“The doctors,” Burnscar scowled.

“You?”

I guess Burnscar didn’t have a great experience at the asylum either.

Hell, was it even really an asylum? Maybe it was a front of some kind for shady parahuman research.

“I… did you know I escaped at the same time you did?”

Interesting. I think that implies the Crew are responsible, if I remember the story correctly.

Elle shook her head.

“I did.  But I had no place to go.  I had some bad days.  I was lonely, scared.  Some guy tried to convince me to be his whore, earn some cash, get fed… I refused, but he kept coming after me.”

Eesh, fuck off.

So that’s one major difference here – Labyrinth found a home with her rescuers. Burnscar didn’t.

In an alternate timeline, Burnscar could’ve been a Crew member all this time.

“I don’t want to talk about the weather!” Burnscar snapped the words, in a mixture of desperation and anger.  Her eyes flashed orange and flame flared around her hands, then it all faded.

Power tied to anger, sounds about right. Was I onto something with my anger management spitball?

“Sorry.”

“I… um.  How are you?  How have you been, since you escaped?”

Hm.

Maybe that’s how it all ties together: the asylum. Burnscar as a clingy fellow inmate?

“Been… been good.  Good people.”  So hard to articulate my thoughts, even on a good day.

She’s been good people.

Wait, no, that’s Regent’s job.

“They take care of me.  Faultline helped… more than any doctor I’ve had.”

This is one of the things I like about the Crew, besides simply the fun characters – they’re a bunch of misfits who, while outwardly all in it for the money, focus on helping each other with their various hurdles and mysterious backstories. They’re so inwardly supportive and it’s great. Elle is right to call them a family.

Either that, or she likes it a lot.

Old times.  Elle couldn’t help it.  Her thoughts turned to the bad place, the biggest of her worlds, the world she had spent the most time.

Ah, yes, old times weren’t all that great for Elle.

Is any of that because of Burnscar and her friends?

“Back when we were both having our good days?  We’d talk, and I really liked those times.  I look back on them fondly.  One of the few moments I treasure.”

Was that before your respective trigger events, or are you in denial about how bad things were for Labyrinth?

Elle nodded.  Behind Burnscar, the door to her room was changing to metal.  A tiny window was expanding, bars already closing down like teeth.  The wall around the door was growing tatters of cloth that rippled like they were blowing in the wind.

A metal door, a tiny barred window… is Labyrinth reflexively pushing a copy of her old asylum cell into reality?

“Fuck,” Burnscar said, “I don’t even know where to start.  Since I learned you were in this city, and the group wanted to come here, I’ve been looking forward to this, seeing you again, but now I don’t know what to say.”

It really sounds like Burnscar was very close with Labyrinth.

The other way around is up in the air at the moment.

“The weather?” Elle tried, lightly joking. The wrong thing to say.

Heh.

I bet Burnscar doesn’t like rain.

“I don’t think I did any permanent damage.  They’re alive.”

Ah, good. Thank you.

Let’s keep the Crew alive while we can. They’re one of my favorite groups at this point.

“Thank you,” Elle managed.  She couldn’t entirely suppress the bitterness in her voice.  Burnscar didn’t seem to notice.

“Thank you for not killing my friends, old pal. Very nice of you.”

“I- I wanted to talk.  Like old times.”

Alright? What about?

Also, I’m going to give Burnscar a bit of benefit of the doubt here: It’s entirely possible that her side of the battle out there was self-defense. She may have attempted to approach Palanquin mundanely, but then been recognized by the Crew, who decided to attack immediately to defend themselves and their home from the known person butcher they saw incoming.

Neither party would be really at fault in that scenario.

That said, even with this apologetic, meek attitude and that benefit of the doubt, I’m still wary. There’s gotta be a reason this girl would become and remain a member of the Fellowship.

“I’m… I’m sorry about your friends.  I didn’t come here planning to do that.  It’s just… you know.”

Are they all still alive, at least? It hasn’t escaped my notice that the last we saw of two of them was them going off-screen together with a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

I do find it more likely at the moment that Burnscar simply led them away and then abandoned them with her firewalking, but only slightly.

Anyway, Burnscar seems a lot more apologetic than I was expecting from any Slaughterhouse member. Is she like this usually, or is it just because of Labyrinth?

Elle nodded, trying to keep her outrage off her face.

“I- Fuck.  I’m really sorry, you know?  I can’t help it.”

Anger management issues? That would be very suited for a fire-themed character. As would not being able to restrain her power from going all out with every attack.

Fire is chaotic, passionate and deadly, after all.

You can.  You just don’t try hard enough.

This suggests Labyrinth knows her rather well.

Why was she so sure Burnscar was there for Spitfire?

But Elle didn’t voice her thoughts.  She nodded.

Yeeah, might not be worth the risk of burning the room down.

“Hello, old friend,” Burnscar said.

…

You know, I feel like I should’ve read this line last time. This would’ve been a much better note to leave off the session on.

So are the Slaughterhouse Nine responsible for Labyrinth’s mental problems and institution, and/or her trigger event? Or is Burnscar being more literal here?

Hm… I feel like if there was at any point a positive relation between these two that Labyrinth knew about now, then she’d be acting very differently and probably not be surprised that Burnscar was after her.

She wasn’t good at talking, even on a good day.  “Mimi.”

Oh, huh.

Interesting. 

So… were they “friends” before Burnscar became a Slaughterhouse member, or…?

I know Mimi is a name, or nickname, but I’m just gonna go ahead and imagine Burnscar wearing nekomimi on a regular basis.

“Long time.”

Elle nodded.

“Sup?”

“Oh, not much, just defending our home from murderous intruders. You wouldn’t happen to have seen one of those around, would you?”

But enough about Burnscar’s powers for now. Let’s get back into it for real now and find out what her personality is like! 😀

Since it’s been a week since I last liveblogged Interlude 11c, I’m currently rereading what I’ve seen of the chapter so far in preparation.

Power-wise, Burnscar is really cool. She basically seems to have all the coolest and most useful fire-based powers – fire resistance, firewalking (teleportation between fires), fire generation, fire beams, fireballs, explosions, ranged pyrokinesis (the last three might count as being this mixed with fire generation), fiery footsteps… And she seems fairly strong with all of them, too.

Pretty much the only showy fire-based powers she hasn’t demonstrated are changing the color of the fire (which I believe would most likely also involve realistically increasing the heat of it

in this setting, so chances are she’d be using blue or violet fire if she could), and literally turning into fire.

Besides those missing or unseen powers, Burnscar is basically a perfect fire element parahuman.