canyon at night through the vent in the window. Cars driving by, the murmur of people coming home from a late night, the occasional drunken yell.
Jen dragged herself out from the sheets and flicked the bedside lamp on, checking around the room for fire damage. Nothing. She'd been lucky so far, since checking into the El Cabana. That said, she hadn't accidentally torched a room in her sleep in a couple of years.
Far as I remember.
She stumbled towards the bathroom, rubbing at her eyes and squinting against the light. She filled the smudged tumbler by the sink with cold water and downed it, shivering as she swallowed.
Standing on the edges of her bare feet to keep as far away from the cold floor as possible, she pushed the hair out of her face and stared at herself in the mirror.
So who the hell are you, anyway?
She stared herself in the eyes, daring her reflection to do something, say something, reveal something that she didn't already know. She gritted her teeth. She gripped the edge of the sink with both hands, squeezing until her knuckles were white and the veins on the backs of her hands were standing out. Tears began to well in the corners of her eyes, and she felt herself shaking. The ceramic edging of the sink began smouldering beneath her touch, and the linoleum flooring began to curl and turn brown where she stood.
Her reflection stared back, furious and red-faced, wreathed in grey-black smoke. The edge of her left sleeve caught, and a yellow tongue of flame started eating away at it, joined almost immediately by another flame on her right shoulder--
The room's fire alarm sounded, piercing her reverie.
Jen jumped, and realised where she was. She lunged at the cold tap - it sizzled as she touched it, the condensation clinging to it turning to steam - and opened it fully. She pulled off her t-shirt, dousing the flames under the water, and used it to cool off the floor.
Dumping the sodden, blackened garment in the sink and turning the tap off, she stumbled out of the bathroom trailing smoke and steam. She started throwing things into her well-travelled tote bag, packing her life away for what felt like the hundredth time. She could hear running outside, the bustle and cries of people who know they should be acting in an orderly fashion but have just seen smoke curling out from under a door.
She zipped the bag up and pulled on last night's clothes. She opened the window, checked to check no one on the ground was looking, and tossed the bag out onto the fire escape. Almost as an afterthought, she reached into her trenchcoat and pulled out a brown envelope, counting out three hundred-dollar bills and leaving them on the bed. She made to step out to the fire escape, then stopped and reconsidered, and ran into the bathroom to grab the t-shirt. She stuffed it into the top of her bag and leapt out into the early morning sky.
((Meant to say, but completely forgot - I'm totally down with in-thread comments, if you want to leave something. If you could just use OOC notification - as demonstrated here - that'll keep things nice and clear. Thanks!))
(( I'm really loving it so far! Name rings a bell too! 
((I sent a private message already just to say that this is a really well written story! Not too long and totally engaging. I likes it! 
))
It takes Chaos to move the world to Action.
(( It's great! I love the identity issue stories a lot ))
((Just letting people know I haven't died! Man, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Haven't actually had a single night where I wasn't doing something. Anyway, I've got part three of this in the works, and I'm hoping to get back online next week. Woo!)
Galaxy City. Right?
A thin girl in a black trenchcoat, strawberry blonde hair pulled back with a few strands hanging down over her glasses. Hunched shoulders, nervous posture. Geek, right? Some nerdy loner, walking the streets, maybe going to a buddy's place to watch Robot Chicken or something. That's generally the assumption made by the people she passes. Just another girl who came to Paragon City to live amongst the capes and the tights, to get a giddy thrill from being around all the supers.
The girl finds it kinda funny to know this is how they see her. On the other hand, part of it worries her.
She used to be Jennifer Tamland, schoolgirl, cheerleader, secret math whiz. Then it all got taken away from her, and she became something different. Eventually, she became something a lot stronger. Then that all got taken away.
These days, she wonders who she really is.
She feels like her glory days have passed her by. She still wears the costume, she still plays with fire, she still patrols the streets at night, but none of it seems real any more. She was away too long. The thugs have forgotten who she is, and for some reason she can't work out, that matters to her. That, in itself, causes her a fair amount of confusion. She thinks it might be a throwback to her schooldays. Her normal days.
It's not just that that's bothering her, though.
It's the gaps.
Her memory's been messed with so much, and she knows it. Or does she? The creeps at SAIL played around with it, for one thing, and she still doesn't know if it's all come out yet, or if there are still some buried commands. And she's fairly certain that she's had her memory messed with again since, but... she's just not sure. Every time something comes swimming back into focus, it's like the lights dim and it gets taken away from her again.
The worst part? The gaps are getting more frequent.
Occasionally, she has to stop and remind herself where she is. She has to think hard about what she's doing. She wakes up with no memory of the night before, and that terrifies her.
She hangs around the Galaxy Girl statue, watching people, not knowing if she knows them, or even if she met them before. She just stands there, balling her fists, trying to remember.
Of course - how could it not be? - Hannah was the exception. She remembers her. Or, at least, she thinks she does. She recognised her, definitely. Everyone else, though? It's all a haze.
She worries. How could she not? Even if she was normal, the thought of a brain tumour, or the C-word, would be bad enough. But with her altered DNA, and her accelerated metabolism, and all the weird beams and rays and emissions she's been subject to over the past few years... it could be anything.
And so she walks. She walks around Galaxy City, and King's Row, and Steel Canyon (where she's staying - "Room 1428, El Cabana hotel", as she writes on her hand every morning when she wakes up), and she tries to remember. Little snatches come through to her. The rooftops in King's. The old gang. Some of their faces come right back to her when she goes to certain places, only to vanish again when she moves on.
And so, the girl who used to be Pyroclast continues to walk the streets of Paragon City.
And the one thought - the thought that keeps her awake at night, the thought that makes the pit of her stomach drop right out - is this:
What if I forgot on purpose?
What the hell did I do when I was away?