Impact
July 15th, 1945
A cursed child walked over a mountain.
She shouldn't be here. That was all she knew, but she had no time to think about that. Beautiful lights danced in the sky, a waltz of purple and pink and light blue and green, the colours intermingling and splitting apart. Mouth agape, she looked up. All seemed to fade away. The sweltering heat, the pain in her feet, the dryness in her mouth, the sadness of being utterly and completely lost.
Memories slipped in and out of her mind. She'd ran as far as her legs could've taken her, for no reason whatsoever. A shooting star tore through the air. It left a beautiful trail, purple sparkles flying in the air behind it. The shooting star grew larger and larger, and much like the sky it'd used as a canvas, it was beautiful. The same colours, many times more intense. She could feel its heat from here. In school, the girl had read about the meteor that took out the dinosaurs.
Suddenly, she snapped out of her trance. She turned around, and ran again, ignoring the pain. Faster and faster, fearing for her life, she ran. Pieces of purple rock flew off the meteorite. She looked behind her. The meteor was less than a hundred metres away. Fleeing was futile. A sharp purple crystal shard broke off, shooting towards her throat.
There was no more meteor. The mountains were empty, the sky was blue. All around her were animals. She didn't understand why she was still alive. A purple crystal laid at her feet - she wrapped it in her handkerchief, stuffing it into the pocket of her dress. The oversized garment dragged over the ground a little as she started walking, observing the animals. Ferrets walked on the air, fish jumped in and out of the rock below as if it were water. A jackrabbit kicked the wolf chasing it, causing the wolf to fly dozens of metres away.
Scared, she stayed close to the ground as she walked. What was this place? She stepped onto a floating rock, amazed. She was really flying - almost - but she didn't dare climb up any higher than a metre or so off the ground. Carefully, she jumped back down to the ground. She felt a sharp pain in her legs as she did so. Walking hurt, but she wanted to know more about whatever this place was.
She chased after a green snake - one she'd heard was harmless - following it over the mountain. She was fixated on the ground, trying not to lose the thing. All she wanted to do was catch it and see if it had a wacky specialty like the others. Suddenly, it turned ninety degrees. With a loud blast, it shot away into the sky. The girl looked at it, and slowly, her gaze turned forward.
With a scream, she scrambled to turn around. She tried to run, but no longer could. The bear right behind her roared, dashing her way. Rather than running, it skated over ice that formed beneath its paws. A pathway of ice extended forward, and the girl slipped on it, twisting around to look at the creature. Its claws plunged down, and she panickedly rummaged through her pockets. The crystal slipped out of the handkerchief, tumbling away, just barely out of reach. The girl rolled to the side, and felt the bear's claw slice at her leg. She lunged forward, grasping the crystal, and the world disappeared once more.
Twice now, those purple crystals had saved her life. She looked at the wound on her leg - it was bleeding, but it was only a little more than a scratch. A man in a beige hat and jumpsuit ran towards her, eyes wide. He didn't believe what he saw, swore he was going insane. She looked exactly like the description he'd been given, and appeared in front of him out of thin air. "Hey! Patricia, right? Are you alright? What happened?" "My parents- I ran- meteor- magic animals-" "Breathe. Let's get you to calm down first, okay? I'll take you to your parents."
July 16th, 1945
A group of doctors in airtight protective suits stood around a hospital bed, stumped. "Diseases can't advance that fast." A balding man yelled out. "Look in front of you, Steyn. The proof's right there." A woman with square glasses retorted "That's not proof, Barbara! Maybe she's simply not patient zero." An imposing lady - the head of the department, one could tell just with a glance - stepped forward. "Quit bickering, you two. What's more important is how to handle this disease." "It's airborne, bloodborne, can affect any animal, can be transmitted through water or skin contact or anything else - it's impossible to stop, ma'am. We're the only uninfected people in the city, most likely."
"Action, everyone! Focus on the press. A disease granting people superpowers is impossible - squash that rumour immediately." The head of the department looked at the girl laying unconscious on the bed. The scratch delivered by that odd bear had grown infected, faster than should be possible. The lady squinted at it. For a moment, she could swear she saw a ring of smoke emerging from the wound. In the background, she heard a boxing match playing on the television in the adjacent room. Background noise had always been distracting to her. "Can someone turn that off?" She said, annoyed, and then started thinking aloud. "No disease even remotely similar to this has ever been seen on Earth. Where, oh where, could you have caught such a thing...?" She muttered. A cough in the back of the room caused every doctor to turn around. The doctors scrambled to leave the room, but it was futile. Within a minute, everybody had broken down into a coughing fit. One by one, the doctors fainted, dropping like flies. The last thing any of them heard was the ringing of a bell from the television.