-Don't mind me, this chapter's a bit longer. I just couldn't stop writing!

-Such fast updates recently, I'm on a roll.

Quote: "The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." -Elbert Hubbard, The Notebook, 1927

Listen to: "Two Small Deaths", Wye Oak

-o-

31 December, 1958.

Susanne shoved her way through the crowd of people, all wearing bright masks in celebration of the New Year. It was the highly anticipated Masquerade Ball at the Kashmir Restaurant, for the elite and wealthy of the city. People were drinking and laughing, although there was an air of unease lingering behind; rumors of war brewing between Atlas and Ryan, of people being beaten and killed in the streets, unchecked. Rapture was a powder keg ready to blow any day, at the slightest spark or provocation.

The blonde continued pushing roughly at people in her way, searching the crowd for a familiar red mane. And then she found it, that flash of scarlet that was a giveaway tell for Katy, standing on the other side of the dance floor where couples spun in happy circles. She was wearing her green dress, like so long ago when they had seen the Daddy and Sister. A mask like a white bird clung to her sharp features.

"Katy! Oh, Katy, darling, I've been worried absolutely sick!" Susanne rushed up to her, cutting across the dance floor. "Where on earth have you been?"

"Sorry, Susanne." Katherine said, a little unapologetically. "I've been a bit…busy."

"Oh, I know." Susanne nodded vigourously, her rabbit mask shifting a little. "What the hell happened? Half the theatre is talking about it. And what the hell have you done to your hair!"

"I beat the daylights from Kyle with my shoe." Katherine answered like it was nothing. There was an eerie calm to her composure and voice. "I went to his flat. He slapped me. I took off my shoe and beat him until a paramedic was needed. He's currently in the Medical Pavilion, recovering. And I thought I would try something different." Katherine touched her newly cut hair, chopped away to her ear.

Susanne sat with a disbelieving huff, her face pale and mouth open. "Katy…what have you done?"

"Nothing of import. Only what was needed, to keep him in line."

"'Keep him in line'?" Susanne asked incredulously. "Darling, I think beating a man half to death is more than keeping him in line."

"Maybe. But I was also very, very angry." Katherine turned a little, just to look around the room and take a sip of champagne, but the movement made her dress with the slit up the thigh shift to expose a black strap around her leg.

"Katy." Susanne said, staring. "Are…are you wearing a gun?"

"Oh, I almost forgot about that." Katherine moved the dress aside to show the 9mm pistol on her leg. "Yes, I thought that with all the dangerous happenings, I ought to arm myself."

"Do you even know how to…use it?"

"My father was a bit of a marksman, but it doesn't take much. Point and shoot, bad things go away."

The clock struck midnight, the heavy, weighted strikes going out to signal the New Year. The patrons of the restaurant cheered and couples kissed. Katherine raised her glass to nothing and drained it. She opened her mouth to speak, but then something happened.

The spark.

An explosion shook the entire building from the very roots, and partygoers cried out. Those who were dancing stopped, and for a moment, there was no sound but the dolling of the clock.

Gunfire shattered the silence, pattering around the room. Splicers stormed inside the restaurant, screaming pro-Atlas and anti-Ryan ramblings, beating those who got too close. The panic set in all at once, a heavy curtain of hysteria. Dust fell from the ceiling as Splicers with burning orange hooks crawled along, yelling at the people below in contorted voices. Bullets crackled loudly and horribly, shattering bottles of spirits behind the bar and making everyone briefly duck. Anyone with two brain cells was preparing any plasmids they had for combat.

Susanne was crying in fear, along with many others. Katherine pulled her pistol from the leg holster and aimed it at the nearest Splicer. He was slobbering and vile, waving a rusty piece of pipe in the faces of a man and woman, but he still looked like a person. Katherine hesitated, her finger freezing on the trigger.

Someone shoved into her in panic, and the pistol shot deafeningly loud in her ear. A man screamed in agony, though she wasn't sure if it was the Splicer and, frankly, she didn't want to know.

"Susanne! Susy, where are you?" Katherine stood and looked around, craning her neck while still being pushed and almost knocked down completely by terrified party guests. Her friend had disappeared, either run off or trampled beneath the people trying to escape.

A woman lay in the dance floor, her leg twisted at a bad angle by the shin. Katherine elbowed over to her and helped her up, and together they hobbled to the door to the Kashmir.

"Oh, thank you," The woman sobbed, flopping down on the steps outside. "Thank you, thank you."

"Don't mention it." Katherine, gasping and sweating, pulled her over to the side, away from the guests sprinting from the Kashmir and the Splicers running inside. Smoke billowed from the door, snaking up to hover at the top of the glass hall.

"M-my name's Angela." The woman said shakily, after a few minutes of getting her bearings. Her light brown hair had been shaken out of a knot and now hung in dirty waves down her face. She had blue eyes, which had pupils dilated in fear taking up most of her iris.

"I'm Katherine." The redhead held out her hand, and Angela shook it. Katherine thought for a moment, still shaking hands. "But you can call me Kiki."

-o-

"It's bloody cold." Kiki rubbed her arms, which had erupted with goose bumps. They were in the hall that led to Poseidon's Plaza, and one of Cohen's disciples, Martin Finnegan, had locked himself up there. The entire corridor was glazed over with a thick coating of ice, making the floor slippery and the air so cold it almost burned.

Jack smirked, not bothered nearly as much by it because of his jumper. Given, it was matted down with dirt and blood, but it was still a jumper.

"Oh, will you look at this cheeky bastard." Kiki shouldered Jack with a chuckle.

"Quite the freak couple you two make." Kyle muttered behind them.

"What was that?" Kiki asked over her shoulder. "You want to look at your own small intestine?" Silence. "I thought so."

"I can see your breath…" The voice was gritty and threatening, slithering through the corridor in a very ethereal manner. It gave the three pause, but they continued on.

The corridor led into a sort of transitional room, a large high-ceilinged hall that stretched back about a dozen metres. It was just as frozen as the corridor; huge slicks of ice crawled up the walls in places. Foot-long stalactites hung from the ceiling, massive icicles six inches wide or more. Most unnerving of all, however, were the frozen statues of Splicers dotting the long hall. They were stuck in various positions of running, fighting, or hiding.

"Well, that's…" Kiki clenched her hands, which had briefly frosted over. "That's a little creepy." Taking a few steps in, she held up her hand to use Incinerate, and was appalled to see ice dashing along her skin, holding it there. She looked to Jack to warn him, but saw him already encased, looking at his hands in wide-eyed surprise. Kiki's head was lodged in it's turned position as the ice stopped all movement.

For a few minutes, she wasn't sure what to do. The room was distorted and cloudy through the ice, but she could move her eyes. To her left, the hall stretched out. Directly in front of her, and, she realised with a metaphorical twist of the mouth, slightly above her, Jack was sealed away as well. He looked over at her, and for a moment they shared the same look of total unknowing for the immediate future. They looked away as footsteps clicked purposefully toward them.

"Has the old grape finally sent someone?" A man in a bird mask like Kyle's walked toward the three frozen. His voice had that crazed edge to it, that touch of insanity where one was never sure what he would do. "Son of a bitch…left me to fre-e-ze. Oh, I've got a pose all picked out for you…"

Kiki felt her arms being twisted and moved by uncaring hands, her head being twisted. Her entire body was picked up and moved. She could hear Finnegan's footsteps underneath her as he carried her to what she could see was the far end of the hall. He walked away, and there was silence for a minute before he came back with Jack. Finnegan looked to be having a harder time carrying him, but managed to put him down next to Kiki.

The way their heads were turned, they were looking at each other, either up or down since there was a good few inches difference in their height. Their hands were clasped around each other's, and Kiki's foot was up a little. It was supposed to make them look like a couple, but it was really very uncomfortable and made less than romantic by the life-threatening cold. In the corner of her eye, Kiki could see Kyle posed with his arms in Hamlet-like positions, looking up to the ceiling.

Water leaked down Kiki's hand to trickle down her arm. She looked at her hands held underneath Jack's. Incinerate was boiling under the ice of his left, freeing it. He wiggled his fingers, getting the plasmid hot again, and he blasted himself free. Shaking bits of water and snow from his hair and jumper, he quickly freed Kiki as well.

"Good lord, he's gone off the deep end." She bent down, her hands on her knees. It felt like she'd been half drowned. She snapped Kyle out almost as an afterthought, and the smoker crumpled, coughing heavily.

"What the fuck…was that about?" He demanded between hacking up globs of spit and water.

"Martin Finnegan." Kiki shook out her hair, sending bits of frost around. "This'll make killing him less of a chore. Thanks, by the way." She gave Jack a thumbs-up.

"Where did he go?" Kyle looked around the room, as Finnegan had apparently vanished after putting them in their final resting places.

Jack whistled and pointed, directing their attention to one of the Splicer statues. It was hard to tell, but Finnegan had apparently frozen himself to hide or otherwise wait until more people came.

"That's convenient." Kiki said, walking up to him. She placed her pistol at his head and pulled the trigger. Shards of ice exploded backwards, as well as a shower of blood and gray brain matter.

"That was bracing." Cohen chimed in, finally. "Take a photo of him and put it in the quadtych. I'm feeling full, like an expectant momma."

"Ew." Kiki took out her camera. "Well, I guess Finnegan's fame was…" She took the picture with a click and flash of the bulb. "Sleeting."

Kyle slapped a hand over his eyes and shook his head. Kiki laughed at her own joke as she waved the Polaroid out. Jack patted her shoulder in sarcastic reassurance as he walked past, snagging the picture away and leading them back out into the atrium.

"Come on, that was good, right?" Kiki followed him, tucking away her camera. "That was pretty clever!"

"Let's just say you haven't gotten any better at jokes in the past two years." Kyle said.

"Shut up, that was good." Water splashed up from Kiki's shoes as she walked through a little puddle. Jack paused when he got to the quadtych, picture in hand, but hesitantly placed it in one of the frames.

"It's coming together…yes…but there will always be doubters. You don't doubt me, do you?" Cohen asked from the radio. "I could never stomach doubters."

"Now, I may be wrong, but I think the next target is Silas Cobb." Kiki said unsurely. "Cobb got along with Cohen all right. He owned the record store in the Plaza."

"Very good, little butterfly." Cohen congratulated. "Head there now, and capture his image in his defining moment. But for your trouble, here's something to ease the burden." Next to the quadtych, a stone-like man with a rabbit mask like the ones holding the frames emerged, cross-legged, from the floor holding something that made Kiki grin.

"Oh, brilliant! Er, thanks, Mr Cohen." She jumped over to the crossbow and picked it up, loading a bolt. "This is just excellent. Okay, boys, back through the corridor and then to the Plaza we go."

"But it's freezing cold in there!" Kyle almost whined. Without missing a beat, Kiki changed her plasmid to Winter Storm, held his hands together behind his back and froze them together in makeshift cuffs, and then did the same to his ankles.

"Then you can stay here." She snapped, dragging him by the collar to sit against the stage. "We'll be back with the pictures of Cobb and I'm thinking Rodriguez. Then, it's your turn." Kiki shouldered her new weapon and walked back off to the Plaza.

There was silence for a few minutes. She and Jack walked back toward the flickering blue sign to the Plaza, the only noises being the rustling of their weapons as they walked.

"Okay, you're curious." Kiki decided.

"…Yeah."

"Good a time as any to explain." Kiki took a moment to get her story straight. "Before the Civil War, about two years ago, I was a concert singer. Kyle was the pianist for me most of the time. We dated for, I don't know. A few months. It was good at first, it always is. But then Kyle started to yell at me very often, and was prone to outbursts. It was a week or two before the War when he started…when he started hitting me."

Jack looked back the way they had come, like he briefly thought about going back, but Kiki waved a hand. "It didn't get out of control. Okay, maybe it did, but that's beside the point. A day or two before New Year's, I confronted him. You know the scar on his face there? Yeah, let's just say high heels make for good weapons."

Kiki switched to Incinerate and melted away the ice that blocked the door to the Plaza. "Long story short, I hold grudges. I'm looking forward to killing that bloody son of a bitch."

"Why haven't you?"

It was the first real statement Jack had said in a while, and the question itself took Kiki off guard a little. "I…oh, I don't know. Maybe because I actually knew him before. Maybe because I'm a sentimental idiot. I don't know."

"Katherine, will you be able to?" Jack stopped and looked at her. Kiki mentally counted the words, wondering if she'd just beat the record on How Long A Sentence Can You Make Jack Say, and decided she had.

"Yeah. I mean, I've killed all sorts of people. The bastard who abused me isn't much different." Kiki's confident smile flickered away for a moment, like make-up smearing away. Jack looked at her, almost pitying, and put an arm around her shoulders.

"Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Kiki exclaimed with a laugh, goose bumps rippling up her arms and up her neck at the change of temperature. She hugged Jack, suddenly feeling the sharp cold of the hall. "Since when were you a bloody furnace?" She laughed, her voice muffled in the jumper. "Okay, furnace boy, through to the Plaza."

They shuffled past the last door, which spat them out into the actual Poseidon's Plaza. Right away there were the familiar sounds of drywall being torn away. Kiki aimed her new crossbow at the ceiling, watching for movement or glowing hooks.

"Bitches better watch out, 'cause I've got a crossbow…" She sang quietly to herself, bouncing back and forth. A Spider dropped down in front of her on cue and began gracefully cartwheeling toward her. Kiki fell back a step as she shot the crossbow, and the Spider was down for the count. After realising it only took one shot, Kiki laughed giddily.

"Whoo! Oh, I'm going to enjoy using this." She flipped the crossbow around and kissed the polished handle. "Come here, you lovely killing machine, you."

Two more Spiders were crawling around the walls, though it was hard to see. The ground floor, which they were on, was quite dark due to all the lights being out. The only light came from the staircase leading to the top floor, and a flaming Spider that went sprinting in front of Kiki, waving her arms and screaming.

A hand grabbed the back of Kiki's shirt, and she swung her arm around to throw him off. The Splicer yelled something in her ear, too loud for her to make out. He picked her up off the floor like a dog carries its pups and started running. Kiki waved her legs, trying to trip him, and succeeded in getting him tangled up. They fell down, but the Splicer's hand remained gripping her shirt.

Pain stung her back, and the Splicer started screaming hideously loud. Jack had started him on fire. The addict stood and ran around to try and put out the fire, but soon keeled over, dead.

"Whew, thanks for that. Is that all of them?" Kiki asked, patting the flames away from her now singed shirt. "Right, Rapture Records is…this way."

Somewhere on the floor above them, a Big Daddy was walking. It was too easy to hear his thundering footsteps and thoughtful, incoherent mumbles. A girl's voice chirruped along as well—he had a Sister. Jack looked up, looking like he wanted to go up there, but Kiki patted his arm and shook her head.

"We'll take care of them later. Right now, let's get rid of Cobb." She encouraged, and they continued into the record store.

Fire flickered on the floor below them. The stairs that led down had been completely chopped away, along with a lot of the top floor. A shadow flickered down below and disappeared. The pair at the top both loaded their weapons at the sight. Kiki stepped forward first, edging closer. Two doors were on either side of the lower room, both closed. There were some scattered, broken records and smashed pieces of wood. A poster advertising Jasmine Jolene was leaning up against the pillar in the centre of the room, burning, along with other random debris.

"Yeah, it all seems good." Kiki whispered, making a beckoning motion. "I guess we'll just have to jump for i—ah!"

The beam underfoot snapped, pitching her forward with a surprised yell. She felt a tug on her shirt as Jack tried to grab her, but it was the ashen, singed part, and the cloth broke away. Kiki threw out her arms to brace herself for the drop, however short, and hit the ground with a resounding thud.

"Oh…" She groaned. "Oh, cheese and crackers, that bloody hurt…come on down quick as you like, Jack." Shoes dropped down next to her as Jack joined her, and he helped her up. "No, no, relax, I'm fine. Seriously. Here, let's look at the flashing red light."

Kiki walked toward the pile of debris, where there was indeed a red light flashing amongst the broken filing cabinets and burning paper. "Uh, on second thought, run." She waved Jack off, and when he didn't move, grabbed his arm and pulled him further back into the store. "Run!"

The following explosion sent a plume of fire rolling up through the shop. The shockwave sent both Kiki and Jack flying a few feet, and shards of wood and glass blasted out to lodge into the walls. Pricks of pain showered up Kiki's side facing the pillar of rubbish. Her knees slipped in blood as she scrabbled to her feet.

"Fuck, fuck and triple fuck!" She snapped, loading the crossbow and stepping back into the open room. "Where the hell is he?"

On cue, a flaming Molotov cocktail came soaring over the edge. "Shit! Telekinesis, Telekinesis!" She held up a hand and focused, catching the cocktail midair and sending it hurling back to the attacker. Splicers charged in from the side doors as Jack stood to join her. "Jack, hold 'em off while I take care of Cobb!"

Jack stormed off, Incinerate and machine gun blazing. Another homemade bomb flew toward Kiki, who focused on it and sent it back again. This time, it hit someone. A man screamed, his figure lighting up in flames. He was on the top floor where they had been, and in his panic fell off the edge as Kiki had done, only with less preparation for the fall. Bones crunched horrifically against the floor, and Silas remained twitching, still inexplicably alive. Kiki took her pistol out and put the burning man out of his misery.

"He was a nasty one…and my favourite." Cohen sighed from the radio. "But I think I like him better this way. Take his damn photo, chop chop!" Kiki silently removed her camera from her belt and snapped a photo of the still burning body.

Tucking the picture away, she saw Jack struggling to hold off two Spiders and a Houdini by himself. Kiki ran over, limping slightly now as the adrenaline wore off somewhat, but grinning as she speared one of the Spiders with the crossbow. "Bitches," She loaded a new bolt. "I've got a crossbow!" The Houdini appeared long enough to splash liquid fire at them, and get shot by a trigger-happy Kiki.

"How do we get out of here?" She panted once the Splicers were dealt with. She looked around the room. "Just what I needed." She pointed to a vent that had been busted open in the fight. "Crawling through air ducts." Kiki crouched down at the vent and looked up. "Looks like it'll lead us right up to the top floor. Come along, Jack."

Getting down on all fours, she crawled up the ventilation shaft. It was dark but for some flickering orange light shining at the other end. The metal made wobbling noises from their weight as she and Jack crawled upward.

Kiki was about halfway up the vent when she realised something. "You are looking right at my arse, aren't you?"

"…No?"

"You cheeky little…" Kiki kicked backward a little with a chuckle and continued on. "Once we're out of here I'm going to smack you."

The vent did, in fact, lead them to the top floor. Kiki got out with a groan, tentatively touching her bleeding back. Jack emerged a moment later, and got a right smack to the arm.