Hailee got thrown out of the darkness, landed face down on the hard concrete. She felt like she just came out of a washing machine, all nauseous and lightheaded.
"Damn it! Can this thing get any easier?" she complained as she tried to fight off the sickness.
She stared into a distance, taking deep breaths to cure her nausea, a trick her father taught to overcome her seasickness.
They were on a hilltop, looking over a sea of city lights, an iconic view often seen in movies, and to her left was the Griffith Observatory.
"We're in LA?" she sighed in disappointment.
"Where did you expect? Aspen?"
"Paris would be nice!"
Her backpack slipped off her shoulder, landed on the ground with a thump. She really packed for the trip, with extra clothes, a water bottle, and money to do some shopping.
She patted the dirt off her pants, glad she chose her hiking outfit, something against wear and tear.
"That thing is in there?"
She looked over to the observatory, the marvelous white building with black domes, thinking about all the epic battles in movies that took place in iconic structures.
"It's right there..." the old man pointed where she looked, then slowly panned his direction away from the main building, passing the parking lots, and stopping at the dark trees. "...behind the dumpsters!"
"Damn it! Why do they always pick dirty places?" Hailey whined.
"What can I say? They're low-life creatures." Holden shrugged, seemingly taking joy in disappointing the girl some more.
"Can't you deal with them yourself? Having all powerful and all?" Hailee scanned the old man with judging eyes.
"My power will destroy half a city, and I do handle the big problems, so you can handle the little ones."
"Little ones?" Hailee felt offended.
"Well, get on with it. You want to get back to your precious sleep, don't you?"
Grunting in frustration, Hailee walked across the empty parking lot. The garbage area was surrounded by a high wooden fence, behind it came sounds of crumbling, like someone was going through the trash.
The sooner I'm done, the sooner I go back to bed!
Outside the fence was a tap and hose, probably for washing the dumpsters. Hailee walked up quietly, turned the tap and let it run, building up a puddle on the concrete ground.
She raised her hands, brought up five spherical bubbles to chest level, each the size of a baseball, with two in front, two at her sides, and one at her rear, covering her from all angles, a defense layout she learned from video games. She hasn't grasped the technique to solidify water yet, so this is her best defense tactic for now.
"All right. Time to see what you are." she whispered to herself, carefully approaching the doorway, ready for whatever was coming.
As if detecting her presence, the noise stopped. She took careful steps up the fence, tilting her head to look inside.
The plastic dumpsters were torn apart, leaving a hill of trash and tree branches, no one could be seen. Then she heard a twitch, among the trash she saw a tree branch moving, then another.
She traced the branches to their origin, it took a few seconds for her mind to process what she was looking at, then a chill shot up her spine, so cold that all five spherical bubbles burst simultaneously, striking her own skin like a thousand frozen pins.
