It’s amazing how much can happen in the span of a couple seconds.

If her life was a movie, Nisha could just press pause at this bit and count exactly how many things happened, and how many seconds they happened in.

1) A new person suddenly appeared.

2) Sudden appearance of this new person lead both Sam to jump and clutch his chest as he tried to breathe, and James to start sputtering incoherent nonsense.

3) Finley rushed to Sam’s side, nervously checking him out while he kept shaking his head and pushing her off him with his arm.

4) After taking about half a second to register James’ rambling, Carolyne immediately started yelling.

5) After hearing James’ muttering, and Carolyne’s yelling Alex started yelling.

Because her life was not a movie, Nisha didn’t have the availability to pause and try and process through her own time what the hell just happened. Instead she jumped when she heard the new mysterious arriver, and just sort of stood awkwardly when everyone started yelling, her head moving back and forth between people like the spectators in a tennis match.

“Hey that’s a cool little trick!” The mysterious person said, forcing Nisha to turn and focus her attention on her.

She looked young, around sixteen or seventeen? Definitely a teenager, and was wearing typical teen clothes; a white shirt that slumped off her shoulder revealing a green tank top underneath, blue jeans ripped at the knees, and orange and white striped trainers. She had dark brown hair with side-swept bangs that fell to her shoulders, and her skin was a fair bit lighter than Nisha’s. All around the type of person Nisha herself was horribly out of touch with. When the girl saw Nisha’s look of confusion, she pointed down to her hands.

“I’ve seen a lot, but nothing quite like that!”

Nisha looked down at her hands, which had gained their now becoming increasingly familiar green mist. Maybe the way she was producing it was involuntarily through her emotions? Before she could try and dispel it again like she had done earlier, she felt the sudden urge of something locking up her body against her will. She couldn’t move her arms or legs, but apparently her neck was fine. With a jolt, she looked immediately to Carolyne, who had her arms outstretched and was giving the entire room a death glare. A quick look around confirmed that everyone else was similarly frozen. The shock of it all kept the whole space silent, but expressions ranged from furious (Alex), to a little vexed but ultimately worried (Finley), to positively entertained (mystery girl).

“Listen!” Carolyne shouted, her voice containing nothing but pure authority. “I don’t know what just happened, or who you are-” (cue a pause to look quickly at mystery girl) “but I’m tired and hungry and filled with raw power I didn’t have before. I demand explanations and a way out of here- I’m a scientist damn it! I want the truth!”

As she spoke, her voice quavered, and she closed her eyes for a second, furrowing her brows in concentration. For that brief moment, Nisha felt herself gain control over her own body, until Carolyne opened her eyes again. Still, the brief stint (or maybe the taxation of controlling six people at once) was too much for Carolyne, who let out a frustrated grunt. With that, the control was released back to everyone’s own bodies-- the almost tactile tension disappearing as soon as she released command.

She let out a brief yell, pushing her hands up from her face into her hair.

“Augh! Useless-ass body!”

“Whoa lady, calm down.” Mystery girl said, sticking her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I get that you're like, freaking out or whatever, but like don’t shoot the messenger. I just need to go grab someone.”

Carolyne looked up, opening her mouth to answer but before she could, the girl jumped up and disappeared into thin air just like how she came.

One, two, three beats passed until Sam spoke up.

“Does anyone want to tell me what just happened?