Author's Note: Sorry that it's been so long without a post! I feel really bad about that, and I just found this chapter a few days ago (I'd forgotten I'd started it). Anyway, I finished it up and tweaked it, and… here it is! Enjoy!

P.S. I started chapter 8 the other day, too, so hopefully I can have that up soon.

CRACK!

Emma jolted straight up in bed, the frigid night air hitting her as the sheets gave up their cover and slipped off of her body. She listened to the thunder rolling across the sky and the rain hurling itself at the roof. How long had it been raining?

The sharp crack of thunder sounded again, and Emma's heart flip-flopped in her chest as furniture shook and glasses rattled at the force of the intense boom. The sound had struck something in her that had her rushing to throw her clothes on, sprinting down the stairs, and flinging the door open to the soaking, freezing rain.

As she hurried down the street, she noticed that the majority of the town was enduring the chilling rain along with her, and she began to realize that all of them – men, women, and children – were all headed in the same direction, panicked masses flowing past her. Never had she known this many people to be in Storybrooke.

Emma allowed herself to be corralled by the crowd, following the cascade of people down the street. They were walking awful fast, and as a result, Emma found her clumsy self bumping into people and being jostled by annoyed – yet, for some reason, concerned - looking strangers as she fought for space to walk in.

Emma skidded to a stop suddenly, droplets of rain flying up around her. The crowd had abruptly stopped moving, and a horde of townspeople was blocking her from continuing her path through the streets. Waves of whispers went up around the crowd – Emma heard several "What do we do?"s traveling around.

For some reason, it was oddly bright around where the crowd stood, despite it being the middle of the night and the middle of an intense thunderstorm.

Emma wasn't sure where the crowd had brought her, nor did she know what all the ruckus was about, so she raised herself on her tiptoes to see if she could find out. She still couldn't see anything and was irritated that she'd let herself come all this way, now utterly drenched by the freezing rain, her ponytail hanging heavy and limp down her back, until…

Wait.

Emma's heart froze.

What was that?

There had been a miraculous half-second break in the crowd's chatter, long enough for Emma to notice a low, continuous roar meeting her ears.

She pushed herself up further on her toes, enough until she could see, and her heart took off like a shot.

Suddenly, she was pushing her way through people, trying to make her way through the crowd of confused bystanders. She was finding out for herself exactly what happened when the unstoppable force met the immovable object – the unstoppable force had more reason not to be stopped than the immovable object had not to be moved, and barreled right past the immovable object.

Panicked tears welled up in Emma's eyes, spilling over her eyelids and blending with the downpour as she fought her way through the masses.

When Emma reached the front, the chatter had completely subsided, and onlookers were pointing bewilderedly at the blonde stranger who was making her way straight toward the blazing house of their town mayor.

The rain. Emma wondered how fires were possible in the rain. Water was supposed to be the one thing that won out against fire, right?

Emma reached for the doorknob.

If they couldn't rely on the one thing that could defeat fire, could Regina truly ever be good in this "new world"?

Emma pushed open the door.

After all, isn't beating fire a lot easier than beating yourself?