Stolen Time

She was screaming, she could feel it ripping at her throat, but she couldn't stop. Flashes of Griff lying beaten and shot in her living room gripped her skull, blood soaking into the cream colored carpet. When she opened her eyes she was sitting up in a tattered bed, luckily no one was there now. No one had heard her. She knew it was all wrong, Griff hadn't been shot in her parent's house. He had been shot in his van, by a Cleric. Filthy Humanis zealots. But it just taunted her that someone else was hurt, maybe dead because she hadn't gotten there sooner.
Peeling herself off the dusty makeshift cot, she went to the sink in the corner of the warehouse and washed her face, peering into the cracked mirror. The beginning of this ordeal had been far less stressful, it had been so easy. Too easy, now she was tangled with emotion and everything stunk of danger. A Humanis politician. A human thinking that anyone who wasn't human didn't deserve rights. Elise spat blood into the sink, she had bit her lip sometime during her nightmares. Her hair was dyed black now, instead of carnation pink and lilac, but the blond roots were starting to show. For some reason she got more nasty looks as a blond elf than when she had purple hair. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she took the picture of her mother from the file she had found in the abandoned hospital. Staring at her slightly older looking mother staring back at her, feelings of anger, yearning and confusion welled up in her throat.
She had seen their bodies, laying like rag dolls on their thick rich part of town carpets. Victor had brought her home from practice, fourteen years old and high on sweat from martial arts. Her mother and father lay dead, shattering her hope of someday having parents who weren't too busy. Now they were much too busy for her, being dead. She had told the Lone star that, and they didn't believe her, that had been her first clue.
But here was evidence, that she had been tipped off to by Victor. Her mother appeared to be alive, the file was dated a year ago. It infuriated her, that at least one of her parents were not dead, as odd as that was. As a child, all she had wanted was to spend time with her Elven Scientist parents. Nannies couldn't handle the bundle of energy that was Elenore Highcastle, no matter how many that were hired. It wasn't until she started getting brought home by the Lone Star for going places she wasn't allowed that a family friend stepped in to help the girl. Victor Nickless, a Megacorp Exec that her parents apparently were close friends with. He came to the house after Elise had been brought home and offered to teach her an old style of Martial Arts that he knew. Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, it sounded funny at first, but she gave in and finally had an outlet. She had been twelve then.
Now she stared hard at the face of the elf in her picture, nearly ten years since this woman had been lost to her. Yet here she was, wearing time on her face that she didn't deserve.
Victor said that things ended up ways that none of them had planned when she had grilled him about her parents the day before. Somehow he had been arrested, for what the news hadn't said, it all sounded bogus. She had gone to the station and used her real name in hopes of getting somewhere, what she had gotten was the interrogation room. The Lone star had asked about her parents, then didn't believe her when she told him not only were they long dead, but she had seen the bodies. It was bewildering that the Lone Star acting like she was being obstinate by not changing her story after telling her that she was wrong. Then Victor shows up at her safehouse with the group known as the Ruffians, when she hadn't told him where she had been. In fact, she had been looking for him and failed. Not only that, but he told her to come with him. As she got into the car, Hannibal rammed them with Griff's van. Thinking back now, it probably had looked strange from his prospective. Her getting into a rich as sin sedan with a human in a suit, maybe he was trying to protect her, who knows. It hadn't gotten less fishy from there, Victor had pulled over on the side of a highway. Told her to run, and leave Seattle, but she had asked about her parents. After he told her about the Hospital, to look there. He had left her in the car and jumped from the highway's bridge, gone. No body, like he had simply landed and walked away.
She screamed and kicked the sink, pacing. After finding the file, she was not leaving. This is why she did these things, why she took jobs with hackers, and slummers, with riggers, like Griff.

Guns and Pigtails.

A freckled nose was poised an inch from the tangled wires of her next drone when the acidic velvet voice pierced her intent attentions, "I said, I need to go into the pier district."
Daisy looked up at the elf from her crouching position over the fetal drone, blue eyes taking a moment to focus on the non-mechanical form, "Petunia's resting." Daisy grinned, the gap in her front teeth closed with her tongue pushing to it.
The female scoffed down at the freckled little human, putting her a hand on her hips as the other motioned around the run down and filthy club that served as the Black Crow's hangout, "Believe me, you're not my first choice for a ride! How old are you? Eight? You shouldn't even be able to drive!"
Scowling, Daisy stood, only coming up to the elf's collarbone, even though her race was only five foot five at most. Daisy was shorter. "Look, fairy-folk female number one. Petunia is resting." She poked her hard in her breastbone with a thickly gloved finger, "And I'm fifteen! If you're so well-connected, so buy yourself a ride from some elf-wannabe!"
A smirk curved the creature's lips, Daisy was wearing pigtails, a sunny yellow dress and had a constellation of freckles on her face. Her boyish figure certainly made it easy to mistake her for not only a child, but one that couldn't hurt a fly. "Van, now." She shoved Daisy, causing her to stumble over her unborn drone. But when she righted herself, the elf only had to look into the girl's unfocused eyes to realize it had been a bad idea. Especially when the roto-drone flew from its place in the corner to level its sub-machine guns with her pointy ears.