Sunny is a simple girl, after all. It makes sense that when she learns how to become something else, it'd be presented simply. She can analyze it easier that way.
Old leaves, candy wrappers, crunch under her feet; nobody takes this backroad, skinny as it is, and if her body was any broader she wouldn't be able to make it through. Walk right between two chain hotels where the cameras are presumably around and the entrances light up at night, and she's stayed safe every time she takes the shortcut to her own place.
(Not every awakening to heroism has to be in the face of great danger, after all. Sometimes it's just the next step in you becoming what you were meant to be.)
The next morning, Sunny doesn't recognize the bracelet that's been carefully laid over her phone, next to her ear cuff, next to a set of tweezers and a couple of shiny scraps of metal; but she does recognize that it's Sunday and she has the day off and she has nothing planned except some individual-level runs. Those in themselves tend to take her some nice hours, after all, where all she worries about is the game and her time and her fingers over the buttons with lightning-speed - but it really is a nice bracelet. There's no rust, no tarnishing, pure silver and not the darker subtones of pewter - she could never afford this. It's really nice, and she would never be able to splurge like that on something like this, something frivolous that she would inevitably lose behind the bed and bemoan her pointless spending. So, you know, whatever. Sunny picks it up, because it really is nice, and it feels like
it feels like
like an electric current, like a breath on the back of her neck, like bones-clattering to bring her home -
she's not wearing her pajamas anymore. These are way too nice to count as pajamas. These are way too nice to count as casual wear; not with the cold weight at her throat, the silky texture of the cravat (god, she's wearing a cravat, she feels like some ridiculous Regency-era reenactor), the fishnet wrapped perfectly around her legs -
Sunny never closed her eyes in the first place, but Babel Page of Saturn takes her first look at the world around her and smiles, because she's home she's home she's home. She's something more than she was, and nothing has been lost for it; because she has caught glimpses of this world for years and years and she's never really assumed she could ever join it - but she's here. She's made it.
She's level one, now. Babel just has to figure out what she can do.
