Author's Note: (Upcoming) videos for characters canon and original, can be found on my Youtube channel via the link on my profile.

Strike First

"Honey, I'm just going to nip out for a minute, okay?"

Lori hunched over the console, eyes narrowing. Onscreen, Admiral Salen Kotch snarled his way through yet another intergalactic fight.

"Lor!"

Lori finally deigned to look up, only to see the furious face of her mother, Shannon's red-lipsticked mouth pressed in a thin line. She hated it when her mom called her 'Lor'. Her dad had initially wanted to call her Laura after his own mother, but Shannon had said he'd no right to name a baby he hadn't even bothered to turn up seeing being born. When it came to naming Robby, Lori's twin brother, she had applied the same argument, guilt making Johnny give in, Shannon giving Robby the middle name of Swayze for good measure.

But surprisingly, when it came to his daughter, Johnny hadn't let Shannon win second time round, so they had reluctantly reached a middle ground of Lori, Shannon wanting the twins to have complementing names that sounded similar. But Johnny and Shannon had then battled over the spelling of Lori, Johnny changing his mind at the last minute when they went to register the births, wanting Laurie instead of Lori, arguing it rhymed better with Robby and sounded like Laura to boot. But Shannon had put her high heeled foot down, and now here Lori was sixteen years later, glaring up at the woman who had lost all authority over her so long ago.

"Don't call me, Lor," Lori snapped, flinging the console aside, "it's Lori." She would have personally preferred Laurie, thinking it cooler, but if she took a brainstorm and took her dad's surname, she would have ended up sounding like the hot dude out of Little Women.

"Well, Lori," Shannon said sarcastically, dramatically curling her fingers into quotation marks, "I was just informing you of my intention to nip out for a few minutes."

"I thought it was for a minute."

"Oh, you were listening!"

Rolling her eyes, Lori then glanced over at Dylan by the draining board, where he was pouring himself another glass of Scotch from one of the half empty bottles Robby's deadbeat buddies always left lying around whenever they dropped by on the downlow. Shannon never seemed to notice how alcohol magically appeared in her apartment all the time. Dylan was Shannon's latest flavour of the moment, and surprisingly she hadn't ditched him yet like she did the others, who didn't even last a day never mind the week like Dylan had. He was considerably younger than Shannon's average middle-aged suitor, being in his late twenties, sporting a hipster vibe with his beard and checked plaid shirts.

Dylan glanced up, catching Lori's eye, holding it for a heartbeat too long. Lori looked away, jaw tightening. She wished her mother would ditch Dylan like she did the others. He didn't seem to have a job and was more than happy to sponge off Shannon, or more correctly, Robby, who was the real one who tried to keep everything ticking over, taking care of them all. Lori would often feel Dylan's eyes on her, but whenever she looked at him, he would always be doing something else, playing paranoid games with her. He was still looking at her right now; she could feel his gaze burning into her back, Shannon too angry to notice his odd behaviour.

"Are we done?" Lori said to Shannon, picking up the console again, trying to ignore Dylan.

"Yeah, I'm done," Shannon snapped, snatching up her Fendi cream leather handbag from the coffee table.

Lori rolled her eyes again as Shannon then stormed out, the front door slamming shut behind her. Ever since Dylan had taken to hanging around the apartment, Shannon went out several times a day, killing time until she could get Dylan behind closed doors, her bedroom door to be precise. Lori would make herself scarce, nauseated by the knowledge Shannon wasn't keeping company with Dylan because she merely liked his company. She had once told her mom that her chances of finding a decent man would be better if she didn't put out on the first date all the time, resulting in Shannon not speaking to her for a full month.

Robby had taken to pulling disappearing acts as well ever since Dylan had appeared on the scene, heading out early in the morning and only coming back late at night, sometimes with the groceries Shannon forgot to buy. It was reaching the point Lori was seriously considering stopping skipping school, figuring anything had to be better than facing down Dylan every day. She only hesitated because she still couldn't decide which was worse, math or Dylan, each fate more terrible than the other. Robby had been talking for a while about dropping out of school altogether, Lori tempted to do the same, not seeing the point of education anymore, only attending occasionally for the hot guys and the couple of classes she was coasting, primarily art and English.

Exhaling sharply, Lori got up off the sofa, pushing her long ash blonde hair out of her eyes, leaving it to fall untidily around her face. She caught a glimpse of herself in the antique mirror opposite, an obsequiously ornate object, her mother insisting on decorating the apartment so its interior resembled the Moulin Rouge, leaving Lori's scruffy appearance at odds with her opulent surroundings. She and Robby physically resembled each other at first glance, but a closer inspection revealed the differences that divided them. Robby's hair and skin were darker than Lori's, as well as being taller and more broadly built, Lori leaner. But they shared the same pattern of freckles scattered across the bridge of their noses, the siblings' thick dark brows, delicate features and distinctive green eyes echoing the other's, with their hair shot through with the same dark gold that caught the hot California sun.

" 'You know nothing, Jon Snow,' " Dylan said in a deliberate monotone as she came over, reading out the quote emblazoned across the front of her oversized T-shirt.

Lori just ignored him, searching the cupboards for the last bag of chips left over from Robby's most recent grocery run. In her opinion, if anyone was to know nothing, it was Dylan. The T-shirt in question had been a birthday present from her mom, one of the few things she owned that wasn't secondhand or stolen.

"I didn't have you pegged as a nerd."

Lori slammed the cupboard door shut. "How so?" she snapped, finally provoked into speaking, her fruitless search increasing her annoyance.

"You're too hot to be a nerd," Dylan said coolly, knocking back the last of the Scotch.

Lori stared at him, caught offguard. This wasn't the first time one of Shannon's short-lived suitors had looked at her sideways, but they'd at least done it discreetly, only giving her a greedy glance or two and she would merely sneer at their sleaziness, feeling safe in her scorn. But this was new territory she was treading, sending an unexpected frisson of fear shooting down her spine, Lori realizing with an alarming new awareness just how alone she was in the apartment with him.

Dylan swaggered over to her, his dark gaze now openly raking her from head to foot. "C'mon, baby," he drawled, leaning over her as he set the bottle down on the counter beside her, "don't look like that. You must have known I was digging you. Why do you think I've been hanging around this shithole? Not for your mom, that's for sure."

"Let me past," Lori snapped, making to move by him, only for Dylan to suddenly grab her arm, holding her fast.

"Hey," Dylan protested, "don't be so hasty, honey. We're having a conversation here."

Lori stilled, her whole body tensing. "Are we?" she said coolly, feigning a calm she didn't feel, panic threatening to paralyse her.

Dylan rolled his eyes dramatically. "Yeah, we are," he smirked, thankfully letting go of her, only to smooth her hair back instead, the gesture alarmingly intimate.

Before he could react, Lori grabbed his wrist, breaking his hold, twisting her body at the same time to snatch up the bottle of Scotch with her other hand, bringing it down on his head. The glass smashed to smithereens, scattering like jagged rain around him as he hit the floor, Lori reeling back against the counter, clutching the shard of bottle neck like a sword.

"Shit," she breathed, clutching her throat with her free hand, knowing there was going to be serious consequences for striking first and thinking later.

Does a scorpion sting when fighting back?

They strike to kill

And you know I will…