Jinx smiled back at him. The timing was just right.

After they'd parted two weeks before, Jinx was sure she'd see the Fastest Boy Alive the next day. He couldn't wait. There's no way he can wait. She was certain. When he didn't show then, it just meant that two days after both met Madame Rouge would be the time. But it wasn't.

She was a bit perplexed. He was certainly interested. Hell, she'd whacked him over the head with a sign, put him in a cage and tried to give him to a member of the Brotherhood of Evil. And STILL he was all hormones and roses for her. Oh, he was interested. And he didn't seem like the patient type.

Jinx convinced herself that, at any moment, he would come rushing up to her, a red and yellow blur that would suddenly slow and focus into slender, athletic Kid Flash. She developed a bit of mild paranoia. He could be anywhere. He could come from any direction with no notice. She started to spin around, excited, at the slight wooshing sound of a building's air conditioning system turning on down the block or a distant car zipping by to one side of her. It became such a mania that she started to question what the sound of him approaching at super speed even was. Was it more of a woosh or was there some sound from his boots? The more she obsessed about the boy, the more possibilities she thought there might be. She worked it around in her mind that most any sound could mean his approach.

Because he was going to try and see her right away, wasn't he? The guy's whole game was speed, wasn't it? She felt sure of it with a mix of excitement and annoyance. Excitement because the boy was so cute. Were those the bluest eyes ever? And his cheekbones! That body! She recalled Mammoth laying him down in the cage at HIVE headquarters. His suit was so tight but it was still perfect because he didn't have a speck of fat on him. His buns in red! Oh god. She'd tried to look away quickly but just couldn't. Finally, Gizmo saw her looking at the caged hero and cast a suspicious glance her way.

Annoyance because he was a bit cocky, a bit arrogant. He'll come by any day now and think he can just smile and say a few cute words and I'll go good, won't he? He had just played with them. What arrogance that took! He put all the stuff back in the museum and didn't call the cops. He just sat there in the cage even though he could get out at any time. How did he know we didn't have some kind of a ray gun to paralyze him or wipe him out? How did he know? And if he knew he was taking a risk, why do it?

Then she thought of looking into those big blue eyes while he was in the cage. "You can do better". That face, that expression. She pinballed back to excitement. He was interested. He was soooooo interested and what does he say but "You can do better". What a line! What a choice of words, so serious from a boy who seemed like he might be the shallow sort. What an . . intriguing thing to say. How long had it been since somebody gave her credit?

She thought of it when she looked at the last rose he'd given her in a vase in the apartment where she was now staying. It was in the worst neighborhood of the city, prostitutes always on one corner, boy drug lookouts always on another corner. Course, the boys looked at the prostitutes and the prostitutes probably took drugs, too.

The apartment belonged to a girl who was a friend of her cousin, a girl whom Jinx had met at a party and got along well with. The girl had needed some money and Jinx had given her some. It was never about the money for Jinx. She was always free with it when she had it. The girl had offered thanks after thanks and said to look her up if she could ever do anything for Jinx.

The time came. Jinx needed someplace to stay right away. She wasn't going back to the HIVE's headquarters. To Jinx's surprise, the girl made good on her pledge. Not that it was a saintly action on her part. She was over at her boyfriend's place most of the time and it didn't hurt to have someone in the apartment, watching the place in a neighborhood like that.

It wasn't the worst place she'd ever stayed. Except for the high tech crib at HIVE headquarters, most every place she'd lived had left a lot to be desired starting with the first. She was born 15 years before, to a poor couple who lived in a double wide trailer.

On the way out of the house to the hospital, Jinx's mother knocked a mirror over, breaking it. Flustered by that, she made her way out to the car, walking under a ladder to get there and had her path crossed by a black mother cat and her litter of four black kittens. If those weren't enough bad omens, her baby, Jinx, was born in the 13th minute of the 13th hour of the day on Friday the 13th. A nurse checking records noticed that she was the 666th child delivered at that hospital since its opening.

But even these events didn't explain Jinx's peculiar ability. According to the aunt with whom Jinx went to live at age 8, who wheezed out her story between drags on the cigarettes that were finishing the killing of her that earlier cigarettes had begun, there was a vague story of a curse cast on the family right after the Civil War. According to Jinx's aunt, an ancestor of hers, an Elijah somethingorother had been a gambler and cardsharp on the Mississippi. At one time, he had an amazing run of luck and acquired a big house and a great fortune. He wooed and won a beautiful girl from a respectable family. But he couldn't be satisfied with a position in society. He couldn't stay away from gambling and chance. And his luck ran bad. He was desperate to change it by any means possible before he lost his home and position in society. A band of gypsies were camped in the area and Elijah went to see them. He spoke to an old woman in a wagon after too much alcohol. Along with the usual soothsaying, the sign on her wagon promised "luck transferrance". Drunken Elijah demanded that the old woman change his luck and make him as successful as he had been before. She supposedly told him from a look into her crystal ball that it couldn't be done. She couldn't give him the luck to restore his fortune. An enraged Elijah knocked the woman over as he started to leave. But she was a feeble old woman and just that was enough to kill her. With her dying breaths she spoke out a curse on Elijah and his heirs that they should not only not experience good fortune. They should experience all bad luck possible.

Elijah was ruined and died penniless. But the curse didn't seem to completely affect the family. Some descendants seemed to live happy lives of cozy, middle class tranquility with no particular misfortune. Some in the family had served in World Wars I and II and gotten home safely. Of course, there was that one son who was shot and killed on the last day, the very last day of fighting of World War I . . at Fort Dix. A stray bullet from a rifle range half a mile a way struck and killed him as he was getting into a train car. And there were rumors of a daughter of the family catching the misfortune curse before the turn of the last century.

"You got it . . . aintcha?"

Jinx shook her head.

"Don't . . lie . . to me! It's . . the only . . thing . . that . . 'splains it. I heard . . 'bout . . you"

Jinx sighed angrily, her pink eyes almost seeming to light up before her anger subsided. "Yeah, I got it"

Jinx didn't know all that her aunt may have heard about. She didn't have any recollection of her first years. She'd been an obviouslyprecocious child, she learned the alphabet before any of the other toddlers. She spoke before any of the others in the area. She learned to read earlier than any other child around. Everyone agreed that she was an adorable baby and child. Such bright red hair! So distinctive, almost . . pinkish. And everyone who met her remarked about her dazzling eyes that also seemed almost pink. She was in the pink in another way, too, in that she didn't even seem to suffer the normal childhood maladies, measles and mumps or if she did, she cruised right through 'em.

But something always went wrong around her. At first, it was sleeping. Jinx never seemed to sleep at the right times. Never. And never for very long. At unpredictable but always disastrous intervals, her piercing cries would nearly shake the double wide trailer till her father or mother rose to console her. After six months of exhaustion, her father got demoted at his job to third shift. Jinx started falling asleep at night, but only early in the evening. Her mother was a night owl and didn't sleep then, anyway. She was up and crying or making noise when her father and mother needed to sleep.

Her mother constantly wore a defeated look from never getting a significant stretch of uninterrupted sleep. And something always seemed to go wrong with the diapers, leaks, bad tape, bad elastic, always something. It seemed to her parents that Jinx just had to cry and the diaper would fail. Jinx's mother also found that, somehow, she could no longer breastfeed Jinx, adding to the family's expenses.

And then, there were the terrible twos and infinitely multiplied chances for mischief as Jinx learned to walk. Radios no longer played. A tv's picture tube went bad just after being brought home. Some of the things that happened, no one could explain even afterward. The day care home that burned down mystified the fire department. There was no reason for that fire to have started. No onereally believed the little boy who said that Jinx had made pink go into the curtains. Jinx said she hadn't done anything. There was just no reason.

Nor could the collapse of the jungle gym in the playground on top of two boys who'd been calling her names be attributed to Jinx. At least, it couldn't be proved.

By the time she was 5, her father had left. It was no specific thing. He just couldn't take it anymore, the haggard man told his equally worn down wife through tears. He'd just gotten fired from his job. He wanted to be a good husband and father but something was wrong and he couldn't take it anymore. He left their double wide full of busted appliances with regret but feeling that he had to.

But, by the time she entered first grade, the litany of mysterious misfortunes had been such that her given name had been discarded in favor of "Jinx". It was used affectionately, too. Her mother tried desperately to love her. She held her and hugged her and did all she could to look out for her beautiful little girl. But it wasn't easy.

The casual cruelty of kids was such that Jinx was almost relentlessly teased and taunted and called names by boys and girls for looking different and for being bad luck. Some of the kids called her a witch. When the movie of the Roald Dahl story "Witches" showed on tv with its descriptions of the characteristics of witches, including square toed shoes and purple eyes, there was a commotion the next day. As luck would have it, Jinx was wearing her cousin's square toed shoes to school that day. Her pink eyes were close enough to purple for them and a horde of kids called her names at recess that day. She didn't cry. She told them all that she'd put the magic potion into their school lunches and they'd all be turning into mice by evening. The crowd grew quiet. Eyes went left and right. Um, that's not possible, is it? Jinx burst out laughing at them.

Jinx was also an outcast because she was the smartest kid in class. She always got top grades and smiled serenelyat the lackluster efforts of the kids who had made fun of her.

The girls excluded her. In every way that belonging could be expressed, exclusion was expressed toward her. Jinx wasn't allowed to sit with certain girls at lunch or stand near them at recess. They didn't tell her their email addresses when they got computers. They wouldn't tell her their phone numbers. They ostracized any girls who did have any contact with her. If not for the fact that they'd ostracized many other girls there would have been no one to whom Jinx could talk.

But Marcy had been excluded from all the popular and near popular and, well, every other group, too. A stocky girl whose face always wore an ironic smile, she became friends with Jinx in second grade when she moved to the same town. Marcy read fantasy, horror and books filled with gore. She dressed in black at all times, loved horror movies, carried movie style fake blood squib packets with her at all times to leave fake puddles of blood on herself or in conspicuous public places and was an early conscientious objector from school society.

Marcy's arrival nearly coincided with the departure of Jinx's mother. There were no tearful goodbyes this time. Her mother dropped her off at her aunt's one afternoon after school. She thought her mother was coming to pick her up for dinner. At dinner time, Jinx's aunt informed her that she'd be staying with her for a while. The while turned out to be indefinite.

Her mother called regularly and quite frequently at first, but the exhausted sound in her voice faded the longer she was away and Jinx could tell that it was for the best. Finally, she told her mother that and her mother, with relief and tears thanked her and apologized. Jinx saved her tears till after she hung up, bawling and bawling into her pillow.

The emotional support of her friend Marcy helped her slowly get past it. But the simple fact was that the two people who loved her most couldn't stay because the misfortune she constantly brought on them was killing them. Jinx was unsettled for a while after that as if trying to figure out her place in the world and uncertain what it was now that the usual family template had proven impossible. Her attitude toward school changed, too. Wasn't school part of the whole expected good girl thing, along with family, that just didn't work for her?

Her aunt wasn't much help. Her emotions seemed to be reserved solely for 100's and menthols. But, she didn't get in Jinx's way much or try and supervise her much. All Jinx was to her was an extra mouth to feed out of a lingering feeling of obligation to her youngest sister.

The burdens on her aunt were lessened, too, because it was around this time that Jinx started to develop control of her hexing powers. She didn't immediately shoot off energy at the most minor emotional provocation anymore. And she could choose to project a hex, now. Jinx also took up drawing, picking up the interest from Marcy who had 3 thick pads worth of sketches already.

The day after her tearful call from her mother, she was walking home from school showing Marcy where show now lived when a group of social queen bee girls went by and made a few cutting remarks from the other side of the street. Marcy saw Jinx's pink eyes glow with light and then from her fingertips waves of light emanated forth. A passing truck's tire popped and went flat. The truck lurched to the curb going through a puddle and drenching those girls and their expensive outfits in brackish water.

Marcy was giddy, giggling "You did it! You did it!".

"I did . . didn't I?" smiled Jinx.

She had suspected, if not known, her influence in all the previous accidents and misfortunes that had happened around her. This was the positive proof that she had some sort of power. With the prodding of curious Marcy, Jinx tested and refined her powers. At both Marcy's house and hers, she tested how far she could hex things. She'd decided to call it a hex. And what things she could affect.

She found that she made things fall apart. With mechanical objects it was quit obvious. Radios or clocks would stop, for example. Plants would wilt or snap or sag. She'd even hexed the overaggressive dog from the house next to Marcy. It'd yelped and run away as if scalded.

Eventually, she learned of a science term called "entropy", the natural tendency for disorder to increase, for things to fall apart.

"I'm just an accelerator" Jinx smiled to herself with the book on her lap in bed, "an entropy accelerator". The smartest kid in class kind of liked the idea of her power being somehow scientific. She was a voracious reader and loved learning new things. But outwardly she reveled in the whole witch image. She took to to wearing black like Marcy, goth black lace and blue and black nylons. Yeah, I'm a witch. What about it?

But she didn't try to directly hex people. That was the final frontier of testing. But she hesitated to directly hex a human being. Marcy kept egging her on but she wouldn't. Jinx reminded her that this was her life and not some horror fantasy book.

"Do you want me to test on you?"

Marcy decided she could wait. But, eventually, at age 11, bookish outcast Jinx was in a situation where she was furious with a pair of jock boys. They'd been making all sorts of fat jokes about Marcy, calling her all sorts of names, making faces and gestures as they walked home behind her and Jinx. Jinx spun around on the two boys, pink eyes blazing and suddenly fired pink energy at them from her fingertips. Both boys were thrown back as if it by a car and left groaning on the sidewalk.

Word spread around school and kids seemed to keep their distance from Jinx and Marcy in the hallway. It was around this time that her reddish hair turned a pure pink, too. Everyone thought she'd dyed it that way as some sort of goth statement. But it was natural.

Jinx's life had reached a sort of turning point in junior high school when her aunt died. Jinx had grown disenchanted to the point of disgust with school. It was too slow. The teachers didn't care about helping her learn everything she could. The sign out front said "Helping Every Child Reach his Potential". What about my potential? She read tons of books on the side. Why did she have to read the crap that they made everyone else read? She'd gone through some of that years before. And the whole social system, the establishing of rigid status done with the implicit okay of the unimaginative teachers . She was sick of it.

Then, with nearly the same sentimentality which accompanied her being dropped at her aunt's, Jinx watched her family argue over who would take her. Who would have to take her. She arrived at her cousin's apartment in a run down apartment building on the edge of Jump city to icy stares.

"You didn't tell me she's some kind of wacko" her cousin's boyfriend whispered at the doorstep to her cousin.

But, it was the boyfriend who developed the most connection to her. He was a thief. And one day, after Marcy visited and left, the boyfriend closed the door behind her and turned to Jinx.

"Your friend says you can do some neat magic tricks"

"Maybe"

"How'd you like to show me?" he fairly purred.

An hour later she found herself in a car outside an ATM box unit at the edge of a large mall parking lot. It was the boyfriend's idea. If you can get machines to break, why not machines with money? The boyfriend approached the machine with a hat down over his eyes. He put in a card and punched in a pin number. When the machine started to whirr in the process of giving out money, Jinx hexed it. The whirring sound kept going . . and going . . and going. When the door of the compartment opened, the boyfriend could barely pull all the cash out. Still, the machine kept whirring and whirring, doling out cash till all the bills were gone and sparks started coming out of it. Hat still down over his face, the boyfriend gathered it all up then ran to the car with Jinx whooping as he ran. Inside the car he thrust the bills on her and told her to cash it while he roared out of the parking lot. It was 2440 dollars. Jinx saw only one problem.

"Um, won't they trace you from your card?"

"Little girl", he answered, "if you think that was my card you got a whole lot more innocence to get rid of"

ATM's became a sort of specialty of the boyfriend and Jinx. Every few days another one. They only moved on to other targets when they pulled up to one and her cousin's boyfriend was lucky enough to see the cops sitting in stakeout across the street. But they'd made thirty thousand dollars. While there were obvious drawbacks to the lifestyle, Jinx's experience being part of society in school were less than joyous. Her withdrawal from school began one morning when she simply felt like finishing the book she was reading more than going to school. Her cousin didn't mind and she was off waiting tables anyway. The boyfriend didn't mind. He was serenely accepting of the whole thing. He never much asked her how she did what she did, throwing hex energy from her fingertips. He accepted it and tried to figure how to make money from it.

Jinx considered it as well and quickly came to the conclusion that there was no positive way to make a life from her abilities. And she hated the way that school and conventional society looked down on anyone who was different. "What choice do I really have?" she wondered. "It's not like they'd make someone like me partner at the law firm or senator or something. Why not throw my lot in with the outlaws?"

She soon fell into a pattern of sleeping late, sketching from her dreams when she woke up and reading books in the afternoon, then going out and buying things from the pay of crime and a few times a week tagging along with the boyfriend to rob some place.

It was a life with a rhythm that suited Jinx. All her blossoming interests, her need to draw, her voracious reading, her need for a less structured approach to learning were fostered. Crime was clearly the life for her, she decided.

They worked up from atm's to a jewelry store. They tried a lesser one on the outskirts of the City. Jinx hexed the alarms at the doors and then the ones on the display cases. They got off with a folio fool of jewelry. The boyfriend said the take was 50 grand and that they'd get 16 from the fence.

Thing was, the boyfriend went out the next day to make the deal and never came back. At first this was tremendously unsettling. She wondered if she'd feel scared into going back to school. But she didn't. She was a bit scared, but while her cousin sort of mourned her missing boyfriend, Jinx found some of his notes on contacts, the people he'd contacted before trying to fence jewelry. She put some thought into it and planned a couple jobs of her own. It was a steady progression from there to becoming a more established criminal and, by chance, attracting the attention of powerful figures like Slade. And in this arena, unlike school, her worth was recognized and she was held in high esteem.

Her career from that point forward had not followed any particular design of hers. At times she felt caught up in events. Working for Slade hadn't been her intention. And the HIVE Five had seemed like a good idea but it became a chore. Five boys! Boys! Not like young men. Well, maybe See-More, kind of. But this wasn't what she really wanted, this junior chamber of commerce analog, this junior villain thing. She was torn by two conflicting impulses. The lesser one was out. Seeking the rare good luck amulet from the museum had been an expression of that.

The other was onward and upward. When Kid Flash humiliated them at the museum, her pride was hurt just as her curiosity was piqued by his gift of a rose. But he had thwarted out. So, when he showed up at their headquarters and for a time humiliated them again, while curious, she turned to onward and upward. Capture pretty boy and give him to the big leaguers at the Brotherhood of Evil.

His escape from HIVE headquarters only made her think again. But pretty boy had humiliated them and her in particular, what with her having told Madame Rouge that they'd captured him. Zapping him with the level four holding device was just what he deserved for making her look ridiculous. But turning him over to her, that bitch!

Jinx walked confidently up to him. "Thanks for the rose"