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You're walking home in the dark and soon hear the sound of footsteps following behind you. Every time you turn around, nothing is there. If you try to quicken your pace, the footsteps start running right along with you. No matter how you try to see behind you--if you use your phone camera or if you look in window reflections, you can't see anything...but you know it's getting closer. If you don't run fast enough, you can almost feel a hand on your arm, a breath on your neck...

You need to get home, fast.

If you can.


Phaethon was not, typically, the kind of person to stay out at night. He typically had much too much homework to do, or something to do with his parents. But tonight it had been one of his patrol shifts, and so he found himself awkwardly perched on the edge of a building, looking down over it and trying not to let vertigo make him wobbly. He wasn't that terribly high up, but he still imagined it wouldn't be much fun to drop that distance to the ground. He didn't exactly bounce, after all.

Or, at least, he was pretty sure he didn't.

Anyway, his patrol had been entirely uneventful, and Phaethon was ready to go home.

Phaethon got to his feet to stretch out his cramping legs, wiggling first one foot and then the other as he tried to get rid of the pins and needles feeling. He even hopped a little bit in place, trying to restore blood flow. It was during this hopping that something caught his eye, up and to the left, a bit. On top of one of the neighboring shopping plaza suites, he thought he saw--if only for a moment--a shadow standing there. But when he actually looked, there was nothing standing there. So, with a small frown, he went back to watching the place he'd been watching before.

The hair on the back of his neck standing up was his first warning that something wasn't quite right.

The way he felt warm air on the back of his left arm was his second warning.

Phaethon was not keen on there being a third warning. He jumped to his feet and whirled around, but again saw nothing. He had a moment of his eyes searching the surrounding area wildly, but he saw nothing at all. That, quite frankly, made it even worse. There were few things he liked less than enemies he couldn't see. Especially enemies that weren't doing anything outright harmful. Yet.

Alright, he was... he was done. He was leaving now.

And whatever it was seemed to be leaving with him. He could hear the footsteps following his own as he walked with ever-increasing haste down the road. He thought about taking to the roofs, but what if it could fly? Would taking to the roof put him in danger from that? What if jumping set off some sort of prey chase response in whatever was pursuing him? What if trying to jump away from it made it worse?

He ran faster.

So did the footsteps.

He had bolstered speed when in his powered form, but the thing chasing him didn't seem to have much trouble keeping up. Worse still, it felt like it was getting closer. There was more than one time, more than twice, that Phaethon thought he felt it try to close in on him again. He didn't want to lead it anywhere near his house, but he was finding it difficult to override the "must get home where it's safe" instinct. He was a full grown adult that wanted to run home and dive under his covers in an attempt to make his heartbeat stop trying to bore its way out of his chest.

Phaethon threw caution to the wind and took to the rooftops. With his speed and agility and the terrain advantage, he was able to keep going, avoiding what felt like cold hands waiting, stretching to close around him.

His front door couldn't come open soon enough.