Allegra didn't know how long she was curled up on the ground reliving awful memories magnified to the point of being traumatic. It seemed endless, but it had probably just been a few seconds. She would have spent an even longer seeming eternity if Charlie hadn't screamed shaking the teen from her daytime nightmares.

Allegra looked up and saw a paper arm floating over her head waving at her. A small flurry of confetti blood sprinkled over her head catching in her hair and sticking to her new dress. Allegra noticed that at the end of the arm there appeared to be a cartoon bone sticking out like the ones she used to draw for the dogs in her pictures when she was a kid. Then the arm just flew away into the sky.

The next thing Allegra knew, Charlie was pulling her up off the ground. Still in shock, Allegra let Charlie pull her away from the nightmare scene.

"Where are we going?" she gasped. It didn't much matter. Allegra wasn't putting up any resistance. She was just letting Charlie pull her to wherever.
Allegra's mind was furiously trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't. She tried to remember her last solid memory and it was that awful paper man flittering around in the sky.

"No! No! No! No!" Allegra screamed over and over. She wasn't positive but she was pretty sure that she might have just killed someone with her powers.

”Away from here,” Charlie growled in response. They’d been there long enough and experienced enough bulls*** for a week. They needed to go before things somehow got even worse. The two of them just couldn’t catch a break.

Up ahead, there was a sudden noise from the sky as the power that Allegra had given the Ogre wore off, and he caught himself in a tree. He was screaming loudly, and it only took a few seconds for a group of people to gather below to help him get down. He was going to be alright, save for the arm that had landed a little ways off from him. That was probably going to hurt like a b****, but at least it fit with the look he had going.

Allegra was screaming, but she wasn’t putting up much of a struggle as Charlie pulled her forward. How had she even gotten here, pulling along a teenager? It was such an un-Charlie situation. It was almost absurd, really. There had been nothing fun about that past situation, and even though she had been through worse, there was nothing in the last few years that could compare to that situation and how awful it had been. No, they were not staying any longer.

Charlie pulled the younger girl through the crowds and away from the music festival. There was no need to spend any more time there. They weren’t going to get anything out of it, and they needed somewhere quiet so that Allegra couldn’t do anything else or cause a scene.

A little ways off from the festival grounds, there was a picnic table under a tree. It was still close enough that they could see the crowds of people and even faintly hear the music, but everything was still far away. They were alright in terms of distance.

She set the other girl down on one side of the table and then walked around and took a seat at the other. Charlie ran her hands through her hair with a long, exaggerated sigh, and then let her head fall to rest on the table. She needed to sleep for a week after all of that.

Allegra slumped down on the table. Exhausted and scared didn’t even begin to cover it. And did she hear a man scream? She hadn’t looked behind her to see what was going on. She just kept running and running and running.

“Are you…...alright?” she finally managed the strength to ask. “My god, was that even real?  That was the worst experience of my life.”

“Oh my god!” she cried. “What if they saw that I did that with my powers? Do you think they got it on camera? And even if they didn’t, our things are still there. We have to get my phone and our things back. They can track us down and arrest us. Or maybe they will kill us. I don’t want them to kill us.”

After a few deep breaths Allegra tried to calm herself. “Okay, I do this exercise in yoga all the time. It’ll help me calm down. Think clearly. Think rationally. Plan this out.”

Just then Allegra felt a sickening wet feeling on her arm and shoulder. The red confetti in her hair and on her dress had turned back to blood. It had taken a little longer than normal since she was away from the man that shed the blood but when Allegra stopped paying attention, her power wore off. That meant the ogre was flesh and blood and, well, so was the blood. The red goo was dripping down through Allegra’s blonde hair and soaking her dress.

Allegra completely gave up on being calm. She screamed. Very loudly.

Charlie let out a groan and put her head in her hands. After all of that, now she had to deal with a teenage girl and some teenage girl bull***. She just couldn’t manage to catch a break that day. Maybe if she just killed herself she would wake up and forget about everything. It would definitely get her out of that situation, anyway.

As she was contemplating how long it would take her to find something sharp and jab it into her temple, Allegra started to scream. Charlie closed her eyes tight and tried to block out the sound as she had done the talking, but it wasn’t working. The piercing quality of it meant that there was no avoiding it. Either something had to be done or she had to leave… like, now.

A part of her felt sort of bad, though. Even though the girl had been nothing but bad luck, it was still Charlie’s fault that she had done that music thing in the first place. While it wasn’t her fault that the girl was a bad omen, it was her fault that she was sitting on a bench, covered in blood.

With a grimace on her face against the noise, Charlie extended a hand and placed it awkwardly on the girl’s shoulder, starting her best impression of empathy. ”Look, kid, it’s not your fault that things went to s***. You don’t have to go back there if you don’t want to. I can go get your phone, or I can just buy you a new one and we can pretend this never happened.” Did she have the funds for that? Not really, but she would make something work. She always did.

”Do your yoga or whatever, and then we’ll go. Get you cleaned up and do our best to put this behind us. Life goes on,” she said. To say that Charlie was an understanding person would be the overstatement of the century. Over her time, she had learned things; people came and went and life went on. Nothing was ever the end of the world unless you made it such.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Everything's going to be just fine. Don't scream again. Deep breaths. Pretend that's not blood trickling down your chest.

Come to think of it, screaming seemed like a perfect appropriate response.

Instead of drawing attention to herself, Allegra just focused on Charlie's voice. Allegra was lucky she was with her. Charlie seemed like the most caring, sympathetic person ever.

"Okay," Allegra sighed. "But we can't just leave without my phone. They'll be able to connect it to me and then they'll be able to figure out that I'm a mutant and they'll blame me for maiming and almost killing that ogre guy which, by the way, is my fault."

Allegra watched as security was called to the site. An ambulance had already arrived which was a good sign. It meant the guy probably wasn't dead.

"How am I going to get my phone back?" Allegra asked. "I am so screwed."