Sometimes Anita hated her mother. She felt awful thinking it, but it was the truth. The woman spent years crying over how much her life sucked, as if her family wasn't good enough. As if she wasn't good enough. Then, one night she just leaves all together without so much as a goodbye. And she wondered why Anita and her brother Daren had chosen to live with their father?

Anita rolled her eyes, slamming the thick math book shut. She'd been trying to study for the test next week for the last three hours without prevail. Trying to continue would be utterly useless, when her mind was in such a foggy state. The only thing she could focus on was how her mother had just vanished earlier that night. Besides, it was well past one in the morning anyways. She was tired and beyond moody.

Anita pushed herself out of the chair she'd been sitting in for the last thirty minutes, flopping down on her bed a moment later. But when she closed her eyes, she couldn't sleep, her mind swarming with all sort of thoughts. Her dad had given her some lame excuse about her mom going traveling with a group of people to 'find herself.' But Anita didn't believe any of it. She thought her mother was just trying to get away from the rest of them.

She had never cared about any of them. Clearly. Otherwise, why else would she keep pushing them away? Why would she be so depressed, if they had actually meant something to her?

She sighed, rubbing her eyes and groaning softly, exhausted beyond belief. It had been ages since she'd stayed up this late. Anita was generally considered a good kid. She didn't stay up past ten, if she could help it, and she always did well in school. No matter what. Failure to get an A was not an option! Unlike her brother.

Daren was constantly goofing off. He never took anything seriously, and he never turned anything in on time, despite Anita constantly telling him he needed to do well in school if he wanted to go anywhere in life. (It wasn't like their mother was going to do it, was she?) He was lucky if he passed any of his classes with a C. He was such a goofy child, Anita wasn't sure how the heck he'd survive the real world.

Anita buried her head in the pillow, climbing under the covers. Her head was pounding from the stress of it all. She just wanted to run away, forget about it. Just like her mom had. Not forever, of course. She did have plans for herself, after all. All she wanted was a small break to get her head on straight. Little did she know that she would get the chance to do just that the very next day...

{~}

The trouble started during the  fifth period history class. Anita was sitting lazily at her desk, head in her hands. She yawned, just barely able to focus on the lecture Mr. Key was giving on the Aztecs.

School had been especially dull all day, and this class had been dragging on for twenty minutes, now. Normally, she would have been more focused and attentive, but since her mother's latest suicide attempt Anita hadn't much felt like paying attention. All she could think was why?

Why was she never good enough? She only ever tried to do her best. To make her mother proud of her, to make her happy. But it was never good enough. She was always discontent. Anita could never figure out what she was doing wrong, and she hated it. Was she too uptight? Was she not care free enough for her? Did she not do good enough in school? Was it something she'd said? Something she'd done?

Well, Anita thought bitterly. I guess I'll never find out.

She'd just run off...hardly saying anything to anyone. All she left was some bullshit text about how she'd been planning to off herself. That was the last Anita had ever really heard of her mother. The last thing she'd heard her say. (Or text.)

Whatever, she huffed, rolling her eyes. Who needs you anyways...

Mr. Key paused his lecture for a moment, allowing for the class to take notes if they needed to. (Most of the students didn't, but a few of the A honor roll kids, like Anita, complied.) Anita sighed heavily, jotting down a few incoherent notes, not really caring at this point. She was bored, tired, and completely fed up. What was the point of any of this anyway?

With another yawn, Anita plucked herself from her chair and approached Mr. Key's desk. The teacher glanced at her curiously, raising an eyebrow.

"May I use the restroom?" she asked in as polite a voice as she could muster at the moment. The teacher nodded for her to go, and she hurried out of the god forsaken classroom, grumbling to herself as she went. It seemed so arbitrary that students had to ask permission to make bowel movements.

Anita didn't actually have to go, though. She just had to get out of that class room. Sitting there stiff as a statue had been driving her crazy! She needed to move. To feel...something beyond this rage that had been blinding her for so long.

She roamed the halls for awhile, just trying to remember something pleasant for a change. Something that wasn't her mother holding a knife to her own throat.

Anita was so distracted that she didn't spot the man running towards her, until he slammed into her, knocking her to the ground. She toppled over with a yelp, her glasses flying off her face.

"Whoops, sorry," the man apologized. He grabbed her glasses and held them out for her. Anita quickly snatched them from him with a huff. She glared at him, as she took in his appearance.

He was a thin man, maybe close to his forties, but the sheepish grin on his face made him look ten years younger. His short, dark hair sort of reminded Anita of a sheep, and his own thick glasses covered up his kind, ocean blue eyes.

"Who are you?" Anita asked. "I don't recognize you as part of the staff here..."

"That's because I'm not part of the staff," the man told her. "I'm incognito."

She nodded slowly, not really sure what he was talking about. "Right...and you're name?"

He shrugged, jumping to his feet. "Good question." The man started examining the watch on his wrist, like it might have been telling him something really interesting.

Anita stood up, scowling. "I was being serious."

He glanced at her, his eyes sparking with a certain light that Anita couldn't quite place. "So was I."

She frowned, staring back at him, her mind whirling in confusion. "Wait. You're trying to say you don't know your own name?"

The man scoffed, rolling his eyes like she'd just said something stupid. "Of course I know it!" he said. "I just can't remember it."

She nodded again, not sure what to make of this strange man. What was he even doing here? Where had he come from?

"Speaking of names...what's yours, kid?" the man asked, looking serious all of a sudden.

Anita folded her arms over her chest defiantly. She had gotten the stranger danger talk early on in life, so she knew better than to just give away personal information. "Why should I tell you?"

"Because there's a dangerous meta human on the loose, and they're running around your school. I'm gonna stop them, but if something happens to you I should probably tell someone about it, don't you think?" The man stared at her, like he was actually waiting for her honest opinion.

She looked back at him, momentarily lost for words. What the heck was she supposed to say to that? "I...um..." She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. "Why don't you just let the Flash take care of it?"

The man tilted his head to the side. "The what now?"

Anita rolled her eyes. Now, she knew this guy had to be joking. How the heck could he not know who the Flash was? He was the biggest hero in the entire city! Central City had a whole holiday built around the guy. They had drinks named after him and his friends down at Jitters. You had to be living under a rock to not know who he was! "Uh, the Flash? You know, guy in a red suit? Runs around locking baddies up?"

The man shrugged. "I've never seen anyone like that in this city before."

"That's sort of the point," Anita told him. "He's fast. You're not supposed to see him."

He shrugged again, looking like he couldn't care less about the Flash or what he did for the city. It almost seemed as if he didn't even believe Anita that Central City had its own super hero. "Anyways...name?"

She sighed, exasperated. Clearly, this guy wasn't going to lay off until she told him something. For a moment, she contemplated giving him a fake name, but after a moment she thought better of it. What was the worst that could happen if she gave the man her real name? "Anita."

He grinned brightly, looking like an over grown child as he did so. "Nice to meet you, Anita. Now run for your life!"

Before she could respond, the man grabbed her hand and took off at a sprint down the halls. She tried to protest, but when she glanced behind them she thought twice about that. Because right behind them was a flaming man, hair bursting with white hot flames, hands alight with a ghostly fire. His eyes were the same color as an egg shell, glossed over as if he were in a daze.

Anita let out a strangled gasp at the sight, letting go of the man's hand and running faster. She only came to a stop, when she ran into a locked door.

The mystery man frowned at the door. "It's locked. Why is it locked?"

Anita shrugged helplessly. "The school board insisted we get more safety features for our public schools, like three years ago because stupid meta people kept attacking us!"

"Yes, but why's it locked?"

"To keep them out, dumbo!"

"Well, that's stupid. Clearly locks aren't the issue."

Anita would have argued about it more with him, but before she could say anything more a white flame slammed into the wall behind her, singeing it slightly. Anita jumped, screaming loudly.

The flamming meta human approached them slowly, a menacing smirk playing at his lips; the mystery man aimed his watch at the water fountain hanging on the wall near by. Instantly, water exploded from the fountain, pushing the meta human backwards, extinguishing his flames, and flooding the halls.

While the meta was down, the nameless man turned swiftly, pointing his watch at the door. He pushed it open a second later, running outside. Anita watched him, stunned. "H-how did you --"

"I have a really cool watch," the man said. "Come on!"

For a moment she didn't move, still processing what had just happened. She knew a magic watch shouldn't be so surprising in a world where people could run on water and shoot lightening from their finger tips, but there had to be a line somewhere, right?Anita shook her head, running after the man.

She quickly matched his pace, which was surprising considering she usually would have run out of breath in under five minutes. (She assumed adrenaline was the cause for her extra stamina.)

"What about the rest of the school?" Anita panted, as they sprinted across the school yard. She was worried that the meta human would attack the other students and staff members. Shouldn't they have at least alerted the police?

"They'll be fine," the man insisted. He turned left, rounding the corner, making Anita slip slightly on the ground as she tried to follow.

"How do you know?" she asked, not even sure why she was still following this guy.

"I stole something from him, and he wants it back," the man said, as the came to a pause in an alleyway. "So, he'll probably follow us. But in my defense I only stole it because I needed to fix my time machine."

Anita stared at him, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Time machine?"

The man nodded, breaking out into a huge, childish grin. "Wanna see?"

I hope that was a good intro to Deserey's daughter... Was there enough detail? Dialogue not too... cringe? I'm sure the Whovian readers will be happy at least...

Let me know what y'all thought of Anita in the comments! Did you like her? Dislike her?

And who do you think the mystery man is? Any ideas yet? (I know you literally just met him, but it's never too early to start theorizing! )

Also I hope it's fine with y'all that I'm just gonna periodically put these where ever I feel like. I was gonna go back and put it more organized, like, every ten or five chapters...but it just seems easier to do it randomly 🤷🏻

So, I'm a lameo so I don't have much to say, but I hope you enjoyed this little interlude. Next chapter we'll get back to Dez and the Legends!