The night was black as they come. Dull streetlights annihilated every star in the sky, and Rena was alone on an empty street, a clean and lifeless city street, black asphalt flanked on both sides by buildings. Every window, dark. A grid. Black streets. Dull street lamps, impassive slate grey buildings that loomed high above, all stopping at the same height, like the black of the sky was a ceiling painted in a color that sucked away all light and did not ever let any go. Rena was running. Turning corners down each new street, trying to escape. Every once in a while, after a turn, red bullets would fire from somewhere, each bullet breaking the sound barrier. Sometimes they would come from the tops of buildings, ricocheting off the asphalt, breaking windows. Sometimes they would come from within the buildings themselves. Every once in a while a flash of light, like a comet would shoot towards the source of the attack, and Rena would run once again trying to find cover. All there was were street, streetlights, sidewalk, and the dark and uninviting interiors of buildings seen through windows. It was terror. Overhead the comet streaked back and forth, the sounds of gunshots from a distant area, the sound of the gunshots getting closer, an attack that she barely dodged, bullets that punched holes through everything. Then she woke up.

On Saturdays and Sundays the alley closed at 5 PM, so the night shift was not needed, giving Rena a standard weekend with which to do nothing with herself but languish in depression and sorrow. This Sunday Rena awoke earlier than normal, 10 PM as she was startled awake by a particularly realistic nightmare. Sometimes when waking up earlier than desired she would try to go back to sleep, and accomplished it easily. This time, however she was worried that she would return to another nightmare and thus rubbed her eyes with her hand and grabbed her phone sitting on the nightstand beside her. 

The doom scroll began, she checked all of her socials 10 times over, refreshing often to potentially see some new thing that would occupy her mind for 5 more seconds, often to no avail. The feed was, as usual, filled with various simple distractions, usually Rena would check out some new video of someone using powers, but she did not have a taste for such a video this morning and she scrolled past all of them, paying each little mind. 

She placed the phone face down on her bed beside her, still groggy from the dream, the bad sleep, and the night before. She squeezed her eyes shut and groaned. She curled her fingers into a fist and looked at it, turning it over as she lay flat on her belly in bed. She studied her fist. Weak, she thought. Thin, frail fingers, no muscle, no power. She did not think about her aura. 

Rena stayed in this state for several hours, checking her phone, scrolling, looking at what others were saying on the social media, not speaking to any of them. She felt within the grip of a slowly tightening giant hand. As the days went by the hand would imperceptibly close tighter and tighter until there was no escape. 

Was escape possible now? How long had the hand enclosed her? 

After some time Rena ventured into the kitchen. Sylvie was neither there nor on the couch. The television was on. Rena made a poptart, two, placing both in the toaster and pressing down on the lever. She thought about the spring which would launch the toasted pop tarts into their ready position, the sound would startle her most times, although she expected it. Perhaps the anticipation was what made it really startling. She couldn’t time the actual popping in her mind, as the seconds went on she would get a little bit more anxious, until the release. 

With hot tart in hand, Rena sat at the couch she had seen Sylvie laying on the night before. She thought about the night before, she thought about what Mari had said to her, about Mari and Kelsey, about Alec and Amber. And Sylvie, wreathed in blue flame, an ethereal form. She remembered cowering behind a tree. 

Rena picked up her phone she had placed on the coffee table in front of the couch. She thought about texting Mari, but did not. She thought about texting Alec, and thought that, obviously, she should not do that. 

She didn’t even know Alec, they had just met and gotten into a fight, and she was not eager to return to violence so soon. Still, the two super powered individuals she had met the night earlier came up frequently in her mind. They were just at a party, waiting to get into a fight with someone. That was normal for them? It was hard to imagine. 

Rena set the phone down, and sat the plate with pop tarts beside her. She closed her eyes and focused on that inner point in her body, which brought forth her aura. She didn’t open her eyes, she just sat on the couch and thought, trying to return to the meditative state she had been in to achieve her awakening in the first place. Right now it was all Rena could think to do to remove troubling thoughts from her mind. She tried to clear her mind of all the memories of the previous day. She found, after a time, that she was able to slip into a serene state. She did not think about much, and the worry and stress and anxiety melted away into nothing. 

Time passed in this state, though Rena did not perceive it. She was happy for the feeling of release, of weight being taken off of her. She felt like the hand slowly closing around her was no longer there. After a while she opened her eyes, and sat with herself for a time. She did not grab her phone and was not interested in moving from her spot. She felt content. 

A buzz from her phone sounded, she quickly picked up the phone and read the message displayed on the screen. 

“Hey it’s Alec. My sensei might be able to help you. No promises though.” the text message read followed by an address. 

Rena turned over the thought in her mind. Flashes of the previous night’s battle, and of her own power unknown to her unfolded in her mind. A second text came through giving her more information. Available times to contact. No phone number, the sensei apparently did not use a phone. 

“Thanks. I hope the thing with your girlfriend’s soul goes ok.” Rena responded. 

Rena walked along the grassy line bordering the parking lot of the apartment complex. In a rare turn of events, Rena decided to get out of the apartment and walk. She hadn't decided to go to Alec’s sensei, but some feeling animated her to walk. The feel of the wind on her skin seemed strangely different. She turned down the road and walked along the sidewalk. Not really going with any purpose or destination in mind. She walked in the direction of a nearby convenience store. 

Rena observed a few other human specimens going about their normal lives. Rena wondered to herself. How do these people feel in a world with such uncertainty? Their lives could come crashing down at any moment by forces far beyond their control. Are they happy with it? Are they ok with it? Have they made peace with it? Rena realized then that she had not made peace with it herself. The world all the citizens of earth resided in was, in her estimation, a world of great turbulence. One did not need to look far to see examples of humans having their lives uprooted or destroyed by alien attacks, interdimensional incursions, powerful supervillains with a lust for blood and destruction. Still, most people went about their lives normally, seemingly without much worry at least how it seemed to her. It always seemed to Rena that most people simply did not care about the infinite and strange possibilities, including the possibility of sudden annihilation, as much as she did. Connections formed slowly in her mind connecting her feelings of isolation and difference from others to her understanding of the world. It was not as if Rena was racked with fear or paranoia often, although a sense of paranoia was not unknown to her. It simply appeared that Rena had a worldview incompatible with the world. Where others were able to function normally, Rena was not. 

For all of Rena’s life she had desired something different. Something more in her estimation. It always seemed like the lives of those with some connection to the supernatural, super powers, other worlds, grand adventure, great destiny, were far more rich and fulfilling than hers. The history books in school were filled with heroic exploits of the super powered, and their friends and comrades. Many times the course of history was changed by supernatural events far beyond the understanding of normal mortal humans like her. This filled her with a sense not of jealousy, but of something being fundamentally wrong. She felt that there was something wrong with her. A normal human, with nothing to offer the world, lackluster intelligence, negligible strength, and destined to rot in the dirt,  unremembered for all time. There were friends who she occasionally expressed these feelings to, like Mari, but none of them understood her. They all seemed to understand something she didn’t or at least they seemed to fail to understand what she did, and it left her dissatisfied with life. 

Rena reached the convenience store. The store had a drink station at the back, adjacent to the sliding entrance doors. Hot coffee and cold soda were available at all times of day and night, though Rena did not drink coffee. Rena also did not often drink soda from the fountain, and today was no exception. She turned down an aisle with colorful wrappers stacked up higher than her head. Rena did not often come to this convenience store, instead choosing to go straight to work on a bus most days. The food at the bowling alley was free, or at least no one tried to stop the employees from taking it for free. A rare occasion presented itself where Rena came to this store, and when she did she got her staples. Consistent at every decent convenience store across the land. One Crumpy Crunchy, her favorite nougat and nut filled candy bar, and one of the hot taquitos from the rollers at the counter. 

Today an interesting wrinkle presented itself to her. There was now an unusual offering for her desired treat. A new flavor of Crumpy Crunchy; Crumpy Crunchy White Chocolate. If asked, Rena would always say she preferred the classics, it wouldn’t be her favorite bar if she did not enjoy the delectable crunch, and chew of the nut and nougat wrapped in the finest processed near chocolate approximation, but Rena was often one to try out new things, given the choice between two trivial and unimportant options. 

Rena stared at the two bars. There were several in stock of each. Rena recalled the taste of white chocolate, it wasn’t her favorite but she didn’t dislike it. She had enjoyed other candy bars’ forays into white chocolate before so why should this be no different? She had made up her mind. White chocolate it is. She picked a single bar from its box on the shelf. 2 dollars. What a meager price to pay for such happiness. Rena then turned towards the counter, beside which were the hot rollers that heated hot dogs and taquitos. Just then, the ring of the doorbell sounded, greeting a new customer. 

Rena hung back as she did not want to bump directly into the new customer walking in to the store. There was a short distance of aisles on both sides of her leading up to the counter. Rena could look directly at the cashier, who stood lazily behind the counter. Something immediately felt off to Rena. The new customers did not enter the store as one usually would, walking immediately into the aisles or drink stop and surveying the options, they lingered around the front counter and looked around, standing very close to the door. Two people with black hoodies on. Rena’s instincts kicked in and she ducked to a position out of sight from the counter. There was no one else beside her, the two guys, and the cashier in the store. Rena felt paranoid, but she could sense what was about to go down. 

Once the two men had cornered the door and were in a good position at the counter, one of them pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at the cashier. The cashier was stunned to attention, looking frightened at the gun pointed directly into his face. 

“Give us all the money in the register! All of it!” The man with gun shouted. 

“Ok Ok Ok Ok! Don’t shoot please! Fuck!” The cashier opened the register and began to pull out the bills. The man looking over the door passed the gunman a plastic bag, who in turn gave it to the cashier. 

Fucking unreal. Fucking unreal. This isn’t happening. Rena thought. A robbery in broad daylight? At like 1 in the afternoon? Who does that? Are these guys insane? Fuck they better not see me. Rena crouched lower in her position. She gripped the White Chocolate Crumpy Crunchy in her hand. What am I gonna do if they see me? Oh god. Am I going to fucking die here? No way. Rena started to sweat and her eyes darted around. She dare not move from her position. She could see the cashier pretty well, the guy at the door was mostly out of sight but the guy with the gun was in relatively clear view. He wasn’t looking around. In his hand he held something strange. It wasn’t a normal gun like Rena had expected. Something with black or silver or grey, no. The fucking thing was green. And it had a shape made of a couple of spherical bulbs. Is this guy packing a fucking ray gun?

The gunman could see that there was barely any cash in the register. He quickly wiped his nose and blurted. “Where’s the safe!?” The main behind the counter raised his hands in defense, not wanting to look directly at the raygun. “I said where’s the fucking safe!?” He pointed the gun within inches of the man’s face. 

“Oh oh oh oh over there! It’s over there!” The cashier desperately tried to point to a place on the wall behind the counter without moving too much. The guy with the gun saw it and cocked his head. 

Rena’s aura sense was already activated. It had turned on instinctively when she had first sensed the danger. She saw the cashier’s aura, and the man with the gun’s aura, both completely ordinary, small like hers. She could get a light sense of the aura of the man of whom her vision was partially blocked. It was as if she could see it lightly through the aisle, without seeing the man she could get an assessment of it. It, too, was completely ordinary. Each person’s aura was a different dull color, but Rena could pay no mind to something like that. She clenched the candy bar tighter in her fist. What am I gonna do? I have to do something. They could fucking kill that guy. They could kill me too! But I can’t move. I can’t be seen. What am I supposed to do?! 

Rena’s mind snapped to several places in time, times when she had observed the aura of others, times she had seen powers in action, Strike Master. Her mind drifted to Strike Master with his aura like golden rays. She had only observed him in action with the aura sense once but something stood out to her. How he enveloped his ball with his aura, which then seemed to magically do his bidding and perfectly strike the pins exactly as he desired every time. She thought about it. Could she do it? She looked down at her fist, still white knuckle gripping the Crumpy Crunchy. There’s no way. She focused on that inner point. Nothing happened. She focused on the candy bar. On her fist.

 Something else snapped into her mind instantly, like a flashback played at dizzying speed. When she had flown hands first through that window at Kelsey’s house she had barely been hurt. It didn’t even hurt at all, she barely felt it. She put her arms out to defend herself, and it seemed to have worked. She should at least have gotten a few glass shards in her arms right? Or is that not how glass works? Still it should have at least hurt but there was nothing. Did the aura protect her? Was it possible to just… block damage, or maybe she had some form of enhanced strength or durability? How did it all work? The newly considered information made her confused and distracted her from the moment at hand. Can I take a bullet? She thought looking down at the snapped in half candy bar. Her mind was racing at such a speed she may have considered the thought for a millisecond which felt like ten. Stupid. That thing probably doesn’t fire bullets. 

Rena thought once again back to Strike Master’s technique. She now returned to that inner point in her being. The center of her being, she supposed. She thought of her meditation earlier that day, and it calmed her a bit, made her mind a bit more clear. She felt another attachment in that dark inner space. Her eyes had remained fixed to the candy bar, she felt it now, in a new way. Her aura reached out to envelope it. 

“Fuck. Ok I’m gonna do it!” The gunman said to his buddy. 

“Ok just be fucking careful.” The man watching the door said, seemingly in a hurried tone. 

The candy bar was now enveloped in Rena’s aura. It was like an extension of her body now. What good would this do however? Strike Master could seemingly control his ball to strike perfectly, but could she do the same? Could she do it instinctively without ever trying before?

Rena’s concentration was broken by a sudden movement from the guy with the gun. He moved quickly to the side and the guy behind the counter squealed and ducked. The entire store turned bright green. A blinding green light erupted from the raygun for a second. The guy had fucking blasted the safe apart, several nearby objects, cigarettes, magazines, were on fire. It completely shattered the glass on the cigarette shelf possibly by the heat or of the force of it. 

“Jesus Fuck!” The gunman yelled wiping his face. The guy watching the door sprinted over and jumped over the counter to inspect the safe, no longer secure.

“Fucking shit you melted the whole thing!” The guy screamed. “Fuck you god damn idiot the whole thing’s melted!” He kicked the wall below the safe and spun around to look at the cashier. Rena could sense from the aura that he was sitting on the floor, cowering most likely. The thug behind the counter grabbed the bag out of the cashier’s hands, or perhaps from off the floor beside him, and jumped back over the counter. The man with the gun was still rubbing his eyes, dazed. Quickly another ding from the door. Rena was seized with fear at the sound. She could see immediately, though she could not actually see him, that this man was different. His aura was much larger than the others.

“Did you get it?” The newly entered man said. 

“Naw he just blasted the whole shit. It’s worthless!” The man now carrying the bag of cash said. 

“Damn!” The new man exclaimed. “Whatever, let’s get out of here. You guys ready?”

“Yeah” The man with the bag said. The man with the gun was still dazed and the bag man grabbed him by his arm and pulled him towards the door. 

“Nimbus!” Rena’s vision went blank. The entire store filled with blinding white smoke. She stood completely still, and crammed her eyes shut. Did a bomb go off? What happened? 

The smoke surrounding her was completely thick and obscured all vision. It did not obscure the aura sense however. Even with her eyes closed Rena could still sense the aura of the cashier. The other guys had gone in an instant. The smoke surrounding her felt, strangely, a bit damp and it was cool like a breeze. Rena stayed crouching in her position for a few seconds longer. Making absolutely sure there was no more danger. Then she opened her eyes and started to feel her way towards the counter. The smoke was rapidly clearing, and she could start to see some more. 

“He… Hey! Are you alright?” Rena called out to the cash register. 

“Ye…. Yeah. A.. Are you ok?” the man responded. Rena could see him start to get up slowly from the floor. The gas was clearing better now. Within a few seconds it was gone. Rena got to the counter. “Did you call the police?” the cashier said. 

Why the fuck didn’t I call the police? Rena thought. A huge pang of guilt swept over her. “Uhh no. Sorry” was all she could say in response. The cashier went immediately to the phone beside the register and dialed out. Rena could see that the place in the wall where the safe was was still smoldering. It appeared the gas or smoke had snuffed out the fire though. Or maybe it put it out because it was too wet. The smell of burning cigarettes and ash filled the store. 

Rena was still alert, still on edge. It was like her heart was pounding a mile a minute. The cashier dialed in to the police and began to explain what had happened. Rena watched him, stunned for a moment, and while his extended conversation with the dispatcher was going on, she walked out of the store. 

It wasn’t until Rena reached the door of her apartment that she realized she was still gripping the Crumpy Crunchy. She had stolen it.