On Your Mark, Get Set

The air was always so cold. The morning sun had just peaked over the horizon by the time she had arrived at her designated starting point. Light refracted off speckles of water that coated each blade of grass on the massive field. The dew dampened her shoes, but the insulated soles did its best to keep the uncomfortable sensation at bay. As if the adrenaline wasn't accomplishing that already. Being the third Wednesday of the month, this particular seventeen year old had snuck out of her suburban home as she usually did, on a monthly basis.
White off-brand earbuds played music into her ears as she stretched out her legs and arms. She had left her house around five in the morning and the current was approximately five-fifteen. This was roughly the time-frame she would shoot for every scheduled day. Otherwise her mother would more than likely catch her and ground her for the rest of eternity. Just another average day, really.
Just thinking about this exhausted her, so her focus resumed back to what she had come here for. The cold air nipped at her face, which was the only bare skin accessible by the air. The rest of her body was encased in a protective layer of under-armor. Removing her thicker layers of clothes, the girl folded the articles and placed them on the small patch of paved concrete that remained from a street strip.

Her body lowered into a traditional runner's stance, eyes looking straight forward. Brisk air infiltrated her lungs as she inhaled deeply. Reaching over to her left arm, she skipped to the next track that played on her out-dated iPod. It was a voice recording of an Olympic announcer about to kickoff the race to come.

"On your mark..."
She stretched her legs out, hands on the ground to balance herself.

"Get set..."
A small smile crept up along with her heart-rate.

She didn't even need to hear the final line before instinctively knowing the exact time to dash. Her legs stretched to their absolute limit and she was down the twelve-hundred meter street within eight seconds. She cleared her previous record by two seconds completely. She lifted her arms over her head and took heavy breaths. The energy carried over and made her shoot up.

"It's Grace Thompson! World-Wide Speed Extraordinaire!" the girl exclaimed to the abandoned buildings, which were her only audience. The girl bowed to the imaginary crowd and let her arms flop down to her sides. "Someday." Grace muttered then walked back to her starting point. Unfortunately, no one was in old downtown to cheer her on or admire her unnatural talent, but she was content.

The cold sting of the wind smarted on Lizzy’s face as she pulled back her hood to her shoulders and straightened her spine. She brought down her hands and gripped the edge of the rooftop, sticking her head out into the cold air to let the breeze rattle her antennae. So; this is running away, eh? Well, maybe she didn’t have to call it that. It’s just a little vacation, is all. She’d be back on the bus to Philly by the end of the week. But she’d earned a little time to herself.

Her feet swung leisurely from the roof of the three-story building as she leaned back, closing her eyes to the world around her. The grain of the cement was rough underneath her palms, but her carapaced fingers let her dig into their grooves  with minimal discomfort. She could hear the faint chirrup of birdsong surrounding the suburban landscape, the gentle clinking of her heels against the stone wall, the breeze whistling through the grass of an open field nearby. Yeah, this was pretty relaxing, Lizzie guessed. If one didn’t think about what Doctor Gonzalez would do to her when she crept back into the lab after several days MIA.

Her muscles stiffened. Wait, no, she shouldn’t be feeling this way. This was meant to be soothing. Soooothing. What did those eggheads know about the trials and tribulations of superhero work, anyway? A whole lotta nothing. She could handle whatever they threw at her when she got back. Those extra security measures had never done more than delay her before, and the scoldings weren’t much more than a nuisance. But the nightly Philly patrols had left Lizzie badly in need of some R&R, she reminded herself. Smiling, she decided the best choice would be to just embrace the peace and quiet while it lasted.

Lizzie's antennae pricked up at the sound of a voice coming from the far end of the lonely street.  It was youthfully sharp, though through the wind it was hard to pick up on any particular annunciation. Lizzie's fingers reflexively reached for the sides of her hood. Twisting herself around, she noticed the outline of one girl, her exact features obscured by the morning sunlight, with her arms up in the air. The girl stayed in that position for a few moments, facing away from Lizzie, before she dropped her arms back down and began walking back in her direction. The hood was flipped back up in an instant, and Lizzie silently praised herself for her on-point subterfuge. She then turned herself back around so she was again facing the edge of the building.  Conversation wasn't her forte, but she was pretty sure the girl would be leaving soon. This didn't seem like the kind of area anyone would stick around in for long.

While Grace would've loved to goof around some more, but she knew that her ever-so-vigilant mother would have a fit if her 'speedster of a daughter' was late for breakfast. Honestly, breakfast sounded pretty good right now anyway. Wiping the light sweat from her forehead, the girl retrieved her water bottle and draw-string bag. She tossed the bottle and extra clothes into the bag before swinging it over her shoulder. If it wasn't for a sudden wave of uneasiness, she might not have noticed the woman on top of the building at all. Her hazel eyes receded behind the protection of her eyelids almost immediately. The intensity of the morning sun refracted off of the shards of glass that remained from the long-since abandoned warehouse. As if miniature suns were attacking her eyes at unknown intervals, the girl raised a hand to protect them from the burning sensation. Using this as a last resort for finding out if someone was there, she called out. "Hey, anyone up there?" She yelled, disappointed that she couldn't have thought up something a bit more witty or creative to call them out.

Oh, great. A conversationalist. Lizzie jerked up one hand in a wave refliecting both aknowledgement and dismissal. She supposed that she should have sat inside the warehouse as opposed to on top, in full view. But how was she supposed to expect some weirdo wandering this ghost town so early? She stifled a sigh and rolled her eyes. Just her luck, she guessed.
There was a familiar tingling sensation slowly running down the inside of her sleeve as two tiny insects crawled out from her jacket. One perched on her fingertip, spreading its wings in the breezy coolness, while the other pittered out onto the concrete roof. The light of the sun made their glossy hides shine like flies. Lizzie smirked contendedly, feeling a renewed sense of security. A couple buzzing insects always provided a good distraction for talkers, if it came down to it.

The silence was enough to drive Grace into near-panic mode. What if she was being stalked? That would really be just her luck. Taking in the size of the building, the girl assumed that if she got a head-start, she could manage to run up along the wall just long enough to grab the over-hanging roof panels. Though what she wasn't sure of was whether or not she should confront whoever was up there.
Unfortunately, her curiosity was something that common-sense couldn't triumph over. Her body pulled her towards the unknown and she found herself jogging up through the rotten door and up the less than stable stairs that miraculously didn't fall through upon contact.

The contented look on Lizzy’s face was short-lived when she caught the noise of footsteps thumping below her, quickly approaching. She deftly slid her legs underneath herself and rose into a half-crouch, frozen, wondering whether or not to run. On one hand; this was her territory, and she was no stranger to brawling. But the trouble of having her description plastered all over this town’s papers didn’t appeal to her…
When the echo of the footsteps inside the hollow building started to fade as they approached the open roof, she knew she had to act fast. Lizzy turned around and started sprinting towards the far edge of the building. Shit, what was that just before she turned her head? A hand? Someone’s shadow? Screw it; there are plenty of fish in the sea...er...rooftops in the suburb. Just go.
Lizzy crouched and sprung up from the edge with powerful legs, sending herself into the air. She resisted the urge to spread her wings as the next wall came closer and closer from below. Her extended hand smacked into the edge of the next building, swiftly closing its fingers around the concrete. Her lower body followed suit and she pushed her toes into the grooves of the bricks, propelling herself up onto the new roof. She continued to run away at a brisk pace, straining to listen for some kind of voice or footfalls behind her.