[b]Lynn[/b]

[i]Bullshit,[/i] Lynn thought, eyeing New Girl. [i]A question about the food? The fuck?[/i] Lynn stared her over, looking past her clothes and skin and features for a minute. Trying to look for sketchy shit. She looked older than Archie, and Lynn didn't remember seeing her on the shuttle up. [i]Something's up.[/i] Something about this entire set-up was not what Lynn wanted to see, even before you threw a cop into the mix. Lynn responded with a nod instead of her name to Eli - whatever weird crap was at work here, Lynn was not going to play ball. Sure enough, Spoons looked about ready to carve this girl's eyes out, which Lynn would've paid to see on pay-per-view, especially given her lack of knowledge on what New Girl could do. She was too young to be anything other than a parahuman, so that ruled out the possibility of her being a gen one. Eh. Keaton would do the smiling and pretty talking, as per usual. Lynn didn't particularly care if New Girl liked her or not - or really, if anyone at the table did. Keaton vibing with her would've been nice for business purposes, and Archie for - [i]flowers[/i] - some reason she couldn't really place (which in Lynn's book, meant it was either to be trusted unequivocally or was bullshit to be ignored, with little means of determining one from the other. Lynn leaned towards the latter in this case). Radvi stood there, looking pretty sheepish for a wolf. Fortunately, he was turning to leave, and the knot of tension in Lynn's stomach began to un -
 
Lynn was used to surprises. She'd been jumped in the street, judo flipped by a glowing escaped murderer, had a table thrown at her by a giant lizard, and been up and moving when a robot man fell from the ceilings onto her lunch table. This was beyond the realm of what even Lynn could have prepared for, and her fingers burned their way into the pretzel bucket as Black and White appeared, Lynn flaring up with shock and readiness. [i]It was a set-up, it was a fucking set-up![/i] Lynn curled her fist, ready to flash-fry Radvi's brain inside his skull before they slapped a collar on, before the kids were dead, before they put her in a cell with the leftover Fire Worms and Lynn was counting her teeth on a concrete floor -

He was startled too.

Lynn stayed her hand at her hip, the pretzel bucket falling to the ground as she got her other hand ready to punch, fingers dancing. Her heart thundered in her skull and she was a foot closer to Radvi than she had been a moment before. She looked down and her forearms were glowing and flickering with light, like [i]The temperature of the room was becoming unbearable now. She was terrifying. A living elemental. She pulled her hands away from her face, revealing eyes that were so bright that they were painful to look at for long. “I’ll kill you!”[/i] - like someone else Lynn had known. Lynn's face tensed and her whole skull seemed to clench. "What the fuck is this shit, Anderson?" Lynn hissed. The two began talking, some call-and-response, choose-your-own-adventure bullshit, and the whole time Lynn's head was ringing with anger. She was sick of this. She was sick of people dropping this shit on her, sick of being the joke, sick of being the pawn they would push around the board. [i]How long have you just been waiting around this station? How many kids have you watched get dragged into their little holding cells?[/i] 

Then it got better. Lynn listened to their speech with literal steam curling off her exposed skin, her fury a snarling dog held by a fraying leash. "Oh who wants to go first? Eat my ebony and ivory dick. You can't do anything? You're so helpless? You fucking pussies. No, fuck this, I'm not playing these reindeer games. Neither should any of you." Lynn spat on the ground. Smoke curled from the floor. "Here's my question. How the fuck did skater boy get on the station and start assaulting kids if you two have been lurking around? Where the fuck have you been when they interrogate minors without lawyers? And for two invisible fuckers, how come you haven't seen shit about the murdered professor? Was it not [i]in your jurisdiction[/i] to save three hundred people last month? Or - " [i]Or to tell whoever a three six zero five is that it'll be okay? To tell them they haven't been fucking abandoned and left alone?[/i] Lynn wanted to shriek, but she bit her tongue. Radvi was there. Radvi was Gennedy and every other snake who sat at their high table on the first day, crying out the laws and punishments and running when Archie had turned into a beast. Radvi would take her in if he knew what Keaton and Lynn knew. [i]It's not worth it. It's not worth it.[/i]

Archie! Lynn turned and saw Archie was beginning to flip and stepped forward to grab him, but he had calmed himself back down. Lynn's head was still throbbing. She should've gone for him first. "The disaster is everyone in this shopping mall dying because you dipshits thought it would be a good idea to jumpscare the human T. rex." Lynn took a few steps back, shaking, but under control. She couldn't lose her shit. She couldn't give Radvi an excuse. If she gave Radvi an excuse, they found the doll, they killed her, they killed Keaton, and then they kept killing kids. They were going to kill Lynn anyway, but if she could make it a little longer, maybe they could save one or two. Maybe she gets Keaton what she needs. Maybe she gets to go a few more weeks without having to - [i]four people[/i] - to...to do things. She was so pissed at the nerve of these two she couldn't even bring herself to want to beat Freaky D's ass - whom Gennedy had told her was for sure dead. [i]Either Gennedy lied to me, or he's got leaks on the inside.[/i] "No, yeah, go fuck yourselves. Even if you two were on the level, which invisible motherfuckers usually aren't, we've got no reason to trust you. You want us to cough up everything we know to the invisible bastards who need eighteen year olds to narc for them? I got here a month ago and wash dishes in the fucking taqueria. What do you think I know?  How about instead I keep stopping all the shit that goes wrong on this station, and you two keep creeping around on kids. You should be good at it. You've got both fucking halves of Michael Jackson to work with." Lynn turned and stormed off, shoving someone aside as a mild exodus had begun taking place. The last time Freaky D dropped out of a ceiling, things had not gone well for the room's inhabitants and the Panda Express' denizens were responding accordingly.

Lynn turned back and grinned. "And I clocked you fuckers in the interrogation room, by the way. You're not as sneaky as you think you are." [i]Let 'em chew on that for a minute.[/i] Lynn turned and kept walking, fingers curled into her hoodie pockets. [i]Keaton can stay and ask questions if she wants,[/i] Lynn fumed, [i]But this shit is a set-up. Keaton may be smarter than the rest of us put together but she doesn't know how people work. Whatever that bitch has on Archie got them here and got him to call us all over. I fucking knew it. I fucking knew it.[/i]

Keaton didn't know how to tell what people would do before they did it. She was unlucky. She'd never known a Che.