Barely surviving has become my purpose / April

[BENSON JAYMES ATTISON]

Benson Attison was so used to being on his own that he had never really considered the consequences of his manipulations. Not until today at least. The day started off just like any other day except the fact that there was thunder rolling in with the morning's sunshine. Thunder meant time to play, or at least exercise some powers he hadn't been able to use in a few weeks. The weather here in Heatherfield was way off from the rest of the country. He was sure it had to do with the amounts of magic concentrated in the area. He could be wrong, but he was almost certain he was right about that.

Ben started his morning routine out like normal, run four miles, pull ups on the tree branches, practicing dust storms with leaves on the ground and then he started to play around with whirlwinds. Things were going smoothly and the thunder was making things a lot easier - he was making louder cracks and was even able to create and manipulate his own lightening strikes from all the energy around him. He was using a clearing around his little shack in the woods on the far outskirts of town. He'd only been here in town for just under a year, he still hadn't made any friends and he sure as hell hadn't made any progress on his parent's and their history. He was getting overwhelmed with all the information he could find that was not specific to his family. He wanted to be able to avenge them, but at this rate it would never happen.

Ben started to turn in circles, counter clockwise, arms out and the wind started to swirl around him. The air started to turn stronger creating some small hurricane force tunnels that soon developed into a much larger tunnel. It was not much bigger than the shack he'd been staying in, he was holding the tunnel cloud in place with one hand and still churning the air with the other. All of a sudden he saw a flash of movement on the other end of the clearing, he lost focus and let the tunnel cloud go, accidentally sending it in the direction of the movement he'd seen.

[APRIL EVANGELINE TISZA]

Heatherfield was strange. She'd heard the rumors, of course, indicating that people who didn't belong in other places could belong there. That alone should have clued her in to the oddity of the place. But being here was such a different story. April had traveled across the state in search of her sister, dark sunglasses carefully shielding her eyes from view. She'd been here for three days, though, and had already realized she could lose the shades. Her yellow-gold eyes were one of the least abnormal things around here. The one thing she hadn't done since she'd arrived, though, was explore the absurd speed she seemed to have developed over the last few months.

Back home, April had been part of the track team. Without warning one day, she'd begun running at such speeds that she became a blur of movement. With a great deal of concentration, she could mask that and force herself to run at a speed that was actually possible for others, and she'd been devoting a great deal of time to that effort. In fact, she hadn't actually tapped into that speed since before she'd left home. Given the population of Heatherfield, though, she figured there couldn't be a better place to try it out.

Since she wasn't quite comfortable with her abilities herself, she figured showing them off by running along the street or somewhere she was likely to be seen might not be the best idea. So she'd headed for a patch of woods on the outskirts of town. Once she was far enough into the trees to know she couldn't be seen from the street, April took off at a run, closing her eyes and letting her body take control. Within seconds, she was moving so quickly that she felt like she was flying. Unfortunately, running at that speed also meant being completely unable to stop.

Having expected to be entirely alone, April was caught completely off-guard by the presence of someone else in the woods. She couldn't see him, but she could feel a sort of change in the atmosphere, and before she really knew what was going on, her eyes focused on a tunnel cloud headed in her direction. She glanced up at the sun in the sky, frowning at the realization that the tunnel cloud wasn't natural. Her frown turned to a look of abrupt fear as she further realized that she couldn't stop it, and she wouldn't be able to outrun it for very long.

[BENSON JAYMES ATTISON]

Being in and out of foster homes and juvy didn't really make things easy for Benson the last few years. He's still not quite eighteen yet, so if he was caught by anyone he'd be sent right back to Philly and arrested for going over state lines and out of their custody or something. He had read enough to know that he'd be in big trouble and he was determined to stay out of jail and out of legal trouble from now on.

As he was watching his tunnel cloud spin out of control towards what he could now tell was a young blond, it was like he was moving in slow motion. He also seemed to be having some sort of out of body experience, he could see himself reacting as if he was himself and as if he was standing five feet away watching it all happen. He rushed towards the tunnel, attempting to thrust it out of her path and all of a sudden the thoughts hit him. What if she got hurt? She'd want to call the authorities and he'd get into trouble. There was no one in this town, let alone the world, that could vouch for him. He worried, very quickly, about all the things that could go wrong.

He had to save her. He had to stop her form colliding with the tunnel. After making the split second decision, he again, thrust even harder to push the tunnel from her path, using both hands. He eyes had started to yellow, he could feel himself taking on a more elemental form. He didn't want to scare her with that as well so he threw his whole body into the cloud, disappearing into it and crashing into a tree, hitting the ground quickly.

"What the hell!" He screamed, getting up from the ground. He still wasn't quite sure what hit him. He rubbed the back of his head, where a goose egg bump was forming. He looked around the small clearing for the girl, not seeing anything right away. "Hello" he called, "You still here?" He figured she got scared and ran off... he sat back down on the ground, rubbing his head, feeling a little dizzy.

[APRIL EVANGELINE TISZA]

She stared in terror at the tunnel cloud as it started to catch up to her. People said adrenaline could make your body do things it wasn't usually capable of. Maybe it worked backwards for her. She couldn't quite tell if she was slowing down or if the thing was getting faster, but there was no doubt within her mind that she was going to be hit by it. At best she'd be banged up. At worst, given her own speed and the speed with which it was approaching her, she wouldn't live to tell the story. Eyes wide, she forced herself to increase her pace even more, to focus her vision ahead of herself and not behind lest she collide with a tree or go careening off a cliff.

Once she turned her vision ahead of her, she seemed to easily fall into the faster pace, though her breath was quickly becoming more labored. She was pretty sure she was about to faint when she felt the rush of movement behind her again. Chancing a glance over her shoulder, April watched as a boy, who appeared to be close to her age, threw himself at the cloud. Her eyes widened and she came to a rather abrupt stop, very nearly falling in the process. Crouching against a tree, she took a few seconds to catch her breath before standing to retrace her steps. She'd stopped quickly, but her speed had made it difficult to gauge how far she'd come once she'd made the decision to quit running.

After wandering back about twenty feet, she frowned as she noticed the guy she'd seen standing. He rubbed his head, which boasted a lump, and April couldn't help but frown at him, her arms instinctively crossing over her chest. "What are you, stupid?!" she demanded. "That thing could have killed you!"

[BENSON JAYMES ATTISON]

He'd not heard a peep from the girl while the cloud chased towards her, no scream or anything. He wasn't sure she had even survived the event until he saw her wander back into the clearing from about a few hundred feet away from him. He wondered what it was that made her run so fast, was she running from something? Someone? Would someone else come careening into the clearing after her? He stopped rubbing his head and looked up from his seat on the ground, "Not stupid", he replied. "Very smart actually." He smiled crookedly at her.

"That 'thing' was mine to begin with." He wanted to make sure she was okay. He stood up, still a little dizzy, but he made his way towards her. "What the hell are you doing out here in my woods?" He was mad and he could feel his own temperature rising from within. His hands started to shake. He shoved them into his pockets to hide the effects from her and from himself as well. He'd not yet had a close call like this and he hated the fact that this girl interrupted him and could have gotten them both killed.

[APRIL EVANGELINE TISZA]

She'd barely had time to register the fact that the boy's crooked smile was completely adorable before he told her that the tunnel cloud that had been chasing her was his. Frowning at him and momentarily forgetting to keep her yellow eyes averted, April let out a huff. "So were you trying to kill me then?!" she asked, not at all thrilled by the idea. Tilting her head, she let her gaze roam over him, though she refused to admit that he was attractive. She was very busy being angry with him at the moment.

Something about his stance and his unreasonable anger made her wonder what he was afraid of. Someone had told her once upon a time that anger was usually a mask for fear, and it seemed plausible enough. The way she saw it, though, of the two of them, she was the one with the right to be pissed off. After all, it appeared that this guy had sent some kind of barely controllable tunnel of wind toward her. She hadn't actually done anything to deserve that. Not that she'd realized, anyway. Shaking her head, she finally registered his words. His woods? Did he own them? Or live in them? Or maybe both? He seemed so young that April decided none of those were plausible options. She shot him a disdainful glare. "I'm sorry, was there a sign posted out front? I'm pretty sure this is public property." Ignoring his question, she glanced around, half making sure that he hadn't decided to try to kill her in some other way. "What are you doing out here, anyway? You look like you should still be in school." It was a silly comment, of course, given the fact that she should have been enrolled in school herself, but she couldn't quite help pointing out his apparent age.