The tall woman lay next to a fire surrounded by her subordinates. One helped hold her down as another pulled the arrow from her shoulder. She screamed in pain at first, but it resolved into a sputtering laugh. Sitting up she poured some alcohol on the wound before taking a large swig herself. Her subordinate took a ripped piece of cloth and stuck it into the hole in her shoulder left by the deep wound. As something caught her eye, she looked out over the fire and stared at something in the flames.

  “What are you looking at child?” She said to nobody in particular. “There is no use in hiding, I shall findeth thee child.” She called, as she lifted the back of her hand up for Ridley to see. A familiar Celtic-looking symbol was tattooed on her hand.

  Ridley sat up in her bed and let out a pained gasp. Every freaking muscle in her body was cramping up in pain.

  “Next time I throw a dumpster, I need to remember to do some warm up stretches.” She groaned.

  Remembering her weird recurring dream somewhat, she looked down at her hand. The symbol she had drawn on her hand in class a few days ago. Looking up her arm she saw a dozen drawings she didn't recognize. Out of the corner of the eye she saw symbols on the wall, they wrapped all the way around the her headboard where one giant symbol over her pillow matched the one on her hand.

  "Creepy." she smiled. Then she smelled herself and realized she had been distracted for the past two days and skipped her shower.

  She hopped up out of bed and stretched her body out like they do in anime. Radio calisthenics, she remember them calling it. She didn’t actually know all the stretches, but she did some amalgamation of the ones she did know and the ones from PE. It surprisingly helped. She felt limber enough to shower at least. Her hands and arms were often covered with doodles she would sketch when she was bored. She scrubbed them all off one by one, but was surprised to find the one on the back of her left hand wasn’t even smudging. She tried to recall if she had accidentally used a permanent marker or not.

  “There’s no way that this could possibly be an event flag.” She said loudly to the universe.

  After drying off and getting dressed she grabbed some pop tarts on her way out the door. She strolled out of the apartment complex and went to the park. Rather than walk she decided to skip, drawing looks from the few people she saw as she went.

  She moved to an old dilapidated playground. There was a large cement art piece that Ridley had always thought looked creepy when she was a kid. A giants face coming partially out of the ground that kids could climb on. The giants mouth was open as if crying for help and a hand stuck out a dozen feet away from the head as if reaching to grab something.

  Some tortured artist got paid to design this? A drowning giant for kids to play on? What a sick mind. Ridley chuckled.

  She looked at it and decided this would be as a good a place as any to test her powers. She squatted down and put both her hands under the ear of the giant and lifted with her whole body. She grunted with exhaustion and pumped her legs a few times. Nothing budged. Ridley’s spirits were still high though. She moved to the hand that stuck out of the ground. She dropped down and wrapped her arms around the wrist of the hand and lifted. Again she had no results.

  Feeling a little frustrated she looked around for something smaller to test her strength on. As she looked the playground over she saw the old lady at the park entrance. She was talking on the phone while staring right at Ridley. She of course welcomed an audience for her awesomeness.

  “Hey old lady! Wanna see something super cool?” Ridley shouted as she wrapped one arm around one of the cement fingers. Glancing at the finger she imagined Jared’s dumb face. Then she took a step away from the statue and pulled on the finger, like she was clothes lining it in a WWF match. She heard a loud crack as the cement snapped at the base of the finger. Rather than the finger falling to the ground though it bent backward until the nail touched the ground. The rebar inside it, keeping it attached somewhat.

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  The old woman let out… an old lady noise. Like a surprised puppy whining for food.

  Probably headed home to get some heart medication or something.

  “Ok!” Ridley exclaimed as she pumped her arms. The red haze in her vision clearing up quickly. Ridley sat down cross-legged beneath her.

  ^

  Quest update!

  Therapy is expensive:

  You have suppressed your anger too long, it’s time to blow some steam.

  Objective: Break at least $250 worth of property

  Total value broken: $2434

  Current quest rewards:

  -1 xp per $1 value broken

  2434 xp

  -1 silver per $100 value broken

  24 silver

  Time remaining: 6 hours 12 minutes

  "$500? Really?" She assumed that would be repair costs, as the artistic value of this monstrosity was about that of a slice of pizza.

  “HOLY CRAP!” Ridley had completely forgotten she got four silver yesterday. She opened up her status screen and immediately located her silver. She withdrew it into dollars after looking over her choices and it turned into $101.88 that she was able to snatch out of the air. That’s when she noticed the blood quickly staining her hard earned cash. Flipping her hand to look at the back she saw her bloody knuckles. Apparently punching concrete with your bare hand is a bad idea.

  “ I guess my first amazing purchase is some bandages from the corner store.”

  She still took a second to marvel at the money and glanced back at the concrete hand like it was made of gold. She tried to get angry and snap off some more fingers, but she was far to giddy to be mad. So she decided to hit up the Walgreens before walking around town and see if there was anything else that would be easy to break.

  As she walked she took some deep breaths and wondered why she felt so good today. Approaching the old town city square she realized something. Her posture. Her head was high and shoulders back. She wasn’t slouching like she usually did. She wasn’t trying to blend in. She didn’t care if someone from school recognized her. She was free of a burden she hadn’t realized was so heavy. If the rest of her life was like this, she felt she would do just fine. A novel new thought.

  She passed the outer sections of the old downtown that had the abandoned shops. She looked in at the donut shop and snickered at the thought of smashing fifteen cent donuts. Next she saw the window of a jewelry store. Jewels were expensive, but breaking them would be difficult and risky with actual security in their stores. Looking at the rings made her think of Lord of the Rings. The shop wasn’t open in her tabs but she wondered if magic items were going to be a thing now that super powers were? Thats when she felt a slight pulse in her hand.

  She looked at her Celtic symbol and immediately recognized the fact that it had changed color. Instead of a sharpie pen-black it had a light orangish gold tint to it. As she walked it slowly continued to shift in color. She rounded a corner coming into the old city square proper and it pulsed again. She waved her arm around and spun in a slow circle. People around her stepped off the sidewalk to walk around her giving the ‘is she crazy?’ look to each other. Ridley didn’t notice or care.

  She became relatively certain that her hand was in fact reacting to something nearby.

  “Hand sonar! This is going to make choosing a super hero name more complicated…”

  She found the hand position that caused the symbol to turn the lightest shade and walked in that direction. She crossed the street, causing a car to slam its brakes and honk at her.

  “Sorry! Just following my destiny!” She shouted uncaringly, “…and she gives bad directions!” She yelled, but continued on as she was. Finally, she saw her hand was guiding her to a little corner convenience store with a few of the old quarter candy and toy dispensers out front.

  As she waved her magic hand back and forth she passed over the different dispensers, little rope bracelets, peanut m&m’s, eggs full of slime, then there was one that dispensed cheap plastic toy rings. Her hand responded strongly to it by glowing gold. She wasn’t sure what was in there, but she knew she wanted it.