There was the high temple.  Faultline and the hypnotist they’d hired had talked her through it, building a place that wasn’t so influenced by Elle’s negative thoughts and ideas.

High temple? Sounds like what she pulled out at the mall.

It was a place she associated with personal triumphs, with her inner strengths.  At the opposite end of the coin was also the bad place.

The low toe?

Also, this sounds like a healthy practice. Kudos to the hypnotist.

Of the worlds, it was the biggest by far.  Nothing she could use there, she knew.  She was intimately familiar with every aspect of it.  She had spent a long time there.

Ouch.

Her eyes snapped open as explosion erupted in the street.

She saw Faultline, Gregor and Shamrock tumbling through the air.

Yeeah, this ain’t ideal.

Her power was available to her, but the range was too small.

Ahh, I see.

She needed time to soak it into an area, and she’d gone for a walk earlier.  Two hours since she’d gotten back, and her power was limited to her room, the neighboring rooms, the upstairs hallway and the exterior walls of the building that surrounded these areas.

That is a very interesting mechanic. It might also explain the timing of the Crew’s intrusion on the Merchant get-together.

Not enough to reach the street where the fighting was happening.  And if she moved beyond the boundaries, she would be losing ground.  Any time she moved to a new place, beyond the limits of where her power was taking effect, her area of influence shrunk to a few feet around her, only to start gradually bleeding out once more, faster with each passing minute.

Huh. Which also means that the larger the area she has to play with, the more it takes for it to reset like this.

She tried using it anyways.  Closing her eyes, she reached for the other worlds.

Hm.

How literally is this what she is doing? We know there are other worlds, including our own, so I guess it’s not far-fetched that there’s one with moving pillars in the location of the ABB hideout, or one with a temple containing a maze in place of the Weymouth shopping center.

Or a temple in one world and a maze in another.

Pocket worlds, as she interpreted them.  Realities that were a blank canvas to be altered according to her thoughts, both conscious and unconscious.

Ahh. So then it’s somewhere in-between the world of Labyrinth’s imagination and real worlds.

Real worlds of her imagination, I suppose.

They were lucid dreams that were big enough, detailed enough, intricate enough to swallow her up, as they so often did.

I see.

I don’t know if I ever stated it explicitly, but it’s been pretty clear to me that Labyrinth being “in her own world” had her seeing some of the same sorts of things she can “create” in combat.

She could make new ones at a whim, but she found it better to build on what she already had.

Seems reasonable.

The same instant he turned towards her, the flame around her flared up, consuming her.

Aaand she’s gone again. Which flame did she go to now?

They turned to look for her, simultaneously trying to back away from the flames that spread with each of Burnscar’s attacks, and they missed seeing the crouching form in their midst.

Well, shit.

Only Elle, from her higher vantage point, was able to see Burnscar.

Would’ve been very helpful to have some sort of walkie-talkies or similar.

To say that Faultline and her crew were friends wasn’t meaningful enough.  Elle saw them as family.

Aw, that’s nice. 🙂

And she was helpless to do anything to save them.

That, not so much.

I’m not sure whether or not Elle is Labyrinth. She seems a bit more clear-headed than I would’ve expected, and Labyrinth does have powers that could be used to help out here.

But I do seem to recall Elle’s name being mentioned before, possibly in a context that heavily implied she was Labyrinth. I guess I should go and do a blog search.

…

Okay, so Elle is Labyrinth, but her lucidity fluctuates and her power is inversely proportional to her lucidity. Right now she’s the most lucid we’ve ever seen her, and thus weak powerwise, and that’s why she can’t help.

Things make sense now.

Like a flamethrower, twin streams of fire shot from Burnscar’s hands, striking Shamrock, Faultline and Gregor. 

Ouch.

Catching sight of the attack at the last second, Gregor did his best to shield Faultline and Shamrock with his bulk.

Woo, go Gregor!

Newter threw more trash and rubble towards Burnscar, and succeeded in interrupting her assault on his teammates.

And Newter too!

Faultline was on fire, her costume alight.

That probably ain’t good. Sounds a little uncomfortable.

Gregor slimed her to put it out, then wheeled on Burnscar.

“Oh, you have it coming now.”

She seized Spitfire and began dragging her toward an alley, one hand around her throat.

She hasn’t said anything yet, but it seems like this is someone who knows what she wants and takes it by force.

Wherever Burnscar stepped, she left burning footprints, and the flames slowly swelled and spread to join with one another, a trail of fire forming a path behind her.

Huh, that’s pretty cool. Kind of powerful too, if her power lets her teleport from fire to fire – she’ll automatically have fire under her almost no matter what, and just needs to put an exit fire somewhere.

Newter lunged forward, leaping over the flame that separated him from Gregor and then hopping to the nearest building to grab a bag of trash with his tail.  Twisting his entire body, he whipped the bag at Burnscar.

Nice!

It struck her, and she staggered back, losing hold of Spitfire.

Sweet.

Are we going to have a save like this from each Crew member? Except Labyrinth, maybe, who I’ve just realized doesn’t seem to be present.

Burnscar dropped into the flames that covered the pavement and emerged from the flames just behind the others.

Watch out!

Elle, from the second floor room of Palanquin, banged on the window, trying to alert her comrades.

Labyrinth?

Hang on.

We’ve been seeing things that should be behind Spitfire’s back, such as Burnscar coming after her when she turned to run. The narration has also been devoid of descriptions about how things felt for Spitfire, such as the throat grab hurting.

She’s not the POV character here. Elle is.

Burnscar drew fire up around herself, blinding the others, and in a moment, she was beside Spitfire, clutching the girl’s throat with her fingertips, pushing her down against the ground that was still burning with traces of the fireball’s heat.

Welp.

So is she just fast, or does she have a sort of fire-to-fire teleportation?

Why couldn’t this be one of the areas where the streets were flooded?  Why did Palanquin have to be on this hill?

Holy shit.

A dry place.

Ish.

“Get her!”  Faultline shouted.  Shamrock drew her gun and fired, and Gregor launched a stream of slime toward the spot where Burnscar crouched.

Good luck… oh wait

The slime put out the flame where it landed, and in the moment the splashing slime and the billowing smoke obscured her, Burnscar disappeared.

Hm, maybe it’s not so much fire-to-fire as a “teleport when not visible to anyone” ability?

Or maybe it’s both. Teleport from fire to fire when not visible.

“There!”

Burnscar had emerged from a patch of flames fifteen feet from Spitfire, and was striding toward the girl, ensuring Spitfire was in the way of any potential attacks from the rest of Faultline’s crew.

Okay, yeah, definitely seems to be fire-to-fire.

Burnscar didn’t seem to have the same reservations about incinerating more vulnerable enemies that Spitfire did.

Yeah, no surprise.

Gregor the Snail caught one fireball with a hurled glob of slime, extinguishing it.

Nice.

The other landed in the middle of the group, not striking anyone, but nonetheless driving them apart.  Newter was at one side of the resulting blaze in the middle of the street, Faultline and Shamrock at the other, with Gregor and Spitfire at the back, furthest from Burnscar.

I wonder how much Shamrock’s luck extends to her allies. I mean, her allies succeeding at things for the good of the team is lucky for Shamrock, right?

Spitfire turned to run, and Burnscar drew together another fireball, lobbing it forward, where it soared high in the air before it began to drop.

That ain’t good. Is this going to cut Spitfire’s escape off?

The fireball collided with Spitfire, smashing the girl to the ground.

Oof.

Flames licked off of her fireproof suit and the pavement around her, and it was long seconds before she was able to start pulling herself to her feet.

A fireproof suit implies either that Spitfire herself isn’t fireproof, or simply that she doesn’t want to end up naked in battle.

I can relate to both of those things.

Burnscar wore a red dress and had chosen to go barefoot rather than wear shoes.

Oh, hi. Didn’t think we’d be seeing you this immediately, though I suppose we kind of did with Jack Slash. I guess there’s no pretense of introducing the Fellowship one by one not being the gimmick of these Interludes.

I appreciate that, honestly. It’s too obvious to try to hide it at this point, even if the reader didn’t know there were eight of these Interludes going in.

Her dark brown hair was a tangled mess above staring green eyes.  Her skin was pale, giving a greater contrast to the red of her clothing and the dark the circles under her eyes.

She sounds oddly elegant. Not sure why.

The round scars of what were likely cigarette burns formed individual rows down from the bottom of each eye to her jaw.

Ah, yes, the signature burn scars. Quite possibly related to her trigger event.

She strode forward through the flames she’d set on the streets outside Faultline’s now-deserted nightclub, Palanquin.

Eyy, it made it through the test of water. Now let’s hope it can withstand fire too.

So chances are Burnscar wants Spitfire – both Jack and Siberian went for people they could relate to, and I think that trend will continue – but Spitfire is apparently not amoral. Does Burnscar actually think she’s Slaughterhouse material?

Sweeping her arms to either side, she spread the flames along the breadth of the road, drew the heat into her palms, and then hurled it at her opponents.

On the other hand, maybe she just came here for a fight. I do think it’s more likely that the Crew just got ready to fight the moment they spotted her, though, without hearing her out.

Spitfire had often complained that having a power based around creating flame meant you faced two kinds of opponents.

Oh hey, Spitfire! This ought to be interesting. Despite her appearing in Interlude 5, we know next to nothing about her.

There were the people who burned, who were the majority.  Civilians fell into this category.

That is an unfortunate side effect, yes.

So considering we’re following Spitfire and talking about burning, is this the Interlude in which we meet Burnscar?

Unless the person with the power was amoral, which Spitfire wasn’t, this actually wound up being a detriment, because of the easy possibility of life altering injuries, death and scars.

Yeah, that can be a problem.

And then on the other hand, we have people who don’t burn, people the power is useless against, right?

The kind of thing that brought heroes down on the villain’s head in full force.

Like Taylor was worried about Regent’s body control doing to the Undersiders.

The second group was the foes who didn’t burn.  People in armored suits with enough covering, people with forcefields, people with foreign materials either forming or surrounding their bodies, the list wound up being fairly long.

People who burn by default and don’t take damage from it… People who can control fire and prevent it from burning themselves, maybe even turn it against you… People who are just generally fire resistant…

“Spitfire, run!”  Faultline ordered.

I take it you’re up against one of those latter enemies right now?