[Megan Daniels]

Being a Hero was tiring work, but not always for the reasons most people would suspect. Sure there was plenty of physical exertion, but having to talk to dozens of unfamiliar and only sometimes friendly people daily, uphold laws, and maintain appearances simultaneous for large amounts of time on end all while keeping who you are a secret from most people? Fortunately for Megan, practicing with her powers had always been relaxing for her. So when she had enough time to herself she did the sensible thing- spend it hiding about 20 feet off-path in thick foliage in the middle on a public park in the 23rd largest city on earth, a place where everything smelled like a newly paved road.

There was of course a perfectly good reason for her to do this. She was in Hancock Park, home to the La Brea Tar Pits, where from the moment she had entered she could feel that there were at least tens of thousands of skeletons going back the same number of years buried. Crouching down, Megan focused on a single skeleton. She could just tell it was there and about what size it was, what exactly it was eluded her until she'd brought enough up to recognize the signal she got from them automatically. She was certainly glad to be wearing her normal clothing for this, she quite liked her costume but chalk-white body armor hardly is difficult to notice.

As she started to focus, sliding up through the ground like it was made of water came hundreds of black-tinted bones, and as they reached the surface they silently but rapidly snapped into position, and within 20 seconds the full skeleton of a bulky wolf was there, it's head tilted to be 'facing' Megan. She grinned "Now you're just gorgeous". It might not have been a very 'normal' seeming talent, but she still loved using her power. You would need to be slightly off the path to even see the area where she was, and seriously, who was going to be looking?

Kenzi Nadir

[Kenzi Nadir]

VACATION!!!

Summer was here, which meant school was over, which meant vacation time! Her family had gone on a vacation every summer since she was born, and while they never left the U.S., Kenzi was still thrilled to discover new things in different states - from the mountains of Colorado to the oceans of Florida to the lobster in Rhode Island - every trip was a different adventure. While the family had changed, the tradition hadn’t. Both her older sister, Andrea, and her even older brother, Rob, had moved out long ago. And since Rob got married to his wife - a lovely young woman named Val - and had a baby - a sweet little girl named Chrissy - the family had grown, but that didn’t stop them from getting out of the corn-filled Midwest and seeing what the rest of the country had to offer.

This summer, the family was spending two weeks in California. Los Angeles to be exact. The Nadirs had been to California before, up north in San Francisco, but it was a big state; there was lots to explore. While in the past, the family would drive to their destination no matter how far it was from their hometown, this year they decided to take a plane. The sights Kenzi saw as they flew over the country provided her with no end of inspiration for her art. The clouds, especially, she found spoke to her deeply.

They landed, got their rental cars, and drove to their rental home. As quickly as she could, Kenzi dragged her suitcase to her room, unzipped it, grabbed the art supplies they wouldn’t let her carry onto the plane with her, stuffed them into her backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and marched out the door.

On her way out, her mother stopped her, warning her it wouldn’t be safe for her to travel alone. Kenzi laughed. ”I’m not in danger. If any bad guy tries to attack me, I can just say ‘look over there’ and run away.”

Her mother nodded and replied, “Fair enough.”

With a characteristic large grin on her face, Kenzi rushed out the door and into the city.

Kenzi took in LA with wide eyes and an awestruck smile. Kenzi believed that every city had a soul, a spirit. Not literally, of course; she didn’t believe in those things. But artistically. Everywhere you went, there was an aura to be captured, and she planned to do exactly that during her vacation time, as she did during every other vacation she’d ever taken.

Eventually, she made her way to a park - Hancock Park, she believed it was called - and wandered in, going off the beaten path, as always. Being the inquisitive young woman she was, she went straight into the brush, taking in the atmosphere, the strange yet beautiful concept of nature in the city.

After some time getting whacked by bushes and branches, she saw what looked like a person in the distance. She thought about loudly greeting this stranger, but decided against it. Perhaps they wanted their solidarity. Not many people went this deep into the brush looking to run into another person.

Still, her curiosity got the best of her, so, using her powers to direct all attention away from herself, she moved closer to the stranger - a young woman with bright dyed hair. Just as she was getting close to the woman, a skeleton started to rise from the ground. Her mouth opened into a wide oval as she let in an excited gasp, watching in amazement as a fully formed wolf skeleton emerged from the ground.

”Oh my god, that’s awesome!” she exclaimed ecstatically, dropping all attention manipulation. She ran up to the woman ”Did you just bring the skeleton up from the ground. Dude! That’s amazing! You must be a metahuman! I am too, so don’t worry about any assholery from me about that stuff.” She looked the wolf skeleton up and down, admiring its beauty. ”I always loved the energy skeletons had, you know, like, artistic energy.” She stared at it a little longer in silence before turning back to the woman.

”Kenzi!” she announced zestfully, sticking out her hand.

Megan Daniels

[Megan Daniels]

Megan whipped around at the sound of a voice, the wolf bending down ready to charge until she stopped it, being confronted by a girl who was so incredibly vivid that it seemed a miracle she hadn't seen her coming. The girl certainly was friendly enough, though she spoke at the rate of a bullet train. She was glad that she was caught by one of the rare people who shared her sentiment that her critters were interesting and not frightening. I mean, they were probably less dangerous now than when they were alive, and there wasn't even anything rotting on them!


Happily shaking Kenzi's hand she replied "I'm Megan. I have to admit I didn't expect anybody else out here, but it's all right. This park contains a big fossil site so I use it to test stuff out when I can. I have to admit I've never been any good at drawing or painting but I still love art, so I went to Film School." she gave the younger girl a wild grin "So you're a metahuman too? What's your thing?" there was a wild excited sort of curiosity in her expression "Because I'm not sure why but nearly every meta I've met, which is not that many admittedly, has had a power that suits them in some way. I'm curious to see if that trend continues to be true." The wolf sat down, and moved it's jaw as if it was yawning but of course no sound came out save the nearly inaudible creak of the joints.

[Kenzi Nadir]

Kenzi’s smile widened as the woman grabbed her hand. Megan, she said her name was. She was relieved that Megan wasn’t put off by her sudden appearance. Apparently her assumption that someone hiding deep in the wilderness (as much wilderness as there can be in the city) didn't want to be bothered was untrue. It was likely she just didn’t want to spook people with her skeletons. Plus, some people could be real dickholes about metahumans. It was probably smart to try to avoid any bigoted assholes by hiding deep in the brush.

”Oh, awesome!” Kenzi replied at Megan’s mention of film school. ”I love movies. Any form of art really is exciting. My brother used to want to be an actor so he’d show me all kinds of movies. He’s a salesman now, but he never really lost the passion, so we still watch plenty of movies together.” Kenzi laughed. ”Sorry, that was kind of a tangent. I do that a lot,” she said, grinning.

A mischievous smile grew across Kenzi’s face. ”A demonstration.” She thought for a moment. Whenever people asked what her powers were, she always displayed them with a demonstration. She tried to do a different trick each time, but she didn’t have one prepared at the moment, so she had to come up with one on the spot.

”Alright!” she said, an idea coming to her head. She pulled a leaf off of a nearby bush. ”See this?” She held the leaf in front of Megan. ”Keep watching the leaf, don’t take your eyes off the leaf.” As she spoke, she diverted Megan’s attention away from her hand and the leaf, making her focus on Kenzi’s face and voice. Thus, she’d be completely unable to notice as Kenzi pulled several more leaves off the bush. Finally, with five leaves in her hand, she released her hold on Megan’s attention. ”How many leaves am I holding?” she asked with a cheeky grin.

Megan Daniels

[Megan Daniels]

While she definitely hadn't expected to meet anyone here, it would be lying to say that Kenzi's enthusiasm and manic energy weren't absolutely welcome. Even among the friendlier people she knew Megan so rarely met someone with the same sort of joy and wonder in the world that those who lack it tend to view as childish. But to her, that was what humanity was really about, our science and art alike being fueled by sheer excitement at discovering. She realized she had gotten her train of thought derailed by philosophizing about the meaning of life, which was far from an infrequent occurrence but it did get annoying at times.


Megan grinned, nodding excitedly at Kenzi's enthusing about movies before laughing "Oh don't worry too much about it, getting lost on tangents isn't uncommon, besides sometimes you find great ideas there". She paused to gently stroke the skeletal wolf's head. It couldn't feel it and wasn't self-aware enough to react to it of course, but that didn't change the sheer amazing factor of petting a skeleton wolf. "I did voice acting work for a little while, which was pretty fun."


Being asked to stare at a leaf might have been the strangest demonstration of powers she'd been given, but Megan went with it. She focused intently on the leaf... or tried to anyway as for some reason her focus absolutely could not stay on the leaf at all. There was something frankly improbably distracting about Kenzi's face despite it looking the same as it had before and not particularly unusual by any means. She blinked and suddenly the girl was very clearly holding 5 different leaves without Megan having seen her move a muscle "Ok, I have to admit that that is extremely cool. Correct me if I'm wrong but was that like a Somebody-Else's-Problem field type of effect?"

Kenzi Nadir

[Kenzi Nadir]

Kenzi was really liking Megan. Some people were so cynical, so put off by her enthusiasm and energy. This didn’t describe most people, far from it. But Kenzi had met enough sourpusses to be prepared for a backlash whenever she was her unapologetic lively self. Of course, Kenzi was persistent, and almost everyone came around to her eventually. She didn’t go away from an encounter with a stranger without transforming them into her friend. And it seemed she was already well on her way there with Megan.

”You do, don’t you!” Kenzi agreed ecstatically. ”I love rambling. Like love it. I come across ideas I didn’t even know I had! But it’s important to listen to people too,” she said, tapping her ear. ”I kinda tend to just bulldoze over other people in conversation, so to speak. It’s something I’m working on. 'Cause other people, they’re interesting, they’re inspiring, and they can provide you with plenty of new ideas too,” she said, smiling.

”Ooh, voice acting? What did you act in? How did you get into character? What was it like acting when you weren’t doing anything physically? Was it weird not being face to face with your costars?” She forced herself to stop the line of questioning there. She had many more questions she wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to overwhelm her new friend. Rob had never done any voice acting, so she had no frame of reference for what the experience was like and she was curious to learn.

Kenzi grinned wide, her teeth practically sparkling as Megan complimented her ability. ”Attention manipulation, baby!” she exclaimed. She threw the leaves up into the air and let them slowly flutter down around them. ”I diverted your attention away from my hand and onto my face and just picked the leaves off the bush right in front of you without you even noticing!” she explained proudly. ”I can also sense what you’re paying attention to, though if you’re focusing inward, I can’t tell what you’re thinking about. I can’t read minds or anything.” She put her hands on her hips. ”I’m basically the stealthiest person in the world. Although I don’t really wanna do stealthy shit as a job. Maybe for fun, but not as a career. I wanna be an artist!” she said, grinning. ”I basically already am. I was in a couple galleries, sold a couple pieces. I’m going to the EMBA to learn how to control my powers and just kinda get out of the Midwest - I’m on vacation here with my family, by the way, thus the Midwest thing - but art is what I really wanna focus on.” She let out a little laugh and cleared her throat. ”There I am bulldozing again. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

She looked at Megan’s skeletal animal. It was beautiful, but it was also darn cute, in a spooky scary skeleton kind of way. “Can I pet your dog? Or is it a wolf?” she asked. ”Can it feel? Can it think? Or are you just moving the bones around?” She stepped toward the canine. ”Does it have a name?”

Megan Daniels

[Megan Daniels]

Megan certainly knew some people with the sort of exhilarated energy Kenzi had- the was one of them in fact. But absolutely nobody she knew took it to the extent this teenager did, quite this level of boundless enthusiasm. The effect of being around it was like being injected with caffeine.

"All true. Certainly some people can do a lot with very few words, but there's a lot of value in letting your train of thought go on and see what sorts of sights it takes you to, so to speak". She was correct that talking to her felt like the verbal equivalent of a machine gun, but unlike some people who did that there was no real malice, she simply had a great deal to say and wanted to make sure it all was said. "Everyone sees the world at least a little bit differently, and most people you meet will have seen and done some things you never had, so it makes sense."

She gave a soft smile at being asked about her work, answering the questions in order. "I did voices for a couple minor characters on some animated shows and for some video games. As for the rest of the questions they kind of are all part of the same answer. Yeah it was kind of odd not being physically present, but I felt like that may have helped me get into character more because it didn't matter what I looked like, because the end result would be me looking perfectly like the character. I do have to admit I kind of waved my hands around like crazy while doing it even though I don't normally gesticulate,"

Megan laughed at the explanation Kenzi gave for her ability "I will repeat, that is very cool. I'm really glad you don't want to have a career in stealth because you would be terrifyingly good at it. What kind of art do you do? I have to confess to not being an expert in visual arts but I do know there's a lot of variety within it." her laugh came back instantly at the admission of 'bulldozing' "It's alright, I was warned and right now you have a lot  you want to say- I'm not going to get upset about that."


Having mostly been sitting still the whole conversation, the skeleton stood up as Megan turned back to it, giving it her signature sort of impish grin "A Dire Wolf if I'm not mistaken, feel free to pet it. Can it think or feel? That's actually quite a good question. I can't just manipulate bones, I can only put them back together into these skeletons, and they follow my mental or verbal instructions without fail and just sit there idly if I haven't given them any, but on the other hand they do seem to choose the best way to follow my instructions if they're not that specific and otherwise act like they were a living animal that I was controlling. My best guess is they do have a bit of a mind, but it's sort of an unconscious extension of mine rather than a totally independent one". she had the wolf take a few steps to close the remaining distance between it and Kenzi. "Well since I've had him, or her its hard to tell most of the time with skeletons, for all of a few minutes no name yet. I don't usually get to hang on to them for all that long so I usually don't name them."

[Kenzi Nadir]

Kenzi laughed. ”Yeah, I’m not one of those people who can do a lot with very few words. With very few lines, colors, images, yeah. But words, naw. I could never be a writer or anything like that.” Every member of her family had an artistic specialization. Kenzi - art, Andrea - music, Rob - acting, their father - jewelry, their mother - inventing/engineering (which the whole family had designated as an artistic endeavor), but it seemed the gift of writing had passed them over. Perhaps Kenzi’s niece would turn out to be a prodigy in the field, or one of her own offspring. She supposed she’d just have to wait and see.

She listened intently, eyes wide, as Megan enlightened Kenzi on her experiences in voice acting. Kenzi may have been a loudmouth, but she knew when to shut up when it mattered. As much as she bulldozed conversations, she was an exceptionally good listener. She knew how to absorb information like a sponge, and she could empathize like no other. Empathy, in her opinion, was the most important thing a human could experience, and should be afforded to even those who had difficulty empathizing back. She gave a well-natured laugh. ”That’s awesome, dude! It sounds like a lot of fun, getting into a character like that. I bet it really lets you use your imagination and stuff. It seems more freeing than in-person acting, in a way.” She chuckled. ”I’ll have to convince Rob to give it a try.”

With confidence, Kenzi walked up to the skeleton and gave it some gentle pets on the head as if it were her own dog. She afforded the same attention to Megan’s explanation of her powers as she did her voice acting. “Dire Wolf? Isn’t that a Game of Thrones thing? I don’t know, I never watched the series. I was waiting for the whole thing to come out so I could binge watch it, then I heard it got really shitty so…” she clicked her tongue, “that kinda sucks.” She caught herself. “The show, not your Dire Wolf,” she quickly corrected. ”Your Dire Wolf is awesome.” She smiled and scratched it’s long, bumpy spine. ”Your whole power is awesome. It must be so fun to spook people with this kind of stuff.” Of course, her mind went immediately to pranks when it came to Megan’s power, but she appreciated it for a myriad of other reasons. ”Just the aesthetic is super badass,” she added.

Sitting on the dirt-covered ground, she took the backpack - painted in bright, colorful, rainbow swirls, garnished with glitter - off her shoulders, and placed it on the ground in front of her. She unzipped it and took out a sketchbook - cover similarly colorful. She passed it over to Megan. ”Here, this should give you a taste of the kind of stuff I usually make. Of course, I try to mix it up a lot, but that’s kind of a jist. Be careful looking through it though, don’t wanna mess up any of the work.” The sketchbook contained a large array of stunning abstract work - some looked like they could be based on real life objects, but most were completely alien to any real world equivalent. A myriad of mediums were used - graphite, pen, colored pencil, crayon, glitter - if it could be used in a standard sketchbook, it was in there. Every once in a while, there was an objective piece depicted at a strange and interesting angle, so accurate it looked like it could have been a photograph. ”I usually do abstract stuff ‘cause, you know, that’s a bit more pure, if that makes sense. Like, it comes from the mind; you create it and nothing else. I do objective stuff every once in a while though when I get bored, or when I wanna show off to the noobs.” She gave Megan a cheeky grin.

She pulled out another sketchbook - a much newer one - and a high-end pencil, tip so sharp it looked like it could easily puncture skin. ”Do you mind if I use your Dire Wolf in one of my pieces? Don’t worry, I won’t draw it verbatim, but it’s energy is just…inspiring.” She stared at the skeleton for a moment, eyes wide, then looked back up at Megan. ”Can I?”

Megan Daniels

[Megan Daniels]

Megan realized what it was that made Kenzi so likable at least to her, she was very fundamentally human. Not in the sense that she was anywhere near normal as humans went, but in the sense that most of the best characteristics of humanity- curiosity, wonder in the world, empathy, and a strong sense of self expression were all dialed up to eleven in her. It was just hard to be upset by anything she did considering how incredibly genuine it was. "Yeah, it's pretty fun. Even if I only need the voice recording I often take videos, it just is so ridiculous looking compared to the more subtle movie acting. On a camera it matters that your actions look right, in person like in a play that matters too but you also have to scale up your movements to account for everyone being a bit further away, with voice acting how you sound is the only part you can't go completely wild with" she winks.

The dire wolf nuzzled into the petting softly, the bones stained black from millennia buried in tar. "I've never seen Game of Thrones either, but their Dire Wolves were inspired by these ones. Close relatives of modern gray wolves, not much bigger but a lot bulkier, they went extinct about ten thousand years ago. This park is built around tar pits, and for tens of thousands of years animals have been getting stuck in them. Predators like dire wolves would often come to try and take advantage of that only to get stuck themselves. Somewhere over" she gestures vaguely to the side "there is a museum of skeletons that have been dug up from the area and there's an entire wall with hundreds of dire wolf skulls" she smiled. She always liked it when people seemed actually remotely interested by these sorts of things. She'd gone to the museum out of curiosity and taken quite a few pictures, so pulling out her phone she showed one to Kenzi.

Just running through the sketchbook Megan could tell what sorts of art Kenzi did: all of them. The majority were abstract but practically any possible way of drawing something on paper seemed well accounted for. They were quite beautiful in their own uniquely 'Kenzi' way, capturing huge amounts of emotion and thought in indistinct shapes and patterns. "I really like these" she said with a wild grin "I mean some I can see what the inspiration was but most? I just sort of feel them, like it just distilled your thoughts and emotions into a visible form. I have to say when I've been to art museums a lot of abstract art kind of confused me. Like those really famous ones that are literally just the differently colored rectangles? Never ay the point in that. But these are wonderful really"

Megan chuckled at Kenzi asking permission to use her skeleton as inspiration "Feel free, I wouldn't even have objected if you'd wanted to draw it verbatim. I don't have a trademark over dire wolves or anything any more than anybody has a trademark on any living or extinct animal, it's by no means whatsoever my design even if it can be argued I created this specific example of one. I'm all for things being open source unless there's very good reason for it to not be and luckily nature is something full of inspiring sights nobody can claim ownership of" while simply saying 'yes' probably would have done the job neither her nor Kenzi were the type to leave their thoughts incomplete when they had something to say.

[Kenzi Nadir]

Kenzi found Megan’s account of her voice acting exceedingly interesting. Of course, Rob had given her plenty of detailed accounts about what it was like to act on stage and, occasionally, for the camera. But voice acting was unexplored territory, and Kenzi had always considered herself an avid explorer. She laughed. ”Cool, do you have those videos? Like, can I see them? You don’t have to show me if you don’t wanna, but they definitely sound interesting,” she said with a big smile.

Stoking the skeletal wolf, she listened intently as Megan gave a history of the area, the tar pits, and the reason for the fossils. ”It’s super cool that you know all this, though I guess that’s to be expected for someone who can move bones and shit,” she said while staring down at the wolf. She followed Megan’s vague gesture, though, as to be expected, she couldn’t see anything through the thick brush. She looked at the image Megan showed on her phone. ”Ooh, cool. I like the lighting,” she said. ”And the skulls too, of course, those are cool too,” she added sincerely, though clearly as a second thought.

”Exactly! EXACTLY! Thank you!” she responded to Megan’s praise. ”Some people, I show them, and they just don’t get it, you know? It’s just ‘ooh colors;’ they don’t try to look deeper.” She let out a sigh. “Sorry, that probably sounds pretentious as fuck, but you get what I mean, right?” she asked. “Though I should say, don’t dismiss the rectangles. I have a lot of thoughts on abstract art like that, but I’ll save you that rant for later, because ooh boy,” she wiped imaginary sweat from her brow, ”that rant goes on for hours,” she said.

”Cool!” she said, twirling the pencil in her fingers. ”Cool, cool, cool.” She eyed the lines of the Dire Wolf’s jaw and began copying it in her sketchbook. ”I really think we should give it a name,” she said as she drew. ”Do you know its gender?” She paused. ”Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. Gender is a social construct anyway.” She brought the eraser to the chin, studying the wolf carefully. ”Sammy,” she declared. ”Their name is Sammy.”

Megan Daniels  

[Megan Daniels]

Megan couldn't help but beam energetically at Kenzi's wild enthusiasm for just about everything. She gave an apologetic look at the mention of her videos "I'd totally let you but they're currently all on flash drives in boxes a few hundred miles north of here" while there were probably better ways of storing your life's work, this was the first time Megan had encountered even the slightest issue with that strategy "I live in San Francisco, here on a bit of off time to play around with my powers some more" she said with a wink.

The wolf calmly stood letting Kenzi pet it, not quite still but certainly keeping more still than any living wolf in that situation would have. Megan chuckled "Let me tell you, a few years ago I had absolutely no clue, I just figured it would be rather a good idea to have the first clue what I was bringing up in the first place rather than just being like 'oh it's some sort of skeleton' and leaving it at that". As she put her phone away she replied "Well if you have hundreds of wolf skulls to display, why not do it with some style?" 

Megan continued her mesmerized looking through Kenzi's myriad artwork slowly nodding at the excited rambling. It wasn't that she wasn't listening- she was, very intently. It was just that each picture seemed to give her a new thing to think about, making it hard to devote enough brain space to any sort of response. Finally she handed the book back and said "Well honestly I don't exactly get it either I just can tell that there is something to be gotten. Same with the rectangles, I really can't fathom why they're such a big deal but I'm entirely sure there's some reason for " and she grinned.
 
"While I'm sure there are people who could, I'm hardly an expert in discerning gender in even human skeletons, much less wolf ones. Plus I'm not sure the concept remotely applies to a skeleton animated by metahuman powers" to her the skeletons had always been 'it'. Keeping track of every last one was simply an impossibility. But once the skeleton had a name 'it' felt rather wrong, and while names were not exactly something Megan was good at it seemed Kenzi was perfectly able to come up with reasonable names. The wolf tilted it's skull, trenching itself out. "Sammy it is then"