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Ajo Arizona is the official home of Eagle's Nest, the base where the American super team Eagle Force is based.  The surface is a sprawl of buildings and hangers.  The base was constructed in the hole left by a copper mine.  A kilometer across and hundreds of feet deep.  Now the desert has been changed to conceal any trace of the mine.  A simple wooden plaque at the rest area near the highway tells the tale but little else.  twelve foot razor wire fencing and armed guards patrolling the perimeter reinforce the idea that they don't have casual visitors.

The town of Ajo is another matter.  Hardly more than a dot on the map the small community has a white washed tourist feel with splashes of native American color in the windows of shops and the aromas of cumin and peppers hangs in the spring air.  The difference between this part of Arizona and Chicago is like night and day.  The bitter winds and chill of the city are replaced by a scorching heat that can be held at bay by even the slimmest of shade.  Evening brings a gentle breeze that strikes up the orchestra of wind chimes which seem to be everywhere.

No where are the chimes more in evidence than the home of Sky and Bobby Six-Killer.  The girls run around chasing the dog, or perhaps being chased by the dog.  Laughter and the voices of a dozen different wind chimes sing out from the porch and yard.  The home is simple and unassuming, it's like every other home that lines the rode between the town itself and the and the endless desert expanse beyond.  Bobby's old truck and motorcycle fit the picture of the place, dusty and aged but functional implements.  The clean modern sedan which Sky drives back and forth to work sets itself out of place, like perhaps federal agents have dropped by.

Bobby is in the kitchen cooking, a job he does with joy.  He will occasionally call out to the girls to bring him something from the garden, or ask his wife to contribute to the meal with the only skill she has for such tasks.  "Chop this."  One might think that her skill with a knife is nothing more than the left over threads of a once promising career in culinary arts, it's fast, deft, and precise.

Arrangements had been made to take the kids to Eagle's Nest and show them around.  That was the day trip.  they'd get to meet the team, assuming some emergency didn't drag them away.   Sky would give them the same tour that new recruits to the Omega Squad program got, and fate would have some of them repeating that tour years from now.  The evening would be a trip out to the trailer where Bobby's grandfather lived.  Grandpa Adobe is what the girls called him, Bobby just called him Grandpa. 

Dinner was served on the back patio, under the stars.  The food was accompanied by pitchers of sweet iced tea and the girls talking all about their day at the reservation school.  Their spring break wasn't for a few weeks yet, and so they talked about their teachers and the other kids.  The games they played and the book the teacher was reading to them.  It's not too late before they're off to bed, disappointed but compliant after mom and dad take them in and read to them.

Bobby and Sky come back once the girls are settled, taking chairs and finally relaxing.  Considering their backgrounds and the lives they lead, the girls are a hand full.  "We're just having the two, right?"  Bobby asks with a smile. 

OOC: I know Colin and Sylvia were going.  I didn't want to name anyone else, but if you were going it's probably safe to assume you're there at the Six-Killer house.

Sky, who mentioned she has the same argument with the girls about bath time every night, nods and rubs her hands down her face.  "Thank god they sleep," she says with undue sincerity, as if it might have been possible they wouldn't.

She's such a nice lady, Sky is--a pale, dark-haired woman with a face that still has a round, girlish sweetness, especially once she's home with her family.  She has a straight-forward manner and a firm handshake, and Sylvia would really like to like her.  But from the moment Mr. Six-Killer dropped them off at Eagle's Nest and Mrs. Six-Killer met them at the security gate, Sylvia's had the crawling feeling that something's not quite right.  She enjoyed the tour.  She enjoyed the few minutes--hours in telepathic time--she spent with the Eagle Force telepath, Seer.  She even liked the Jell-O in the cafeteria and the pilot guy who had trouble finding his own office--it was new, he said--and who spent his presentation time with them talking at length about the toys that used to come in the bottom of a box of Cracker Jack.

But throughout the day Sylvia has had the feeling that something unseen--a predator, something vast and alien to her understanding--was stalking into and out of their presence, and only once they were in the nice lady, Sky's, Volvo did Sylvia realize it was haunting the woman in whose house they'd be staying.  Sylvia has been nervous and quiet, like a frightened, quivering bunny.  She sticks like glue to Colin, afraid to let him let her out of sight.

Colin is a little taken by surprise.

"What? You really want me to ask? Wasn't knowing too much about bad for your health, at least the mental part?" he says, grinning. "I'm not very good at announcing future kids. My mom hasn't recovered yet."

Bobby laughs, "It wasn't meant as a request Colin, just a comment."  He pours another glass of tea and eyes Sylvia.  "You look nervous.  Try to relax some."  he refills her glass.

"Mm-hmm," Sylvia squeaks.  She drinks her tea, trying to look everywhere but at Sky.

Sky slides Bobby a look, one of those looks a wife gives a husband when she told him so.  Then she smiles at Colin.  "So your mother's having a baby?  That's wonderful.  Does she have a name picked out?"

"Uhm. I don't think so." He looks dubious, though. "I mean, I think I heard her name in one of my dreams, but they aren't 100% reliable." he says shrugging.

Then his eyes focus on Sylvia. Is there something wrong?

Sky leaves no question unasked.  "What was it?"


Sylvia's eyes slide askance to Colin's.  How does she explain?  Fearfully, that's how.  There's something bad in here with us.  Big.  Big and bad.  Toothy.

"Rose. It makes kind of sense. It would make kind of sense. It'd be the name of her late grandma from mother's side, and the name of a dear friend of Chris'. Of course, if it turns out its a boy, I'm going to feel pretty stupid."


Here?

Colin's eye didn't prick, so he felt pretty safe, but he turns on his ghost sight and looks around just in case.

"That's beautiful," Sky says.  "So Rose . . . Crow?"


Sylvia nods just a bit and then darts a look at Sky that falls short of the woman's face and lands somewhere in the vicinity of a plaid flannel shirt and then the corner of the table.

Sammy returns from the bathroom, yawning.  She had taken Colin up for some aerial photography opportunities at sunset, and had promised him another chance at dawn.  She had arrived here early in the morning with Sarah, after the two of them hop-flew across the country from Florida to get here in time for the grand tour.  The fatigue from the day's exertions is beginning to show.  She sinks down on a convenient glider at the distant edge of the conversation circle, wraps herself in a quilt and yawns again, trying to pay attention but losing the battle.  The seat's gentle movement combined with the hypnotic flicker of flames from the patio's fire pit has her asleep in a few minutes.

"Rose is a nice name.  Let's change the subject."  He shifts his gaze to Colin and Sylvia.  "Glad to be out of the chilly Chicago weather?"  Bobby says, with a smile.  "I didn't much care for the winters there."

"Oh, no. Well, I don't know. Crow is my father's name, but my mother goes by Alexandra Crow, not Alexandra Dalton, so it might be. But for what it's worth in the dream it was Rose O'Brian."



Colin can only follow her look.

Sky is as she always has been when Colin's met her.  It's as if she's always been a paper-pushing mother of twins who can't cook worth a damn and who spends entirely too much time puttering around in the garden.  Bobby's scarier, surely--big, with an assortment of intriguing scars, and a stare like he's sometimes looking right through you and to the horizon.

Sky chooses that moment to get up and head into the house, murmuring something about getting a blanket for Sammy.  Sylvia visibly untenses as the woman leaves and looks at Bobby as she answers both him and Colin simultaneously.

"It's supposed to be spring," she says, trying to bolster up her voice so she doesn't sound spooked at all, "but you wouldn't know it except that it's raining instead of snowing.  I don't like it there either, really."

To Colin she says, I don't know.  It's just something about her, like what we're seeing is just a mask.

"Too hot in summer, too cold in winter.  Me, I spent a lot of time in the tropics, so it's not my kind of weather."  Bobby says, getting some more tea.  "If you'd like Sylvia, we could put you up at Dave and Jenn's place.  They're just up the road."

"Yes, please," she says too quickly.  She doesn't care if Dave and Jenn are flesh-eating cannibals who live in a walk-in freezer.  "I mean, um, sure.  That would give everybody a little more room here, I guess."

Bobby smiles, "Come on."  he helps her get her things, and then drives her over to Dave & Jenn's.  They seem like they've been expecting at least some of the overflow from Bobby and Sky's place and have a guest room for her already.

It's probably not long before Bobby is back. 

OOC: If Sylvia wants to chat with him they can, or not.  I'm sure Sky has come back out to the patio once Sylvia has been safely evacuated.

Sylvia perks up the moment they leave the Six-Killers' house and begins to ask all kinds of questions about what it's like to live in the area, whether he knows what it's like to work at Eagle's Nest, whether it's dangerous here and why there hasn't been an outbreak of paranormal teenagers here, so close to Eagle's Nest.  This is probably what it was like on the way in from the airport, too [if that's how they got here]--Sylvia asking all the questions a prospective student visiting a college campus would ask.

She already likes it here.  She likes the desert:  no people to clutter her head with their noise.


Sky comes out of the house with a blanket.  She drapes and tucks it around Sammy's sleeping form with a practiced mommy's deft hands.  "Sylvia had to go?" Sky asks Colin with a knowing, amused look.

Bobby is the cordial host, answering as many of her questions as he can.  Once at Dave and Jenn's place he hands off the questions to David, who picks up with details Bobby generally doesn't have about the base and what it's like to work there.

"I do. It has its perks. I would likely find perks in almost any other place, but I've grown to like the rain. I'm weird like that."


Sylvia senses Colin's discomfort as he answers.
It's not exactly like that. I'll explain another time. I'm sorry it bothers you. I didn't think of it.


Colin just nods.


Colin sighs.

"I'm sorry."

Sky's smile grows, and she shakes her head.  "It's not the first time."

Satisfied that Sammy is comfortable for now, Sky slides back into her seat at the table.  "There are a couple of things I'd like you to take to Grandpa.  Remind me before you leave."

"You're not coming?"

"I have to keep an eye on Zoe and Vivian, and possibly Sammy," Sky jokes.  "You're not worried, are you?"

"Are they like this every day?" He asks with a smile. "I'm glad I finally got to meet them."


"Who, me? Nah. Not at all."

He manages to keep that pretense up for a whole half of a second.

"Nervous, I'd say. The first time I met Bobby he was quite intimidating. The second time... worse, probably, at the beginning. I wouldn't mind putting my best foot forward this time. Anything I shouldn't do? Like, for example, blabbing my mouth like this?"

"They're half-wild most of the time," Sky confesses, "but they were especially excited to hear that you were coming to visit."

Zoe and Vivian charged toward Colin the instant they saw him.  They seized his hands, and Zoe, the talker, started to babble at him as if he were a favorite cousin who came to visit only too rarely.  In that winding little-girl way, after she had introduced him to the dog and to the horses and to the barn cats and then pointed out the crow peering at them from the roof, she told him some babbling fantasy about scorpions that came into the yard and how they had to spend a week with Uncle Graham and Aunty Eve and how Aunty Eve is having a baby soon and she doesn't know it yet and blah blah blah.  Little girls can talk.  They don't necessarily make any sense, but they can talk.

Vivian, the quiet one, just sort of leaned up against Colin and looked at him with her dark eyes as if she were seeing something that changes, constantly, like the ripples on water.


Sky laughs.  "You'll be fine.  Grandpa can talk a fair bit himself when he gets going."  She gets to her feet.  "Wait.  I'll bring those things you need to take with you."

She returns in a minute with a grocery bag.  It's mostly full of pencil-thin spring asparagus and fresh lettuce from the garden, but in amid the produce is a pouch that smells like desert dust and tobacco.  Sky picks this out of the sack and hands it to Colin.  "This is a gift from me to you and from you to Grandpa.  Understand?"

Colin loved every minute of it. He played all the games they wanted and proposed variations. After the beginning, he seemed to understand Vivian too pretty well, conceding Zoe the role of boss in good order. Sarah told him she was quite jealous.


"Oh. Ok. Thank you. Won't he know it?" asks Colin, taking in the smell.

"As with any gift it's the thought that counts," Sky says.  "It's not magic.  Don't get that impression.  It's just a courtesy, something to break the ice."

"Good. Thank you." he says again.

He sits on the porch with her while they wait for Bobby to come back.

"When Zoe says scorpions, she means actual scorpions, or something else?"

Sky tries not to react, but her posture stiffens, and her expression becomes careful.  "She's talking about some magic that came to visit last fall."

"It doesn't sound like a courtesy visit. Does it happen often?"

It's clear he's thinking about a little girl in five years who won't be the daughter of a demon and a witch hunter.

Sky weighs the need to protect Colin's childhood against the need to prepare him for his manhood.  "I like to think that Bobby has a job.  He's been doing this job for a long time, and he's very, very good at it.  Unfortunately his being good at his job means that he makes a lot of enemies, enemies who have magic and who consider it a point of pride to have no mercy.

"We aren't dead yet," she observes.  But quite of a few of them are.

"He's got friends too." he says, meaning it. "I could be here very quickly if you ever need help. Ever more quickly if Sarah is around."

"Is his job forever?"

Sky smiles at Colin's rush to offer assistance, but she has no intention of bloodying his hands at the tender age of fifteen.  "It's as forever as Grandpa is," she says and congratulates herself on having picked up a little of the family's talent for cryptic replies.

"Are you concerned?  Have you made enemies?"

Too late for that.


"Not really. The witches made me into their enemy. To strike at me they messed with something bigger than them. It doesn't look like they're going to ever wake up. Vandross got arrested. Strange too. And... actually, I did very little to cause their fall. My powers, or at least what I understood of them so far, they aren't very good to take the fight to the bad guys. I'm happy enough with keeping the good guys from getting killed."

"My superpower is that I'm not alone. I've got a lot of friends. And I'm not afraid to ask for help." he says, smiling.

Sky gives him a smile.  "That's a good thing to have, friends.  Probably the best thing to have."

Her gaze strays out to the mountain range in the distance and the clear, bright stars over it.  "Colin?" she says after a moment, deliberating over how to make the offer comforting instead of troubling.  "If you ever find yourself in need of a place to call home, I hope you know you're welcome here.  The way I see it, we're all sort of family.  I think there might come a time in your future when you feel very lonely, and I want you to remember that Bobby and I will always be here.  Always."

He turns to look at her. "It has to go both ways, Sky. If this is to be a place that I can call home, I should be allowed to protect it as well. It's only fair. If you want me to remember about you and Bobby in times of need, you should remember me as well. Ok?"

"I reserve the right to call on you only in extreme need until you're at least eighteen, but once you turn eighteen--"  Her smile deepens.  She might be joking, but not even she knows for sure.  "--you'll stop here before you go anywhere else, and we'll make a real defender out of you.  It's been my experience that, no matter how peaceful your calling, in this business, the fight always comes to you.  It's best to be prepared."

"Deal." he says, with a solemnity only broken by his grin, as he offers her his hand.

Sky hesitates only a moment before she takes it.

The morning sun paints color in place of shadows across the desert.  The sharp contrast gives the landscape an unreal appearance, like snapshots of some other planet.  The chill air gives evidence of your own life as clouds of breath form with your respiration.

The ride from the Six-Killer house to Grandpa's place only lasted about half an hour.  The small trailer sits in a vast expanse of nothing.  Mostly barren ground with scrub weeds struggling to survive in the unforgiving desert.  More rocks seem to grow here than plants of any kind.  The uneven ground finally giving way to a fairly broad flat spot, worn down over the decades from use.  Sitting in an old metal patio chair, it's paint gone now in favor of rust, is Grandpa.  Wrapped in a colorful Native American blanket, his worn white straw hat resting upon his head he is simply a weathered face.  The ravines and crevices of his features mirror the world he sits in, scorched by heat and ancient.  A small fire burns, and he fetches a cup of coffee from an ancient enameled pot as the group arrives.  "Hey Grandpa.  This is Colin, and his friends."

Grandpa nods and mumbles something that no one seems to understand.

"Sure."  Bobby says, "You guys wanna sit down, I need to get a fire started in the shack."  He gathers some wood and heads off to a low structure that only now seems to stand out against the desert around it.  He walks down some steps and out of site.  Grandpa mumbles again, pointing at the group and then the coffee pot.

Sylvia has decided she loves the desert.  It's full of California colors, the water-color reds and yellows, a sky so blue, so cool and solid, that she can feel it on her skin.  It's full of intriguing smells, the dry, spicy smell of the earth, the aromas of coffee and chili that linger in the arid air.  And most important, the desert supports only a countable number of people.  Instead of millions of humans packed in against each other, there are only a few hundred, and they mostly seem content, as happy as she would be to be a part of the landscape.  New York and San Francisco are looking a lot less appealing.  Dear Avengers:  Screw you.

She doesn't entirely understand what they're doing here.  At first she thought Bobby was one of Colin's relatives.  (Honestly, she was surprised to learn at the airport that he wasn't a teenage girl.)  She has no idea why they drove out into the middle of nowhere to meet this old man, but she likes where he lives--no one in sight for miles and miles--and she likes the way he seems to be rooted into the land.  She half-imagines that he exudes something less energetic than contentment and less angsty than resignation, and it's a balm on her nerves after Oak Park and its constant drama.

Sylvia is happy here.  She imagines this is what Colin means by "in-her-guts happy."  Or at least it's like losing a migraine that's been dogging her for most of the year:  she's euphoric by comparison.

She takes the old man's cue and pours some coffee for all of them.

OOC: Colin would have asked how he's supposed to call him on the way there.

Colin accepts the coffee with a nod, and steps closer to the old man.

"I'm Colin Crow, and I'm very glad to meet you. I brought you a little something, I hope you enjoy it." he says, handing him the tobacco pouch.

OOC: Bobby would have told you to call him Grandpa.  Everyone does.

The old man chuckles, the only sound you've heard that is recognizable.  He mumbles again, taking the tobacco and slipping the weathered bony hand back under the blanket.  His gaze falls to Sylvia, and she feels that he's looking inside her, but not the same way she looks inside people, more like his eyes adjust to looking into a tunnel that runs off into the distance.  He nods in her direction, and mumbles again looking back towards Colin.

Bobby comes back a few minutes later.  "Okay, all ready."  He helps Grandpa up, and then guides everyone into the sweat lodge. 

The steps are cut into the stone of the ground, and the pit is covered with a small shack made of dry timber and branches.  A bench runs along each wall, and a few blankets lay about the floor.  The space is oppressively hot and humid, with a thick smell in the air.  Grandpa seems to move easier on his own in the heat.  He walks away from Bobby to the far end of the lodge, and takes a seat on one of the blankets.  He shoulders his wrap to the ground around him exposing his white shirt with blue stripes, buttoned up to the collar.  He slips his hat off, and takes his pipe from the open shirt pocket.  He begins to stuff some of the tobacco Colin gave him into the pipe, then takes a small stick from the fire to light it.  He breaths life into the pipe, smoke curling up and adding it's rich pungent aroma to the space. 

"Sit."  he croaks, the mumble of his earlier voice now clear.  The sound is like blocks of letters rolling out of his mouth, after tumbling across a field of gravel.  "So, you're the new Spirit Dancer."  he chuckles, taking a draw from his pipe, "I imagined you'd be taller.  There's still time though."  He looks over at Sylvia.  "You're all so sad.  Some gifts are more curse than gift.  But you took this path, brave.  Or stupid."  He looks down at the fire.  "Child of two flowers is broken Spirit Dancer."  his gaze slowly comes up to Colin's, "Are you willing to die to heal her?"

Colin sighs.

"You're not the first one to tell me that."


He swallows. He's been here less than a minute and he already has to die?

"How broken?"

Sylvia's having a hard time following the old man's speech.  "Wait?  What?  Death?  What?"  Colin's urge to play human sacrifice should not be encouraged.

Sammy doesn't hear a word of it.  She sits and stares raptly at the fire, entranced by the dancing shapes in the flames.  She can almost hear the music they dance to... her fingers start to tap out a rhythm.

"Broken is broken, isn't it?  Are there degrees and measures of broken?  Are there breaks you fix, and ones you don't?  Or, is there no broken at all.  You're broken too, aren't you?"  He takes another drag off his pipe.  Reaching his free hand behind him he rolls a small drum out from under his blanket, and rolls it to Sammy, giving her an outlet for the music she feels vibrating in the space around her.

"Most breaks I don't need to die to fix them." Colin says, taken aback. "Can't you tell us anything more? What is it I should do, exactly?"

Without really knowing that she's done it, Sammy catches the drum.  Her hands beat out the rhythm, and as they become more familiar with it, the song becomes louder in Sammy's head.  Voices, she can hear their voices singing now, and she tries to sing with them but doesn't know the words, so she echoes the sounds.  Her gaze is fixed on a place hundreds of yards and hundreds of years from here.

Grandpa takes another long slow drag off his pipe, letting the smoke curl up into the cloud which hangs over them now.  Sammy sings a song and pounds out a rhythm on the drums.  It's louder than it should be, louder than it could possibly be.  But voices carry in a whisper.  "You will walk alone Spirit Dancer.  Without permanence, or roots.  Into and out of lives, seeing snapshots but never remaining long.  The one who came before you did not have the will, he turned away from the calling to the arms of his loved ones.  The Spirit Walker will bring peace to many, but never have it himself."  He takes another drag on his pipe, letting the smoke issue out of his nose where it forms into a pair of snakes which rear their heads and look around before breaking up into nothing.  Grandpa looks over to Sylvia.  "You have an enemy within.  Feeding on you.  Gnawing away at your core."  his pipe comes out of his mouth, and the bony hand points a bent finger at her, "Strip away your layers, your pretenses, and step into the fire."

Colin smiles. It's not a happy smile, but it's a smile. "I'm the son of a firefighter. We're the ones who run into the places from where everybody else is running away. I already knew that."


Colin looks at Grandpa, then at Sylvia. "If he says so, you can trust him."

"Trust him?" Sylvia says, looking wary.  "I don't even understand what he said."

And then, because she was raised better than that, she addresses the old man directly.  "What pretenses?  What layers?  What fire?  You don't mean that fire, do you?  This is all figurative, right?  'Cause, one, I'm not getting naked for anybody, and two, I'm not fireproof."

Grandpa chuckles and takes another drag on his pipe.  "I don't know the way your kind would help you.  I only know what I know.  Bare yourself, and purge your soul.  Or not.  Fire purifies.  You will feel pain, but you will not be harmed."

Sylvia is completely out of her element.  She looks to Colin for guidance, especially since Sammy is off in her own little world and unable to chaperone should nudity be involved.

"Do you remember when we went to the astral realm together? That black being that looked like... Hamilton after the explosion? It was something you made, and I could do very little against it. If he says he can help you, he can. That's about all I can tell you, I don't really know anything else. You don't have to do anything you don't want to, though."

He looks at Bobby. "Help?"

Bobby holds up his hands, "I plan to be outside.  If she's getting naked, that's my cue to go outside.  You're on your own with this one Spirit Dancer."  Bobby smiles, "And, bad news is, it'll get harder as you get older probably."

"I like you guys because you're always full of good news." He says to the retreating Bobby.

He turns to the old man. "Grandpa, she doesn't believe in fixing people. If I was to attempt what you proposed on someone else, she'd be looking for something to crush on my head. And probably with good reason. Can you please try to tell her why this would be different?"

"We're not fixing anything.  When you're thirsty you drink.  That doesn't heal anything.  She's got to get her strength up to be able to hold the darkness back.  Fire cleanses."  Grandpa looks at Sylvia.  "I can't fix it.  No one can.  You've looked into the black, chosen to look.  For some, those who have no choice and are made to hang over the darkness, you will be there to keep them from falling in.  For the ones that stand in the dark, waiting for their prey to fall, you will be the thing that peers back at them."  He smiles at her, yellowed crooked teeth peeking at her from behind his thin wrinkled lips, "You wanted a destiny."

Sylvia shoots the old man a troubled look.  She's not sure what he means.  Is it Nietzsche?  'Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster--'  Too late.  '--and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'  She's been looking into the darkness for so long, it seems, that sometimes her whole world looks black.

"Even the things that go bump in the night can be afraid of the dark?" she asks.

Grandpa nods.  "There is something in the dark corners of their mind.  Something they fear.  That something could be you.  Once you've purged your monster.  The one eating at you.  Wearing away the part of you that knows the difference between true darkness and the shadows where you need to be.  Fire Cleanses."

That look on Sylvia's face, the look that makes her look twenty years older, settles in.  She takes a deep breath and suffers a weird pang to have Alicia there--Alicia, who wouldn't just accept this but who would have the guts to keep questioning, relentlessly, until the old man stopped talking in riddles.  Sylvia is too nice sometimes, and she has the feeling she's going to have to stop that.

"Do I really have to take off my clothes?" she asks, a mite dourly.

"They'll catch fire if you don't Daughter of Two Flowers."  he smiles and takes another drag off his pipe.

"Am I needed here for this?" Colin asks.

"You've seen it.  Best not to let her face it alone Spirit Dancer.  Unless you'd rather not face it again."

"Oh, no, it did not scare me at all. I've seen worse."

He turns to Sylvia.

"Syl, are you ok with me staying here to help?"

"You're ditching me?" Sylvia says, throwing him a don't-you-dare look.  She seems relieved at the old man's answer.


Sylvia makes a face--pouty, rumply, and grumpy.  "If this winds up on YouTube," she tells Colin, "you'll never sleep through the night again.

"But don't go."

All at once, compelling herself not to hesitate, she takes off her cardigan and pulls her sundress over her head.  She's a fairly underdeveloped fourteen-year-old.  The hips are there, but Sylvia trains too hard to have the significant fat deposits that might someday make her look more like a woman than a little girl.  She has the beginnings of a physique braided with ropey muscle, and she has scars--the acid burn on her arm, the laser burn on her shoulder, the little flecks of shrapnel scarring from the explosion.  There's a big dark bruise on the outside of her thigh from sparring, and under her skirt she has her knee taped for support.  She has to wind off the bandage, which means bending over.  That's the most embarrassing part of it.

When she's ready, she tries to gather up some dignity.  She tries to maintain that perfect gymnastics posture like she's not conscious of Colin somewhere behind her and the old man who's blessedly unreadable.  "So into the fire.  Really?"  She walks toward it, into it, slowly, hoping someone will stop her if she's completely misunderstood.

The heat of the flames increases with each step, until Sylvia is sure she's going to get burned.  She can feel the prickly sensation of her skin getting damaged, and then she steps over the surrounding stones that make the fire pit.  It's like submerging in a tub of hot water.  Stinging and soothing at the same time.  Then she feels the sparks and embers bounce against her from the disturbance she makes in the fire pit, and her vision is blotted out by heat so intense she's forced to close her eyes against it.

The world is cold and dark.  She's crouching with someone's arms surrounding her, their body shielding her from the last remnants of an explosion.  It's not John though, it's Colin.  They see the explosion, the rending of the building.  But it's only them here, and through the wreckage down the hall they can see Hamilton, or a caricature of him.  He's sitting at his desk, flicking the lighter in his hand.  Each time he does the explosion repeats itself until it's more comical than disturbing.  His head is about ten times too large, his features stretched over the bloated cranium. 

Sylvia was half sleeping the last time she saw this, sucked into the state in which even ridiculous things seem perfectly plausible.  "What the fuck?" she breathes.  And then, because they don't seem to be in any immediate danger and because Colin is way too close to her, she slaps at her body, hoping that this isn't one of those naked-in-the-classroom dreams.

Sylvia finds she's not dressed, but not naked either.  although she's not wearing any cloths, her skin is covered in what looks like black paint, as though she were dipped into it up to her neck.  There are spots which are not black though, spots that look like chrome.  If she peels away some of the paint she finds that underneath she is made of gleaming metal.  It's only seconds though before the paint fills in the gaps over the chrome.

"Ms. Avery-Vaughn.  As I live and breath.  NOT!"  Hamilton screams the last and another explosion punctuates his sentence.  "Who's that with you, Mr. Wizard.  Heal Bot.  Bird Man.  Don't be shy."  He strokes the lighter and another fireball erupts in the endless stream of explosions.

"I'm not sure what it is. I can tell you what it isn't. It's not Hamilton. And it's not a demon either. It comes from you, And I think that it keeps making himself explode, again and again, because it wants you to feel like you felt in that moment. Try to remember. What did you feel like? What did you think?"

Sylvia's shoulders tense, creeping up toward her ears.  "I wanted to save him.  That's all I wanted.  I felt responsible, like I had broken him, like I had pushed him too far.  And I didn't have the strength to stop him cold."

Colin's eyes go wide as if he had an epiphany.

"When we talked, it tried to make me give up. To make me think everything was pointless, and that nothing I could do would matter. He's the part of you that makes you feel powerless. The part that taunts you with your past errors until it paralyzes you. It's your insecurity, your doubts. You have to fight it with the part you feel most true about yourself. The parts that you feel would never let you down, and never allow you to back down. Take Strange's lighter away from him."

Sylvia gives Colin a dubious look.  The parts that would never let her down?  This is like that "in-your-guts happy" thing, isn't it?  Colin is talking about the faith in the world, and in herself, that she hasn't had since the day she could hear what people were thinking.  She has her will, though--her patent stubbornness--and just as she compelled herself to walk into the fire (and what the hell was she thinking, by the way?) she can compel herself to walk toward Hamilton, or whatever it is.

The first step is hard and scary, and she hesitates.  She finds she has to bring her chin up and talk to whatever this taunting thing is to keep her courage.  If it talks, it has a shred of humanity, and if it's human, it has its weaknesses.  She's oh-so-good at finding those.

"You know--" she stammers and then has to start again.  "You know, Hamilton was just a tool.  He let Strange play him.  Hamilton meant to use the pep squad as test subjects and make his fortune turning his work over to some bad people, but he got used.  In the ecosystem of bad guys, he was nothing more than a scavenger, an opportunist.  Is that what you are?  You're trying to make a meal out of me without having the guts to fight me?  You're a parasite.  An insect.  I'm going to slap you down like a mosquito."

The bloated Hamilton head turns towards Sylvia.  "That's pretty big talk for for you Hell-No Kitty Girl.  You barely have the strength to look inside the dark and scary minds of teenagers.  What's it going to be like when you have to look inside a grown up mind.  A sick and twisted grown up mind?  Oh wait, I know.  You'll fail and they'll blow themselves up and nearly kill half your friends and a couple of hundred innocent bystanders.  Just like last time."  He punctuates the statement by setting off another explosion.  Sylvia can feel the oil inching up her neck as he speaks.

[OOC:  please? If you don't want it, it will go away.]

The oil creeps up, but it can't get to her nose and mouth right away.  Sylvia feels cold, fresh air there, freely offering her any strength she needs to fight back.  A glowing, shifting, firelight-filled Sammy-djinn floats just behind her right shoulder like a guardian angel, eyes closed, hands reaching out toward Hamilton.  The light in her pulses with the rhythm of the music.  Sammy's strength is Sylvia's, if it is desired.

OOC:  Rewriting it all because I'm a day late and a few thousand braincells short. 

Sarah sips at the plain black coffee which taste like it was poured from a thousand year old uncleaned pot.  Still it was coffee.  Probably.  Sort of like monkeys are people but hey beggers, choosers, etc.  The desert was soooo empty and quiet.  Creepy quiet.  Sarah liked quiet sometimes but who knew what was sitting out there in the darkness.  Arizona had poisonous snakes in the desert.  Scorpions.  Wild pigs!  She'd barely been paying any attention to the conversation she was so wrapped up in just how different the desert was.  When Sylvia asked if she really had to get naked her attention snapped back to the present.  What?!?  She waited quietly and realized Colin was staying and Sammy.  Wow.  Too embarrassed to stay but too worried to leave she stayed and kept her mouth shut. 

After a little while Sammy looked lost in the.. ceremony or whatever.  Something was happening.  Sylvia and Colin and Grandpa were all talking about stuff that didn't make a whole lot of sense.  And Sylvia was still naked.  Fortunately no one seemed to care about that particular point.  More importantly Colin seemed to be not interested in the situation...

"Pfft. That's so not what happened. In the same day you were attacked by a thief-witch, and got subjected to the effects of a drug made explicitly to shut telepaths down. And without your nagging us about it, Hamilton would have completed her researches, he would have sold them, and many thousands would have suffered because of that. Put it as you want, it was still a win."

"Naturally Bird-Boy would consider it a win.  Someone got blown up.  Just one more death in the long line of deaths that will lead right to him.  He's got it so easy Syl, he has the bird telling him what to do.  He doesn't have to think for himself.  He can't see things the way you do.  He can't hope to understand."  Bloat Head Hamilton looks at the lighter.  "Yeah, just reach out and take it from me.  That will solve everything."  it says, a broad grin spreading across it's face, exposing the broken explosion wracked remnants of what had been teeth.

Sylvia pauses as Hamilton talks and Colin replies.  She doesn't glance at Sammy so much as touch her with a feather stroke of telepathy.  It gives her time to think, and when she looks at Hamilton again, her gaze, and voice, is hard.  "For something that lives in my head, you don't know a damned thing about me.  You think I'm afraid of what I see?  Afraid?  I have to look at it every day.  I can't look away.  I'm not afraid.  I'm sick.  Sick of it.  Sick to death of all the squirmy, selfish urges that keep us from doing right by the people around us.  Sick of the lying and the pettiness."

What began as rhetoric becomes something more stentorian and heartfelt.  "The only thing I'm afraid of," she says, advancing on Hamilton, "is that I'll give into it, that I'll start to think I should have anything and anyone I want because I can.

"But that has nothing to do with you and me.  I'm afraid of hurting the people around me--that's all.  But you, you're not a person."  She can be angry with this entity, and she is.  "I can hurt you all I want."

It's a thing, she reasons, something feeding off the discrepancy she feels between what she can and what she should do.  It's a flea, getting fat off her blood, and there's only one thing to do:  crush it.  She stretches out with the strength of her telepathy and taps Colin and Sammy, channeling their roiling energies into a searing purity of intention, and then where she's so often practiced restraint and subtlety, she musters the power she's felt pushing at the corners of her mind for months and levels it in full at the thing pretending to be Hamilton.

The old man was right.  The things in the dark are supposed to be afraid of her.

Sarah drank her coffee.  Sylvia was talking to someone, about something.. Hamilton?  But he's.. I sooo should be outside with Bobby.  But snakes and scorpions..

OOC: more editing out of my carelessness.  Move along here nothing to see.

Sylvia's will controls her power.  Telekinesis is an invisible force which comes not from a direction, it just comes.  She's felt Smith work through her, channel his skill through her like a surgeon using a sophisticated extension to perform microscopic surgery.  Study Anatomy.  It was a casual comment from Smith while he munched on cookies she brought him.  She could squeeze the life from someone as easily as comb her own hair.  But this, this thing, she wasn't focusing power for subtlety.  She visualized the point.  A dot, and with a shudder as she shook off the walls of her lingering doubts expanded it outward with violent intent.  Bloated Head Hamilton exploded in a spray of red, stripping the oil away from Sylvia.  The scene was destroyed with him, and now she and the others stood in a vast dark space.  The taint of the oil and it's black doubts was gone, her chrome armor clean save for a single spot.  In her mind she knew what it was.  The taint of others.  The darkness of other people's thoughts and desires.  From time to time she'd need to clean it away.  But for now, she could be the happy teenage girl she was before Smith had opened her eyes to the dark world.

"Daughter of Two Flowers."  The rock said softly.  "Put something on, you'll catch cold."  the rock didn't move.  It's voice was that of Grandpa Adobe.  With the next blink of their eyes they're in the sweat lodge, sitting by the fire with the heavy aroma of tobacco and wood smoke hanging in the air.  Sylvia is completely dressed, and Samantha is just finishing a song.  "Who's hungry?"  Grandpa asks.

Sylvia's ears are ringing.  At least that's what she thinks in the first few minutes after coming back to the dusty world.  But her ears are fine, she realizes, and it's something deeper that's ringing--the resonance of purpose, perhaps, which explains, in a way that eludes reason but that satisfies instinct, why this place is important and why the old man is important.  This is where you come when you're lost because, here, you always know where you are and why and, most important, who.

There are all kinds of questions she could ask, but they feel oddly irrelevant, nothing more than post-analysis of something important only to her.  She wanted a destiny; she now has the implacable feeling she doesn't need one.  She'll change the world around her no matter what she does.  So it goes for her; so it goes for everyone.

"I have a job to do," she says, blurting it out apropos of nothing.  But the dusty world brings certain priorities with it, and her stomach rumbles.  "Didn't we just eat?"

Sammy blinks.  Where did the music go?  She rubs her eyes.  I must have fallen asleep.

Sarah notices Samantha stirring and asks, "Bad dream sunshine?"  

[edited confusion out]


Colin resists the urge to look at his watch. He's not sure he'd like the answer, or the answer would have made sense.

He's stuck looking at the old man in wonder.

"The Q'nra is the observer, isn't it? But one cannot observe without influencing what is being observed. Curious. What do you see when you look at me?"

OOC:  Crap!  No.. my fault...and I'm not sure how to fix it.  See back on page one Kat fell asleep.. at the Six-Killers home.  I sorta skimmed over a bit (including the post from secretoracle that said it was the next day and we all rode to Grandpa's house) where Kat is then staring into a fire and drumming - which I also missed somehow (oh right I suck that's how) and then in Kat's next post some glowy djinn Samantha appears by Sylvia's shoulder.  Which I did catch..
My brain caught - Sammy fell asleep.  Colin & Sylvia interacting with Hamilton, Sammy djinn appearing to help. I assumed it was a sleeping Sammy projection... 
Meanwhile Sarah is back chatting with a sleeping Sammy back at the Six-Killer's three pages too late.  I made a time boo-boo.  Help!

EDIT:  Fixed it.  All better.  No more boo-boo.

"This isn't science Spirit Dancer.  I don't influence the world by observing it.  I influence it, by acting."  He heads for the door of the sweat lodge.  "Chili's getting cold."  he says making his way out into the night.

The clear night sky and the cool air are a balm to stiff muscles and over heated skin.  The fire near the trailer blazes and Bobby is there with cold drinks and bowls of warm chili and tortillas for everyone.

"Everything okay?"  Bobby asks as the others begin to arrive.

Colin has a lot more questions but it looks like they'll have to wait. When he steps outside and it's night he can't help but blink a couple times.


"I'm not sure. Define okay." he says, rubbing his eyes.

"Sorry.  That's like hot and cold.  It's usually a matter of personal preference."  he hands everyone a bottle of water and a cold root beer.  "Same number of people came out as went in, always a good sign."

Sammy stumbles into the night air, and she seems a little out of it, like someone just awoken from a deep sleep.  She beelines to the chili and starts to eat as if she is very, very hungry.

Sylvia takes a swig of her root beer and thinks she's never tasted all the little sparkly flavors in it before.  "Where was that place?  Was that the astral zone?  Why did we have to go through the fire?  What was that thing?"

Mmm everybody sitting around eating chili.  How 'bout some more beans Mr. Taggert?  Yeah, this place will be under a green fog by three in the morning.   Sarah gets a bowl of chili wishing for some sour cream, salsa and chips and hopes to get a stuffed up nose before bedtime. 

"Thank you. Aaand I'm going to do myself a favor and not ask about the times it doesn't go as well."


Oh, root beer! So refreshing! Colin drinks it very intently.


"Hey, wondergirl. You're quiet. Weirded out?"

Sarah shrugs, "Nah, just out of the loop.  You're all speaking a foreign language as far as I'm concerned so I'll just be polite and nod until the conversation turns back to NASCAR or American Idol or something."

She scoots over to make room for Colin.  "It's good to be here though.  I missed you when Sam and I were down in Florida."

"Really? I thought you were having wild fun. All those tipsy college guys..." he says, grinning.

Sammy starts humming the Flipper song around her mouthful of chili.

Sarah starts coughing on her rootbeer and glares at Sammy before her chokes turn into laughs.  "It was a lot of fun but not that many tipsy college boys.  I don't mean I spent all day in a hotel room pining for you or anything but when I saw something cool or did something fun I kind of wished you were there.  I had a lot of fun with Sam and she was very silly.  We may have set a record for most appearances on the Jumbotron in one game.  I think Sammy got more air time than some of the players. 

We'll have the summer, he says, giving her a quick kiss.

After dinner, he tries to catch Bobby alone.

"Bobby, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure Colin.  What's up?"  Bobby replies as he finishes his root beer.

"Sky said that your... job is as forever as grandpa is. How long has grandpa been... grandpa?"

"He's been around a while.  He's probably only gonna be with us another twenty years or so if he's right.  Me, I just sort of stick around until I'm ready to go I guess."

Colin frowns a bit. "How old are you?"

"Older than my wife."  he says with a grin.  "I was born in 1947.  My dad had gotten back from the war, he and mom bought that house where we live now."  Bobby gets another root beer.  "My mom lived there for the rest of her life."

Well, at least he's younger than Jack.

"Is it going to happen to me too? I mean, not getting old as long as I'm needed?"

"Ah, no.  Spirit Dancers only stay for their lifetime.  And, you can quit anytime.  You could quit now, grow up, have a family and a life.  There's no karmic backlash.  This is always strictly volunteer work."

Colin nods. He's not sure if he's relieved or disappointed.


"Grandpa sounded like he doesn't like quitters much, though. Do you think they'd tell me when they find a good fall-back candidate?"

Bobby shakes his head.  "One per generation, so no fall back.  But, the universe gets by without one I guess.  As for not liking quitters, he's neutral for the most part."

"I mean, when the next one in line is ready. Is there a retirement plan, or they'd start looking for the next one only after I'd quit. Or die, I guess."


Colin doesn't seem convinced.

"Mhmm. Let's take you, for example. Zoe told me of the scorpions. If you quit, would they stop coming?"

"I'm sorry.  I didn't explain it well.  There is only one Spirit Dancer alive at a time.  If someone decides not to take the job, or quits, then there isn't another one until after they die."  At the mention of the scorpions Bobby shrugs, "Maybe.  I'm never sure if it's someone who doesn't like me because of that or just something I did to them personally."

"Oh. Ok. It does make things simpler." he nods gravely.


"Then you can't retire anyway, because you'd leave them unprotected?"

"Well, it's not like I'm not plenty dangerous anyway.  I see what you're saying though."

Colin nods gravely as takes a sloe sip of his root beer.

"Why can't I understand him out here? I thought I was supposed to understand everyone, sooner or later. I had a feeling he got out not to answer my last question."

"He's certainly the type to duck answering a question.  As for understanding him, that's a hard one.  Someday you'll be able to understand pretty much anyone.  Grandpa is a hard one for some people.  What was the last question you asked him anyway?"

"Just a look at Sylvia and he knew perfectly what was wrong with her. I asked him what he sees when he looks at me."

Another sip.

"I've had the feeling I was supposed to learn something, during this trip, but I don't know what, so I don't know what to ask."

Bobby chuckles, "He didn't answer because what he sees isn't important.  It's what you see, or I guess what you've decided you're going to be.  And you have learned things this trip.  Like you always have a place to go as long as we're here."  Bobby puts his hand on Colin's shoulder. 

Colin looks up at him and smiles. "Right. I shouldn't overlook that. Thank you."