Priestess Aishisu: Four reviews...hmm....that's about what I've come to expect for this fanfiction. Not bad I guess.
ThunderAnn: great story!! YAY!! ur back with another chap!!
Kitty: Steph is not here so im replacing her. But...i must say. This is a really good fic. YAY!
FOR LOVE/Hate relasionships!! i hate lovey-dovey stuff. No action, no yelling no...um...name..calling..?
TA: I agree. PLEZZE CONTINUE! 1/86 RULZ!
Priestess Aishisu: It's so nice to see a fellow fan. What are the chances you might write a 1/86 fanfiction?
Princess Rusty: Issaquah? That's where you live? I would prefer that to my town, Lynnwood. But my neighborhood has a lot of cool things to do. (Swimming in the creek, I only did that once. Playing at the school, there are pretty dragonflies. Playing with the neighbor's dogs, they cute! Umm..Nothing else, the neighbor's sometimes have parties, that's all I can think of.)
I'm glad you didn't disappear into a black hole, I was wondering where you went. Well, anyway, I'm having fun reading your story! Karo
So said the Princess Rusty, who is a lovely young lady.
Karo: Thank you, Sport, you are so much better at this than your brother, King.
Sport: bows why thank you, Princess!
So said Sport, who is a total kiss-up and is working in the place of King, who was fired.
Priestess Aishisu: I didn't go anywhere, my computer was broken.
Jay Man: Kind of sweet. Nice to know that her brother is a K.N.D. operative, will that play a role in this story as well? ( Just a yes or know will do, I don't wan't the surprise spoiled). Why haven't any of the others seen this show ( by others I mean the older decommissioned operatives?). This was a good chapter, I did notice a grammar error or two, but everybody makes mistakes. Good work.
Priestess Aishisu: Yes, it most definitely will. And somehow I doubt many fourteen-year-olds watch Cartoon Network (What, I'm thirteen!) Which grammar errors? I would like to correct my flaws as soon as possible.
Sammeh Teh CheeseCake: Aw, that was adorable .
And they had a few more kisses, went out twice and even danced together you say? Fangirl scream AW! That is so cute!
I can't wait 'till the next chapter .
Priestess Aishisu: Yeah, I was going to write the 'danced together' thing in detail, but it wouldn't have been long enough to make its own chapter and I can't make months go by in the middle of a chapter.
Priestess Aishisu: Also, I just watched Operation: G.R.A.D.U.A.T.E.S and realized Tommy isn't in the Kids Next Door anymore. Oh well, it's a fanfiction after all. Just use your imagination to figure out why he's back on the team. And pretend Operation: S.L.U.M.B.E.R never happened.
"Hi, Natasha," said Francine without glancing up from the pile of bills she was paying (a.k.a forging Marigold's signature while the real Marigold was out partying.)
Natasha rolled her eyes. "What were you, a spy in another life?" Francine had actually said this to Natasha several times, and it was true they both had the skills of spies.
Francine picked up a slice of kiwi from the plate next to her. "Want one?" she offered, and Natasha slipped a piece into her mouth. It was delicious, but a little too tart.
"Did you cut your hair again?" asked Francine, finally glancing up. The pale, highlight-filled waterfall had been cut into a wispy bob. The hair cut off was so long Natasha had made a braid and was using it as a belt. It was hot with her lilac tank top and miniskirt (not to mention her tan) but Francine rolled her blue-green eyes. "You do that too much. Highlights every month, extensions every week, gel, curls, bangs...at this rate people are going to forget you're a natural blonde! I never change my hair."
"But your hair is pretty," protested Natasha. "Mine's always been ugly. And why are you paying bills? You're fourteen and you've been doing it since you were eight."
"Well, David can't forge Mum's signature," she replied, already back to trying to figure out if the offer to cut their electricity bill in half had strings attached.
"Of course he can't forge it, and he shouldn't pay bills anyway. But you shouldn't either. You aren't anybody's mom, though sometimes it seems like you might as well be."
Francine looked up sharply. "I can't imagine you came here to lecture me," she said, her curt tone signaling the end of the conversation. "Don't you have something to say?" She remembered the sliver of kiwi she was holding and popped it into her mouth.
"Oh yeah. I found out I can do something...just watch." Natasha turned towards the Fulbright mailbox, leapt forward, backflipped backwards, somersaulted forward, and kicked at the wooden stake all in one breath. The stake snapped, and the mailbox trembled a moment before falling. Letters flew everywhere. She stooped to pick them up, watching Francine's reaction.
Francine stared, mouth open. The piece of kiwi fell from her lips and landed on her silvery skirt, but she brushed it away without notice. "That's my mailbox. We can't afford a carpenter, so you have to pay for that. How did you do that, anyway?"
"I don't know," replied Natasha, shrugging ambiguously. "But...I just have this feeling that something bad is going to happen to you—that's why I really came."
Francine smirked and tossed her head saucily. Her lovely hair fluttered and settled around her. "And what could happen to me?" she replied audaciously. "I'm fine."
Natasha shrugged stubbornly. "Just...promise me you'll be careful, all right?" Francine nodded vaguely, not even paying attention. She would regret it later.
As always, Francine gazed at the numbers on her hip as she bathed. For the first time she noticed that they didn't seem like tattoos, but thin scars. Burns, actually. Her fingers hovered over the pale skin, and she could feel heat radiating from them. Her fingertips tingled.
She stepped out of the bath and gazed in the mirror at her slender, lovely from. Her skin was milk-white, flawless and pearly. She never wore sunscreen because it she hated the smell and stickiness, but she never got sunburned or suntanned. And she didn't have freckles any more. On a whim, she climbed onto the toilet and stretched up so she could touch the light bulb. It was warm, but nothing more. There was a bang, and the light bulb shattered.
Shivering suddenly, she got off and quickly dried herself off, yanking on her nightie before she could glance back at the scars and sweeping up the glass. But her blue-green eyes kept traveling back to her unhurt fingertips. She had touched a light bulb when she was three, and it had burned terribly. But she hadn't had these mysterious burns back then...had she? What's happening to me?
Francine blinked awake when she heard a knocking at her window. She was surrounded by objects which produced heat—including candles, flashlights, and matches. She found she could suck fire from one location and either distribute it into another and use it for warmth or energy. However, overusing it would make her pass out.
She tried to ignore it, but eventually it became too loud to ignore. "All right, all right, I'm coming," she mumbled, walking to the window. "Nigel?!" she cried, pushing the window open. "It's late. And couldn't you have at least used the door?"
"Your house is burning!" he snapped.
"It's what?!" she screamed, and turned to run towards the door. She flung it open, and was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of smoke. "Oh man! Mum must have stayed up drinking. Russian vodka is 98% alcohol!"
Before he could even try to stop her, she had run out the door into the blaze.
Francine didn't bother to check the living room. She knew Marigold was dead. She sprinted through the blaze into David's room, where her little brother was sobbing on the bed as he tried to curl tight enough to escape the dancing flames.
David gasped as he saw the goddess or angel or whatever it was in the doorway. She looked like his sister, but that was impossible. She was supernaturally beautiful, her pale skin luminous, scarlet hair lustrous, her eyes two perfectly cut emeralds with long thick black lashes. The flames slipped off her harmlessly as she dashed forward, wrapping her slender arms around him. "F–Fanny?!" he choked out. Without speaking, she put a slim hand over his mouth against the smoke as she pulled them through the blaze and out of the house.
Nigel gasped as Francine appeared, clinging to her brother. Her nightie was singed, but there wasn't a harmed hair on her own body. David was sobbing when she let him go, but her expression was unreadable. She gazed first at her burning house, then at the cars. There were reporters, and Nigel's friends, and her friend Natasha, and David's friends, and families.
"Fanny, are you—" he laid a tentative hand on her shoulder, but she jerked away silently without glancing at him. He could see tears gleaming against her cheeks.
"Nigel, old boy, what in the world is going on?" his father cried, but he couldn't reply. He watched in a numb daze as Francine angrily told the reporters that a fire wasn't a circus side-show. She told lies as well—about having a father who was out-of-town at the moment and other things. There were no signs that she had just stepped out of the fire herself.
"Where will you go until your father gets back?" a reporter said. Half of them were terrified by her already, the other half were insulted that a teenager could speak to them as if they were the young ones.
"My brother will stay with his friend Lee, and I—" She trailed off. Natasha, like her, had only one parent, and her house barely fit her. Sonya, in fact, lived with David's friend Lee. (She wasn't, of course, aware of their underground fortress or anything like that)
"She can stay with me," said Nigel automatically, and his parents nodded quickly.
Another reporter lifted a perfectly plucked eyebrow. She was young and pretty, with dewy skin and pneumatically enhanced breasts. "And you are...her boyfriend?"
Nigel and Francine blushed furiously, though it was mercifully imperceptible against the still-crackling flames. "No, I'm her next-door neighbor," Nigel replied crossly.
He glanced at Francine, wondering if she would speak. But she just gazed with her huge blue-green eyes as her house crumbled and everything she owned was consumed by the blaze.