Luminous Beings

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

The walk with Keaton was - well, not bad - Lynn supposed, although she felt awkward, shifting her weight, glancing over her shoulder every few steps. Subtly. You never wanted a tail to know you'd cottoned on. As best Lynn could tell, there was no invisible man trailing them, but even she was forced to admit she had pretty much no way of knowing. Can't Denim do her brain thing and figure it out? Lynn thought. She zoned out for a moment as Keaton was talking, wondering what her role in all this was. Denim's the ticket, Lynn realized, feeling a bit of the fire flicker out of her. I think she could solve this without me. I gotta....I gotta get my shit together. Their conversation was interesting, and Lynn enjoyed hearing more about Keaton. She was different. Real different. But cool. Not bad.

The mall was its own set of problems. The shopping malls that Lynn had frequented on Earth were considerably different from this one, in that this one had all of the lights on and that when you bought things here, you received a receipt. Lynn burned through another cigarette on the walk, feeling an itch crawling up her spine. What if Denim wants to go clothes shopping or something with me? Lynn wondered. Something about that seemed to make the four inches between their heights seem like a mile, something about it drew Lynn's eyes to the curves in Keaton's clothes. The only curves in Lynn's figure were the wrinkles on her hoodie, whose red had faded almost to the point of pinkness.

They entered the mall and the hustle and noise immediately struck Lynn. She'd been in either the steam-filled clamor of the kitchens, a boring ass classroom, or the woods for most of the past four weeks. There was too much to keep track of here, Lynn thought, and the doll in her backpack weighed heavy a stone. Her eyes danced from person to person, Lynn trying to suss them out as quickly as possible. Her fingers curled around the notebook in one pocket and her thin wallet in the other. Lynn was not a usual mark for pickpockets. Something about her demeanor, or perhaps a resting body temperature that could rotisserie-cook a misplaced hand, seemed to discourage it.

"Oh shit, they got those here," Lynn said. Her scowl melted off for a minute as she grinned, looking at the pretzel stand. "You ever had those? They're the shit." Lynn's stomaach rumbled, but she ignored it for the time being. She had managed to put on a fair bit of weight in the last few weeks, although she was sure if those know-nothing doctors tried to check back up on her they'd have more bitchy notes about her. So, Lynn swerved their appointments. "They're all - "

They approached the food court and Lynn's jackrabbit mind, already butterfly-boxing its way through her surroundings (making her heart race, making her knuckles itch, making her see glowing hands that one had glowing hands) took off at a dead sprint.

Archie was with a fucking cop.

Son of a bitch.

It was a set-up.

There was a girl seated next to him, smiling and tall, beautiful, glowing and smiling. Smiling. Why was she smiling so much? What kind of snake shit was she pulling? Her outfit was a puzzle Lynn couldn't have put together if she had all day and the picture on the back of the box. Lynn's gut twitched at that. Don't like her, Lynn thought, an assertion all of her emotional and mental faculties gathered to deliberate upon, voting in unanimous agreement in about two seconds. Why's she here? Why's she here with a fucking cop?.

Lynn had her fair share of times evading the police, or simply needing to reallocate some of the contents of a stranger's wallet and fade back into a crowd. In this regard, being, on average eight inches smaller than the average crowd-goer was particularly useful. Saying nothing to Keaton, Lynn flowed to the left, trying to keep as many bodies between herself and the table some thirty-five yards away as she could. Lynn passed into a nearby store, not particularly caring which one, and putting a few more physical barriers between herself and the fucking narc table. He's been taking lessons from Spoons, Lynn thought, feeling the taste of smoke rise up in the back of her throat. Her gut didn't like that either. Lynn didn't know if Keaton had followed her in or gone on ahead. She wanted to turn back and shout a warning but she figured Keaton was smart enough to handle herself. Lynn closed her eyes for just a moment and tried to recreate the picture in her head, if there'd been anything she could've noticed. The cop wasn't acting aggressively, he seemed to be having a friendly chat. Meant nothing. A spider will sweet-talk a fly. He'd looked normal otherwise, and Lynn didn't think she saw any other officers in the area, even plainsclothes ones. When you're dressed like a divorced dad and stare at anyone but me, you've got a badge tucked under the Hawaiian t-shirt. Lynn frowned, the scar across her nose deepening and darkening. Something. There'd been something off about him, something he'd been wearing, but Lynn hadn't gotten a good enough look at him to tell. Damnit. Didn't matter. Lynn kept one hand locked like a visegrip on her notes, ready to turn the evidence to ash if she saw a uniform.

Lynn looked around. She was in a Bath and Body works. As tense as Lynn was from almost running into their snare like a damned fool, she had to admit this place smelled really nice. Lynn cinched the backpack tighter to her shoulder and glanced to see if Keaton had accompanied her or not. She figured the clever move was for Keaton to split somewhere else. Lynn was going to try and see if there was a back way out from this store, or slip back out in the crowd as soon as she could. Lynn could feel all their eyes upon her - the cameras, the clerks, the attendees. A lesser facet of Lynn's parahuman abilities was an uncanny knack to draw store employees to her presence whenever she entered a retail establishment. Lynn picked up a candle, rolling it over in her hand. Her small fingers could barely fit around it. Smelled nice. Sweet. Like vanilla ice cream. Candles. Who'd had candles? Was it Lucy and her family? Or had it been the Martins, all four months that she'd been there? Lynn couldn't remember the house, in her mind's eye it seemed equally likely it was either one, but she remembered sitting on the floor at night, watching it dance and flicker. No, Lynn thought. It was Lucy. That was what got the Christmas fire going. She put the candle back, rubbing her fingers on her jeans to get the feeling of the smooth wax off her mind. Lynn needed to get clear of all this, and intended to linger just long enough to make a semi-convincing act for the cameras. This was stupid, Lynn thought, grinding her teeth. Why did I let Denim talk me into this shit? This was stupid, stupid, stupid. No way out of here. So many people.

"Can I help you?" a square in a store uniform asked. "We have - "

"No." Lynn said. "Go away."

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Lynn was instantly beloved in the back rooms of El Vaquero, one of the Promise's numerous Mexican restaurants.

For starters, she didn't care how hot the scalding water was as she scoured plate after plate (and, similarly, little did she seem to notice the water was more steam than water after a few minutes of her furious scrubbing). Secondly, when one of the older cooks - a two-time carjacker and one-time willing participant in an extraterrestrial work release program - commented on Lynn's rather diminutive stature in Spanish, Lynn informed him that, despite her small size, she was more sexually endowed than any of the other line cooks.

Lynn's knowledge of the Spanish language was, shall we saw, a few inches wide and thirty miles deep. For the purposes of winning over these crew, she may as well have been trained at the United Nations.

Regardless, for the first time on the Promise, she had found a group that took an instant liking to her. Lynn also dialed back her paranoia a bit. People like Archie or Natalie or the snake's pit Gennedy watched over made absolutely no sense to Lynn. Lynn could not understand wanting to come to this place.

These guys hadn't. Lynn had been a few years younger when she'd worked in a kitchen last, although she did a brief stint in one when she was...well, doing a brief stint. It was familiar. It was comfortable. They smoked out by the dumpsters during breaks and Lynn felt just comfortable enough to shit-talk the Promise in Spanish, in muttered tones with her coworkers as the clamor of the restaurant deafened them to any eavesdroppers.

"Vas a romperla." Antonio said, grabbing the cup out of her hand.

Lynn blinked. She'd put cracks in the glass.

"Disculpa," Lynn muttered, staring down at it. The water boiled around four hundred degrees as it rolled over hands - a fact the other dishwashers had objected to before Lynn told them to stop being pussies and did their work for them (admittedly, with a stool under her so she could reach the sink). She stared down at the water for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. The steel of the restaurant walls looked the same, sometime, and she'd tripped over a gym bag coming into work that afternoon. Once, Lynn had picked up one of the menus and thought it was in Chinese before she clinched her eyes open and shut and forced them to read it correctly. She looked around at the gallons of grease sealed on the other side of the room, of the smell of sizzling vegetables and cooking meat. Lynn turned back and scrubbed a plate, where her nose still looked broken in the reflection.

---

Class was bullshit.

Lynn was told she was below the standard aptitude level of a child her age, which pissed her off for a number of reasons, as did most things. Regardless, she gritted her teeth and suffered through class. Most days. Her attendance was not spectacular. On one or two days, she woke up and stared at the ceiling, sweat steaming off her. There were nights Salamandra and she were locked around each other, the woman a few inches taller each time she showed up again. Lynn struggled to get her footing when her right knee split open with pain, and then Salamandra was over her, looking down, her hands around her neck -

On those days, Lynn did not go to class. She walked the campus and smoked, or drank coffee in the most run-down diner she could find on the Promise. Her teachers strongly suggested Lynn get a tutor. When their suggestions turned to orders, Lynn just didn't show up for tutoring. Surprisingly, none of the tutors seemed particularly motivated to tell the teachers Lynn was not showing up. Lynn has a talent for asking for things nicely, I suppose.

Power training class was at least something. The instructor was a jackass, but Lynn could admit there was plenty to learn, and this guy had an inkling of respect for her - a respect Lynn attributed to any surviving cafeteria footage that was circulating the Promise.

"You need more control," he barked. "You'll burn down your dorm when you sneeze if you don't get a lid on it." Lynn bit back a few choice words, mostly bringing into question his preference in sexual partners, perhaps questioning his desire for broadening his romantic interests beyond the realm of the two-legged. That would only prove his point, after all, and anyone who thought they had Lynn figured out could go and fuck themselves. Whether it was getting three (to five) square meals a day or the training, Lynn did notice her flames came to her more quickly, her arms and legs felt stronger than before, her eyes danced with light more brightly. Lynn even glanced in the mirror one morning and could not count all of her ribs. She stood and stared for a while, grinning crookedly, letting herself feel like she and Lucy were dressing up again for a moment.

Day by day, Lynn found it harder and harder to keep her guard as high as it should be. It did not make her less jumpy, or keep her eyes off the entrances and exits as she sat down to eat. She never stopped trying to fit as much food in her mouth as quickly as she could, but she had to admit they had enough time to put another hit on her. The breakout was a sloppy job, Lynn thought. There's something at work here. Archie and me and Nat were just icing on the cake. There was something hidden on the Promise, something Lynn could not see, no matter where she looked.

The thing about Lynn, of course, is that everywhere she went, with her hair glimmering and her eyes burning, there were only more and more shadows, deeper and darker the harder Lynn tried to cast them away.

---

Lynn sat in the woods, some two miles off the path and with her back to a tree. Lynn had lost count of how many times she had come out here - after a shift, smelling of dish soap and Mexican food, or after class, where she would stare down at her notes and grow angrier and angrier, smoke curling off the edges of the pages. This is fucking bullshit, Lynn wanted to scream. Everyone else could finish the readings in minutes, but Lynn did not know what half the shit meant. Math, likewise, was an impossibility to her, and Lynn did not care about anything they taught her in history class, because it was all propaganda anyways. The only classes Lynn seemed to scrape by in with a modicum of academic prowess was chemistry, which seemed to come naturally to her (naturally enough - she hovered at a C+, near the edge of a B) and power training. Spanish, at least, wasn't too much of a struggle, but whoever thought their classroom Castilian was worth a damn was an idiot in Lynn's book.

She'd earned the attention of the Spanish teacher on the first day.

"How do you say what's up?" he asked, drawing a name and turning to Lynn.

"Comó andas," Lynn said.

The teacher blinked. "I...yeah, in Argentina, I suppose." He stared at her curiously then kept going, Lynn grinding her teeth as a few others glanced in her direction. One girl asked if Lynn had studied abroad.

Lynn shook her head. That thought and others came to her, sometimes, and she could not force them out. Lynn flipped through her notebook, running back over the observations she'd jotted down. It was another day or two before she and Keaton would meet again and exchange what they'd found out. Insomuch as Lynn could trust anyone on this place, she was beginning to feel she could trust Keaton.

No.

She couldn't. She was getting to know Keaton. That was something. But Keaton was like everyone else on this ship - looking for a reason to throw her under the bus. It was just now they were useful to one another. Lynn did not mistake that for anything more. The more Keaton knew about Lynn, the more Keaton could tell Gennedy the next time they were locked up on trumped up charges. She didn't know who had ratted on her in the interrogations, or why Gennedy hadn't come for her again already, but they had to be plotting something. Lynn stared down at her notebook, going back over everything. There was something she had missed. In her mind, this was no different than the harsh red ink at the top of her classwork. Another reminder. Another puzzle Lynn was too slow to solve. She leaned back against the tree and tucked away her notebook, sparing a few minutes to pass over some bars she'd written idly on a slow day at work, a brief sketch she'd made with the charcoal of her fingers. If anyone saw this shit they'd laugh until the day I die, Lynn thought.

Lynn liked the woods. They were quiet, and out from Gennedy's para-traitor eyes. She never had her phone on, as she did not want Cara listening in, so there was nothing to distract her other than the occasional chirp of a bird or gurgling of the river. At times, though, the quiet was too much. She would - she would remember things. Four people, there and gone again, in the blink of an eye and a flash of heat. A bottle in her hand, a flash of pain across her face. A scratching inside her knee, like the sinew was still trying to stitch itself together again. Lynn rubbed idly at her nose, fully healed, save for the scar at the top.

"Oy, Lynn."

"Don't use my name, you fucking moron," Lynn muttered, reaching into her pocket and drawing out two hundred credits. The boy - a few years older than Lynn, skinny as a junkie and shifty as a fox, reached out and tossed her a pill bottle. Lynn checked it and nodded, tucking it away. The man counted Lynn's restaurant money and nodded.

"Pleasure."

"Hey," Lynn said, glancing back up at him. She hadn't figured out what kind of powers he had to be here, but Lynn had a grudging respect for anyone who came here with a noose around their necks, parahuman or - "I dannae what the fuck you're on abou'." she said, catching her breath. "Aint no gettin' off this ship. One way ticket n' all. - or....or otherwise.

"...yeah?"

"Sorry," Lynn said, shaking her head straight. For a moment she'd been - she'd been somewhere else. "You ever looking to expand?"

The boy shrugged. "Maybe. You handle your shit?"

Lynn raised an eyebrow.

He snorted. "Alright. I'll keep you posted."

Lynn nodded and waited until he had left before she pulled out the ceramic mug from her bag, one of many quietly appropriated from the cafeteria. She placed it on the forest floor before her and sat cross-legged, filling it with water from her bottle. Lynn picked it up in her hands and held it gingerly, trying to take deep breaths. Slowly, the water came to a boil, the cheap porcelain heating in her hands as well. Lynn took another deep breath, a bead of sweat trickling down her face. She could get the whole forest blazing, easy, but this was different - this was like a one finger push up rather than a bench press.

"Just the water," Lynn told herself, softly, trying to keep her breathing steady. "Not the mug, just the water." The water boiled and steamed, but the mug was heating up faster. Lynn cursed, prompting her whole temperature to spike before she calmed herself down, staring at the rippling surface.

"Tienes frío?" Lynn asked, Clarita shivering beside her.

"Sí." Lynn grabbed her hot chocolate, gone cold some hours past, and warmed it back up to her, the beverage boiling again in a matter of minutes. "Cuídate." Lynn ran a hand through her hair as - the side of the wall exploded and Clarita was gone, three others too, vaporized and -

The mug exploded. It snapped and - four people - the water burst apart in a cloud of superheated steam. "Motherfuck," Lynn cursed, one of the porcelain shards slicing her forearm, the other missing her hoodie narrowly. Lynn fumed (literally and figuratively) for a moment, taking as many deep breaths as she could. Her heart was thundering against her skull, though why, she could not say. She fumbled for one of the Xanax, swallowing it dry and taking more deep breaths. She wasn't far from where she'd been when she - when the restaurant had burst open, Archie curled around Natalie, Salamandra dead, the...the everything.

Lynn put another mug on the ground and tried again. And again. When she'd run out of mugs, she gathered her things to leave, spotting it at the last moment. Lynn knelt down and picked it up, rolling the doll over in her hands, muddied and worse for the wear. It was a bunny rabbit - Lucy had one like it when they were younger, but Lynn couldn't remember the name of it. The hair was mostly worn away, one of the button eyes dangling loose. Around its ankle was a tag, one Lynn recognized without even needing to read it.

"Those fucking bastards," Lynn murmured to herself. Gennedy's face swam into her mind and her hair danced with fire. She tucked it in her backpack, zipping it tight. She and Keaton would have a lot to talk about.

---

Homecoming. Lynn didn't get the point. She'd never anticipated graduating high school - which, self-fulfilling or no, seemed to be a relatively safe assumption given recent weeks on the Promise - and never had much of a home to stay at anyway. Lynn sat in the park at the designated place, backpack next to her, notepad sprawled on the stone table. Lynn smoked a cigarette, one leg brought up to her chest and the other rocking back and forth on the ground below her. Her phone buzzed, prompting Lynn to flip it over. Work?

Archie. Meet up at the mall. Group text with Keaton and one other - Natalie. Something in Lynn twisted, bent around like drooping dead flowers, and she flipped the phone over. Lynn hadn't seen much of any of them, save Keaton for their weekly meet-ups. She had a class with the other two, but tried her best to keep a distance. In the park around her, a few kids played, which Lynn watched with a hint of a smile. They fucking suck at soccer, Lynn thought, although she doubted if she could do much better. Basketball, most assuredly, although Lynn suppose they were probably some of the few she could reasonably compete against in terms of height. Lynn considered the announcement from earlier. This will work on the sheep, she thought. The wolves invite them to dance, and they'll put on their dancing shoes. Not Lynn. She was going to have no part of whatever consolation prize for letting rapists out of custody that Dunbar had drummed up. Lynn would be working, either at El Vaquero or on the scrawled words on the page before her. Lynn had paced over the Promise's station a dozen times over, relishing in at least the length of the leash she had on her now. In juvy, she'd paced every inch of the yard. This was no different. Just a better view.

Lynn picked at a meal someone had ordered but not picked up, meals the manager very graciously always saw fit to pass along to Lynn. She munched on the chicken noisily as she waited for the rendezvous, her other hand idly scrawling lyrics into her notebook, on a page separate from the breadcrumbs and dead ends and red herrings.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Lynn stared at Archie, wondering how badly the fumes of the restaurant had addled her - the beast was tamer, somehow, not the wild feral thing that it was in the cafeteria, and it was - it was cradling Natalie, like a child. Lynn's hands fell to her sides as she stared, bewildered, the beast roaring at her. Is it going to hurt her? Lynn thought, her mind hazing in the pain. Lynn was as tough as they came, but Salamandra had put a beating upon her, and there are tremendously few people who can remain coherent in the circumstances Lynn found herself in. I have to kill it, She thought again, swaying back and forth slowly, a drunken boxer trying to stay upright in the twelfth. There was something she could not piece together, something that was twisting her already churning stomach. Why is it cradling her like that? Why -

Lynn felt it a moment before it happened. Perhaps it was intuition or her affinity for flame or her pain-addled mind piecing things together too late. There was the surge of heat, the pressure shifted and Lynn knew in that moment, screaming no, to run, to -

The restaurant burst apart, vaporizing four people in a second. The heat rushed to Lynn like a dog to its master, caressing her face, making her forget for a moment the way Salamandra's eyes had bulged with Lynn's fingers around her throat, Natalie unconscious in Archie's hulking scaled arms. Lynn stared, the knife slipping from her fingers, the metal glowing faintly as it clatttered against the sidewalk.

"No," Lynn said, her voice thick and coarse from the blood running down the back of her throat. "No, no I didn't..." Lynn stared at the fire, knowing, knowing it was her, just by her being there, that Salamandra may have withered regardless but it was Lynn standing there that made it burn brighter than the sun, that made it break bricks and split steel and turn glass to water. She stumbled backwards, her eyes wide and her whole body shaking, short and frail under the hoodie that engulfed. "No, Christ, I didn't, I..."

Lynn felt twelve years old again, her hands wrapped around the cold glass bottle, staring at the elongated face reflected back at her and the lighter fluid inside, the other hands, bigger and callused, split-knuckled and strong as iron clenching her fingers against it, shoving it back against her, telling her to throw, throw like her life depended upon it - , smaller than the lizard, smaller than the smoking building, smaller than the paramedic that draped a blanket over her and said words she did not hear. Archie looked at her and Lynn opened her mouth to say something but couldn't, she could only shake her head, her mouth full of smoke and salt and iron.

She had to get away. She had to get clear. She had to find somewhere that wasn't this. Lynn turned and stumbled, ignoring the reaction team. Someone else told a paramedic to fuck off through her mouth and with her voice, but Lynn didn't think it was her, because she couldn't have talked, because she was back inside the restaurant, and she was watching herself get thrown to the ground by Salamandra, and wondering why she didn't check the back rooms before she left, why she didn't think the woman was withering, why she poured all her strength into stopping her. I had to stop the lizard, Lynn wanted to shout, if anyone was listening, but the part of Lynn that had shared cigarettes with drug dealers and kept eating her lunch while someone got their teeth knocked out two tables over in juvy told her to shut the fuck up and get clear, to pray that the paramedics weren't paying attention to who was where and that even the Promise's kangaroo lawyers didn't have enough evidence to pin anything on her.

Lynn blinked. She was in the woods. Her feet bled from the rocks and glass she'd walked across but Lynn did not realize it. She did not want anyone to see her, least of all the fucking snake Gennedy and whatever stormtroopers he had waiting to kill a few more people - like you fucking did - in the chaos. She leaned back against a tree and fell to the ground, her left hand balled into a fist that she bit into with all her strength and screamed, shaking.

Lynn hadn't gotten a good look. How old were they? Were they kids? Why hadn't she remembered? Why hadn't she thought? Why wasn't anyone else there helping? She had...Salamandra would have killed her, would have raped Archie, would have killed someone else. Why did she have to laugh? Lynn thought. Why were they standing there? Why didn't they run Jesus Christ why didn't they run? Her head was still throbbing from the pain, with even her regeneration unable to slow her nose almost sealing shut from the swelling, her jaw puffing up. Her face was a patchwork of pale and purple, and where her hoodie sleeves fell down her bony arms there were deep red bruises from Salamandra's hands, the same that matched her thighs, the last things Salamandra had left her with. She could hear her laughter again, and Che's. I am no fucking better, Lynn thought, feeling as though she would have thrown up again if there was anything left inside her to purge. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Gennedy just put the bullet in my head now. I'm here and there's no cameras just fucking do it.

Lynn's hair and eyes stopped glowing and died down to a dull mess of auburn, frayed with split ends and uncombed tangles. Her eyes were blue, light and pale and watering. Lynn wrapped herself in the banket and twisted it over and over in her hands and let herself be cold.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

There were so few situations in Lynn's life in which she had no idea what to do.

The first thought that flashed through her mind was that this was a trap, an underhanded attempt to pull one over on Lynn. Lynn wasn't surprised - with one arm out of commission, she was going to need one hell of a trick to be able to wrestle Lynn back down to the floor. She kept coming closer, low red flames flickering up and down her arms and legs, dancing across her naked form. The steam and smoke in the restaurant afforded Lynn some degree of privacy - it was difficult to see outside of the restaurant, which probably boded well if the lizard came slithering back in. Lynn figured she could try to scramble out and get a better angle on him while he sifted through the sauna. But Salamandra lay here, breathing like she was trying to give birth, her arm hanging uselessly out of socket. Lynn stopped and stared at her for a moment, thinking.

This was Salamandra. Salamandra. The woman who burned cops and stayed on the run. Lynn felt furious and small, like everything pounding in her skull was towering over her. She was livid, angry enough at Archie to burn stars and melt fires. He had hit with the fridge and knocked her on her ass. I had her, Lynn seethed. She was mine and you fucking took it from me. They'll all say Salamandra had her on the ropes until Archie came in. Weak Little Lynn getting her ass beat all over again. In her mind, behind the squeals and groans of the restaurant's walls, bending and succumbing to the intense heat, she thought she could hear the laughter - Salamandra's and everyone else's - as she stood there, naked as a baby and feeling roughly as strong. She was furious at Salamandra, too, for more than she knew how to express. Megan and Clarita fucking needed you, Lynn wanted to say. She remembered the day they called her Salamandra, when she'd gotten her ass beat halfway to hell for them. They never had any chance of being Wonder Woman, but they could be Salamandra. Salamandra killed anyone who fucked with them, and with her ribs pressing against her skin and her stomach cramping on empty, Lynn could only give them sunburns. And Clarita and Megan couldn't do anything. She'd been shaking with fury and fear the night Salamandra had been arrested. If the Fire Worms can burn out, Lynn had thought, watching the shitty small television from behind two black eyes, the room full of anger and noise, We all will, too. If Lynn had been as strong as her she wouldn't have gotten fucked so badly in life, not from the cops, not from all the girls in juvy, not from -

In all the other pain Lynn felt, in her jaw and her throbbing, swollen nose, and down her sides and her stomach, Lynn felt a flash of phantom pain in her knee, worse than all the rest.

She stared down at Salamandra. This was no trap. The woman was beaten like a dog, shaking and whimpering. Lynn had never seen something so pathetic. Lynn's fists were still curled at her side, flickering with coronas of heat and light. She was going to rape him, Lynn thought, wanting to draw herself closer and crush her windpipe. Leaving her in prison is breaking her enough. Lynn heard noises from outside, the sound of it slamming the ground with all its strength. It could be out there killing someone, Lynn thought, wildly, in a voice she could've sworn was Lucy's, or a court-ordered psychologist, or maybe even Clarita's, once upon a time. Lynn looked back down. They sent her to kill me, she knew, she knew down in her bones. They knew she would set off the lizard. They wanted deniability. She's a fucking puppet for the same bastards who lock kids up without a trial. Lynn tried to process the broken woman's words. She wasn't going to fight? She was going to lay there and take it? Just go the fuck back to lockup? She didn't have anything to prove, or anything to accomplish? Lynn was shaking with anger at her. Get up, she wanted to scream. Get up and fucking fight me. In the flurry of thoughts in Lynn's mind she could not tell what was right or what was fake, which of her instincts she could follow. If she gets out again she will come back for you, and they will say you were too big a coward to finish her off. If you're ever locked up with her, she'll shove a shiv between your ribs the first chance she gets. one side urged. If you kill her and the lizard takes out someone else outside, their blood is on your hands.

Had someone been plotting to kill Lynn - in earnest, for once - and had that someone been behind her, they would've had as clean a shot as they would ever get. Lynn stood rooted to the spot for some full thirty seconds.

The longer she stood, the quieter the second voice got. Spoons is as broken a housedog as they come, she thought. Archie is too nice, and they'll put a bullet in his head the minute the lizard stops being useful. Amelia deserves whatever they're doing to her in Gennedy's excuse for a precinct. And Keaton won't help you when the time comes. It's only you. It's only you and when they put you in a cell with her she will beat you to death with your own collar.

She walked closer to Salamandra, drawing her power back to her, siphoning what oxygen remained in the room. There was a part of Lynn that loved this feeling, the rush and thrill that was running through her, the knowledge she had put Salamandra where she was now, that Cordelia Lynn Holmes could take the best hits the worst criminal in L.A. could give out, and when the smoke cleared, Lynn could spit out her teeth and keep on swinging. That part of her wanted this. It wanted to snap Salamandra's neck and drag her outside to show Gennedy, and Narc Natalie, and Che, and -

Lynn stopped again, her mind struck by a thought she had not expected to cross it again. Did that girl going to the station, with the officers - did she make it? Who else is out there?

"Enough of this shit!" Lynn screamed, kicking the floor and driving a foot deep gash into the melted linoleum. She panted, flames coursing higher up her naked skin. She turned back to Salamandra, heaving with exertion and trembling with anger. She'd wasted enough time pussy-footing with all her feelings. This woman was a killer, and not for any good reasons. She sicc'd that skull fucker outside on that woman. She was going to rape Archie (and for a moment, flowers in a hospital room flickered through Lynn's head, and burned away as quickly as they came), she was going to kill Lynn as soon as she got the chance. And the longer Lynn stood here the less time she had to put down the lizard or help that girl. Or help them all. All the ones on the station right now, all the ones found by the killers nastier than Salamandra. They burned away in Lynn's head, too.

There were no cameras left unmelted in the room, and in the smoke and heat, you could've mistaken it for the doorway to hell.

Lynn strode forward, grabbed Salamandra by the hair and pulled her up. The woman threw a punch, a blast of heat that tickled Lynn's side, and slammed her working hand into her kidney, her thigh, her groin, each blow a little weaker than the last. Lynn smashed her head against the wall trying to stun her, but Salamandra had melted most of the damned thing, and Lynn only succeeded in irritating her. Enough, Che said. Do it. Lynn remembered how scared she'd been holding the bottle in her hand, not wanting to, not wanting to be a - Fucking do it already. Are you a pussy? Are you going to let them die because you're a coward? the way the guns had gone off around her, louder and stronger, kicking like horses in their hands, melting the barrels as long as Lynn was nearby, but the tracer rounds lit like stars, and they seared holes in their cars, in the walls, in -

Lynn blinked. Salamandra was limp.

She stepped back and the woman slumped down. The room was spinning, a touch from the fumes, a touch from the lack of air, a touch from Lynn's soul flickering like a candlefire. She kicked Salamandra again for good measure, almost falling over from the effort. Lynn wanted to say something, to tell her she was a bitch, that she should never have laughed at Lynn or done what she did, that she couldn't believe Salamandra went out like a coward, that Lynn would have run with her, that they could've burned their way to the docking bay and gotten caught but fuck, they could have tried, they at least could have tried, but none of the words came to her. They felt as empty as the room. Lynn shook her head and strode back to the far side of the restaurant, where the temperature was still several hundred degrees, but markedly cooler than that side. Lynn forced herself to simmer down and grabbed her sweatshirt, putting it on clumsily as she exited the back of the restaurant. As the hoodie passed over her broken nose, another flicker of pain whited out Lynn's vision for a moment and she stumbled into the doorframe, pausing to catch her breath. Lynn glanced around the kitchen and found a gym bag tucked into a corner. Lynn threw on a pair of shorts - oversized for her, but when were they not - and grabbed a kitchen knife off the chopping block. She considered grabbing a gallon of grease, but hesitated. The light on her hands was flickering, dancing wildly and violently, and Lynn did not trust herself to hold steady as she had in the cafeteria. I'll blow my hands off, and not be able to stitch them back to me.

Lynn had hoped ending it would qualm things down inside her head, but it had only made them more furious. The girl or the lizard? Keaton or any of them? Fuck this, fuck all of this. Lynn stepped outside, only half aware of how haggard she looked, of the sharp crook in her nose and the swelling left side of her jaw, the purple bruises already forming on her pale skin. Lynn drew in as much air as she could, feeling as though she'd only gotten a minute in the corner before having to start another fight. Whichever I find first, Lynn decided. If Keaton goes, I've got no chance of unraveling this, and Archie's the one most likely to kill her.

Lynn came around the side of the building she saw Archie and Natalie having a staredown. Lynn would not admit it to herself on the conscious level, but she did not have the strength to contend with either of them, and knew somewhere deep down, somewhere that scared her and stripped off her clothes and made her a little girl shaking on the curb outside a burning home, surrounded by sirens and screams, that she was not sure if she could have beaten Salamandra if Archie had not intervened.

Lynn had never been one to pick winning fights.

She stepped closer slowly, trying to assess the situation. Where's Keaton? And what the fuck happened to Spoons? "Oy," she muttered, knowing the lizard could probably hear her heartbeat back on Earth, but trying to catch Natalie. She looks gone, Lynn thought. Like her mind snapped in half. For a second, Lynn thought she could hear Che agreeing with her. "Nat, get up. Back away. Get over here." They didn't have time for this. She'd have to try and lure the lizard back in or -

She frowned, remembering Keaton's words through the weariness. Against every instinct Lynn had, she forced her heat back down, as low as she dared, and put her hands - only barely glowing now - behind her back. "Natalie get the fuck over here. Move." Lynn did not take her eyes off the beast, but kept her ears out for another escaped convict coming up behind her. I hate this fucking station, Lynn thought. Her mind whirled for a way to win against the lizard, or maybe even both of them, as rabid as Natalie looked, but it only showed her Megan and Clarita, and Lucy crying, and Che, and Salamandra's eyes bulging, and the feel of her nose right now, and her right knee splitting open, and the cold of a prison cell.

As she tightened her grip on the knife, she could feel Salamandra beating against her right side, each hit growing weaker than the last.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Before coming on-board the Promise, Lynn could think of two situations that ranked as absolutely fucked as this one was. She was beginning to suspect this was just going to be a regular occurrence.

Lynn did not fight as Salamandra pushed her backwards, privately thankful she had a moment or to to gather herself. Wheezing, Lynn tried to stand but felt her head spin around a bit. She blinked blearily and looked around her. Oh, fuck me, Lynn thought, forcing her fire down. Between her and Salamandra and the amount of smoke Lynn had been throwing out and whatever burning the floor of the restaurant had accomplished, there was a notable lack of breathable oxygen in the air. Lynn's body was pretty damn resistant to poisons, but even she needed breathing air. Lynn forced her flames down to a more manageable level, treating what was more than likely a death sentence as nothing more than a mild irritation. It was hard to be furious at biochemistry when the lower half of your nose was pretty close to a thirty degree angle. Salamandra was gearing up for a haymaker, and Lynn did her best to take a quick assessment of how she was doing and where she was at.

The answer was that she was fucked. Lynn was thrown off from vomiting so violently, and even for a girl who fought to the bitter end, the throbbing pain of her nose was wearing her down. Not to mention she now had a tremendous weak spot right on her face for Salamandra to take advantage of, and Lynn no longer had the speed to butterfly float around punches. Not that any punches were coming her way - Lynn figured Salamandra was going to close the distance, pin her down, and pound her nose until it was the consistency of Gennedy's moral backbone.

Lynn's backup plan/mutually assured suicide pact came through with the form of a refrigerator that tagged Sally shortly before melting into refrigerator plasma and going out the wall. Lynn turned to face Archie, powering down as much as she dared with Salamandra so close by. The lizard made eye contact with her - Wanna go tango in the kitchen, scaleface? - before heading outside. Lynn considered this as a pretty mixed blessing. On the one hand, Lynn had watched enough WWE to know that smashing an appliance over someone's head was a definite boon in combat. On the other hand, Archie was now fucking off killing God knows who, and it was going to be that much more of a pain to track him down later. Lynn attempted to look outside to see what he was doing, but the thick steam and smoke in the restaurant made that pretty much impossible.

Okay, Lynn thought as clearly as she could through the pain and the smoke. Positives is that her arm looks like it's first-day-in-prison fucked. Negatives are that I have maybe two good bursts left in me, no clothes to burn, and I can only breathe through my mouth. The arm, Lynn realized, was much more of a boon than she had initially thought. She can't grapple, Lynn thought, wildly and desperately. Lynn crouched down lower, hoping to salvage a bit more air closer to the ground. As she'd dimmed down her flames, she'd felt her head begin to clear up a bit. I'm gonna pull that bitch all the way off.

Lynn gave her a wide, bloody smile, her front tooth gone. Lynn thought about trash talk, but noticed her mouth filling with blood. Well, if the vomit worked, fuck it, let's hang onto that too. Lynn didn't know if Salamandra was near her breaking point in terms of how much heat she could take, or if she even had one. But for the first time, Lynn was starting to feel cocky. She was going to have one hell of a time putting down Scaly Boat Farmer in a few minutes, but Salamandra was looking at least manageable for the first time in the fight. Lynn didn't have a tremendous amount left in her reserves, but she now opted to shift her strategy - with all the extreme heat in the room, and as much as she'd pumped into Salamandra, she was content to just let the bitch simmer. Lynn was going to keep what juice she had left for her haymakers and only try to flare back up if she got tangled up with her again.

Lynn stood up, naked, blood running down her chin and throat, hair a rippling blue sprawl. She smiled at Salamandra and started walking closer, more cautiously than her initial approach. Lynn was going to let her make the first move, and react accordingly.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Lynn had only a brief moment of animalistic joy as Salamandra roared in pain before the woman was on her again. Lynn had attempted to scramble away and put some space between them, but the floor was slippery from being only semi-solid at this point, and Lynn's ruined shoes did not contribute to her steady footing. In fact, Lynn had started to sink down into the floor as she stood, which was not going to bode well when one of them ran out of juice. If we got sealed in this shit when Archie comes out, we're dead. As she stumbled backwards Salamandra was on her, bringing her head down to smash Lynn's face with her own.

At this same time, Lynn's mind was processing what her next steps were - calling it a plan was overly generous, but she had two steps figured out as her stomach cramped once again. The third, most likely, was getting choked to death by Salamandra or eaten by Archie - or, at a distant third, devoured by the skull beast walking around outside. A pleasant but incredibly unlikely fourth possibility was that Keaton was able to MacGyver a high-powered rifle out of egg rolls and discarded forks in the back and proceeded to kill all three with one bullet.

Lynn's next step was going to be a doozy. She had about five seconds, she reckoned, before she could pull it off.

But in-between that and step two - which was Archie breaking through that wall and clawing apart everything in his way, Lynn knew what she needed to do. If Keaton managed to get through to him, I can't be glowing when he comes, Lynn thought. And I need to get clear from this bitch, which is not -

Lynn tried to twist her face, to bring her forehead down to intercept the blow, but she had no positioning and not enough time. Salamandra's forehead smashed into her nose and Lynn felt the lightning-flash pain of her nose breaking for the third time in her life. Lynn screamed, her flames scorching up and disintegrating the rest of her clothing as well as a good deal of Salamandra's, filling the air around them with more putrid smoke. Lynn's eyes watered from the pain and she felt a boiling trickle of blood rush down her nose for a moment, but Lynn forced herself to sideline the pain for just a second. She needed just a second more.

Her stomach cramped tight enough to make her think, for one brief, pain-addled moment, that she was pregnant, and her legs went weak. Lynn stopped struggling to pull herself away from Salamandra, trying to pull herself in closer instead. Under the woman's iron grip, this was easy. She reached up and grabbed the back of her shirt as best she could reach - Lynn had wanted the back of her hair, but there was no such luck there, Lynn was far too short - and Lynn hurled up three meals' worth of Chinese food up onto her attacker. She was aiming for the eyes, but trying to maintain any semblance of accuracy when your eyes are full of tears and smoke and your head is ringing from a probable concussion is somewhat difficult. Lynn spewed, and spewed, and gasped and spewed again.

A particularly disgusting, but noteworthy fact about Lynn is that her internal body temperature is hotter even than her outside body temperature. When she commits as much as she has in a fight such as this, her stomach burns like a blast furnace. A great deal of Lynn's energy had gone into keeping the acidic bile that now dripped off Salamandra as superheated as the rest of her. Shaky from the impact and from hurling, Lynn couldn't help but grin (a tooth was knocked out that she did not even register) at her masterpiece. A sludge of well over a thousand degrees, acidic, foul-smelling, and overwhelming in volume had torn the lining off Lynn's throat and had splattered onto Salmamandra. Eyes and hands, Lynn thought. Please try to cover your face or my mouth.

Lynn was no chemist, but she had a rudimentary understanding of heat transfer just by nature of her powers. Best Lynn could figure, they had a nice little bubble of superheated steam around them that wasn't going anywhere, and was keeping the two of them nice and warm and toasty. Lynn was firing as much of her energy as she could into Salamandra, and as close as they were, this bitch had to be working overtime to be taking it all. Lynn knew she could not maintain this for very much longer, but if her gamble - her only real shot at winning - was to work, she wouldn't have to. She didn't know how efficient the older woman's powers were, but what felt to Lynn like thirty gallons of boiling vomit had to put a dent in her capacity. Lynn was fully aware that trying to super-charge her opponent to the point of combusting was not, perhaps, the soundest strategy, but if Lynn had been committed to the soundest strategy she would have walked out with Natalie and gotten clear.

It's not every day you get to throw up on a childhood icon. Let alone a murderer. Let alone whatever Salamandra would've been if she'd taken Archie.

Lynn had hoped she could keep a lid on the rather explosive mixture of adrenaline and a full stomach until Archie had come out to play, thinking that even the lizard's scales couldn't take liquid that hot, but that had not panned out. Now it just meant she'd have to go find a real big stick to beat his ass with once she finished up Salamandra - or so she told herself. Lynn tried to gather her strength to break free from Salamandra, but she was stunned for just a moment - there is physiologically just about no way to deal with projectile vomiting and getting your nose broken within five seconds and stay in fighting shape throughout. Lynn shook her head (a terrible idea - her nose split open with pain once again) and tried to gather herself, but she knew Salamandra's next hit was coming. She tensed, readying for the blow - either my nose or my snatch, I'm guessing.

"You still hungry now, bitch?" Lynn spat, a thick clot of superheated blood splattering onto what pitiful shreds remained of the older woman's clothes. She gasped for air. How much oxygen are we burning? Lynn wondered vaguely. The two of them were causing some serious damage to this place, and one way or the other, it couldn't last much longer. Anytime now, Gennedy, you worthless fucking fascist, anytime now.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Cordelia Lynn Holmes was no one's fool, although she certainly felt like one for a brief moment.

There were a fair number of skills that Lynn had acquired that are worth mentioning here. Firstly, Lynn had learned a long time ago the very valuable and difficult lesson that comes from getting punched in the face, really hard. It sucks. It's unpleasant. Your head spins, your ears ring, your thoughts scatter like the employees of this Chinese restaurant when Salamandra walked in.

But you also learn you aren't made of glass. When you can piece yourself back together from anything short of an atom bomb given enough time and calories, doubly so. If it was going to have killed you, it would have done it then and there, Lynn always figured. So drop an f-bomb and keep swinging.

Second, Lynn had learned how to get her ass kicked before. This is a rarer brand of wisdom. Most people can take a punch, but few people can take an absolute ass-beating. The deep, primordial knowledge of knowing that someone has more power than you and can do whatever they want to you is harrowing. If this was someone's initiation into the ass-beaten community, they may have panicked, or screamed, or shut down entirely. Curling up on the ground and trying to take it was not the most unreasonable of responses.

However, Lynn had spent a pretty mean stint in parahuman juvy, where damn near everyone was bigger than her and got real tired of the shit that came out of her mouth. With Spoon's favorite kind of necklace on, there wasn't much Lynn could do but grind her teeth together and take it. Lynn had gotten the shit beaten out of her more times than she could remember.

Salamandra was just the bitch who elbowed her in the face this week.

Now, Lynn would be the first to admit that she had not expected whatever judo bullshit Sally had pulled on her, and Lynn would probably go further to describe martial arts as a whole as "some pussy stuff you do when you can't really fight". However, Lynn also had enough pain tolerance and punched-in-the-face discipline to know that wouldn't help her. Lynn also had known Salamandra had fire powers, but not whatever specifics she was packing. Lynn was a bit too busy trying to put this bitch down to stop and really contemplate all the possibilities there. So, Lynn all in all would say Salamandra was a dirt underhanded bitch, which she would perhaps have anticipated better had she not rushed in headlong. And in all fairness, her last fight ended when she set off a DIY nuclear warhead in a kitchen, which was as close to underhanded as it got. Secondly, Lynn felt the brief jolt of fear from Sal reaching out and grabbing her - which shut down about Plans A through Y that Lynn had cooked up for most fights, and let it push her harder. Lynn's jaw hurt, but she'd been hit worse, and knew that if you slowed down to think about it, you just got hit again. Lynn knew the next hit was coming, and didn't care when it came. The flip side, Lynn thought, Is she can't hurt me with heat either.

Lynn's stomach cramped for a brief moment, and the back part of Lynn's mind - the part that wasn't getting her ass beat, took very careful note of that, as well as the glimpse of Archie starting to stretch out, sitting perfectly still. Shot clock's on, Lynn thought to herself. It would've been regardless. The corpse outside would've come in or something. Lynn was burning pretty intensely - not as hot as she could maximally go, but Lynn was looking to kill this bitch.

There were a few minor problems with that. For starters, Lynn could feel her heat being wicked away about the time the sprinklers above exploded with the harsh shrill of the fire alarm. Water rained down around them and sizzled off her and Salamandra alike. She didn't know if it was going to be more of a detriment to her or to the would-be rapist, but Lynn figured at the rate her day had been going, it was safe to assume the former. Second, she was still currently on the floor, which began to melt as Lynn crashed down onto it. Not one to sit still, she was already rolling as Salamandra brought her foot down. Once you got on the ground, you were dead. Everyone could kick your teeth out, and even though Lynn wouldn't have known the fighting terms for it, she knew you didn't have leverage or options. Staying off the ground was one of the first things she'd learned from the academy of running her mouth too much. One of the few advantages of being Lynn's size was that she was a lot quicker than most of the people she fought. Salamandra would probably smoke her on any given four hundred meter sprint with those long legs, and could out-wrestle her for days, but an extra step or two for her was more time than a step or two for Lynn. It was clear Salamandra knew more fighting techniques than Lynn, but Lynn was no stranger to a fistfight. She kept her cool as her body reached the sort of temperatures you need for blast furnaces. As Salamandra's foot came down Lynn was up in a crouch and dodging the blow, half a second ahead of her. When Lynn got hit, which was frequently, she kept moving. You still got hit that way, but not as badly. As Lynn pulled herself up she braced herself for the next hit, letting the pain drive her on. Lynn had fully expected not exactly this, but the Promise to try and take her out. She didn't know what Salamandra's angle was, but Lynn was fighting for her life, and she was ready.

There was a quick, adrenaline-frenzied whirlwind of thoughts. Cramp. Cramp. She's not fazed by the heat. She's glowing. That's something, I can do something with that. I'm at waist height. Sprinklers. Smoke. I'm below her - smoke in her eyes. Archie. Keaton. Clothes. Lynn grunted and flared as much as she could, forcing another blast of acrid smoke from her clothing up directly above her - where Salamandra was looking down. She may have been able to eat Lynn's fire, but Lynn had yet to meet someone who didn't gag at a cloud of burnt polyester. The corona of heat around Lynn brightened even as it shrunk, devoured by Salamandra and the dowsing sprinklers. Lynn's skin glowed like burning coals, shimmering across more and more of her bare skin, as most of her jeans had burnt away and her shoes were becoming a melted, runny mess. The phoenix across Lynn's back danced with the blues and reds and golds of her hair, and might have been beautiful if she wasn't about to die.

Lynn didn't know to what degree Salamandra was sapping away her strength. Keaton had shouted she was absorbing her heat, which was curious. Just the heat. Okay, we can work with that. Lynn hoped Keaton was running to grab a crowbar and knock Archie out while he was still transforming, but that seemed to not be her plan. Best Lynn could figure, he was completely out of it while he was shapeshifting, and while she didn't enjoy the idea of giving Archie brain damage, it seemed like the most surefire way of keeping the lizard from coming out. I could knock him out with smoke, Lynn thought, If I wasn't having to deal with this bitch. Without her power, Lynn was only as strong as all ninety-five pounds of her would allow for, which lost to this five foot eight, hundred eighty pound sack of human garbage every time. She could still feel that energy running through her, but it was all getting eaten by her as soon as it ignited along the surface. Fortunately, Lynn didn't need to have all her strength for the half-baked plan she had in mind. She needed maybe fifteen seconds, and one good window, and then she was going to go put the lizard to sleep for the second time. Lynn's jaw screamed with pain, but she forced it down. She could spit out her teeth when this was over. I think it's about even, Lynn thought. Lynn figured she'd have the upper hand on strength if she could shut down her absorption, somehow, but at least they were roughly square. That was more than Lynn was used to. More than the fucking lizard gave me, at least.

There was one other thing Lynn was pretty sure would work, because it had worked on literally everyone Lynn had ever met. Lynn, Salamandra's left leg beside her, shifted her weight for a split second before throwing as much force as she could into a punch at her target, a foot away and off-guard from Keaton's shout.

Salamandra's groin.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Cordelia Lynn Holmes was a great many things, but wise enough to avoid taking the bait was most assuredly not one of them.

Since Lynn had come on-board the Promise, she'd had a noose around her neck just loose enough to let her breath. Strapped and collared on the flight. Bound to a bed and told she wasn't medically clear to leave. Detained for something she wasn't remotely involved in by the sort of security force Lynn could only assume was literally making a game of seeing how far they could fit their heads up their own asses rather than stop these freakshows. She couldn't knock Natalie's teeth out for narc'ing on them, she couldn't slap Amelia for coming and talking to her at the cafeteria, and she couldn't knee Archie in the groin for picking flowers for every bitch who looked at him twice on this station. Up until juvy, Lynn had not ever dealt with that shit. If you insulted her, Lynn made a diss track. If you slapped her, Lynn punched back. And if you punched her, Lynn burned your fucking world down.

Lynn was five feet closer to Salamandra before she made her feet stop moving. "Keaton get the fuck out before I glass this bitch," Lynn spat out, some back corner of her mind that was desperately trying to hold back the rest, like a child trying to stop the ocean from demolishing his sand castle. And a kid was what Salamandra had made her fucking feel like. You were the one, Lynn wanted to scream, if the deep down parts, the Che parts and the Lucy parts and the cold parts, could even admit it, You were the one that was never fucking afraid. Lynn was Salamandra when she was getting beat in, or beaten by the six foot two hundred pound bitches in juvy, powerless and frail as any other hundred pound girl, curled on the floor. Lynn was Salamandra when they'd made her burn. When they'd - when they'd laughed. You didn't laugh at someone who wasn't your bitch. And Cordelia Lynn Holmes was not anyone's fucking bitch.

Not ever again.

"You Nelson Mandela sounding fuck," Lynn said back. She'd taken her hoodie off, sometime, she wasn't sure when. Lynn's hair was white, her eyes burning to match, and around her the air shimmered and broiled, the bottom of her shoes just barely starting to run out onto the floor. Where Lynn's knuckles split as she clenched them tight, steam rolled from the cuts as her superheated blood met whatever cool air was left around her. Visibly, the food in her belly had already begun to shrink. "You belong in the pen. You're Gennedy's little bitch."

Lynn spared one moment to glance at Archie, curled on the floor, grasping at his knee. Get the fuck up, Boats, Lynn thought. I -

Salamandra's next words cut through Lynn's thoughts.

She wanted a date. Archie was sixteen, seventeen?

He hadn't had any fuck-ups 'til tenth grade.

There was a man, older, screaming on the floor, his left hand smoking from the fingertips, the number Lynn had dialed in her right idly forgotten, she was gone -

"Lynn, they tried to - "

"They tried what? They tried fucking what?"

Lynn walked towards Salamandra. Ten feet. Nine. Eight. This fat bitch was probably nine, ten inches taller. Maybe eighty pounds. Lynn was going to make her eat her own fucking heart.

"Square up." Lynn hissed, hands rising to her jaw. Along the knuckles, Lynn's skin burned bright enough to hurt the eyes, and her tanktop burned and split where it came in contact with her skin, the acrid smell trailing off her. Where Lynn exhaled, there was a brief flicker of blue flame that traced her breath.

The Fire Worms were a bunch of pussies anyways, and the West Coast had shitty rap.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Lynn learned several things over the course of their brief dinner. The first was that her hunch about Archie not having any kind of a criminal past was backed up by his own admission - she didn't know anybody from her neck of the woods who had made it to tenth grade, let alone gotten there with a squeaky clean attendance record. Lynn did not enjoy admitting that there was the slim chance Archie didn't have some angle on this whole operation - so she didn't. There were still too many pieces missing from the puzzle for Lynn to look at the back of the box and say it was decisively a pic of Archie not being an asshole deep down. With enough time, the skeletons in everyone's closet started to rattle, and Lynn wasn't going to assume he didn't have a graveyard back there just because he had a drawl and a puppy dog smile. So what got you strapped down on their rocketship, Boat Farmer? Lynn wondered. She figured there was a good chance the lizard killed somebody, but Archie seemed remarkably well-adjusted if that was the case. Who knows, though, Lynn thought. Didn't Dahmer work at a suicide hotline or something? Keaton proved herself to be what Lynn had suspected as well. Smart. Lynn had a feeling that Keaton wasn't looking to make any enemies, but she wasn't looking to make any friends, either. What Lynn figured by that was that Keaton was willing to lie to the authorities insomuch as she could do it with her ass covered, which Lynn found partially annoying, but respected. At the very least, she wasn't still in the police station, like a certain black plague carrying, steel trap triggering rat that Lynn could think of.

Then Lynn learned she was right about Natalie too. You didn't tell the truth, you snake, Lynn wanted to scream. The truth is what they throw at you in the courtroom when you can't afford a good attorney. The truth is what you think you saw and what you told them in holding. There was no truth on the Promise. If they had so many cameras and a machine listening to their words, Lynn had no doubts they had all the truth they needed. Lynn reckoned this one would go marching to the electric chair telling herself it was just a pretty lightshow. Lynn had another, more fitting lightshow in mind, but there was no sense in escalating things here. Dumb as she may be, she's a deterrent, Lynn thought. Like a big, dumb, cop-loving nuke. It was just as likely to go off and kill her, Lynn figured, but whatever the Promise had up its sleeve was a little bit slower to go off with the two trigger-happy juggernauts at her side. Not, to clarify, to say that Lynn was scared of anyone or anything. She just had business to settle, and Natalie had earned the covetous position of being further down the list than she was the previous day.

The waitress bringing food helped settle things tremendously. Again, Lynn started when Archie reached over her for a moment, but her shoulders came back down after only a second. Old habits. Lynn set to devouring everything that was put before her, eating with no semblance of grace or manners. In lock-up, they had maybe twenty minutes total to eat, including waiting in line to get food. Beforehand, Lynn had not been so culinarily deprived as Natalie, but she'd been in the same ballpark. Fast food was a bit of a fancy splurge out for her, and Lynn was leaning into the mentality that any given meal might be the last, whenever Gennedy decided to punch her ticket. So, she figured a pound and a half of Chinese food in ten minutes wasn't the worst way to go. Besides that, Lynn was eager to put some more meat on her bones. Before yesterday, Lynn had entertained the notion she might actually gain some weight and maybe manage to squeeze another inch or two out of her spine here on the Promise, but she didn't imagine she'd be around long enough for that to happen now. Still, Lynn's furnace went through a lot of coal. Better to keep it fed.

Lynn stopped eating when she saw Salamandra walk through the front door - the very reason Lynn had sat with her back to the exit (much as the clatter behind her had pissed her off). Lynn's mind went whirring and processing to place a name to a face. Wasn't she locked up? Lynn thought. Che had mentioned something about her, and for a heartbeat Lynn wasn't in a Chinese restaurant, she was sitting on the floor beside an easy chair held together by duct tape and cigarette-burn-scars, Che's dark eyes staring ahead, talking to himself more than her, with Lynn clinging to his every word. "We could be like the Fire Worms, I mean really put a fucking name out there. They want to kick me out? Fine. Don't fucking need them. Don't fucking need any of them". He swirled a bottle of beer in his left hand, the back of his right hand held to a busted lip, nursed on the cold of a ring.

"I could be a Fire Worm," Lynn said. The others couldn't, she knew, but she could, she could be firepower enough for all of them if she had to. She looked down at her arm, bruised black by the wrist, but her tattoo was starting to come in, she thought, and -

"Yeah," Che had said, staring ahead. He took another drink. "Salamandra knows what the fuck she's doing. A dozen like her and I could run this fucking city."

Lynn looked down at the side of the chair, resting a short finger against the cloth, letting her touch burn a hole in the side -

"Look alive," Lynn muttered under her breath. Lynn looked outside and saw - Christ. Her nose wrinkled instinctively. Lynn had seen some shit before, but something like that was not anything anyone could see and reasonably not take a second to process. Still, there'd be time to throw up about it later (a real possibility, Lynn thought, as the rapidly-devoured meals sat swirling in her stomach). Lynn started to say they needed to shut the fuck up and stay seated, but everyone flipped at the exact same moment. Spoons was staring past Salamandra - don't fucking stare at her, Spoons, that's asking to get your ass kicked - into the spirit world and Archie had gotten up, tried to run away, and gotten caught by her. Yeah, I believe you made it to tenth grade without any fuck-ups. Clearly nobody ever beat you up if that's how you run away. She roasted him a bit but nothing serious, Lynn thought. Archie would be fine if he didn't do anything dumb, like becoming a giant lizard.

Lynn's mind, at that moment, had a great deal to consider in a very short amount of time. Lynn, for all of her rationalizing and paranoid thinking, was not really much of a thinker. She was more instinctual. She could play the game and try to out-fox when she had to, but that was a means to an end. Lynn trusted her gut. Figuring out the fifteen ways in which Gennedy had likely bugged her apartment was the sort of rationalism built over the foundation of he's going to hurt you and not any kind of clearly-articulated thesis Lynn could put together. So Lynn glanced over Salamandra and tried to piece together the first reaction she could have based off the clusterfuck that ewnt down.

One. Guy outside. Nasty. Tough. Don't want to tussle with that. Killer. Could probably take him. Why bother?

Two. Works with Salamandra. She putting out hits on innocents now? Didn't seem like her style.

Three. She's in scrubs. Salamandra either broke out dressed as a nurse or something's fishy there. No fucking MD's for her in LA.

Four. Archie's going to get actually killed if he goes lizard. That means everybody else too, and Spoons is just going to make things worse.

Five. That hit from the Promise is coming, and this sure as hell looks like it.

Five point five. Salamandra isn't the type to do anybody's dirty work, I don't think. Maybe she'd kill some kids, but I don't know if she'd do it because the jailers told her to. Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn't explain those scrubs.

Six. If this is a breakout, I want the fuck in.

"Salamandra," Lynn said. She stayed seated in front of her food, hands on the table. Lynn was perfectly willing to throw down with her, although even in the most delusional corner of her mind, Lynn didn't favor their chances. Lynn had ridden with some tough crowds, and gotten through more than a few tough scrapes, but she knew Salamandra was a league above. Still, there was four of them and one of her. Two. There's whatever the fuck R.L. Stine motherfucker is outside. No, she said them. There's more. Lynn kept her cool, trying to keep an ear out for anything behind them other the panicked running of the restaurant staff. I'm about to blow a hole in another kitchen, aren't I? "Some of us are here under the needle too. Maybe we want in if there's something going on, if we know what it is." Lynn rolled her sleeves up, baring her tattoos. "So if you're looking for company, maybe I'll buy dinner."

There was enough distance that, if Salamandra wanted to whip her ass for that, Lynn could scramble back. If she snapped Archie's neck in retribution, not much Lynn could've done anyway. She was a bit comfortable playing with Archie as a hostage, because she figured in a worst case scenario, he went croc and Lynn could scamper away in the chaos. Some part of her, though, seemed to twist over. Good enough to eat? Lynn turned to Keaton and tried to shoot her a knowing glance. What the fuck is going on here, Denim? was mixed with Thanks for not doing any dumb shit like Spoons and Boat Farmer Before turning her eyes back towards Salamandra but pointedly not directly in her eyes. "Don't mind her," Lynn said, gesturing to Spoons. "She was just on her way out." Lynn figured Spoons could handle herself outside - she could probably bitchslap the Skull Guy back to Earth if she had to - but in here she was going to tweak out and piss Salamandra off. That meant Archie tweaking out, which meant everybody died. If I die, nobody finds out about this shit, and the kids keep getting the needle. Plus, maybe Salamandra was onto something here. If she was a prisoner, Lynn had a feeling she wasn't getting anything close to due process. Lynn couldn't really fault a sister for a little jailbreak. Now, the murdering random women on the street, that did admittedly push Lynn a little closer to the "fuck this bitch and anyone who looks like her" side of things, but Lynn was enough on the fence to hear her out, should Salamandra be in a talking mood - and Lynn figured after five years in lockup, she just might be.

And if one thing was for sure, if Gennedy wasn't behind this, the clumsiest of hits, she was going to rotisserie cook his ass for being incompetent enough to let this happen again.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Archie had seemed to know where he was going, which Lynn wondered if that was some subset of his powers or something. Don't lizards have like internal compasses and shit? Lynn thought. Maybe that was birds. Lynn studied him from behind as he walked in and got a table, smiling at the hostess. No, wait, he just had time to walk around when I was in the hospital. Lynn frowned, making the scar across her nose deepen a bit. I don't like this place. It was big and open and Archie had gotten them a booth in the middle of the restaurant, which Lynn grimaced at. She sat on his side - figuring it was probably wise not to sit next to Natalie, all things considered - halfway off the booth seat, with her back pressed up against it. She was situated where she could see the restaurant's entrance from where she sat, although the flurry of commotion from behind her made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

This white guy then brought tea, which made Lynn blink. She had never had hot tea. The guy reached across her to put it down before Archie and Lynn visibly tensed for a minute before unclenching her jaw and exhaling slowly. It's different here. Lynn grabbed her hot tea after Archie passed it to her, muttering a thanks as she looked down into the liquid. It stayed boiling hot in her hands, which didn't bother her, but Lynn had no idea if that would affect the flavor or whatever. She sipped on it and wrinkled her nose. Ugh. Lynn sat it down but kept a hand near it, her small fingers drumming the table. Archie said thanks for looking out for him, and Lynn glanced back at him for a moment, taking her eyes off the door. Lynn had two simultaneous thoughts, each furiously vying for her attention: He stayed with the snitch and Archie is not Che. Lynn opened her mouth and closed it. "Yeah," she said back, lamely even to her. She didn't know what to say to shit like that. Lynn wasn't watching out for them, not really. If they got taken down, Lynn's ass was as good as dead. And she figured the clock was already ticking - especially with Amelia taking her sweet, sweet time back in the station - but Lynn wasn't one to roll over and die. Lynn looked up at Keaton to ask how her powers worked but closed her mouth. Cell phones. Cara's listening. Lynn chewed on her lip as she opened up the menu, not recognizing or knowing how to pronounce anything on the menu. Isn't there General Tso's or some shit? Lynn wondered. What was a dim sum? She didn't really care. She was real hungry, and the bright side to realizing the clock was ticking was that she didn't need to worry about conserving credits. Lynn for a moment considered telling them to bring out enough food for one day in Beijing and that she'd foot the bill, but decided against it.

Archie asked them how the interview went, which did admittedly pique Lynn's interest. Spoons is about to start sweating out some of those steroids, Lynn thought, her dancing fingers an inch away from her teacup, looking back over at the two of them. Now this was where the game got dangerous. They were listening. They had to be. Or maybe being followed or something. The oh-so-friendly AI peeking out around every corner. No way. If Lynn even had a cell phone, she would've snapped it in half the minute she heard that robot chatter. But Gennedy had admitted it had blind spots. Unless he's really setting us up, Lynn thought, They've got blind spots in the woods. Could the whole thing have been charades? Lynn gave it a moment's thought. Maybe the heartless Gen Man was letting them go so they'd go off in the woods, where it was "camera-free", and get caught plotting. It was possible. But Lynn didn't see the point. If they wanted to pin a case on her, they could just go ahead and do it. Not like she had a lawyer to defend herself. The boy was what swayed her. They've got that new puppy running around, nipping at their heels. No way he keeps his trap shut about that. "Interrogation," Lynn said. "Wouldn't give me a lawyer and bent a table in half to prove a point." Lynn took a drink of her tea just to feel something boiling hot rush down her throat. She had a sober feeling that a collar and the cold was coming soon. They already had that on tape in the room, so none of this was damning to Lynn. She figured there might be a chance of swaying a few of them with how fucked things were here - with Keaton, Lynn thought she might be able to chain together what was happening. Archie happens to flip out on the first day? There's a guy who sneaks onto Star Wars Alcatraz? And they carved up the fucking biology teacher worse than anyone I've seen. Lynn coughed on her tea for a second, remembering something she'd forgotten. Almost...worse. She put her cup down, wiping her mouth off with the back of her sleeve. "You know. The way you're supposed to treat kids. Because they have nobody to fucking defend them." Lynn shook her head, her tea bubbling as she gripped it in her hand, staring down at the liquid, eyes off the door for a moment. "Gennedy. What a fuckin' traitor."

Lynn let her eyes flicker between them. If Natalie had narc'ed, she'd get proper justice for it at some point, but Lynn had to admit that the bubbling rage down in her stomach for Spoons spoon-feeding the feds all they needed to give Lynn the needle was not the biggest problem on their hands. This shit was like, institutional. Even if Lynn rotisserie'd Spoons to prove a point, there'd be another Spoons tomorrow. Because nobody got it. They didn't get it. They can do whatever they want to us. Archie sat next to her, a full foot taller than her. He was next on the chopping block, or maybe Spoons. Tough call. Keaton would probably be able to squirrel away if they believed she knew nothing, which was pretty unlikely. She was like the AskJeeves of people. In juvy, Lynn would've been gunning for her from the get-go. Keaton was like the ultimate human narc, but Lynn's gut told her Keaton hadn't said anything. She'd been playing it close to her chest in the station. Amelia screamed flight risk if ever there was one. If it was her, she'd trigger the lizard, set him up for some carnage they wanted to cause anyway, and then give him the needle in the name of public safety. He'd probably take her or Spoons in the process. Then it was easy to scramble enough evidence to kangaroo court the others. Easy. More needles than the trash can at a methadone clinic. Tick tock, drip drop, they all fall down.

The waiter came back by and Lynn pointed at like three separate dishes, entirely unsure of what they were, but figured there'd be at least one decent thing amongst them. She didn't particularly care what she ate, for once.

And the whole time, there was a butcher running around. She thought of the girl in the dress. She would've smiled back at Lucy. Lynn chewed on her lip. But Gennedy could break the smile off her face and never go to court.