The things are really, really curious about what she's doing. They don't directly interfere, but, well...

Sometimes they move things. Sometimes they break things. Sometimes she turns and there's one crouching behind her.

But they don't significantly hamper her from converting a cable car to a proper car, and as she gets the hang of her new knowledge it becomes easier to work.

The first time one turns out to have been behind her she goes out - calmly, calmly do not get the zombies' attention even though these aren't zombies exactly (aaah) - scavenging for more food cans and curtains and clothes and stuff like that. She has to pause and use a tarp and build a fire to make a water trap too. Water: Nice to have. She stores up some jugs of it.

She's increasingly tense and jumpy and scared and trying not to let it affect her too much but yeah, this sucks. She's starting to get in the compulsive habit of making 360-degree turns every minute or so.

She seems to be what passes for local entertainment. Not a lot of them are on the streets, but if she looks up she'll see groups gathering on the rooftops by the time she finishes.

Climbing not-zombies. Perfect.

Okay, well. This is a hack job. Engine, lamp oil, crude steering, jugs of water and cans of food. It takes most of two days. They always seem to find her. She spends an hour making a super crude pipe gun that might work or might just blow up on her in the "secret" area of one of her sleeping spots.

She sleeps with a knife and the pipe-gun in reach in a room with two escape routes with her trusty backpack ready to be grabbed, planning to leave in the 'morning'. Is this day... Three? Four? Her parents will have been looking for her. Might have actually gone to the police by now. If whatever-the-fuck brought here wherever-the-fuck 'here' is didn't leave a body. Don't you go crazy if you spend too long not talking to anyone? Sound not being real is probably worse. Not to mention the zombies.

Whatever. Sleep, as best she can, to be alert and maybe enact the great escape tomorrow.

She'll have odd dreams, starting a few days in. Fragments of memories that are definitely hers except how they're not. People her brain insists are familiar except how she's never met them. Flashes of deja vu in the daytime, rarely - a sense of what some things are for, in mundane ways. A feeling she's seen this street, that vista.

Early in the morning, when a grasping fog climbs up the hills around the bay, it's quieter. Fewer odd humanoids about. 

Hallucinations or some kind of master power? No way to tell. Only thing she can do is write down what seems to be happening to her.

...It doesn't seem like she's being overwritten with a new personality or anything gruesome like that... She's definitely a poor white girl whose dad owes money to a bunch of Asian gangs, for all that she knows that empty cafe over there, somehow, or that graveyard...

Whatever. Her tram monstrosity is as complete as it's probably getting any time soon. There aren't as many zombies around. Good a time as any. She loads it with all her stuff and turns on the engine.

It flashes a bright red, sending waves of yellows and oranges and whites into the air around it as it pulses, brighter and faster than the dull glow from her thumping heart. It reflects off the low fog like a second sunrise.

Welp! Blocking the engine off from the driver's cab was a good idea, that's really bright! But it works! It works!

This will probably make the zombies freak out. Time to go - do or die. The tram lurches forward.

There's waves of blue and pink rising - the blue gets brighter, the pink twisting into orange and echoing among the horde - 

And it's a horde now.

They give chase, paying no heed to the blue they send washing over the city.

Her heart's pounding, her breath is fast. This shouldn't be a silent dance of coruscating colors, silence and the sheer adrenaline rush together feels wronger than ever - Turn turn tuuurn and get slammed into the side of the cab and then floor it away from the things!

They're fast, especially when she's not looking - 'zombie' might have been an overexageration. They stop whenever they get close enough for her to see, but more than a few manage to grab onto the back of the tram, and start breaking and crawling in windows.

She is not really paying enough attention to notice that they're any faster or slower under certain conditions! Staying on the road is challenging enough! Making an escape seemed like such a brilliant plan...

...Oh no! She still doesn't have any real weapons except her pipe gun which is clattering around next to her. She panics and tries to grab at it - this takes her eyes off the road for a bit too long and she gouges across someone's lawn, spitting fragments of fence ahead of her and cracking the glass at the front of the tram, and losing some speed. And they're all over the tram-

No no no no no-

There's a flash of orange light which somehow clearly communicates: 'Hey assholes! Pick on someone your own size!'

And then either a very effeminate guy wearing a magical girl outfit for some reason, or a very androgynous magical girl flies by, knocking the zombies clear with blasts of what seem to be lasers. They're not wearing a mask, and are almost supernaturally pretty.

The ones too close to her for lasers get taken out in a whirl of black feathers and flashing blades. This person - who isn't really staying still enough to get a good look at but is covered in odd black wings - seems more devoted to clearing out the zombies than to shouting at them.

Local heroes! Or something! Hooray! She registers this with about a tenth of her attention as she tries to regain control of the tram and hits the brakes.

The zombies are no longer chasing her. They are, in fact, running away.

The winged woman flashes to the side of the tram, and it goes up in the air slightly, comes to a gentle halt, and then lowers.

They look kind of freaky. The black-themed one does at least. Monstrous capes... Wait, is that racist? Eh. They're not trying to kill her, that's probably good.

Her hands are shaking. Her whole body is shaking. She's crying. She... Cuts the engine and weakly says "hi". Then frowns, brow knitting, when all that comes out is a bit of light. "Ugh." She waves, instead.

Awkward wave back. The black wings - underlaid by a truly unacceptable number of eyes, attached to some painter's abstract thought of a human form - shimmer and break away, revealing a teenaged girl in yoga pants and a t-shirt and no mask, her black hair cut short and loose.

'Hi!' says the orange light magical girl person is producing. 'Uh my power lets me communicate with everyone, I can understand you. You - okay? The things are gone.'

"Well I'm no longer about to be gutted by zombies so thanks but I am very freaked out and very lost sound should not behave this way and I don't know who you two are or what you want, so."

"I'm Nereus, she's Ink. We can get you out of here, no strings. The light's a localized thing, we came here for practice and saw a lot of light and figured we'd help out."

"Yes. Good. This place is creepy. But something is - where is here? I was in Brockton Bay and there was a weird cape and then suddenly I wasn't."

"This's the Dreamlands. Dunno the city name, it's been ruins a while. We're kinda near Ulthar? - Or if you're this freaked, uh, are you from Earth?"

He's usually not one of the ones dealing with newly Entangled people but she seems to have been doing well for herself at least.

"Yeah. Earth. And I was in the middle of a fight with a strange power involved. And then I was here."

Her hands are still shaking. Can she make them not do that? Somehow this is a pretty monumental task. "...So this. Is not Earth?"

"Uhhhh no. Nope. And - " He turns to Ink and starts making faces - "I haven't been in a while but Ink goes to school there and says people on Earth don't have powers?"