*ahem* It’s Srrindi again. This is my latest "fantasy" story, and if you look closely you will be able to tell which of my writing characters was at work in which part. It's about a group of superhumans that have been banded together by a renegade ringmaster(who is the villain of this story, and also a girl). If this part is too long/short for you, please tell me and I will make the next installment different.

Chapter One.

A chilling blast of wind swept across Rachael’s face and threatened to yank her bright red hair from its loose ponytail as she trudged down the sidewalk, slouching into her loose, baggy coat. The sky was lit by a bleak winter sun, and several scraggly wisps of cloud lined the pale blueness; the streets were dismally empty, as they had been ever since the catastrophe. So the wind was free to rattle its discordant notes around the looming grey skyscrapers that had been boarded up and abandoned a long time ago.

This place had once been the biggest city in America,---New York City, the Big Apple, Gotham, even "the capital of the world". But "quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore’"; for that was what they called it now. A hulking ghost town, inhabited only by the precious few who had stayed behind to scratch a living from the elements when all else fled---either because they were crazy, had nowhere else to go, or a member of some street gang.

And Rachael? She’d been just a little girl when her parents were shot by angry rioters desperate for food, who had burned her house to the ground and left her for dead. If Alex Williams hadn’t stumbled upon her and taken Rachael under his wing, surely she would have met some horrible fate, either from starvation, the numerous gangs that roamed around, or the corrupted state, whichever found her first. He was just a poor man, without a home and without a job; but Alex protected her because "they needed each other," he once said. Tears swam in Rachael’s brilliant green eyes. She loved him so much…but he was gone now, frozen to death only last week. Rachael buried him in the backyard of some abandoned house and tried to go on with her life; but somehow, life just didn’t have any meaning if you had no one to share it with. She was all alone in the dark, cold, deserted streets of Nevermore.

Or not completely alone.

A shadow lurked along the grimy brick wall as Rachael continued her trek through the tangled labyrinth of cramped alleyways and dirty side streets; she’d worked her way deep into the heart of Skid Row. Dangerous place, for any other girl besides Rachael.

A man suddenly burst out of nowhere and lunged for her, thinking he had the element of surprise to his advantage; but in the blink of an eye Rachael spun around to meet him, leaving a deep gash in his arm with the dagger she’d been holding at the ready all this time. Almost as if she’d been expecting him. The man cried out in pain and ran like a whipped dog, not thinking it worthwhile to attack someone who knew how to fight back so well.