Chapter Eight

Me 4: 46 pm : I'm sorry, I can't come in, something awful happened.

Tony – incoming call-

Ana bit her lip again, and declined the call.

Tony 4: 48 : Ana please answer your phone

Me 4: 49: I wish I could but I'm in the middle of something.. I'll do my best to explain later, but right now I feel like I'm about to pass out

Tony 4: 51: Are you okay? The diner was wrecked the morning after, please tell me if someone broke in. Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?

Me 4: 53: No, I'm sorry I couldn't clean the place in my panic, no, yes, not exactly

Tony 4: 55: What?! Ana please talk to me

Ana sighed as she read the message and shut off her phone.

She was back in her apartment laying in her bed, still resting off her injuries. The painkillers she took weren't working and it was making her incredible agitated. After Megumi had told Ana her story and asked for her help, she had asked Ana to think about her request and brought Ana back to her apartment.

Despite what Megumi told her, the way Allen's face paled and what Ana saw when she caught a glimpse of herself in the lobby mirror, Ana was sure she looked like an undead zombie. Ana felt so unbelievably sore she didn't think she would be able to stand on two feet, let alone help Megumi save the world from a power obsessed maniac! What was she even supposed to do? She knew nothing about her power so how the hell was she supposed to use it?

Speaking of her power…

Ana held her wrist up to her face, her entire body protesting at the motion. Megumi told her the full transformation process would be painful, but aside from the first contact, Ana wasn't feeling much pain other than the recovery process.

Out of curiosity, she furrowed her eyebrows as she stared at her wrist, focusing on the burned skin, trying to summon the rings again. After a few moments of her staring and concentrating, a pit of hot anxiety in her stomach, she relaxed her facial expression as she realized the rings were going to come, letting her arm fall back onto the mattress.

Ana supposed if she was going to help Megumi, she needed to get a better hang of her power, seeing as how there was no way to get rid of them, not that Ana knew, and she hadn't thought to ask Megumi if there was a way to get rid of them.

'Should I?' Ana asked herself.

She could do anything with this power if she just got the hang of it. Her whole life she wasn't special and now she finally had something that truly set her apart from the rest, something that even Zalic considered unique. Speaking of Zalic, Ana now had the power and the ability to help stop her, even if it did involve fifty percent of Ana's fear becoming a reality.

She wondered why she wasn't freaking out as much about this as she thought she would be. Perhaps she was still in some sort of gratifying shock? Or was it because the main part of her fear was Zalic finding her and forcing her to become a super soldier like the rest of the villains? Or maybe it had something to do with Megumi being the one to find her, a person who was once in the same position so Ana wouldn't have to walk this new terrifying path alone…

Ana agreed with her inner thoughts that she was happy Megumi gave her sort of a helping hand, a person she could trust even if she was publicly on Zalic's side. But until her plan could take action, there wasn't much Megumi was able to do about that.

Ana wondered if she should tell anybody else about her newfound power, and what their reactions would be. Tiffany would be ecstatic, thinking of all the possibilities that come with a new power, she assumed Stephanie would be the same, Mike would panic and think of all the horrible outcomes that would come with her new powers and inevitable new identity clashing with her current lifestyle, and Tony would probably be right next to him, horrified and concerned to the point of making himself sick. Ana didn't really know Sally well enough to gauge her reaction, or really even consider he being someone to tell at the moment.

Ana rubbed her face as she watched her pale pink ceiling get darker as the sun became covered by a cloud.

For the time being she decided she wanted to keep her new power a secret, at least until she got the hang of it.. And she might as well stay home for a few days until her wounds healed more. Even though she felt the pain couldn't get any worse than when the transformation first happened, Megumi reassured her multiple times that it did get worse, and the last thing she needed was having another panic induced episode while she was in the middle of a stressful night shift.

Ana's stomach growled which reminded her of something else Megumi had warned her about; her weight and calories dropping during the entire transformation process. Apparently she needed to be eating double what she usually did in order to keep her strength for the next three days the transformation would take to complete.

Megumi had told her from her experience of watching Zalic transform supers in the lab that trying to immediately go back to one's regular schedule during this process was a recipe for a disaster.

Ana let out a low groan and tossed her feet off the bed, feeling the soreness flow back into her body as her feet hit the floor. Her back ached as she sat up, the bones in her neck felt like jelly as her head fell back with the weight of what felt like a sack of concrete as she took a few minutes to stand up with her eyes closed, standing at least and fumbling her way throughout her apartment blindly until she got to her fridge.

She fell to her knees with a thud, wincing slightly as she opened her fridge, squinting inside as she shuffled through her groceries, remembering she had better options in her freezer, then winced again as she pulled herself up after grabbing an apple out of her fridge and opened the freezer, pulling out a pre-made frozen pizza and setting it on her counter. She drug her feet over to her oven and pre-heated it, then she slowly walked over to her counter, leaned her back against it, sighing as she took a bite of her apple as she threw her head back again, closing her eyes that were feeling heavier and heavier as time went on.

She turned over and rested on her arms as she thought about her plans for the next few days, and how exactly she was going to explain her absence at work and school, also thinking about her answer to Megumi. She decided now wasn't the best time as a massive migraine sent her nearly toppling to the ground, making her lose her grip on her apple. She watched it roll to the edge of the counter, suddenly breathless.

'This must be the second stage.' Ana thought to herself as her arms began to contort and cramp up again, telling Ana that she was in for another pain filled adventure with her new power.