𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 | 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬

Prologue

A/N: Hello and welcome to my second Steve x OC fic, featuring my OC Seren Soul. If you're brand new, you might want to go back and read the first fic 'Darkest Before Dawn' to get a better sense of the background/context of everything! This story will cover the entire WS plot with some original plots thrown into it. This story will also feature my second OC Chloe Winters (who also debuts in the previous fic). This is an eventual StevexSeren fic ;)

Los Angeles, 2006.

"C'mon Chloe! We're going out for burgers!" A teenage girl with short brunette hair waved the tall blonde over to their group.

Her blonde tresses bounced with her as she crossed a football field still crowded with several other cheerleaders and football players. Practice had been going strong even when the sun was set to go down in a few hours. Chloe Winters was no stranger to long practice hours, though. Even as her friends begged her to come with them to get those burgers—their favorites—Chloe reminded them that she still had to meet her gymnast trainor.

"C'mon, you're still going to practice after everything we just did?" Her best friend Ally Gale whined ever-so-dramatically. If her hair was longer, she would've flipped it to accompany the effect.

Chloe smiled. "It's my schedule, what can I do about it?"

"Drop it, maybe?" Ally rolled her eyes. "You're already a cheerleader—and a good one at that—so why do you have to pair it up with this nonsense?"

"Because I have plans, Ally," Chloe reached for a duffel bag on the bleachers. "We're graduating in a couple months and I need to be at my best when that happens. So..." She wiggled her fingers goodbye and started backtracking away.

"You know Max is going to be asking for you, right?"

Chloe smirked. "He better. That's what boyfriends should do." She turned all around and headed off. She reached for her cellphone inside her bag once she was on the sidewalk. She was a little late and knowing her trainer, she would be flipping over. She sent a quick text notifying her that she was on her way. She was almost reaching the pedestrian light when she heard a loud clang from a building behind her. She stopped, frozen, and waited to hear something else. A few seconds later, she did.

Chloe was overly curious. She always was. It was deemed by her friends as something adorable — her boyfriend thought it was quite so — but her parents often expressed their concern. 'It'll get you into trouble one day if you stick your nose where it doesn't belong,' her father would say constantly.

"I'm not an idiot," she muttered as if she was still having that conversation right now. She turned around with a new sense of determination, especially when she heard something new. Running footsteps. She stopped in front of the building and inspected it as much as a 17 year old girl could. No one had come out and all the windows were as dusty and old as they always were each time she walked by.

She finally stepped inside and found it to be as old and dirty as its exterior was. It seemed like an abandoned office space of some sort. There were various buildings around the neighborhood in similar states. Only none of them ever made noises. That's why they were abandoned.

"Hello?" she quietly called, hoping that she wasn't going to get an answer. Whatever made the noise was probably gone. She saw an open backdoor as she crossed the bullpen. She had her phone in her hand again, just in case some creep tried to sneak up on her.

But so far, no creep was in sight.

Chloe continued past the bullpen into an old hallway. Each room was open and solitary, until she heard an odd buzzing noise. She backtracked to the specific room and approached the doorway. She poked her head inside and was relieved to see no one inside. Whatever the buzzing noise was, it wasn't' a person. A thing, she beamed. She could definitely work with 'a thing'. Contrary to the popular belief about blonde cheerleaders, she wasn't dumb and she most certainly didn't hate science. That's why each time she was curious about something, she followed the lead. Who knew what she could discover?