Without much further thought, the teen staggered and bounded across the metal beams, a cacophony of clanging emphasizing her urgent pace. Before she could reconsider, another sharp clack behind her made her haphazardly pull herself over the rails. The height couldn’t have been worse than being outright attacked, or so she thought.
As she twisted to get her bearings, her breath hitched. The distance between where she stood and the cement floor was just short of a two-story drop, and that was aggressively discouraging.
“Oh, shit.”
She wavered, immediately regretting all of her life choices up until that moment, when a man she had never met jogged below where she was hovering. Well, small giant would be more accurate. Even in her precarious predicament, she could tell that guy was huge—the tall, fitness buff type who was clearly destined to be some sort of athlete at some point in life.
“Don’t jump, man. You ain’t gotta do all that, just chill.”
“I’m not planning on jumping!” she retorted. “I’m trying to—”
A jolt of electricity coursed through the steel workings of the bleachers and into her arms. With a shrill cry, the offending metal rail. Her arms flailed until her fingers roughly snatched at the underside of the bleacher. There was no traction on the cold bars, and she slipped.
It’s not like in the movies, she thought. There’s no prolonged, dramatic fall. Just a zipping between one place and another; a glitch in time and location before you hit the ground. And she hit hard. Her leg and side scraped against the concrete, but luckily her head landed on something with more give.
“Hey…”
She twisted to look towards the deep voiced man who had haphazardly caught her and was already pulling away. He seemed to wince, flexed his arms, and readjusted his bomber jacket as he rose to a stand. His grey eyes looked her over questioningly.
“You good?”
Her brows furrowed. Good? Really?
The man waved a dark hand in front of her face. That’s when Suri realized that she was just sitting there staring at him like an idiot. She should be running away, screaming, and heading back inside the school where the scariest thing was Math class.
Except for some reason, she couldn’t help but feel a strange calm, holding her like a warm blanket and protecting her against the sheer panic she felt shifting beneath it. She blinked away the daze she felt and looked down at her legs.
Her grey uniform trousers were torn and tattered, the cuts on her legs were welted and bleeding, and her heart rate was slow to settle but for the most part she was okay.
She nodded in response to the man’s initial question, still not quite sure what was going on and trying to work it out when a clamoring atop the bleachers caught her attention.
She flinched, shooting her focus up anxiously towards the rails she had fallen from. At the top stood the short woman, darting her eyes around attentively before huffing and forcefully shaking the metal bars in her hands.
“Phoenix was right here,” the woman made a loud sound of frustration. “When I see him again, I’m going to zap him like the dumb bug he is.”
“Yeah, we ain’t got time for that,” the man said, signaling towards Suri. “We gotta get her outta here.” The woman pouted before sighing dramatically. Without an inkling of hesitation, and much more gracefully than Suri had, the woman casually hopped over the rails.
Suri reflexively moved to stop her but hissed in pain from the injury on her leg. Despite her efforts to stop her, the woman merely hopped down from the bleachers.
She landed with perfect form, rolling off the impact and even coming to a stand with her arms outstretched like a gymnast as Suri gawked at her in disbelief. Her eyes challenged the brightness in her smile as she brushed off the ruffled collar of her pink peplum coat and approached the pair.
“Suri, right? I’m Fae. That lovely guy there is Dante.”
She nodded at the younger man who had to fold forward just to be able to help Suri up from the ground. The teen’s face became flush when he lifted her a bit to high off the ground and lowered her with a soft apology before Fae continued in a sing-song cadence.
“You would be doing me a huge favor if you came with us to tell Trenton that I was right.”
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