The success of Missouri still hung heavy upon Nicole’s neck like an over-sized medal, both weighing down and lifting her spirits at the same time. Ironic she would feel turmoil within, considering her soul was well over two thousand miles away from her. But this wasn’t Missouri, this was California. A new start, right? Still, any time she thought of that fact, it only strengthened her feeling of invincibility, encouraging even more reckless endeavors.

She slowed on her jet-black sport bike, her jacket and jeans becoming heat traps in the stifling summer air. She lifted the visor on her helmet and surveyed the intersection with chocolate-brown eyes as the stench of exhaust hit her nostrils. Right. The tug at her senses definitely came from the right. Nicole glanced at the line of cars in the turning lane and pressed her lips together.

Green light.

Nicole swerved and whipped her bike into the tiny space between two cars to make the turn in time. A driver slammed on the horn behind her, but Nicole just pressed a button on the dashboard and the sounds of distorted vocals, heavy riffs, and heavier drums blasted from the two speakers on her motorcycle. She leaned out of the turn, then crossed over left and surged forward past the car ahead of her, ripping down the four-lane road at well over sixty.

That aura tugging at her senses beckoned.

Nicole banked left and right as she wove through traffic, crossing the town much quicker than the city planners had ever meant anyone to. The wind tugged at her jacket despite her low profile on the bike, the resistance varying every so often with the shifting of the summer breeze. Ahead at a busy intersection, the light turned yellow.

She cut left across an intersection through oncoming traffic, eliciting a cacophony of horn-honking and more than a few middle fingers as the screech of brakes filled the air. Nicole returned one of her own heartfelt gestures as she sped into an over-forested neighborhood, the air cooler the moment she entered the woods within the city.

The houses in this suburb were older, and the few residents she saw were all elderly. She didn’t want to close her eyes and see it, but she knew if she did, the entire place would be blanketed in a wispy gray fog, reaching and grasping. Dark motes of emptiness floating on the air would accompany it—an aura generated by those waiting to die. She slowed down, but only so the intermittent speed bumps wouldn’t launch her from the street—though she felt much more concern for her bike than for herself. Road rash would heal in a matter of hours for her.

The pulse of that aura was much stronger now. Whoever it belonged to, she could pick up their heartbeat. They were exerting themselves. Maybe they were getting lucky. She smirked under her helmet and slowed even more to thirty, unable to bear going the actual speed limit.

Still not there. Through the neighborhood, then? Nicole exited on the far side of the suburb and rolled to a stop. The aura came from the strip mall across the street. Either that or the bank right next to it. She sped across the three-lane road without looking and decelerated in the parking lot, finding a home for her bike behind the bank.

Nicole dismounted her bike and took her helmet off, leaving her pixie-cut raven hair in a messy shock from the long ride.

“Ow!”

One of the few things that could make her feel pain anymore lanced into her side. Nicole unzipped her jacket and lifted her shirt up to see a new jet-black tattoo appearing below the first, which originated on her ribs between her oblique and her bra. The first tattoo had been finished for a week now, the triangle-like hieroglyph now complete with a circle inside it. The one that had now begun to appear beneath it was rectangular, though missing its centerpiece just like when the first had appeared. So, she was in the right spot.

Nicole lowered her shirt and patted the painful area with her hand in a macabre reminder to herself that she wasn’t completely invincible, then scanned the row of businesses. There were enough people here today that the aura diffracted and made it hard to tell where it came from. Payday loans. Nicole closed her eyes, seeing the swimming pinpricks of light behind her eyelids. No. Not there. Laundromat. No. Central Fighting Arts.

Yes.

Nicole held her helmet by the lip of it and walked across the parking lot, her black leather boots clicking on the pavement as she strode with confidence and purpose unmatched to her much-less-than-average stature. She came to a stop behind the row of cars outside of Central Fighting Arts and closed her eyes.

Among a sea of mostly red and white auras, the one she sought floated there. Powerful, fiery red encircled an orb of violet-black. This was it. Nicole opened her eyes and stared through the windows as the boy it belonged to took a shin to the face and went reeling. Off to the side, a large, muscular coach cupped his hands to his face and yelled loud enough Nicole could hear through the glass: “Focus, Blackwell! Head in the ring!