Clarke Maximoff had always felt different to everyone else in some way. She'd never known her parents, and she just couldn't understand people. Their emotions just didn't make sense. She had grown up in an orphanage; and she was ruthlessly bullied because of her silver hair and burns on her body. Her trust in humans gradually dwindled, and ebbed out like a dying fire. From then on, for the rest of her childhood, she'd lived alone in her head.
These were the thoughts that dripped and trickled into her head when she was asked who she was by the strange girl. You see, Clarke had recently been living homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. She had outgrown orphanages, and the council couldn't be arsed to do anything about her; and so here she was, dressed in a crappy dressing gown, stood in front of another teenage vagrant.
'My name's Clarke. Hi.' She muttered shyly.
'I'm Riley! How are you?' Babbled the girl, words firing from her mouth like bullets from a machine gun.
Clarke physically winced as the tiny girl's rampant thoughts cascaded into her brain, stinging like a tuning fork being hit up against her forehead.
She felt a tickling crackle in her ears for just a second; and then could suddenly feel the air molecules flowing through her hair, sense their tiny forms phasing through her fleshy windpipe. Stars floated around in her vision, and panic rose in her chest like a vicious plant.
Reality kicked in again when the girl's scream ricocheted through Clarke's ears. The two girls had been standing on a roadside on top of a highway bridge. Somehow, her abilities had managed to push Riley off the side.
Riley's blonde hair flowed as she plummeted towards hard, concrete death.
Clarke took a deep breath, and jammed her eyes shut. Air rushed at her face, hitting her mercilessly like a cloud of minuscule blades. She felt blood ooze from her body, and then her feet landed once again on the cold ground.
Riley, still breathing, squirmed around in her arms.
Police sirens screamed and wailed to high hell as the world returned to Clarke's back.
'Hands in the air, mutant!' Yelled the blue-coats in voices muffled by the sirens and Riley's heartbeat.
Clarke put Riley down, and raised her hands above her head. Riley shrieked in terror as she touched down with the ground. She ran straight at the officers, clearly terrified of the mutant who'd just saved her.
Clarke could sense what was about to happen. She just stood there, powerless like a deer in headlights.
The terrified officers opened fire on the young girl running towards them.
The smell of gunpowder and hot lead stabbed Clarke in the stomach, and she keeled over, sick from what she had just witnessed. Bullets flew through the body of Riley, who was still stood there, like a human targeting board. More and more holes appeared in her body with consecutive gunshots, and the targeting board fell to the ground.
Clarke lay there, whimpering on the ground. Once again, the air around her jabbed and whispered at her. Each individual molecule tapped and niggled at her body, slipping into her clothes and biting her legs.
She took one final breath and she was gone.
