Infinity Smashed: Born Lucky
Jul. 28th, 2014 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeBorn Lucky
Word Count: 3070
Summary: Specialist Ebony Larkin has a terrible day that starts with fire and ends with more fire and also Biff in the back seat.
Notes: This story takes place three years after the end of Ten Years to Vanish, and right before Biff meets M.D., but you don't need to know anything to read it. An amusing bit of trivia: this is one of the oldest side-stories in all of Infinity Smashed. We made an illustration for it way back in 2004! Enjoy!
PIN Specialist Ebony Larkin stood up from the firebombed skeleton of her car, wiping sweat and engine grease from her forehead. There was no question: her car wasn’t starting, and her phone was smeared across the pavement in pieces of half-melted plastic.
She hung her head. She sighed. Then she started stripping down.
Once she was no longer in imminent danger of heatstroke, she went to fetch the silver canister lying in the dirt roughly ten feet away. The cylinder was roughly the size of a yogurt maker, surprisingly heavy when she lifted it. Good. That meant it was working.
A shame it was so well insulated that she could barely feel any of the coolness. She shoved it into her duffel bag, along with a few spare chill pills. She shouldn’t need it, but it never paid to be too careful, especially on a day like this.
Putting on her sunglasses, she looked out onto the horizon. The sun wasn’t up yet, but when it was, the current temperature would seem a mercy. Dirt and rock stretched on either side of the highway as far as she could see, a plain of nothing.
She slung the duffel bag over her shoulder and started walking.
…
At dawn, she trudged into a seedy bar that reeked of cheap cigarettes and cheaper bear. Not normally her first choice, but it was open 24 hours and air-conditioned. Heaven.
Even at this hour, the bar was filled with the local unemployed, loafers, and drinkers… all looking like they’d been there all night. Ebony hesitated, but nobody looked at her with anything but the most cursory attention, and after a moment, the conversational volume went back to its normal heights. Ebony let her breath out. With what remained of her uniform, they probably thought she was a gang member, and in this part of town, it was probably a good thing. Certainly better than being clocked as one of la migra (though not the usual kind).
Slinging the duffel bag down, she dragged herself to the bar.
“May I use your phone?”
“Local calls and paying customers only,” the bartender droned without looking up from the register.
Well, she was dehydrated anyway. Larkin dug into her pocket, pulled out her singed wallet, and handed over a five. “Cranberry juice.”
The bartender glanced up, took in the blackened, sweat-stained clothes and the duffel bag. Her expression didn’t change, but her tone softened, and she slid the phone down the counter. “I’ll get you a chaser.”
“Thank you,” Larkin said, and took up the receiver.
She dialed the number and listened a moment, punched in the extension. After a moment, the phone informed her that Randall Leibowitz wasn’t in at the moment, but if she could leave a message after the beep, he would return her call as soon—
She hung up and tried again, with a different extension this time. It kept ringing without going to voice mail, and finally she hung up and tried a different number, sucking her teeth.
This time she got an instant response: “Specialist Grey.”
Her shoulders relaxed. Grey wasn’t a big talker, but she was a reliable friend. “Grey, it’s Larkin. I’m stranded on the edge of the south side, need a pick-up for me and Johnny. Randall’s bolted for the day and Agatha’s not picking up.”
She didn’t have to mention she had been out since ten at night; Grey knew her schedule.
After taking down the address and phone number, Grey said, “I’ll clock you out. Wait half an hour.”
Ebony Larkin resisted a sigh. If Grey could move faster, she would. “Sure. I need to eat anyway.” Right on time, the barkeep plunked a couple glasses in front of her. “Say hi to Bob for me. See you soon.”
“Bye.” Click.
There. That was done. Ebony took the glass and pressed it against her forehead. The chill felt wonderful. She gulped the cranberry juice so fast the ice made her teeth hurt and then reached for the water.
As she raised it to her lips, a roar broke out in the back corner of the place. A group of men at a table were playing cards, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, and as she turned to watch, the youngest at the table was raking in an untidy pile of bills.
He wasn’t anything special—some short white boy with a mullet, a wife-beater—but something about his face, the way he moved, bothered her in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. The spectators around him were exclaiming, but the other players were ominously silent, rapping their knuckles against the tabletop, rubbing their bearded chins, squinting at him.
Finally, one of the players said, “How?”
The winner folded his beefy arms behind his head and shrugged. “Born lucky.” His smug voice was slurred with liquor.
For a moment, the other players stared him down. Then: “Deal.”
A new hand started.
The bartender caught Larkin watching. “He been winning all night,” she explained, wiping a glass with a rag.
“Mm,” Larkin said, sipping her water. “Your boys don’t look too happy about it.”
“They ain’t my boys. And like I said, he been at it a while.”
“Cheating, you think?”
The bartender snorted and gave Ebony an incredulous half-smile, as though how could the answer be in doubt. “Look at him.”
Ebony looked at him. As though on cue, the lucky winner knocked his drink off the table with his elbow. He blinked at the crash and stared at the shattered glass as though wondering how it’d gotten there. Ebony grimaced. Sober, he wouldn’t have been pretty; drunk he was repulsive.
“We know,” the bartender continued, propping an elbow on the stained counter and rubbing her chin. “We just don’t know how… yet.”
Ebony took another glance at the table. The players were glaring at the winner openly now, and there was more than one set of white knuckles and dark looks. The winner was either too smug or too drunk to notice.
“How long before they jump him?” Ebony asked.
“Enh,” the bartender said with a shrug.
She didn’t sound concerned, and after a moment, Ebony decided to follow suit. She tucked the duffel bag closer to her feet and took a menu.
Another couple hands of cards had gone around (the bystanders got louder and louder each time, while the players got quieter and quieter) when the bar phone rang. The bartender picked up, frowned, and turned to Ebony, holding out the receiver. “Robot for you.”
Ebony picked up. “Hi, Grey.”
“Sorry for—”
A roar exploded from the card table. Someone shouted about cheating; glasses and chairs crashed to the floor, and a tidal wave of flesh hurtled at the lucky winner.
Ebony hunched over the bar and bellowed, “I can’t hear you, let me just—”
With an expression as though this were a regular tradition, the bartender reached under the bar, came up with a softball bat, and waded into the mass of shouting men to break things up. Before she made it, though, the card shark tore free. Shedding dollars, he broke into an unsteady sprint, and… did something.
That was the best Ebony Larkin’s mind could tell her: he did something and then everyone’s hands were where he wasn’t. Before she could think further, he smashed into her, almost knocking her out of her seat. While she struggled to stay upright, he snatched her duffel bag from the floor and slammed out the door at full drunken tilt.
With a shout, Ebony slammed the phone down on Grey and bolted out the door, hot on the heels of the angry card players.
Outside, the street was deserted. Except for a few loose dollars fluttering to the ground, there was no sign of the card shark.
The card players interrogated each other angrily; Ebony ignored them. The boy couldn’t have gone far, that drunk and weighed down with Johnny, and there weren’t that many places he could’ve gone. With so many shops boarded up or closed, the only quick and easy hiding places were the alleys in-between. The dollars seemed to be heading left, so she headed towards that alley first. Around her, the card players fanned out to check the others, grumbling.
Ebony’s short, dead-end alley was empty, except for a Dumpster, the fire escape (rusted in place halfway down), and a couple dropped twenties. But Ebony didn’t move. A few hunches were connecting in her mind, and she squared her stance, listening for movement. It was difficult, over the grumbling of the barflies outside, but she heard a faint rasp of cloth against brick, and she reached.
Her hand brushed skin, and then an invisible fist clipped her stomach, knocking her breath out. But Larkin didn’t care, because she had denim and cotton under her hands, and she yanked and kicked out, trying to trip him up. Her aim wasn’t good, but the card shark yelped and she heard a screeching crash as he collided with the bottom edge of the fire escape. He lurched back into the visible spectrum as he hit, and Ebony pinned him against the wall before he could disappear again, snatching her handcuffs from her pocket and binding one of his thick wrists to the fire escape. The boy, still shedding dollars, whirled around and swung at Ebony with her own bag. She dodged, and it slid off his shoulder, flying into the opposite wall.
There was a crash, a clank, and a hiss. Vapor started gushing out of the bag.
“Oh, you stupid son of a bitch,” Ebony Larkin sighed, and then Johnny ignited with a cough.
It wasn’t much of an ignition. Johnny’s system couldn’t throw off cold sleep that fast, and after a couple chough sounds, he still looked like nothing more than a smoldering cantaloupe a month past expiration, barely enough to set the duffel bag on fire. Two of the chill pills burst with a rushing hiss of nitrogen, but Johnny lurched into the air, out of range, making groggy wheezing noises.
Before Ebony could move, some of the barflies barged into the alley. They took one look at Ebony (the card shark had vanished again), another at the flaming cantaloupe, and froze. Johnny didn’t move, apparently equally indecisive.
“The hell is that?” one of the civilians asked.
Before Ebony could speak, Johnny made up his mind and spat flaming matter at them.
It was a stupid move, a warning shot intended to miss, and it hit a car on the street. The alarm went off with a sorrowful wail, but that only made the barflies angry.
“The hell is that?”
“My car! That fucker blew up my car!”
Johnny couldn’t speak English, but he did understand it, and his color lurched to a more dangerous yellow-orange. In his current condition, Ebony doubted he could burn everyone that came at him, or that he wanted to, but he was scared and confused, and that mixed very badly with someone whose natural state was on fire.
Ebony raised her hands pacifyingly, kept her voice slow and smooth. To the civilians, she said, “Sir, if you could please leave the area…”
“My fucking car is on fucking fire!”
Ebony saw the men’s fists clenching; they’d been looking for a fight and were not about to change gears just because of a flaming cantaloupe. Johnny bobbed slightly in the air, trying to gain altitude, but he was still too cold to manage it. Unable to flee, he started making the heaving huff sounds that forewarned an explosion and surged to a brighter yellow.
Everything was going off the rails, and suddenly, Ebony Larkin had had enough. She’d had to wreck her sleep schedule to work this shift, a shift that’d now stretched almost ten solid hours, she hadn’t had dinner/breakfast, she was overheated and overtired and not paid nearly enough for this bullshit, and the last thing she wanted was for Johnny to burn down the city in sheer panic.
“Johnny, hold it!” Ebony shouted. Then, turning on the civilians, “And you! Sir! Back off! Now!”
Everyone shut up and looked at her. More importantly, they did not punch or set anything on fire. Ebony kept on.
“Nobody’s hurting nobody. Understand? You, sir, we will reimburse you for the car. Johnny, you ain’t hurt nobody yet, we can still work something out without you getting into any more trouble. Let’s all take a deep breath, calm down, and—”
For a moment, it looked like both sides might actually obey her, if only because she was the only one sober. Johnny stayed yellow but stopped huffing, the civilians stopped looking murderous, and for a moment, Ebony thought she might pull it off.
And then the chill pill came flying out of the air and hit Johnny dead-on.
Ebony closed her eyes. Mr. Lucky. She hadn’t thought to check his hands…
Johnny made a gasping noise and dropped a couple feet, then surged dark orange and rose with an antagonized roar. Flame started pouring out from his surface.
Finally, the civilians started running. Ebony dived under Johnny, grabbed the chill pills from the charred remains of her duffel bag, and hurled them upwards. Johnny bobbed and weaved and blasted flame; the chill pills protected Ebony from the heat, but dissipated without cooling him down. The cold chamber dug into her shoulder; she scrabbled for it, tried to bring it up. She wasn’t sure it could take down Johnny when he was running this hot, but—
Johnny began to huff, and Ebony was preparing herself for third degree burns when she heard screaming brakes. A black car came flying down the street and screeched to a halt in front of the alley, rear-ending the flaming one out of the way. The car alarm cut off with a sorrowful crunch.
Specialist Grey didn’t waste time getting out of the car. She just shot straight through the passenger window.
Light blue-gray foam doused Johnny and pinned him to the asphalt. Ebony Larkin had the opened cold chamber in her hands at once and raked Johnny into it, along with a good amount of gravel and a cigarette butt. She clamped it shut, it powered up with a hum, and her day was finally over.
Grey got out of the car, completely ignored the shattered window, and came to inspect the chamber. It seemed in fine working order, despite its fall.
“Larkin,” she greeted.
“Evening, Grey,” Ebony greeted from the ground. “Good to see you.”
Grey looked at the boy, who had come back into view and was glancing from woman to woman as though trying to figure out who was going to do what to him. Grey gave Ebony a questioning look.
“Hallu-gen,” Ebony said, slumping against the wall. “Robbed me, assaulted me, broke out Johnny, assaulted him, and ruined my negotiation. Tranq him; I’m done with his ass.”
Grey nodded, reached into the car, and pulled out a tranq tube. Mr. Lucky immediately vanished. Unperturbed, Grey came over, caught hold of some part of the boy, and after a brief struggle, got the tranq into him. While Mr. Lucky swore vociferously and jittered in and out of visibility, Grey tossed the tube back into the car, turned back to Larkin, and stated, “I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Ebony didn’t get up. “You didn’t inconvenience me. How’s Bob?”
“Made pie. Chicken cheese apple. Slice for you in the car.”
She almost laughed. “I like him. I’m glad you kept him.”
Social niceties exhausted, Grey went to get the fire extinguisher and put out the car that Johnny had blasted. Ebony hardly noticed any of it; she just sat with the cold chamber in her lap and felt tired.
When Grey finished, she drifted over and offered Ebony a hand up. Ebony took it, brushing gravel off her clothes.
“I’ll take him,” Grey said.
“Thank you,” she said. After the day they’d both had, it was a generous offer; Grey didn’t like the paperwork any more than she did, and this boy was bound to be a headache.
Mr. Lucky’s cursing, which had grown increasingly muddled and incoherent, finally died off with a moan and a crumpling noise. Despite her exhaustion, Ebony had to help Grey wrangle him into the backseat; Grey’s back was bad and she couldn’t take the weight on her own. A small price to pay for having that living trainwreck off her hands for good. After they were done, Larkin went to fetch her order from the bar while Grey cleared the gear and takeout containers off the passenger seat for her. As Larkin got in, Grey handed her a Tupperware with pie and pointed to the overstuffed glove compartment, extruding paper corners. “Sign off. Take you home.”
Ebony opened the glove compartment, was immediately covered with forms, and began hunting for the correct ones. “Thank you. You eaten yet?”
“No.” Grey fired up the engine. “Caught me before clocking in.”
“Yeah, I thought as much. After we drop this obstruction of justice off, let’s share this stoner pie your comboy made and talk what we’re doing for TV night.”
Grey smiled, nodded her appreciation, and they drove off.
Word Count: 3070
Summary: Specialist Ebony Larkin has a terrible day that starts with fire and ends with more fire and also Biff in the back seat.
Notes: This story takes place three years after the end of Ten Years to Vanish, and right before Biff meets M.D., but you don't need to know anything to read it. An amusing bit of trivia: this is one of the oldest side-stories in all of Infinity Smashed. We made an illustration for it way back in 2004! Enjoy!
PIN Specialist Ebony Larkin stood up from the firebombed skeleton of her car, wiping sweat and engine grease from her forehead. There was no question: her car wasn’t starting, and her phone was smeared across the pavement in pieces of half-melted plastic.
She hung her head. She sighed. Then she started stripping down.
Once she was no longer in imminent danger of heatstroke, she went to fetch the silver canister lying in the dirt roughly ten feet away. The cylinder was roughly the size of a yogurt maker, surprisingly heavy when she lifted it. Good. That meant it was working.
A shame it was so well insulated that she could barely feel any of the coolness. She shoved it into her duffel bag, along with a few spare chill pills. She shouldn’t need it, but it never paid to be too careful, especially on a day like this.
Putting on her sunglasses, she looked out onto the horizon. The sun wasn’t up yet, but when it was, the current temperature would seem a mercy. Dirt and rock stretched on either side of the highway as far as she could see, a plain of nothing.
She slung the duffel bag over her shoulder and started walking.
…
At dawn, she trudged into a seedy bar that reeked of cheap cigarettes and cheaper bear. Not normally her first choice, but it was open 24 hours and air-conditioned. Heaven.
Even at this hour, the bar was filled with the local unemployed, loafers, and drinkers… all looking like they’d been there all night. Ebony hesitated, but nobody looked at her with anything but the most cursory attention, and after a moment, the conversational volume went back to its normal heights. Ebony let her breath out. With what remained of her uniform, they probably thought she was a gang member, and in this part of town, it was probably a good thing. Certainly better than being clocked as one of la migra (though not the usual kind).
Slinging the duffel bag down, she dragged herself to the bar.
“May I use your phone?”
“Local calls and paying customers only,” the bartender droned without looking up from the register.
Well, she was dehydrated anyway. Larkin dug into her pocket, pulled out her singed wallet, and handed over a five. “Cranberry juice.”
The bartender glanced up, took in the blackened, sweat-stained clothes and the duffel bag. Her expression didn’t change, but her tone softened, and she slid the phone down the counter. “I’ll get you a chaser.”
“Thank you,” Larkin said, and took up the receiver.
She dialed the number and listened a moment, punched in the extension. After a moment, the phone informed her that Randall Leibowitz wasn’t in at the moment, but if she could leave a message after the beep, he would return her call as soon—
She hung up and tried again, with a different extension this time. It kept ringing without going to voice mail, and finally she hung up and tried a different number, sucking her teeth.
This time she got an instant response: “Specialist Grey.”
Her shoulders relaxed. Grey wasn’t a big talker, but she was a reliable friend. “Grey, it’s Larkin. I’m stranded on the edge of the south side, need a pick-up for me and Johnny. Randall’s bolted for the day and Agatha’s not picking up.”
She didn’t have to mention she had been out since ten at night; Grey knew her schedule.
After taking down the address and phone number, Grey said, “I’ll clock you out. Wait half an hour.”
Ebony Larkin resisted a sigh. If Grey could move faster, she would. “Sure. I need to eat anyway.” Right on time, the barkeep plunked a couple glasses in front of her. “Say hi to Bob for me. See you soon.”
“Bye.” Click.
There. That was done. Ebony took the glass and pressed it against her forehead. The chill felt wonderful. She gulped the cranberry juice so fast the ice made her teeth hurt and then reached for the water.
As she raised it to her lips, a roar broke out in the back corner of the place. A group of men at a table were playing cards, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, and as she turned to watch, the youngest at the table was raking in an untidy pile of bills.
He wasn’t anything special—some short white boy with a mullet, a wife-beater—but something about his face, the way he moved, bothered her in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. The spectators around him were exclaiming, but the other players were ominously silent, rapping their knuckles against the tabletop, rubbing their bearded chins, squinting at him.
Finally, one of the players said, “How?”
The winner folded his beefy arms behind his head and shrugged. “Born lucky.” His smug voice was slurred with liquor.
For a moment, the other players stared him down. Then: “Deal.”
A new hand started.
The bartender caught Larkin watching. “He been winning all night,” she explained, wiping a glass with a rag.
“Mm,” Larkin said, sipping her water. “Your boys don’t look too happy about it.”
“They ain’t my boys. And like I said, he been at it a while.”
“Cheating, you think?”
The bartender snorted and gave Ebony an incredulous half-smile, as though how could the answer be in doubt. “Look at him.”
Ebony looked at him. As though on cue, the lucky winner knocked his drink off the table with his elbow. He blinked at the crash and stared at the shattered glass as though wondering how it’d gotten there. Ebony grimaced. Sober, he wouldn’t have been pretty; drunk he was repulsive.
“We know,” the bartender continued, propping an elbow on the stained counter and rubbing her chin. “We just don’t know how… yet.”
Ebony took another glance at the table. The players were glaring at the winner openly now, and there was more than one set of white knuckles and dark looks. The winner was either too smug or too drunk to notice.
“How long before they jump him?” Ebony asked.
“Enh,” the bartender said with a shrug.
She didn’t sound concerned, and after a moment, Ebony decided to follow suit. She tucked the duffel bag closer to her feet and took a menu.
Another couple hands of cards had gone around (the bystanders got louder and louder each time, while the players got quieter and quieter) when the bar phone rang. The bartender picked up, frowned, and turned to Ebony, holding out the receiver. “Robot for you.”
Ebony picked up. “Hi, Grey.”
“Sorry for—”
A roar exploded from the card table. Someone shouted about cheating; glasses and chairs crashed to the floor, and a tidal wave of flesh hurtled at the lucky winner.
Ebony hunched over the bar and bellowed, “I can’t hear you, let me just—”
With an expression as though this were a regular tradition, the bartender reached under the bar, came up with a softball bat, and waded into the mass of shouting men to break things up. Before she made it, though, the card shark tore free. Shedding dollars, he broke into an unsteady sprint, and… did something.
That was the best Ebony Larkin’s mind could tell her: he did something and then everyone’s hands were where he wasn’t. Before she could think further, he smashed into her, almost knocking her out of her seat. While she struggled to stay upright, he snatched her duffel bag from the floor and slammed out the door at full drunken tilt.
With a shout, Ebony slammed the phone down on Grey and bolted out the door, hot on the heels of the angry card players.
Outside, the street was deserted. Except for a few loose dollars fluttering to the ground, there was no sign of the card shark.
The card players interrogated each other angrily; Ebony ignored them. The boy couldn’t have gone far, that drunk and weighed down with Johnny, and there weren’t that many places he could’ve gone. With so many shops boarded up or closed, the only quick and easy hiding places were the alleys in-between. The dollars seemed to be heading left, so she headed towards that alley first. Around her, the card players fanned out to check the others, grumbling.
Ebony’s short, dead-end alley was empty, except for a Dumpster, the fire escape (rusted in place halfway down), and a couple dropped twenties. But Ebony didn’t move. A few hunches were connecting in her mind, and she squared her stance, listening for movement. It was difficult, over the grumbling of the barflies outside, but she heard a faint rasp of cloth against brick, and she reached.
Her hand brushed skin, and then an invisible fist clipped her stomach, knocking her breath out. But Larkin didn’t care, because she had denim and cotton under her hands, and she yanked and kicked out, trying to trip him up. Her aim wasn’t good, but the card shark yelped and she heard a screeching crash as he collided with the bottom edge of the fire escape. He lurched back into the visible spectrum as he hit, and Ebony pinned him against the wall before he could disappear again, snatching her handcuffs from her pocket and binding one of his thick wrists to the fire escape. The boy, still shedding dollars, whirled around and swung at Ebony with her own bag. She dodged, and it slid off his shoulder, flying into the opposite wall.
There was a crash, a clank, and a hiss. Vapor started gushing out of the bag.
“Oh, you stupid son of a bitch,” Ebony Larkin sighed, and then Johnny ignited with a cough.
It wasn’t much of an ignition. Johnny’s system couldn’t throw off cold sleep that fast, and after a couple chough sounds, he still looked like nothing more than a smoldering cantaloupe a month past expiration, barely enough to set the duffel bag on fire. Two of the chill pills burst with a rushing hiss of nitrogen, but Johnny lurched into the air, out of range, making groggy wheezing noises.
Before Ebony could move, some of the barflies barged into the alley. They took one look at Ebony (the card shark had vanished again), another at the flaming cantaloupe, and froze. Johnny didn’t move, apparently equally indecisive.
“The hell is that?” one of the civilians asked.
Before Ebony could speak, Johnny made up his mind and spat flaming matter at them.
It was a stupid move, a warning shot intended to miss, and it hit a car on the street. The alarm went off with a sorrowful wail, but that only made the barflies angry.
“The hell is that?”
“My car! That fucker blew up my car!”
Johnny couldn’t speak English, but he did understand it, and his color lurched to a more dangerous yellow-orange. In his current condition, Ebony doubted he could burn everyone that came at him, or that he wanted to, but he was scared and confused, and that mixed very badly with someone whose natural state was on fire.
Ebony raised her hands pacifyingly, kept her voice slow and smooth. To the civilians, she said, “Sir, if you could please leave the area…”
“My fucking car is on fucking fire!”
Ebony saw the men’s fists clenching; they’d been looking for a fight and were not about to change gears just because of a flaming cantaloupe. Johnny bobbed slightly in the air, trying to gain altitude, but he was still too cold to manage it. Unable to flee, he started making the heaving huff sounds that forewarned an explosion and surged to a brighter yellow.
Everything was going off the rails, and suddenly, Ebony Larkin had had enough. She’d had to wreck her sleep schedule to work this shift, a shift that’d now stretched almost ten solid hours, she hadn’t had dinner/breakfast, she was overheated and overtired and not paid nearly enough for this bullshit, and the last thing she wanted was for Johnny to burn down the city in sheer panic.
“Johnny, hold it!” Ebony shouted. Then, turning on the civilians, “And you! Sir! Back off! Now!”
Everyone shut up and looked at her. More importantly, they did not punch or set anything on fire. Ebony kept on.
“Nobody’s hurting nobody. Understand? You, sir, we will reimburse you for the car. Johnny, you ain’t hurt nobody yet, we can still work something out without you getting into any more trouble. Let’s all take a deep breath, calm down, and—”
For a moment, it looked like both sides might actually obey her, if only because she was the only one sober. Johnny stayed yellow but stopped huffing, the civilians stopped looking murderous, and for a moment, Ebony thought she might pull it off.
And then the chill pill came flying out of the air and hit Johnny dead-on.
Ebony closed her eyes. Mr. Lucky. She hadn’t thought to check his hands…
Johnny made a gasping noise and dropped a couple feet, then surged dark orange and rose with an antagonized roar. Flame started pouring out from his surface.
Finally, the civilians started running. Ebony dived under Johnny, grabbed the chill pills from the charred remains of her duffel bag, and hurled them upwards. Johnny bobbed and weaved and blasted flame; the chill pills protected Ebony from the heat, but dissipated without cooling him down. The cold chamber dug into her shoulder; she scrabbled for it, tried to bring it up. She wasn’t sure it could take down Johnny when he was running this hot, but—
Johnny began to huff, and Ebony was preparing herself for third degree burns when she heard screaming brakes. A black car came flying down the street and screeched to a halt in front of the alley, rear-ending the flaming one out of the way. The car alarm cut off with a sorrowful crunch.
Specialist Grey didn’t waste time getting out of the car. She just shot straight through the passenger window.
Light blue-gray foam doused Johnny and pinned him to the asphalt. Ebony Larkin had the opened cold chamber in her hands at once and raked Johnny into it, along with a good amount of gravel and a cigarette butt. She clamped it shut, it powered up with a hum, and her day was finally over.
Grey got out of the car, completely ignored the shattered window, and came to inspect the chamber. It seemed in fine working order, despite its fall.
“Larkin,” she greeted.
“Evening, Grey,” Ebony greeted from the ground. “Good to see you.”
Grey looked at the boy, who had come back into view and was glancing from woman to woman as though trying to figure out who was going to do what to him. Grey gave Ebony a questioning look.
“Hallu-gen,” Ebony said, slumping against the wall. “Robbed me, assaulted me, broke out Johnny, assaulted him, and ruined my negotiation. Tranq him; I’m done with his ass.”
Grey nodded, reached into the car, and pulled out a tranq tube. Mr. Lucky immediately vanished. Unperturbed, Grey came over, caught hold of some part of the boy, and after a brief struggle, got the tranq into him. While Mr. Lucky swore vociferously and jittered in and out of visibility, Grey tossed the tube back into the car, turned back to Larkin, and stated, “I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Ebony didn’t get up. “You didn’t inconvenience me. How’s Bob?”
“Made pie. Chicken cheese apple. Slice for you in the car.”
She almost laughed. “I like him. I’m glad you kept him.”
Social niceties exhausted, Grey went to get the fire extinguisher and put out the car that Johnny had blasted. Ebony hardly noticed any of it; she just sat with the cold chamber in her lap and felt tired.
When Grey finished, she drifted over and offered Ebony a hand up. Ebony took it, brushing gravel off her clothes.
“I’ll take him,” Grey said.
“Thank you,” she said. After the day they’d both had, it was a generous offer; Grey didn’t like the paperwork any more than she did, and this boy was bound to be a headache.
Mr. Lucky’s cursing, which had grown increasingly muddled and incoherent, finally died off with a moan and a crumpling noise. Despite her exhaustion, Ebony had to help Grey wrangle him into the backseat; Grey’s back was bad and she couldn’t take the weight on her own. A small price to pay for having that living trainwreck off her hands for good. After they were done, Larkin went to fetch her order from the bar while Grey cleared the gear and takeout containers off the passenger seat for her. As Larkin got in, Grey handed her a Tupperware with pie and pointed to the overstuffed glove compartment, extruding paper corners. “Sign off. Take you home.”
Ebony opened the glove compartment, was immediately covered with forms, and began hunting for the correct ones. “Thank you. You eaten yet?”
“No.” Grey fired up the engine. “Caught me before clocking in.”
“Yeah, I thought as much. After we drop this obstruction of justice off, let’s share this stoner pie your comboy made and talk what we’re doing for TV night.”
Grey smiled, nodded her appreciation, and they drove off.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-12 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-12 08:25 pm (UTC)The art has been restored! The link should work now. Sorry about that. Enjoy the embarrassingly old art and the kinda broken canon of this story.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-13 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-14 09:42 pm (UTC)I'm considering slapping together an immense gumroad file of a bunch of old Infinity Smashed art for dirt cheap, just to make things easier for folks who don't want to dive through old website archives, some of which no longer exist.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-14 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-14 10:36 pm (UTC)Ha, I'd likely be throwing it up as "pay what you want" so no worries!
--Rogan