Luminous Beings

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

If you need help with powers/powers limitations feel free to reach out. It is usually better to err on the side of more limitations. That also makes it more creative/a better challenge.

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

Lynn

They wouldn't fucking get it. They wouldn't fucking get it. She'd been set up. She'd been set up again. She'd known coming into this it was a terrible idea and she let Keaton talk her into it. How foolish had she been to think Keaton was bound so tightly to her that it was smarter to keep her mouth shut than narc? I have to get clear and ditch this doll, Lynn thought, her mind feverishly trying to run through possibilities. It had to be the woods. She'd get out of range of the cameras and burn all the evidence. Lynn considered a brief foray into the bathrooms to dump her drugs, but at this point a handful of misappropriated anxiety medication wasn't going to save or damn her ass. You're still that stupid little girl who gets burned, Lynn cursed herself, rage almost to the point of tears boiling up inside her. You never fucking learn. Lynn fumbled, taking off her hoodie, red and noticeable as it was, cinching it around her waist. The black t-shirt underneath was from back home: it read Mike's BBQ.

And yet all her anger seemed to be hitting some kind of wall. Radvi had been surprised - really surprised. She'd seen a few too many shitty narc actors in her day to know when somebody was really surprised by the cops and when someone was trying to look surprised. But Anderson had called them all there, which didn't track. Had he brought Paw Patrol too? But why? Just to arrest her? I'll kill him, Lynn thought. He's sold out. She should've stayed and slugged his teeth out - but the more Lynn thought, the more that seemed to burn out as well. Archie had been starting to transform - so there's no way he could've expected those two. Could he have called the cops? Lynn's mind raced through all the avenues as she darted through the crowd, thankful once again God cursed her with her stupid little body. While she got pushed around, at least she was darting in-between open gaps in the crowd more easily. If Archie had called the cops, that still didn't track, because why would there just be one? No one else had reacted to the monochrome duo, which didn't track. Surely they would've been all over, unless -

Someone grabbed Lynn from behind and she turned to swing, to take one or two of them with her when they already stumbled away. It was Boat Farmer. He was cradling his hand, burned, she'd burned the hand, Megan curling it close to her. Lynn remembered that hand, the mark of the burn. She'd seen it...she'd seen it the very last day she saw Megan. "Christ, don't - you can't, you can't do that," Lynn said, moving over to her, pulling her sleeves up and grabbing the girl's arm through them.

"Ow! Ow, Lynn, it hurts, it - "

"I know, I know, you can't do that, okay? You can't...you can't sneak up on me. Not here."

Megan nodded, wincing and nodding her head. She was tough. They all were. Lynn glanced around, cursing to herself - but not aloud. She took Megan gently into the side alley, pooling up some snow in her hands and melting it with her breath and the radiant heat of her hands. She let the cold water drip over Megan's hands, the water a cooler touch of lukewarm by the time it touched the burned skin.

"That feels nice," Megan said, smiling.

The smile untwisted Lynn's stomach. "Good. I...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I don't...I don't mean to sometimes. It just..."

"I know." Megan nodded. "Che said to come get you. He said the deal was off."

Lynn gave her a nod, but inwardly cursed again. If there was no deal, that meant there was no hand-off for Lynn to intercept, which meant there was no fucking money that week. Lynn looked down at Megan, skinny, skinny as death, eyes wide and staring up at Lynn with her snow-water hand clutched to her chest. She rubbed at her eyes. A few more hours until the foster parents started to wonder. Enough time to get back across the city. Maybe. She could still lift a wallet, if she was lucky, or find...or find something. "Is your hand okay? I'll take you b-"

Lynn blinked. She was in the mall. Archie was hurt. Archie was hurt. She'd burned him. Christ. Get it together, Holmes, she said. You're fucking losing it. "No, no, no no no," Lynn murmured. Lynn lived in a somewhat constant state of being angry at God for dealing her such a shit hand in life, but moments like this brought it to bear. The fruit of the garden is poisoned, Che would sometimes say, and she never got what that shit meant until now. "Christ, I didn't...you came up and...." the doll and getting clear had melted out of Lynn's mind. She took a step forward and stopped, biting her lip. You burn everything, you stupid girl. Lynn reached her hand back and closed her eyes, taking deep, deep breaths. Her hair and eyes slowly settled down to a red. It was a brighter shade than any hair that didn't come out of a bottle, but the flickering glow that normally danced across it was scarcely noticeable. "You - are you okay, Archie? Shit. Fuck. I'm sorry, I didn't..." Damn those black and white bastards. Damn them. Damn Gennedy and this whole station. Lynn glanced around. It was always a sick joke nobody could kill her without her body stitching it up, but she could never fix anything she fucked up. "Here - you need...you need to run water over that. I..." Lynn's voice trailed off, the words jumbled in her head and throat. I'm sorry I thought you set me up, you big dumb puppy, you don't get how fucked we all are, I'm sorry, Lynn wanted to say, to just blurt at once and rip the band-aid off, but she couldn't stop looking at his hand, and then his face.

He had the same look he'd had when Salamandra dragged him across the floor.

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

Lynn

Bullshit, Lynn thought, eyeing New Girl. A question about the food? The fuck? 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. Something's up. 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 - flowers - 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. It was a set-up, it was a fucking set-up! 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 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!” - 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. How long have you just been waiting around this station? How many kids have you watched get dragged into their little holding cells?

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 in your jurisdiction to save three hundred people last month? Or - " 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? 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. It's not worth it. It's not worth it.

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 - four people - 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. Either Gennedy lied to me, or he's got leaks on the inside. "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." Let 'em chew on that for a minute. Lynn turned and kept walking, fingers curled into her hoodie pockets. Keaton can stay and ask questions if she wants, Lynn fumed, 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.

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

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

Lynn

Keaton was there with pretzels, making Lynn's mind run through its typical thousand-thoughts-a-second scurry to make sense of things. Lynn had missed her - how? Was Keaton fucking with her? And offering her the pretzels was - well, Lynn wasn't entirely sure what to make of that. You had to be careful with stuff with like that. Now, Lynn owed Keaton. It was small. It was a favor. But nobody ever starts off putting the house down as collateral. You get trapped and tangled in the little stuff, and then suddenly someone needs a favor, and now there's no way out, and they've got the leverage. Was that Keaton's move? As much sense as it made to the cold part of Lynn's mind, the part that did sit-ups on a concrete floor to pass the time in juvy and swapped cigarettes with street rats, sitting on a curb, she couldn't quite square it to Keaton. Keaton had made a good point, in that now they had to show their faces. As Lynn grabbed the flickering, fiery part of her that said to get the fuck out of here, that Radvi was bad news, that there was a doll heavier than Spoons' psych dossier weighing in her backpack, but Keaton was right. She had to be cold as icewater. They'd already been spotted, thanks to Spoons, and if they scurried now, it looked guilty as all hell. Lynn hated she hadn't considered that. There's different rules here, and if I don't learn them they'll be scratching my arm with the needle looking for a vein here soon.

She knows how to play me too, damnit, Lynn thought. "Get a leg up on the cops" was a pretty tantalizing offer to Lynn, prompting a smirk at the corner of her chapped lips. And beyond all that - which Lynn was not dismissing, to clarify - Keaton had gotten her the pretzels. The line was some five minutes long. So when Lynn had split, she'd....gotten in line to get some pretzels. Almost immediately. It was a conscious, deliberate choice to acquire these pretzels. Just because Lynn mentioned them. Lynn could not recall any instance of generosity that would have merited buying these pretzels in return. Lynn did not like the idea of her destiny being chained to anyone else's - not again - and was all too aware of the hundred ways Keaton could stab her in the back. This bitch could be walking me over now to set me up, Lynn thought. She tells Radvi to check my bag and it's all over. That was what Lynn would do, if she had to knock a chess piece off the board. I'd tell him that I was forcing her to help, that I said I threatened her. And the other snakes would come slithering out the grass to say that I had, that I'd threatened them before. It made sense. For a moment, it clenched her fist in her pocket, and made her want to knock the pretzels out of Keaton's hand and walk away.

Instead Lynn took a deep breath (her hair and eyes glowed as if someone had fanned a campfire) and grabbed the pretzels. Besides, if that happens, I will burn Keaton's face so badly she'll have to wear one of those Vader suits to get someone to fuck her. They'll have to do it through those breathing tube holes or whatever.

They were warm, and salty, and Keaton had balled out. She'd gotten like every kind in there. This was the shit. This was pretty much the best food option you could get a mall, in Lynn's years of skulking around shopping malls looking for wallets that needed reappropriating. Sbarro would give you some severe problems thirty to forty five minutes after consumption, Panda Express was cold like forty percent of the time, but pretzels were steady. They were there. There was the cinnamon kind - Lynn's favorite - and then regular pretzel bites, and the hot dog ones, which were good for protein and stuff Lynn figured. Lynn glanced up at Keaton, chewing on her lip. Sometimes, when Keaton did stuff like this, or when Keaton asked Lynn how her classes were or they had their chats, it...Lynn felt dumb. Or small. Like Keaton was playing her. Like Keaton had figured something out about her. It made Lynn feel uneasy, but what Keaton had said made sense. She's fucked at this point if it goes south, Lynn said. Even if she pulls some Judas shit, she's going down too. She has to know that. Lynn did not know if she could trust Keaton - actually, she did. She knew she couldn't. But she could trust Keaton to do what was smart for her, which was continuing to work with Lynn for the time being. Even telling Lynn she was done and ducking out was smarter than snitching.

Lynn's stomach rumbled. "Thanks, Keaton," Lynn said, looking down at the pretzel bucket. A vague part of Lynn wondered when the last time someone had bought something for her was. Flowers.The same part was thinking maybe after she stayed with the group only as long as was strictly warranted, she could still go grab some more clothes or something. Just for the excuse. She had to look like the sort of square who shopped at a mall to keep her cover. Lynn missed the days when they just told her whose ass she had to go beat and not getting seen by the cops was the only important part. Christ, Lynn. One pretzel and you're standing here missing Che. Get your shit together. "I'll get you back sometime," she added quickly, cementing that this debt was recognized and Lynn was good for her word to repay it, and then Lynn was not one to be strung along unawares by this sort of thing, like the dumb fish who took a free cigarette on the first day of lockup. Lynn bit into one of the pretzels. It was likely due in a large degree to Lynn's presence, but the pretzels were perfectly warm. "Damn these are good," Lynn said, chewing. "You want some?" she offered the bucket to her.

"Let's go deal with their bullshit, I guess," Lynn said, chewing another pretzel bite. "Spoons is probably going to try and slap new girl until she's down to a 4 or 5 out of ten - " that'll take a while " - so at least we'll get a show. I'm not talking to the cop more than I have to. And neither should you." she swallowed. "At least trust me on that shit, there's nothing good from that. He's as gen one as fucking Bulbasaur - " (Lynn had never had the money for any of the newer games, as it were) - "and as crooked as Gennedy." Lynn remembered seeing him from the precinct. She had a good eye for faces. I still need to beat the ass of that Promise guy who strapped me down on the rocket up. "I say we get Spoons talking about her feelings or something or have Archie talk about boats or whatever and run him off as soon as possible. I don't want to linger here." Lynn shook her head and chewed another pretzel. "Either Gennedy's attack dog starts sniffing - and I'm on probation, remember - or another freak thing happens and one of those two flips. I don't think - " Lynn started to say she didn't think it was a coincidence that Archie's freakouts kept happening, that someone was trying to use a chainsaw to do heart surgery on the Promise, to put out a hit and kill everyone the mark ever knew just to be on the safe side, but that wasn't wise to say aloud. Not now. "Fuck." Lynn glanced up at Keaton, a look that was a mixture of annoyance and respect across her features, a few blue hairs free from the lazy ponytail Lynn had pinned back. "The shit you talk me into, Keaton. Damnit. Let's get this over with."

Until the end of her days, Lynn would still have difficulty believing that she voluntarily approached a cop at a sketch-as-hell meetup, one which had a documented narc also on the guest list, in the sort of place where they could have officers waiting at every table to pounce. At least there's no clear shot, Lynn thought. Even if there's a nullifier I've got a chance at running. Lynn approached with Keaton, doing her best to project neutrality. She had a feeling Radvi would've heard of her interrogation, and beyond that, had no desire to really be polite to him on ideological grounds. Lynn looked at Radvi and saw a mountain of the dolls in her backpack, stacked six feet high and wearing a shiny uniform. If she'd come blowing smoke up his ass, he would've known she was up to something. Beyond buying Xanax in the woods. Still, she wasn't going to piss him off needlessly and get arrested on whatever Mussolini-ass law Gennedy had put into place around here. She looked at all of them, sizing them up. Spoons looked like she needed a spoonful of something to calm her down. She hadn't seeen Boat Farmer in a bit. He looked good, Lynn thought and promptly dismissed, because what did that have to do with anything.He looked like he was about to have a panic attack, and all Lynn's instincts told her to bolt. It's a set-up and he knows it, Lynn thought, New girl's a nullifer. Just fucking run. Burn a hole through the cop's chest, see if you can take her out before she takes you. That was how it was. You had to get them before they got you. New Girl looked housebroken, too. She could see it in her stance. She was relaxed around Radvi. That took years. Were you relaxed when they fucked up, and three hundred people died?

Lynn would've considered it. But Keaton was next to her, and something about that made Lynn's runaway thoughts run a little slower, and Lynn told herself, more importantly, she was the only one that could get those kids out. If she roasted this guy today, a dozen little girls died tomorrow, needles in their arms and collars on their neck.

She looked at New Girl. New Girl looked nice. Annoyingly. Natalie did too. Something in Lynn that did not often surface - Lynn's concerns were normally survival, food, and maintaining her respect - came bubbling up. It was the uncomfortable knowledge that she was the ugliest motherfucker at this table. None of the other girl had scars or tattoos - maybe Spoons had some scars, but the kind people pitied and not the kind that made them look away from you. She was short, too, ten inches shorter than Archie and even further from Radvi. Lynn shifted her weight, eating a pretzel and thankful for the bagginess of her hoodie, that a men's XL masked the ribs poking Lynn's pale skin. Spoons had stopped crying long enough to put on perfect makeup. Lynn had never really - well she didn't have a, or - she didn't know...makeup was dumb. It was for people who couldn't accept they were ugly. Lynn ate another pretzel, forcing her heart rate to go down. At the very least, Lynn had practice with a poker face. She'd had to bite her tongue a lot of times in juvy to keep from getting her ass beat, staring down any number of people she'd rather throttle than thank. The cinnamon pretzels helped.

"'Sup." Lynn said, chewing. She wasn't going to introduce herself to New Girl or Paw Patrol. Lynn took a quiet, petty level of enjoyment in that.

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

Lynn and Natalie

Lynn blinked, a jolt of annoyance passing over her before she even looked up to see who it was. If it were possible for a scowl to scowl, the ensuing expression would’ve been named after Lynn’s face in that moment. Spoons was there, looking put-together in her own trainwreck way. She’d grown her hair out and there was still the bags under her eyes - Lynn wondered if they were the sort that never really went away, that after a certain number of sleepless nights, they just wouldn’t come back - but she had everything else put together well. She looked put together. Why? Lynn thought. It roiled her, twisting that feeling in her gut she could not place but didn’t like. It was the Che feeling. Sorta. Some days.

“Spoons,” Lynn said idly, rolling the candle over in her hands. “Although, I guess if I look like a stalker, it means I’m not a good one.” Lynn considered something a bit more barbed in response - she didn’t particularly appreciate Natalie’s jab, but wasn’t about to start any shit. She had too much else going on at the moment. Lynn said nothing more, waiting to see what Natalie wanted to talk about.

”I...” Natalie trailed off. No. She felt she had to at least broach the subject. She suddenly looked apprehensive and sheepish, and more than a little sorrowful.”I saw your face that day, after the breakout. I don’t know what happened. It’s all hazy in my head, but...are you okay? I didn’t know when the right time to bring it up was, but I know that look. I know you...probably don’t want to talk about it. Maybe just forget I said anything.”

Lynn’s fingers dug into the candle, a faint shimmering heat dancing up around the candle wick. Lynn did not know what game Spoons was trying to play here. She had enough to deal with, what with Archie calling them to a brunch with one of Gennedy’s attack dogs, the fact she had evidence of the Promise’s crimes in her backpack, and just - everything else. Lynn looked up at Natalie, who seemed shivery and shaky. Was this a shakedown? Was she trying to blackmail her? Very few people had attempted to blackmail Lynn, for reasons obvious to most casual observers. Lynn didn’t think that was what she was going for her. Spoons would go and tell the cops what was going on before she tried to make a buck off Lynn herself. No, this was some sort of mind game. Lynn started to tell Natalie to fuck right off, but held her tongue. If I piss her off, she goes crying back to the rest of the Breakfast Club, and then the cop knows something up. Damn her. Damn this whole place. As she looked back down at the candle, keeping her heat steady, for a moment she thought her hands were glowing, burning like magma, like melted stars running down from under her rolled up sleeves. She blinked and they were scarred and pale. “The lizard smacked your head around too hard,” Lynn said calmly. “I’m fine. Just another fight.” Lynn kept her tone level, but her words were picked carefully. Nat had been the one to call the cops when they’d found that corpse - she may have suspected what happened with Salamandra, but since Gennedy hadn’t come knocking yet, she figured there was no proof. Lynn wasn’t about to give it to them. Lynn opened her mouth to say something more, a jab about Archie throwing her around, but the image of the lizard cradling Natalie and snarling at her flashed into her head and she shut her lips. Lynn smoothed the candle wax out and put it back on the shelf.

Natalie did notice Lynn stop and start talking a few times, and not looking very happy, but at the same time not exploding. Whether that was a conscious choice or something to do with Radvi, Nat couldn’t guess, but it was clear from her reply it was not something she had any intention of talking about. Nat scratched the back of her head and shrunk a little, eyes pointed down. ”Sorry. That’s been bothering me and I had to ask. Our first one on one conversation and I fuck it up, huh? Sorry...So….How have things been?”

Nat felt herself wincing after asking that.

Lynn walked through the store idly, needing some way to let loose her jitters. Lynn could be cold as icewater when she had to be, but this situation was eight different kinds of twitchy and Lynn had patience for none of them. “Yeah,” she said neutrally, trying once again to figure out Natalie’s angle on all this. If she asks me what my sign is, I’m going to tell her to grow a pair and just ask me out. This feels like speed-dating. “I mean, no ten foot tall lizard has tried to kill me in the last few weeks, so, you know. Decent.” Lynn did not particularly want to bare her heart to anyone, least of all Natalie. There was some angle here Lynn could not pin down, and she did not like it. She knows something, Lynn thought. She’s got some kind of power here and I don’t like it. Her gut nodded. “Been working. Going to classes every now and then.” Lynn tried to keep it shallow, letting her eyes glance back to the exit. Was Keaton coming to rescue her from this? Lynn didn’t know how you were supposed to have small talk with someone, least of all in this situation. She expected, just at the rate this day was going, for Archie to walk in with three more cops at any given moment. The sooner I can get clear of this place the better.

”Cool, cool,” Was Nat’s quiet reply. ”Same here, without the work...” Nat trailed off and let that conversation thread die a death. Instead she walked out the store, saw that Radvi was still with Archie and the other girl and groaned, before heading back into the store and stuffing her hands in her pockets. ”Probably not what you expect me to say given what I think you think of me, but I wish that guard would piss off. Wonder who the girl is, though. Never seen her before.”

Lynn raised an eyebrow. Spoons was pretty much spot on with that one. When did she start hating the cops? Lynn wondered. In the interrogation, maybe? Or just that guard specifically? Lynn couldn’t shake the feeling Natalie wanted something from her, that this was a slow subtle trick to wear her guard down and get her to let loose about something. “Agreed there,” Lynn said. “No idea who the girl is. She’s pretty, though.” There was no calculus to the last few words, and they seemed to stumble out Lynn’s lips before she realized. They were true. Lynn’s hair was shifting subtly from sunflower yellow to a bright orange, streaked with blue. “She’s no fish, though,” Lynn said, something she didn’t know until the words came out. The girl looked older than them - at least a bit older than Lynn, she wasn’t sure what it said on Spoon’s driver’s license - but she had that casual look to her, like she was home when all the rest of them looked like visitors. “Hope she minds her manners. Been a whole month, the lizard might be hungry.”

Lynn’s comment about the girl being pretty got an eyebrow raise from Nat, but she couldn’t say it wasn’t true. She was pretty. And she was sitting next to Archie. As much as Nat had tried really hard to not think about her feelings for Archie, she couldn’t deny that seeing a pretty girl sitting next to him and smiling made her feel...jealous? Was she jealous? Is this was jealousy felt like? She wanted to know who that girl was and what she was doing there, but she didn’t want this group reunion to happen while Radvi was there.

”I want to know who she is,” Natalie stated flatly. ”Is she with Radvi or with Archie?”

“Too young to be a cop,” Lynn said, feeling strangely as though she was the first time actually progressing a conversation with Natalie in a way she could comprehend. Not too late to make a necklace joke, though. If only I’d ducked into a jewelry store. “But probably old enough to be a narc. My money is she’s there with Boat Farmer.” The idea ruffled Lynn’s feathers a bit as well, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Archie, for his idiocy, like calling them to a meeting with a cop, seemed to Lynn like a decent person. And you still have those dead flowers in your room, don’t you, a voice nudged her, one with a lazy Argentine drawl. Lynn shook her head and grabbed a cheap candle and gave the employee some money, mainly to prove that, this once, she wasn’t stealing anything from anyone in the shopping mall. She didn’t even know what she’d need a candle for. “I only got a look at her for about three seconds, but I’d call daddy issues.” Lynn had seen leopard print shoes before, and usually not on well-adjusted individuals. At least, such was the trend in her old stomping grounds. “I’ll tell you that much.” Lynn was surprised she remembered so much of the girl’s outfit. Lynn normally had a sharp memory - it was necessary to not get jumped - but usually not things like that. Whether somebody was walking with a holster limp, or whether they kept their hands in their pockets, or whether they had tweaker eyes. She didn’t care about what brand someone was wearing. Did she? She couldn’t shake it. The girl was taller than her by far, smiling and...ugh. Christ, if this station is making me go soft, that’s one more thing I’ll kick Gennedy’s ass for.

Natalie exhaled a reply, and tutted as her brow furrowed. After a second, she took her hands out of her pockets. ”I’m gonna go over there. I can’t take this. I want to know who she is and what they’re talking about. I’ll try to get Radvi to move along politely. Where’s Keaton?”

Lynn was pleasantly surprised by this turn of events but didn’t want to needlessly piss off Spoons. Sure, she thought it would’ve been really funny, but she needed to mosey on away from here, and that necessitated being nice for a while longer. “No idea,” Lynn said, with half truth and total confidence. “I’m probably heading out.” There was no way she wanted to go to this meeting now. Not if a cop was sniffing around. Lynn would make her way for the far side of the mall and then make the hell away from all this craziness. This mall was a deathtrap between Archie and Natalie, and Lynn was starting to get tired of blowing holes in restaurants - in a flash incinerated, all four, burned to . “Tell the new girl hey for me.”

Nat stopped and turned to Lynn. For a little while the two of them had kinda gotten along. It was a little bit sad that Lynn wouldn’t meet up with the rest of them, but Nat understood why she wouldn’t want to meet up. ”That’s a shame but ok. I understand. I really hope this isn’t the last time we’ll talk on kinda good terms. See you.” Natalie replied, before heading off in the direction of Panda Express.

“Later,” Lynn muttered, watching Natalie leave. As per usual, Spoons was bending her expectations around about the same way she bent spoons. A part of Lynn wanted to go along and hang with everyone, but the rest of her was louder. They’re already going back to a Chinese restaurant together, for fuck’s sake, Lynn thought, thinking of fists reaching up, smashing your side, your hip, your leg, your - the last time, and not particularly wishing to relive any of it. She stayed in the candle store for a minute more, figuring by now Keaton had either gotten scarce or went on ahead. Denim would keep her mouth shut, but she was sure Natalie would tell them Lynn was around. “And then they’ll rope me into whatever bullshit’s going on this time,” Lynn muttered. She wasn’t sure how she’d dodged a hit from the Promise yet, but she was not looking for another shitshow. There was too much at stake. If she’d been able to ditch the doll back at her dorm earlier, then maybe, if Archie hadn’t called them to a meeting with a cop, then maybe. But not now. Don’t be weak, Lynn told herself, walking out the candle store and moving away from the food court casually but quickly. [/i] It won’t end well, anyway. [/i] The twisting feeling in her gut had been intrigued by Natalie’s curiosity, and wanted to know more about this new girl as well, but Lynn’s mind stomped it out. There’s already too much shit I don’t understand with Archie and Nat without adding a new person to the mix.

Lynn’s stomach rumbled with hunger, prompting a string of profanities. She’d just polished off those leftovers thirty minutes ago. Lynn shook her head. Well, Keaton had said to be normal. She had to admit it looked suspect as hell if she walked in, met Natalie in a shop neither of them had any business being in, and then bounced.

“Son of a bitch,” Lynn muttered, rubbing at her forehead and stepping in line to the pretzel store. She was going to take out her anger on these pretzels, and then Auntie Em herself.

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.