Runner *unfinished*

by **rattyjol** 4/26/2010, 3:57 pm

Maturity: Blood, fighting, guns, but nothing too gory so far. And there's going to be other stuff too, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll update this later.
Fantasy: People with superhuman traits.

Chapter 1
The young woman crouched behind the small dune, ignoring the dust that swirled around her, catching in her ebony locks and flecking on her khaki uniform. Her dark eyes blinked shut once, twice, three times. And then she was gone.
Sand was kicked out from under the heels of her black army boots as she sprinted over the barren plains. She moved at inhuman speeds, practically a blur, and the sun beat down on her at its peak, and yet no sweat stained her dusty uniform, and her breathing was light and even. Bullets pelted the air around her, impeccably aimed, but none seemed to touch her.
Finally she reached her goal: The small camp set in the middle of the desert. As fast as she’d accelerated, she was still. She calmly took her seat, waiting for someone else to begin the question session as she reached for a bowl.
One of her companions silently passed her the ladle and she deftly spooned out a sizable portion of soup.
“How did it go?” Silas, the youngest and most impatient of them asked finally, breaking the silence. The young woman, the only female in the small group, took a sip of her soup before replying.
“Fine,” she said simply, knowing it would tempt her associates into asking more.
“Did they shoot at you?”
In answer, the woman slowly rolled up her sleeve, which was now stained with scarlet. “Nothing I can’t handle.” She brushed her fingers over the grazed skin of her upper arm and the wound vanished, leaving nothing but smooth, unmarked skin.
Jake, the eldest of the lot, leaned in eagerly to examine the woman’s freshly healed shoulder, but she pulled her sleeve back to to her wrist and returned to her meal.
“Jordan.”
The woman didn’t even bother to look up as her name was called. She finished her soup and stood, striding towards her private tent with the air of one who knows she can get away with anything because she’s too important to damage.
She pushed aside the tent flap, her sharp eyes adjusting instantly to the dim light as she stepped inside. She slipped out of her sandy brown uniform and army boots, putting on instead a simple t-shirt and blue jeans. She shook her hair out of its ponytail and combed her fingers once through the dark tresses, brushing out the worst of the sand, and left the tent.
Jordan stared straight ahead as she walked across the camp. The corner of her mouth twisted down almost imperceptibly. The relentless sunlight was hard on her sensitive eyes.
She crossed her arms and stopped in front of the blue tent, the only one in the camp that wasn’t a dusty tan color. A tall figure was standing just inside the deep shadow cast by the tent flap, obviously waiting for her.
“You were not on duty last night.” There was no reprimand in the deep voice, no anger. It was just... blank. Emotionless.
Jordan did not respond.
“You should not have left the camp.”
“But I did.” Jordan’s lips hardly moved as she spoke, but her voice rang out loud and clear. Sensing the impending clash of wills, the men in camp fell silent and quickly ducked inside their small tents.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons,” she replied ambiguously.
The man stepped into the sunlight, and now Jordan could see that his position was identical to hers, arms folded across his chest. His short-cropped, white-blonde hair accented his deeply tanned face, and his blue eyes were icy and cold, hard as flint as they narrowed dangerously.
“Answer the question, Jordan.”
The young woman lifted her chin, disliking the fact that he had several inches on her unusual height of 6’1” but pushing the thought from her mind as she returned his stony glare, unflinchingly meeting the gaze that would have had any other member of the small group quaking in seconds.
The two stubborn warriors stood like this for several minutes, each unwilling to give up.
Finally the man, David, blinked and relaxed his stiff posture. “Don’t do it again,” he said simply, the turned and reentered his tent, which blended in perfectly with its backdrop of clear blue sky.
Jordan smirked inwardly, twisting around on her heel. She walked to the edge of the small camp and kicked off her flip-flops, leaving them abandoned in the sand, and ran off into the desert.