The Legend of Konoha's Shooting Star

Enter, April Starr!

"I'm home!" April announced as she trudged into her uncle's home after a long, boring day of school, soaking wet. The rain was really pouring down out there. She dropped her wet school bag and grabbed the go-bag she kept ready with her JKD gear. "Uncle Mike?" she called out as she wandered through the empty house, trying to find her guardian. "Looks like he isn't home yet..." she remarked with disappointment. "... And I'm talking to myself again. Great." Her uncle better not have forgotten that she had a tournament today, or she was gonna be pissed. He knew she needed him to give her a ride there, because Casey and her mom were down with a bad case of the flu. She had annoyed the heck out of him about it to make extra sure he had heard her and would remember it.

You see, her old, bachelor uncle was a genius—the absent-minded professor type. Since he worked as both a professor and a consultant, he was always busy solving some kind of complex physics or engineering problem at work. So, she was pretty used to being ignored and disappointed since he never seemed to have any time for her, but she was really depending on him to be there for her, just this once. Unfortunately, her worst nightmare seemed to be coming true, because she couldn't find him anywhere. There's no way she was missing this tournament—It was the championship rounds! She decided it was time to venture down into the basement. Normally, she was forbidden from entering it without his permission, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

When she reached the basement door, April saw that a sticky note had been stuck to it. It said: 'April—Just got the transporter working! Off to tell colleagues. Do NOT touch it.' April face-palmed. He had forgotten! As usual, he was so caught up in  his own little world that he had forgotten all about her! She understood that he was probably super excited because he had been trying to get that stupid thing to work ever since she was a toddler, but couldn't he have waited to disappear until after he had dropped her off at the tournament!?

"Freakin' Trekkie!" April muttered darkly under her breath. She took a deep, calming breath, and then smirked with a mischievous gleam in her eye. If he thought that sticky note was going to keep her out, then he really didn't know her at all. She was definitely touching it now! That would teach him not to forget about her again. And if the transporter really worked, then maybe she could use it to get to the tournament. She yanked the basement door open and marched straight inside, making a beeline for the machine. Rather than a futuristic looking platform from Star Trek, it looked more like a mechanized port-a-potty. Actually, that's exactly what it was. Her uncle had apparently used a freakin' plastic port-a-potty for the outer shell of his one-man transporter. Well, whatever. At the moment April didn't really care what it looked like as long as it worked, because her uncle owed her a ride to that tournament, and one way or another, she was getting it. The inside of the port-a-potty/transporter was much more impressive. It was lined with lead, and there was a flat-screen computer monitor and lots of control panels and fiber-optic cables and wires crammed inside. It was very cyberpunk-ish for something that had been made with such ghetto parts. April took a seat in the pilot's chair (which was an old car seat that smelled like wet dog and garbage). She hit the big button on the wall next to her, thinking it was the power button, to start it up. It wasn't. The transporter was already on. The monitor was just sleeping. She had hit the 'go' button.

"!?" April gasped in surprise, startled, when she was suddenly hit by a very strange sensation in the pit of her stomach as she was yanked back into her seat by an invisible force. A message flashed across the monitor as it woke up:

ERROR: NO DESTINATION ENTERED

Alarmed and confused, April tried to move to do something, but there were too many g's pulling on her. Even though all she could see was the inside of the box, she knew she was moving. She could feel it. And then, it got even worse. Since April hadn't bothered to dry herself off earlier, she was still soaking wet. A drop of water rolled off of her finger and hit an exposed wire.