A New Home (open)

[queenbee]

Dallas ran for the train like the hounds of hell were on her heels. But she just had to get out of town. There was no way she could stay. Her secret was out and she had robbed a bank. True she had long ago changed her name so nothing could be traced back to her father since he had faked her death, but she had been unmasked so to speak.

This was the farthest she had ever been from home. And she was scared, she was going out into the world all alone. She could sneak home to see her father going to work or sneak into the house and take a bath or sleep in her old bed. Her father had kept her room the same since her "death" She heard people telling him it wasn't healthy, they didn't know the real reason why he was doing what he was doing. He still loved his daughter and that was why he had told her to run, but she couldn't leave her home. She didn't want to admit it, but that thought scared her. She would soon have to leave home when a neighbor caught her her going into the house and recognized her.

That spurred her move to Baltimore. It was a big change from the sleepy, southern cities of Texas. She had been 10 years old when she tried to steal that twinkie from 7 eleven and Shane caught her. They were fast friends and Shane taught Dallas how to survive on the streets. it went against everything she had been taught as a child, but she had to do something. No one would take her end and since he dad erased her past she couldn't just walk into child welfare and explain to them what happened.

A tear slid down her face as she remembered Shane. It had only been a week since she had been killed, the reason they had been stealing the car. They needed it for the getaway car for the bank job they had been planning. It was silly for two 15 years olds to think they could rob a bank but neither Dalls nor Shane were normal teens. Dallas could manifest the frozen world of water and Shane could control time. It was the perfect plan and the perfect job. Dallas had just been sloppy with the car she had stolen and the owners came looking for it, and Shane jumped in front of the bullet to save Dallas.

She didn't know how long she been on the train, but when it finally stopped she was half groggy and her face was smeared with dirt and she knew she didn't smell so good. Which was a good thing considering she was walking around with a backpack stuffed with cash that she had stolen just days before.

The train stopped and she had no idea where she was but she hopped off thinking that she would fade into the background of a large city. She looked up and made sure the train had stopped before she jumped off.

She strapped her bookbag around herself and made the slow, dreary walk into her new life.

[William Talbot]

(OOC: This takes place before Bvld. of Broken Dreams, and will help explain some of what happened to Blaze before Darkbrand found him)

"... move closer to Anna and don't duck down... Good, smile... three, two one... Perfect!"

A curvy averaged height woman with long dark blond hair and stunning dark blue eyes smiled as she moved a camera away from her face and nodded to the two teens, a tall, lean and athletic boy with a short mop of black hair, and a cute slender, brunet with pale blue eyes, tiny dimples in her cheeks as she smiled...



A tall and lean and athletic boy walked slowly, with a tiny limp, down a street near the train depot and station, his blue eyes glazed and lost as he looked about for something that could be recognized, but wasn't, his ears hurt from all the noise of rail cars clanking along the tracks, of horns and cars, trucks and people...

Moving slowly, he shrugged some, adjusting his hoodie as he moved along, trying to bring back more memories, faint as they might be, and as hard as they might be to hold...


He then noticed another person moving slowly, near the station, but closer to the tracks, in the darkness, out of the coverage of the overhead lights.

[queenbee]

Being a mutant who could manipulate the frozen ice she could sense when someone was close by from their body heat, and she felt something moving that felt warmer than the average human.

She looked up and a large boy was just wondering around the train yard. She could see him clearly as she was in the dark and he was under the lights. He was limping and he looked lost, like he didn't know how he had ended up where he was. Dallas looked at him debating weather to go over to him. Shane would have told her to leave him be. The streets were about survival, not helping everything poor soul that found themselves on the streets.

But Dallas still had a soft heart and she couldn't just walk away with the boy wandering around like that. He didn't look anymore older than herself.

She took a deep breath and quickly crossed over some tracks. "Hey you alright?" she asked keeping her hands in her pocket in case she had to freeze him and run away fast.

[William Talbot]

The boy paused abruptly and turned his head, his bright blue eyes catching the light as he looked at the girl, a year or so younger than him, he guessed, although he had no exact number to assign to his own age, he guessed he was maybe sixteen or so, maybe older, maybe younger, who knew?

He didn't, in fact he really didn't know to much of anything, outside of normal motor and language skills, and other than the flashes of what seemed to be memories, his mind was fairly blank or just white noise like an old broken TV set...


"Uhh... I Uhh... I don't know... You... I don't know you, do I?" he asked timidly, which instinctively felt awkward for some unknown reason, although he guessed it was because she was smaller, and girl and seemed to be cold somehow.

But again, he had no practical knowledge about his powers or the fact that his senses where so much more powerful than most others or that he wasn't "Normal" in so many ways other than in appearance.


"... You're so much stronger than the others, you must exercise restraint! You could severely injure someone without hardly trying, and you'd have little more than a scratch!"

A tall well built man with long jet black hair and sad sky blue eyes shook his head and sighed as he looked away in what might be considered shame or confusion...

The boy blinked hard and tried to hold onto the memory, to force it to play out, to give him more information, it was after all his memory wasn't it? It could help him figure out who he was, but...


He looked back to the girl and shrugged helplessly; "I... I don't know, anything..."

[queenbee]

The color of his eyes struck her speechless. They were the color of frozen ice. Her favorite color, she had to shake her head to clear it so she could at least appear normal.

She stepped back as the boy seemed to be crazy or losing himself. "No you don't know me." she told him firmly. She looked around and noticed that they were alone and this boy was acting very strange. She felt for the boy as he seemed like he really didn't know who he was or what anything was really.

And then he seemed lost in his head, and she didn't want to interrupt him as he was struggling to hold on to whatever it was going on in his head.

Just as suddenly as it started he pulled out of it and he was back to reality, well whatever reality he was stuck in now. "Oh," was all she said at his revelation. She looked over and saw a 24 hour diner that was full of train people. She was starving and she guess he was too. "Do you want to get something to eat?" she asked him softly.

[William Talbot]

The boy blinked slightly then bit his lip as his stomach let out a long low growl, his hunger returning at the mention of food, but he also looked at her and noticed that she seemed unsettled by him.

"Uhh... Okay, sorry, I just... I don't know." he said softly before he looked away for a moment at the diner, some place that he knew had food, but he had no money, and he was scared to try and just take the food, but, he'd found a place like it that threw out whatever was left over at the end of the day, and while he had eaten well for a few days, they had caught him raiding the trash boxes once and had chased him off...


"I... I don't have any money." he said flatly as he watched the people inside eat all kinds of food that looked so good and made his stomach rumble again, reminding him that it had been almost two days since he'd eaten anything at all.

At least public water fountains at places like bus stations and the like where free...

[queenbee]

She giggled a bit as his stomach growled meaning he hadn't eaten in a while, and she hadn't eaten in almost a week. Thats how long she had been on the train. She had been scared to jump off in case she couldn't find another train and she had to put as much distance between her the bank she had robbed and the cops looking for her.

She looked at the diner. 'Jump City Pie Hole' it read. She had never heard of Jump City, but when they were pulling in she saw a Welcome to California sign. She had never been on the west coast before and she was finding she didn't like the heat all that much.

"No its ok," she told him she couldn't figure out why he was so jumpy and acting so helpless. He looked like he could lift a tractor trailer. She didn't know what to do to make him feel comfortable and relax. Shane would kill her for showing this sort of niceness to a stranger. Shane always told her that people took kindness for weakness and girls on the streets had to be tougher than all the rest. Dallas stepped closer to the boy and slowly reached out for his hand.

She was shocked at how hot his hand was but the boy wasn't sweating. She knew her hand was freezing, par for the course when your body temperature was zero degrees. She usually wore gloves to mask that from humans, but she could tell there was something special about this boy. His body was running hotter than a humans. "I'm Dallas Baltimore," she told him as she gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

She reached into the pocket of her tight jeans and pulled out a few 20s. "My treat," she smiled at him. At least she could make a friend, even though she could survive on her own, she would rather have someone watching her back. And at least she would have someone to talk to, and if she needed to do some dirt two heads were better than one.

She crossed the dust ridden rail yard and dodged a few cars zipping down the street. She had to resist her instinct to freeze them. She pushed opened the door to the diner. It was noisy and the placed smelled like heaven after a week of not eating. her presence went unnoticed. People were used to seeing dirty street kids wander into the diner looking underfed. She sat down in a booth and waited for the boy to follow her.

She reached and grabbed the menu as the waitress came over. "Can I get a chocolate shake with a bacon cheese burger, no pickles or tomatoes and an order of chili cheese fries with onions." She told the woman who put her hands on her hips as she took in Dallas' dirty appearance.

"And how are you going to pay for this?" she snapped. She had been stiffed by homeless kids too many times, and she had to pay her son's private school tuition in two weeks and she couldn't afford to be late on that again.

Dallas slapped a 20 dollar bill on the table. "You keep my full of chocolate shakes and I will give you the other twenty to match this one." she told her. She was hungry.

The waitress smiled and relaxed and turned to the boy. "What can I get you son?" she asked him.

[William Talbot]

The boy blinked at her and then gave a tiny gasp at how cold her hand was, but he nodded lightly and then gave a sheepish smile that turned sad as he whispered to her; "I'm... I don't know my name... Or who I am..."

He looked at the diner then took a breath and nodded again; "Thank you..." he said as he followed her into the diner...


Once inside, he stayed quiet, and simply looked about some, his stomach rumbling some more as the smells of good food attacked his nose and his mouth watered at what Dallas ordered to eat.

When the lady asked him he pondered a moment and then shrugged; "Uhhh... The same for me, uh mam..." he said softly as he licked his lips and waited for the the next thing, whatever it might be...


As he stood there he suddenly felt his mind spin and his head pound as memories hammered into the forefront of his mind, making his eyes water as they clamped shut and he braced himself stiffly as voices and faces, places and other memories flooded him in a torrent of noise and feelings...

[queenbee]

She almost pulled her hand back when he gasped at the frigidness of her but he was holding it tight like he was scared she would vanish if he let go. Her brown eyes softened as he admitted he didn't know what his name was or even who he was. "Oh well thats alright. Whats in a name anyways," she knew that was BS but she didn't want him to feel bad about not knowing his name.

She returned his smile. "Its alright we all need a helping hand sometime," her father used to tell her that all the time. Shane hated when Dallas said that but she didn't think that it was right for people to try and live their lives in a box cut off from other people. Shane said they only ended up hurting you, but Dallas didn't fully buy into that even though she had been hurt in her life.

People were staring at them and Dallas didn't need anyone looking to hard at them, they already had the homeless element, and people never remembered what homeless people looked like. But this boy was just standing in the middle of a crowded diner looking like he was about to do something really crazy. And Dallas hoped he wasn't.

She had no idea what was going on inside that head of his, but she needed to get him in the booth before anyone started asking questions. She stood up and directed the boy into his seat. "He's just really hungry," she shrugged off with a weak smile as the waitress gave them a puzzling look ad walked off to put in their orders.

She waited for hi to work through whatever it was going on in his head. "Are you ok?" she asked him for the second time.

[William Talbot]

The boy sat down and blushed lightly, although he had no clue why, and he shrugged before mumbling; "Uhh... I don't know, I just... My head hurt and... Thought I remembered something."

He looked down at his hands and then blinked up at Dallas and bit his lip, "Uhh, I'm going to go wash my hands..." so he got up and walked to the back where the signs where for the bathrooms and did just that.


Looking at himself in the mirror, he washed his face off as well when he saw the smear of dirt on his chin, then he dried off his hands with the air dryer, the warmth triggering a rush of feelings, emotions and memories, that all blurred together for a painful moment then faded like a fog burned off by the light of the sun, his mind again clear, although still limited and fractured...


He walked back to the booth and sat down with a small sigh as he looked around then looked up at Dallas, and tilted his head at her in thought, like a puppy might when he's trying to figure something out.

"Why are you helping me? No one else will, so why you?" he asked softly as his thumbs rubbed and twiddled about on each other in thought...

[queenbee]

"Oh ok." she didn't know what else to say. Trying to have small talk with him would be fruitless. He didn't even know who he was.

She nodded as he got up to go clean himself up. Looking down at her own hands she saw that hers were a bit filthy as well, but trying to wash her hands were pointless. The water froze on her hands, she had to have boiling water to be able to clean herself up and she doubted the diner's water even got that hot.

She rummaged around in her bag and pulled out some hand sanitizer. She used it all the up to her elbows. She needed to get a hot bath, that would be nice, but she didn't dare check into a hotel. They would expect her to do something stupid like that.

She looked out of the window of the diner, she was thinking about Shane. How she missed her friend. Everything seemed alright when she was around. The girl was tough and smart and she looked after Dallas like she was her mother, even though she was only a year older than her. She blinked as the boy sat back down. She wiped at her face at the tears that had cropped up.

She looked at him as he studied her. She fidgeted under his gaze. He seemed to be trying to figure her out and she didn't know if she wanted someone looking at her that closely. It was uncanny to say the least. She thought about his question. "Well when I was at my lowest point, someone reached out a hand and helped me. And I just feel like you might need some help," she told him honestly. She didn't want him to think he was her charity case, he just looked like he could use a friend right now. "Is there a name I can call you or a name you would like to be called?" she asked him softly.

[William Talbot]

The boy watched her and then bit his lip in thought, his eyes diverting from her as he wracked his mind for some kind of name that fit, something that might sound...

"Wilson... ?" he said, his voice trailing off into a question, as if he wasn't sure if it was okay, the name having some strange pull deep in the back of his mind, one that held a kind of chill, but it was also the only one that seemed to have any kind of attachment to himself, despite it not feeling perfectly right, it was the only one that came to mind as belonging in anyway...


"Sh-shane, W-wilson?" He looked back at her almost helplessly, as if the name would trigger a response, the two names sounded hollow, but he knew instinctively that he should have two names, after all, she did; Dallas Baltimore...


Instantly images flashed, two places, big, noisy, filled with lights, logos and cheering, crowds and crowds yelling, balls flying about, men running, sliding, and crashing into each other, and points...

"D-dallas... Baltimore... Homes of the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, and The Baltimore Ravens, and Orioles..." he muttered under his breath as more words suddenly came to him; Base, Foot, and Ball...


Something in the back of his throat tightened as he looked at her again; she had given him a name made up of two places, places that he somehow knew to be far apart... But why? Was she scared of him? Like everyone else tended to be?


'Is she lying to me? And if so, why?'

[queenbee]

"Ok Wilson,' she would call him anything he wanted to be called. She just needed to call him something other than boy for pete's sake.

Th color drained from her face. "Shane," she whispered. How could he have the same name, how would he even know to say that name. It chocked her up to even say her name she missed her so much. Her eyes teared up. "Why would you use that name?" she whispered as she looked at him. It was a dull pain in the pit of her stomach as she thought about Shane, about missing her, and how she had to leave her just lying dead in the the street with no one who cared about her to bury her and properly mourn her.

She was saved the embarrassment of full out crying when the waitress brought them their food. She immediately picked up on the frozen glass filled with her milkshake. The glass calmed her and she took a few slow slips of the milkshake. It filled her with frosty goodness and she let go of the tears she was about to shed. Wilson didn't know she had just lost a friend named Shane. There was no use being upset with him about it.

She just took a few minutes to eat a few bites of her cheeseburger and her fries. She just needed to calm down after that. She didn't mean to be rude to the boy but she didn't trust her voice just yet.

There she was feeling a lot better. She tried to keep her emotion in check most of the time, people could use emotions to control or use you. And that was never a good thing. Thats why her father had to fake her death. She looked back up and him and smiled. "I'm alright," she told him just in case he thought she was crazy or something.

She giggled as the words spilled out of his mouth. People always told her she had a unusual name. "I was born in Houston actually, but I've never been there. My dad just really liked the name so that's why my name is Dallas." she shrugged. "Baltimore isn't my real last name. When I ran away from home my dad faked my death so I can't use my real last name." She explained. He seemed harmless enough for her to tell him her story, but she wasn't going to be stupid enough to give him her real last name. Though thinking about it there weren't too many black girls named Dallas in the world. She would have to remember that.

[William Talbot]

"Wilson" nodded slowly, and then noted her sudden discomfort at the other name he gave, but as he looked at her and tried to form an answer, the food suddenly was served and the two went about eating, a kind of silence falling between them until Shane took a drink of his milk shake and almost choked, his eyes watering as he pulled his napkin up, then sputtered and coughed hard into it, faint hints of smoke wafting from his nose and mouth until his calmed himself then shook his head and took a drink of water, gently pushing the chocolate milk shake over; "Umm... I don't uh, like that too much, you can have it." he said before looking at her and whispering back; "The only names I have in my head that aren't attached to other faces are Slade, and Wilson, I didn't even know if Shane was a real name or not, but it sounded nicer than Slade, I guess..." he felt very foolish at this point, as if he had unknowingly committed and should have known better, but her reply to his earlier comments about her name diverted his thoughts and he felt a tiny smile tug at his lips; "Oh, I see... I... I think I had a mom and dad... maybe a sister, I'm not sure... I just remember two adults that seemed to love me and talked to me about... lots of things..."

Somehow, talking to this girl was letting things loosen up in his mind, and it didn't seem to hurt like the sudden flashes that he had been suffering from for the last few days...