i'm ready to suffer & i'm ready to hope Who: Madeleine & Persephone Where: Just past the bridge When: 11.37 and on?
There was no reason Madeleine would walk this far in these shoes for anything other than Zaviar’s desire to take a closer look at the opposition. Because they were opposition, regardless of what the signs had said. ‘Preternaturals for Peace’? Really? Who honestly wanted to remain peaceful with a race of creatures that Madeleine did not see fit to do her laundry? Said preternaturals, obviously, but this particular scenario was what the rhetorical question had been invented for. Then again, neither herself nor her mother would consider a significant portion of these marchers fit to do their laundry – Zaviar even less. Rolling her shoulders in an attempt to shake off the reminder they may well be surrounded by godforsaken psychics, she briefly wondered if Lila had blacklisted all necromancers or just Antonin. Not that it really—Ow. Bloody hell. A quick intake of breath and she swore. Stubbing one’s toe wasn’t ever anyone’s understanding of a good idea. She glanced down and behind to see what the cause had been, but saw nothing save the floor. That’s not right. Could you simply stub your toe on the bare—
Her line of sight continued on behind her as Madeleine stopped and her shoulders angled her side-on. Less than a second’s worth of time, and she felt the fire. The only thing she could equate it to was how her brother had known the house was burning when they were children. But then they had known why it was there, that they were safe. Now, she was still struggling to register the noise, left with no time to register the panic. Feeling herself shrouded in flame and hot air—“Zaviar!”—she grit her teeth and closed her eyes, just as the ground rose to greet her shoulder with a fleshy thud. Not the ground, she realised, pushing herself back with the kind of jolt she wasn’t sure would make her throw up or just laugh. The poor bastard she had landed on smelled like a barbecue. So did she. But he – he was burning. The very idea of Zaviar being hurt like that knocked her sick. Ignoring the complaints from joints and various superficial injuries, Madeleine freeing her leg from beneath someone else’s – no, she didn’t care that they were alive, injured and apparently on a slow burn – and staggered away from her small embankment of bodies at the side of the road. Parts looked like someone got a giant flamethrower and went to town with it, while Broadway bridge looked like—Someone blew it up. Someone had tried to kill them all. Which looked an awful lot like a gauntlet to her. “Zaviar, I swear if you don’t answer me I will turn into my mother and you will never hear the end of—”
“Are you alright?”
The small girl who the small voice belonged to received an outright glare for interrupting Madeleine’s rant of concern. “Am I alright?” she repeated, separating each syllable as though the question would somehow make more sense spoken that way. “Do I look alright?” She was standing, walking in stilettoes, stringing full sentences together – that was a good start as far as the elemental was concerned. Where was her familiar? She needed another set of thoughts in her head that was not her own before someone died for being a complete imbecile.
“You’re on fire.”
“Fire elemental. Why is that so hard to grasp? We don’t burn, you complete and utter morons.” What she was guessing was an anti-supernatural – or extremely opportunistic – terrorist group had blown up the bridge with half of Michigan’s supernaturals on it. Did the survivors have to continue to be so bloody stupid? “What are you staring at? Go away.” She wasn’t a godforsaken tourist attraction. There was a significant amount of material singed off her shorts, though. And a hole in the side of her top…
“But your shoulder is bleeding. I think—”
Madeleine pulled a very strained smile onto her face. “If I set you alight, will you leave me alone?” The girl’s sudden distance rather answered that. Which left her almost at square one. “ZAVIAR, ANSWER ME.”