kairos : peter maximoff/quicksilver

PROLOGUE [part 2]

Mr and Mrs Shin screamed, both parents desperately lunging into the street after little Roxanne, already knowing they'd be too late to reach her before the speeding pickup truck did.

The driver cursed and honked and swerved to the side. But he had been going too fast, and Roxy wasn't turning back from Tock.

No collision ever came.

Because in the flicker of time after their daughter's worn black ballet flats hit the asphalt, in which she should have been launched across the road, Roxanne's parents watched bewildered as the girl vanished mid leap.

The car screeched to a stop over the place where she had just been.

"Roxanne!" Mr Shin bellowed.
"Annie!" Mrs Shin screamed.

"What the hell?" The red-faced man from the truck sputtered through the open car windows. Gobsmacked.

The horrified parents followed his gaze, almost unable to comprehend the sight before them.
On the opposite side of the roadway, at least twelve feet from where she had been only milliseconds ago, stood a perfectly safe Roxanne Shin. In her arms she held a squirming mutt which she was currently scolding in a tone that didn't inspire much discipline.

"Bad, Tock! You do not run after squirrels! No, stop licking me; I'm seriousss, Tock."

The three adults at the scene exchanged glances.
The man in the pickup truck muttered something in a panicky sort of way and jerked his car to life again, driving off considerably more cautiously.

Roxanne's mother and father turned to face one another in the same manner as people who brace themselves to tear off bandaids.
There was no avoiding the oddness this time. There could be no excuses made for what had just happened. For what they had both just seen with there own eyes.

Across the street, the girl's words turned into giggles, and she took a sudden step towards the curb to cross back.

This seemed to bring her parents back to reality. "Stay there, mi amor." Mrs Shin's voice seemed strained like it might break at any word. "Wait a second; we're coming."

Roxanne watched as her parents hurried across the road and wrapped her in a tight hug, her strange silver eyes wide with innocence.

"Honey, what have we told you about looking before crossing the street? You and Tock could've gotten seriously hurt!" Mr Shin sputtered. "If-"

"Haesung." His wife cut off his rambling. She somehow seemed both shaken and relieved. "Roxanne... How did you do that, Annie?"

"Do what?"

Her parents looked down at her with identical expressions.

• • •

After quickly escorting their ten year old and her dog back home, the family sat down in the living room for the classic "So I Think One of Us Is a Mutant" conversation.

It was not one that the Shins had been expecting to have.

After lots of discussion involving assuring Roxanne that she wasn't in trouble and trying to get every detail out of her about these newly manifesting powers, Mr and Mrs Shin decided this was just another detail in their lives that they'd adjust to.

Like Roxanne's silver eyes or her almond allergy or Tock's intense aversion to being house trained.

They immediately began researching, as conspicuously as possible of course, asking around for tips from other parents of mutant children and teaching Roxy to take notice of any changes in her abilities and to always be cautious when using them.