Kara stood on the cliff, staring out over the canyon. This was the Grand Canyon, right? In the United States of America, right? Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, right? Oh, what did it matter? Kara shouldn'tbe freaking out like this... And yet... She couldn't help but feel as ifnothing were realany more, as if the veryground she stood on-it's still dirt, right?-was delicate and would crumble if she was too harsh to itnow. The dark greyjeepshe had come here in wouldn't suddenly turn into a Transformer, right? She wouldn't sinkinto the ground? Or her dad wouldn't turn into a vampire demon to swallowherwhole tonight, right? God, she was so scared... Ever sense she had woken up... She was terrified...

The canyon's warm-colored, hot dirt, sand, and rocky bodydimmed as a troop of sixteen American jets shot by over head, the jets' speed screaming in the air, ripping it open asthey passed, before disappearing in the distance. Kara's long brown hairfollowed the jets in their passing wind, as ifbegging to go with them, and she followed the jets as they became specks and disappeared with herlarge cerulean eyes. They used to besmall, and brown, but recently, they had grown a little bigger and turned blue. Not the blue, while becoming more and more beautiful, was seeping intoher pupils, destroying them andmaking them the same color as her irises.That waswhy she was wearing the black sunglasses now; to protect her eyes against the desert sun's glaringlight and heat. She thought that she would go blind if this kept up, butshe didn't know. Who knew any more?That morning,so many weeks ago, when she had woken up and shown her parents, things had been destroyed.

Dealing with what her parents had told her had been hard enough, but when the news had announced why it was happening, she had been traumatized. A pretty girl with so much hope... All of it gone in a flash... And why? Because of a rare and unheard of pehnomenon called spontaneous genetic mutation, or SGM. People just called it mutants. That's right, mutants, as if in the Marvel idea of people suddenly developing powers because of a genetic jump. But this was real life, not Marvel, so not everyone got powers. There were people being born with cancer, people dying randomly from random happenings in their genetics, people being born insane, and people being born with nothing noticble at all, with things that would show up later in life. One famous singer had suddenly sprouted larger teeth and his eyes had become highly prone to reflecting light like a cat, so his eyes always seemed to glow red and thus he had been given the name "Demon". Only a very rare few people had been born with real, full-blown powers. Unfortunatly, another country had been born with and entire team of full-powered mutated people, and were using these people to fight America. America wasn't doing so hot against them, either, with one of the enemy super people having the ability to black out machinery...

And Kara...

She sighed, then unzipped her dark blue jacket and let it fall to the hot dirt, ignoring it as it thumped to the ground. Near by, on a rock, was a gun, black and glittering in the sun light, like metal poison. The American goverment was forciblly taking any powered humans they could find in a desperate attempt to make their own "super hero" team. This meant even taking children. Kara and her parents didn't want that to happen-they didn't want Kara to be forced to use her beautiful new power to become a mindless soldier of battle against other people. Kara just wanted to be a vetenarian. But she couldn't be... Not now, in this time of war and confusion... Maybe some day....

But she wouldn't be around to be there.

Sighing, she streatched and a pair of large, beautiful pink and white wings unfolded from her back, streatching out until the tips of her longest feathers seemed to be reaching for the sky and glowed in the clear afternoon sun. She had flown three days after they had suddenly appeared on her back, as they had appeared to stop growing then, and had hurt herself landing, but she had flown and had enjoyed herself. She couldn't live in this life time happily, so she would take one last vlessed flight, then take her own life. They had tried hiding, her family and her-they had been hiding for the past six months. But the goverment was determined to find the powered people and had followed her family eveywhere they went. No country would let other people in or out, and thus, they hadn't been able to run away to even Mexico. Well, Kara could have- she could have flown right over everyone and landed on the other side. But there was no way in hell she was going to leave her parents. Well, techniclly, she was leaving her parents, but that didn't matter- they had been hit by poison gas emitted from a man when his gentics made his very breath fatal, and they were already dead in the Jeep. She knew it.

Adgusting her pink tank top with its speacilly cut out back, she made her white-jeaned legs take a step towards the cliff and stood there, white-sandled toes wriggling as she stared at the ground so far below. Looking up and around for any more jet patrols, she sighed, then jumped. There was the familiar jerk and strain on her shoulder and back muscles as her wings instinctivly stiffened, then she forced them to flap down, taking her into the air. As she flew up and around the canyon, feeling fast, weightless, and happy, she recalled the weeks when her bones had been acheing as the marrow had tried up to become hollow. No amount of pain killers would numb it, but now, this freedom was worth it. Sighing, she did a slow barrel roll as she continued to gain altitude, becoming careless in her speed and happieness. Oh how she wished she could do this forever! Just flying and floating and diving and spinning and-

Boom!

Kara cried out in shock and pain as a missle exploded a dozen feet away from her and shrapnel flew through the air, slicing her skin and peircing his wings. Loosing control, she began to fall. Looking up, she saw three Russian fighter jets flying over her, turning to come back. There they were-here to shoot her down and make sure that America didn't get her first.

It's ok, she thought, folding her arms across her chest and her wings around her so she was a feathery pink and white missile plunging towards the ground, I was going to kill myself anyway. I don't want anyone using me as a weapon...

Is that so? a male, Russian voice said in her head. She opened her eyes and gasped as she stopped falling.

Looking up, she saw that she was in the arms of a brawny, handsom Russian man in black and purple camoflauge army clothing with a purple and black visor-lensed helmet on his head. This was the Physcic Wolf! The Russian with such powerful physcic powers, he could levitate hundreds of feet in the air! He must be out super-people hunting with the jets. She could see one jet floating in the air, marked with a purple wolf head painted on either wing, just hovering while the other two jets circled.

"You know," PW said gently as something began to nudge at Kara's consciouse, "The Russian military will at least let you grow up before they force you into the army..."

"Well, that wouldn't be too bad..." Kara moaned, gently sliding down the probe of thought in her consciouse and huddling close to Purple Wolf. "But I'd rather die first," she whispered in his ear.

Suddenly, she kicked the PW hard in the groin and as he doubled over in pain andhe and his jetstarted falling with Kara. Missiles started flying from the other two jets and Purple Wolf managed to get over his pain enough to put up a forcefield that flashed as a purple bubble everytime a missle struck him. He mentally manipulated his jet so that it floated to a landing by the canyon as he dove as Kara, seizing her by a write and slapping her, snarling and cussing at her in Russian. Kara cried out in pain and attempted to retaliate by beating her wings at Purple Wolf, but he was nearly triple the small thirteen year old's size and took the blows without so much as a grunt.

Suddenly, both mutants froze as Purple Wolf caught a mental whiff of another consciouse, something far more foreign than either of them had ever felt before, something more powerful. Then a huge metallic silvery craft appear out of the blue sky and a huge door opened up, swallowing them both whole and shooting off into the sky before either Russian jet flyer knew what to do or how to rescue their country's most powerful soldier. Purple Wolf attempted to punch Kara again, slowly thinking that he would take a last hit and fly off, even as the door closed and his fist hit her. Then a huge metallic hand flew from no where, back-hand slapping the Purple wolf away and against a giant wall. Another metal hand caught Kara as she fell and she panted, battered, bleeding, and bruised with her feathers in a messy ruffle. What had saved her? What had defeated the Purple Wolf and kidnapped them both?

Looking up, she got her answer.

It was a robot. A giant, fifty-foot high, black and gray robot. Its mouth was covered by a black breathing appuratus and beneath its black visored eyes were two orbs of deep green light for its eyes. It had a large, rounded chest and a thin neck. Its platform-like lower feet were black, like boots, as were its lower arms and plams with narrow, long gray fingers, giving the illusion of fingerless gloves. It had a strip of black around its waiste and the base of its neck, and a pattern of black on its head made it look like it had a helmet. The robot stared down at Kara with a sadness for beauty damaged. Purple Wolf was unwittingly streatching his mind to report to her how the robot creature was feeling. It was male, and he saw that she was younge and innocent, and sad that such a pretty, harmelss child was in so much pain and loss.

There was another male robot, currently handeling Purple Wolf, and he was down right pissed about the whole situation; the two robots, along with a team of their kind, had originally been doing a "worth while" mission rescuing space travelers from black holes and now they wee being assigned by a huge alien goverment system to come to Earth and help save it from destroying itself, of all the lowly planets! Earth was going to destroy itself some day anyway, or so the alien robot thought, so why the hell save it now!?

Kara looked up in time to see Purple Wolf being picked up carelessly by a robot in similar stature as the one she had been caught by, but this one's head smoothed back in a crest and had sharper corners and flatters parts, and colored light grey and white. Looking up with almond-shapped, glowing red-orange glass eyes, the robot saw Kara and stopped thinking, blinking in surprise. Looking over Kara to his partner, he spoke in a series of machinic noises and Purple Wolf translated for Kara mentally, based of the robot's thoughts and emotions

"Are you sure that is human, Boltmaster? She's not like the others."

"I'm sure, Ventcon," Boltmaster promiced, gently running a metallic finger over Kara's wings to try and straightening them. "This is what we're here for; we don't have to save all the humans. Just the ones like this one, who matter."

After a moment, Ventcon nodded. "Alright, I guess this won't be a total waste of resorces, but what about this one? The one who was hurting her?"

"We'll let him live, for now. Perhaps he may be of service."

Finally, just as Purple Wolf realized what he was doing and pulled his connection away with a painful, headache-leaving mental snap, Boltmax looked down at Kara and spoke in human, his voice chopped, mixed, and blurred like a techno singer.

"Hello," he said softly, "I am Boltmax and this is my partner, Ventcon. We have been told to save your world. But we'll need human help to do it..."

And that was how Kara became a superhero.