She could smell the smoke still seeping from the building down the street even though this part of the city hadn't been touched by the army in days. These days the smoke never really stops; it just receeds for a little while. This city used to be grand but now it was nothing but a wasteland. It was hard for her to believe that it was just 4 years ago that she graduated from college here in this very city. Oh how things had changed, including her.
She cowers in the corner of the alley with her bag over her shoulder and listens. She could hear someone running nearby and she wasn't about to get in the way. In the past four years, she had learned how to survive. She had learned the hard way to only come into town at night and to only stay in the shadows. The shadows offered the only layer of protection from both the army and the criminals. To her, the army were as much criminals as the thieves - maybe even more so. They were the ones that had stole her city out from under her. They were the ones that had ruined everything. They were the reason she was all alone, hiding in the shadows.
The running was getting closer. She could now tell that there were only two people, and from the sounds they were making, one was running from the other. Their steps were not in sync like they would have been if they were running together. She sunk back farther into the shadows.
This city had been a normal American city before the war - before the bombs and the invasion - before that dreaded December night when everything changed. She had been a pretty normal, although quite shy, 23 year old girl. She had her small group of friends, went to her Yoga classes, would occasionally play online games that would suck her time away. Yes quite normal. Back then her favorite past time was to read. At one point she tried to read the whole fantasy section of the library. These days, she still reads. In fact, she is probably the only person in the whole city who still possesses some books after the army-ordered book burnings.
The war had been a surprise to everyone. She awoke one day to the sound of a bomb dropping on her neighborhood. She never saw her friends again. Even she didn't survive unharmed. When she had tried to run to safety, she had been caught at the very edge of a bomb blast, which knocked her unconscious into a drainage ditch. When she awoke, her city was rubble.
These days most of the people lived either in the army's work camps or in various refugee camps throughout town. The only people to live on the streets were the outlaws... and her. That bomb blast had changed her life in another way as well. She didn't know what exactly happened, but that day had thrown her head first into a world that she had only read about. She had changed.
Now the running people were getting closer. So close, in fact, that within a few seconds they would run right by her alley. All she had to do was stay in the shadows and she would be safe. But then she saw a ghost from her pass.
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Back then, when her life was still whole, Kira Tailor had a pretty good life. She had a group of friends, a good job, and nice place to live. She spent her Friday evenings at game night with Brandon, Luke, Ginny, and Tina. They would laugh and have a good ol' time. It was those Friday nights that now haunt Kira more than ever. Brandon and Tina were killed in the initial round of bombs, and Ginny had been killed shortly afterwards when her apartment had been torched by the army. She had never heard about Luke, but since she had hadn't seen him or heard of him since the invasion, she had presumed the worst.
That is why she was shocked to see him running past her alley. In fact, she was so shocked that for about half a minute, she didn't move. But then with catlike gracefulness, she jumped into action. She dropped the bag she was carrying and jumped over the boxes that she had been hiding behind. By the time she landed, she could feel her body changing form. The muscles in the limbs began to grow and stretch. She landed on her front legs and began to run after the two men.
She never completely understood what had happened to her that night that she spent in the draining ditch. Was it the head trauma? The gas from the bombs? Something had changed her very being that night. When she awoke, she had the power to change shape. She could sense that something was different, but it wasn't for a few days later, when she had witnessed Ginny's apartment burning with her inside it that the anger had changed her. She felt herself growing and changing, and panicked a little from the seemingly lack of control. If she had had then the control she had now, she could have flown up and saved her friend.
Kira still hadn't figured out what she could become. She knew it was some sort of black, very large cat. She could feel the cat reflexes pulse through her body, and yet she had wings. In the year since the invasion, she had gained control over the form so that now the wings were optional. She would just stop the changing process before they grew.
In cat form, she raced after the two running men. By that time Luke's pursuer had chased him into an alley and was slowly backing him into the wall with a gun. He began to cower, believing that these moments would be his last. He heard a something snap behind the man. Then out of nowhere, a large creature came leaping off the dumpster and tackled the man. He had been wrong. It was the guy's last few moments to live. But now there was a giant cat standing a yard from him with the limp body of his pursuer in its mouth. Fear flooded through his body.
Kira looked down at the man she had just killed and then back up at the terrified Luke. She wished the change back was as easy as the change into cat form, but it wasn't. She could become a cat almost instantaneously, but switching back was a difficult process. This is one reason she never became a cat in town. She was just going to have to win over her terrified friend as a cat.
Leaving the dead man where he was, she lowered her head and began to inch towards Luke, who looked like he was about to pass out from freight. So she did what any good cat would do. She rolled onto her back and began to purr.
