Even A Dead god May Dream

PROLOGUE

Dragon Girl, or rather, June Young the psychiatrist was at the Costco in Santa Monica today, on a day off. She was wearing her most unglamorous but oh so comfy giant Kpop pink shirt and some extra long jeans, with meek nerdly glasses that apparently concealed her identity... Though she was still seven foot tall Asian lady. Eating out with her appetite was always a terrible idea, so she loaded up her cart with a ton of meat and frozen vegetables, not quite standing out from any one else’s cart. Top shelves were easily reached though. She pushed on towards the last leg of her shopping trip, in the pastry and confections section. The usual free sample crowd had gathered, everyone getting a piece of cinnamon roll.

The girl in the cap and uniform serving the samples out looked like she’d rather be somewhere else, slicing cinnamon rolls with disinterest.  While sampling the pumpkin cinnamon rolls with triple honey glaze, a young teen boy in a black hoodie looked around nervously. (what is it with kids and hoodies these days) He then began rubbing his temple, seemingly in pain. “Mmmhnn…”he groaned, rather convincingly.

“Oh dear. are you alright?” A nice old grandma asked.

“Getting a headache…Uuughhh....” The kid played it up, pushing through some people, acting disoriented, even pushing a stack of orange soda cans over. This definitely got the crowd's attention. A few people kindly went to get some medical aid from the staff.

“Maybe you should sit down! Here, let me open a bottled water for you. You wait here.” The old lady went to her cart, which was about 10 feet away from where June was.

Then it hit, a gradual tremor which grew into a quake. Not quite earth shattering, but enough to send some goods flying off the shelves and carts shaking. Power also flickered off and on briefly. Some people held on for dear life, others ran for the exit. The old grandma slipped, and luckily June was quick enough on her feet to catch her. People around the store were very much inconvenienced.

“Earthquake!” June thought to herself, initially. Natural disaster. Nothing she could do, just stand by and hope the building didn’t collapse… Wait no, she sensed something off. Someone’s bio-signature spiked just as the earthquake started, and it was someone in that crowd. The teenager? Great, more hormonal metahumans.

Elsewhere in the Costco, with people distracted and the cctv conveniently disabled, two intrepid and also hooded teenagers, one in green and another in dark blue, took advantage of the chaos and began loading their own big cart with… laundry detergent. A black market staple. The one in dark blue even used telekinesis to do so. “Hurry up! hurry up!”