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?