A goddess walks into a bar
Vesta is a very strange waitress: she never wears shoes. She's also immortal.
You'd think people would complain, but you've never seen Vesta. If your waitress had a girl-next-door smile, a body an Amazon would kill for, and never served your order more than a second late, would you complain about the shoes?
You'd also think more people would notice she's immortal, but she's very careful. She never works in the same place for more than five years, never talks about her previous jobs, and moves to another city every ten or fifteen years.
It used to be far easier. Back in the day, she could stay in the same town for a century before someone would notice the stunning beauty with bright red hair looked exactly like the young lady that grandpa was always talking about.
But then again, back in the day people died more often.
The customer's question distracts her from her memories. She glances the man asking: mid-twenties, African-American, wearing a grey hoodie and reading a comic book.
Just then, an Asian girl slams the door open. She looks like she's been to hell and back.
Both Vesta and Max watch the girl drink three full cups, one after the other. No sugar.
They figure she must be sixteen or seventeen; she's wearing a black T-shirt underneath a green leather jacket that seems almost oversized for her tiny frame.
The situation is too strange to miss the opportunity to strike an interesting conversation.
Vesta asks.
-She does know everything! Even I don't know this stuff on the fly.
Maybe it's the coffee, maybe it's her new brain stitching together all the evidence, but Noriko seems to come to her senses and stands up.
The girl and the goddess look at each other in the eye. Silver eyes flash, and the goddess backs off.
Vesta replies by showing him the palm of her hand, where a live flame appears out of thin air.
Null smirks, looking down at the now empty cup of coffee.
Vesta reacts as she would with any customer: with a warm and sincere smile.
The three women walk towards Null's table, standing behind her. Yet another two women, again looking exactly like the first one, walk in and start closing the blinds to cover the windows. They even change the "we're open" sign with the "we're closed" one, even though Vesta tries to stop them.
Noriko react so fast that Max and Vesta aren't really sure how the woman who touched her ends up with her head smashed on the table.
warns Max.
The other women dressed in green don't do anything. The one that attacked Noriko pulls herself together; her nose has been squished into her head, but she doesn't seem to feel the slightest pain.
Four out of the five women in green exploded with the force of a small bomb, seemingly without warning or reason.
The force of the explosion shatters everything in the room, yet nothing is burned. Max Black opens his eyes: he looks like he's been through the dirtiest chimney in history, and the Asian teen with the silver eyes doesn't look much better.
– she cuts him, storming to what's left of the door.
The cliché goes that people in New York will shrug off anything, but blowing up a building will get their attention. Just outside the bar, Noriko finds people gathered to understand what's going on.
The explosion should've been far worse: the sidewalk is full of shattered glass, but that's it.
"Could Vesta have contained the blast somehow?" she wonders.
As soon as she turns her silver eyes to the next person, a woman asks:
Noriko doesn't know what to answer, as her eyes shift from person to person. Every information the world knows about the twelve people in front of her is flowing through her head: birthdays, phone numbers, medical histories, job résumés, social security numbers, everything.
Only now Vesta and Max come out of the bar. They see Noriko in the middle of the crowd, seemingly lost and confused. They've known her for less than fifteen minutes, granted, but this is her first human reaction to anything.
Noriko just pushes aside the people in front of her, looking at the street: it would take too long to wait for the streetlight to turn green before crossing. She just makes a step forward.
A motorbike comes to a screeching halt just a second before hitting Noriko. It was a calculated risk, since her brain decided the driver had enough reaction time to avoid her. The driver doesn't seem to think the same, shouting at the top of his lungs:
she answers, just grabbing the driver by the shoulder and pushing him out of his seat.
It's hard to say what's more impressive, that she just shoved aside a man twice her weight or that she's stealing a bike in front of a dozen witnesses.
Rarely has a crowd been made more speechless than now. Only Max has something to say:
A bright flame suddenly appears in front of Vesta, causing enough distraction to sweep Max off his feet and fly away, following Null's bike.
To recap. Noriko is driving in the wrong direction on a stolen bike, followed by a goddess who his flying ten feet off the ground, carrying a grown man in her arms. And all of them survived an explosion five minutes earlier. In other words, this is Max's greatest day ever.
A building several blocks away
Bob Null is late again. It's not his fault, really: he tried to leave the party earlier, but the girl just wouldn't let him go. In fact, she's still clinging to his arm, and they are both right in front of the building where he lives.
Just then, something smashes right through the walls of the building, five stories up. The wall smashes on the ground along with something else; Bob's first reaction is to push Deena out of harm's way. He makes sure she's okay, despite throwing up on the street, before looking back.
There's a puddle of green goo in the middle of the wall debris. The puddle grows very quickly, taking a rough human form, before splitting in two equal parts.
In less than five seconds, the puddle has turned into two identical women with long black hair, dressed in green. One of them holds in her hand an object which Bob recognizes immediately: a perfectly round sphere of solid rock.
The second woman makes a step forward. While Bob is still struggling to understand what's going on, he hears the sound of a very fast motorbike approaching.
The bike then hits he woman, turning her back into goo and smashing against the building.
Someone jumped off the bike at the very last second. She stands up, bruised but completely unfazed. Her silver eyes glow in the night.