cumulonimbus || open
There was a thunderstorm in the simulation room.
That’s what it sounds like from the outside, anyway. Every few seconds – a sharp crack, a low rumble. Repeat ad infinitum.
It had been about half an hour since the dodgeball game had ended, and Riley stood alone in the center of the room, throwing lightning at the wall.
She had come here to practice. To memorize the feeling, get it under control. No more accidental discharges, like the one in the dodgeball game. Electrocuting anything that startled her was not the proper way to deal with this – with anything. This was about control. If attacking the hapless wall with raw, destructive energy was in any way therapeutic, it was entirely coincidental.
Leroy’s revelation had nothing to do with this. Maybe she was a cryptid. Maybe she was adopted. Crack. Maybe not. It changed nothing. Boom. She wasn’t mad at her parents, she wasn’t angry at this wall – no, any rage she felt was reserved for the ones keeping them here, the ones who had no qualms about letting them suffer, who had shown time and time again that they only wanted them to die.
With one final blast of thunder and a flickering, sustained bolt of lightning that dissipated after a second or so, she finally dropped her arms, looking exhausted – and stiffened, as the last of the thunder faded. Something about the acoustics of the room had changed, somewhere along the way. The door was open. There was no telling how long someone had been watching.
“If this is about the noise, I’m finished,” she snaps, without turning around.
By her standards, she was a mess. Her hair was undone, and the loose strands almost seemed to defy gravity, held slightly aloft by static electricity, and she hadn’t yet bothered to change out of the blacks and reds of the beast-team gym uniform. After everything Leroy had said, it was difficult to focus on anything when her train of thought kept jumping off on pointless tangents like wondering whether she might have been born from an egg. It was incredibly frustrating, but none of that really mattered right now. There were other things to worry about, to think about, to focus on. She spun around to face the newcomer.
“You. What do you believe?” Her tone was clipped, but less harsh than it had been a moment ago.