• Kimber walked back into her apartment, a large box with three smaller boxes stacked onto each other as she walked in, sighing in exertion as she kicked the door closed behind her. All she had in her life was stacked in these boxed, with only a few more things she could live without for the night still down in her car. Reaching into her jacket pocket, she pulled out an old switchblade and tore through the tape, relieved to see her clothes. Looking at herself in the hall mirror, she saw the small, infinitesimal stains dotting her shirt and the large grease stain on the legs of her pants. “Thank God I can change!”
    Turning back to the living room, she grabbed the box and walked hurriedly to her bedroom, placing the large box on the ground. She could worry about putting them up later. Quickly pulling off her shirt, she smiled as she placed the old, worn and torn shirt down onto her bed. She grabbed an equally as old shirt out of the box and wondered if she should take her pants off also, but thought better on it. She didn’t want to get to many clothes dirty. So, sighing, she laughed a little as she walked back to the living room, twisting her switchblade in her hand as she hummed a little bit.
    The second box she opened was full of her books, and she set those aside to put in one of the shelves later. She then stood up and walked to the shelves, frowning when she saw the amount of dust on them. She began to make a checklist of things she needed to do to make this apartment her own. And, she turned to look at the deep green couch, scowling slightly, that was the first to go to storage on her list. The dark brown furniture was perfect for her, but that couch wasn’t. It was large, taking up the entire length of the wall opposite her, with weird-ish stains she didn’t want to know where they had come from.
    Not only was it that, but it somehow seemed malevolent, almost like it wanted to do her harm in some way. She turned and stared at it, biting her bottom lip as she considered her options. She wasn’t the strongest person in the world. She would be the first to admit that, and that couch, not only did it look and feel malevolent, but it was also huge, a giant green monster. The thought caused her to laugh a little bit and she stared at it again. Maybe she could ask Mr. Frank to help her move it to storage later, but for now, she would just have to deal with it.
    She sighed in aggravation, and walked back to her boxes, tearing off the tape on another one, and smiled as she found all her art supplies. Pulling out her various sketchpads and drawing utensils, she allowed herself to relax a little bit. Until the sound of a bomb going off filled the apartment. Kimber instantly leaped up and looked around the wall behind her, praying that the wall wouldn’t fall down.
    When nothing of the sort happened, she gulped nervously and walked to her door, opening it and walking over to apartment 303. She knocked on the door tentatively and stood there as she heard someone come up to the door. As she began to wonder what she had heard, the door opened and she gaped, uncaring that her mouth had, quite literally, dropped to the ground.
    The woman she was looking at was a little shorter than her, with tan skin and black hair pushed back by a bandana. She had deep, soul-searching brown eyes, but that wasn’t what got Kimber to stop and stare. No, it was the fact that the woman had a foot behind her head, and she was standing upright. “Um…”
    The woman smiled and spoke in a sweet, subdued voice, “Hello, how may I help you?” Kimber just stared and then pointed at her leg.
    “Um…doesn’t that hurt?” The woman looked at her and then shook her head.
    “Not at all. It’s actually quite easy to do this for me…now, is there something else I can help you with?” the woman asked as she lowered her foot from behind her head.
    “Um…Yes! Actually there is. You see…um…I just heard an explosion over here, and I was coming over to see if you were okay…”
    “An explosion? Is that all?” Kimber’s concerned smile fell instantly. “I guess I’m so used to them, I hadn’t even noticed. Come, you should see the reason behind the explosion then.” Grabbing Kimber’s arm, the woman who sounded like a hippie, pulled her into the living room and all but threw her onto the couch before she sat down on a mat on the ground, and placed both feet behind her head as she stared up at Kimber with smiling, welcoming eyes. “Now, the explosion is nothing new to anyone on our floor. You must be new here. My name is Lola and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
    As Kimber watched, her eyes already wide at the fact that the woman, Lola, could place her feet behind her head, she bent her arms backward and fell forward onto her stomach, bending in a way Kimber hadn’t thought physically or humanely possible. Before she could say anything to Lola however, another voice cut through the air like an arrow and hit Kimber squarely. “Lola, stop scaring the poor girl. We don’t want our new neighbor to be afraid of us.”
    Kimber turned her head and found that she was looking at a blonde woman with blue narrow, calculating, yet kind blue eyes looking at Lola. “Aw, but Chelsea, I’m in the middle of my morning Yoga exercises. I still have to finish twenty different positions before I’m done -”
    “Now Lola.” As Lola sighed and relaxed herself into a normal sitting position, a door opened down the hallway, Kimber having heard the distinctive click of a lock, and then watched as plumes of deep, sooty black smoke floated down the hall and out the still open front door. If Kimber was shocked by the smoke, the person she watched emerge out of the smoke surprised her even more.
    She was a taller woman with, what would normally be dark brown hair, but was now gray, covered in a fine layer of ash, pulled back into a rattail, and thick goggles covering her eyes. She pulled them off, revealing abnormally clear brown eyes and smiled at everyone in the room. “Well, everyone…I just made the world’s first water powered, molecular driven radioactive cell using ray-gun! I can now die in peace…except I can’t, because I still need to – hey who’s that?” The woman pointed at Kimber and she waved a hand shakily.
    “H-Hi…I’m Kimber…but people usually call me Kim…I’m your new next door neighbor…” She cleared her throat and tried to smile. The girl whose face was black with smoke and had ash in her hair suddenly pounced and tackled Kimber, causing her to fall off the couch onto the rather hard and uncomfortable ground.
    “Hi! I’m Kumo! Kumo Shingetsu and I am the resident scientist in the building! Pleasure to meet you!” She held her hand out to Kimber, who was still on the ground, trying to breathe, when she was suddenly yanked off.
    “Great…another…Hojo…or Vexen…just what…I needed…”Kimber tried to say as she sat up, coughing and trying to catch a breath at the same time. Chelsea, who was standing beside the unfortunate victim, looked at Lola and held a hand out.
    “Lola…that paintbrush isn’t yours.”