"Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity." ~Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

Lindsey had never had a problem with lying on occasion, provided it served a greater purpose, so she didn't mind it much when the guy at the front desk of BLI's Security Office waved her through the doors behind his desk with a "Good luck, Andrea!"

What she did have a problem with was when the people she had worked under for nearly six years without incident called her in to be cross-examined. She figured it made sense- they would have to keep tabs on their employees, especially those who worked in close proximity to the Killjoys- but what had she done wrong?

Nothing, she thought with a chuckle, except for aiding in the destruction of two important Drac (or, as her co-workers called them, "Exterminator") creations. But she was positive that any evidence of such exploits had also been reduced to dust; after all, bombs were just as effective on security tapes as they were on buildings. There could be no case against her.

Content with her self-assured safety, Lindsey sat down in one of the beige armchairs in the small waiting room outside the office of the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W department's Head of Security. She glanced briefly at the magazines displayed elegantly on the coffee table, but merely rolled her eyes in derision: every word in those was over-dramatized, outdated, and rarely even half-true. And she had matters to attend to that were more pressing than bad literature.

Lindsey settled back in her chair, closed her eyes, and tried, over the incessant droning of the TV, to figure out why she was being such an idiot.

She had seen her husband twice in the space of a week and hadn't acknowledged that she knew who he was or about their past together, even when he'd figured it out on his own. Nice work, Lindsey, she chastised herself.

The first time, at the Bus, she'd just been surprised to see him. She had certainly not been expecting Gerard to come out of his hideout with his band of rebels and attack the would-be formidable Drac transport system. She told herself, as she had repeatedly since that night, that it hadn't been the right time for a confession like that. The Killjoys had come prepared for a fight, not a declaration of love, and Gerard- it still seemed weird to call him "Party Poison"- had been right anyway: if they'd sat around talking for much longer, one of the relatively more observant Dracs, probably Johan once he'd finished his Kool-Aid, would've seen them and raised the alarm and then they'd be in trouble. And after the detonation, well, it'd still be really random to say something like, "Surprise, I was your wife the whole time!" Plus, she'd had to go off and distance herself from the scene of the crime as much as possible, reporting immediately to the nearest Drac outpost with news of the attack.

That was all well and good, but what about the second encounter? She still couldn't believe that it was just yesterday that the two of them had fought back-to-back, and he'd told her he loved her before blowing up an entire building. She hoped that he only thought that she hadn't heard him properly over the totally shiny music and didn't take offense.

She'd panicked, really. That was the only reason she hadn't run across the parking lot and hugged him, as she'd been sorely tempted to do. It was just the whole thing about how she was suddenly a confirmed traitor and how they had very little time to escape before the building went down or the Dracs found some other way out, and what on Earth was she going to say to her superiors when they asked her, as they were about to do now, why she kept making "fortuitous" getaways, and that she hoped he'd be okay after losing his brother and one of his best friends, and how sad their deaths were, and how sorry she was, and then Gee had to go and give her something else to keep her up at night (like the supposedly one-sided state of their oh-so-tortured romance wasn't doing enough of that already), and what the hell was she supposed to do when she was reunited with her pseudo-terrorist husband after so long without him?

Lindsey dreadfully considered the idea that maybe she didn't really love him anymore, but quickly rejected it when she remembered how she'd nearly worn out her home stereo system playing all his old CD's, not to mention how many days and sometimes nights she'd spent checking and rechecking Drac records and files, and running over Zone surveillance tapes until her eyes ached, searching desperately for any sign of him. She gleaned as much as she could from the blatant propaganda that was the Battery City newspaper, and each mention of his fake name, note about the Killjoys, or brief, blurred screenshot of someone who may or may not have actually been him (all the cameras recorded footage in grayscale, which she found incredibly stupid as Gerard would be ridiculously easy to pick out of the desert landscape if she could only spot his flamboyant red hair) was all it took to make her heart speed up. Even when it wasn't, and she ended up getting excited over something totally irrelevant, she would get this feeling of guilt, like she knew she shouldn't be doing this.

And for a few months she'd honestly tried to forget about her old life, and her driving need for artistic self-expression, and she probably shouldn't have been secretly "in love" with a rebel. She had begun to think that this was just the kind of silly, obsessive, slightly creepy stalking behavior that a lot of hardcore fangirls went through, and she was confusing it with love! Why was she doing this to herself?

Oh right, she'd realized, because she was his fucking wife! She wasn't one of those hopeless wannabes jumping up and down at a concert, screaming, "Marry me!" She was actually married to the guy, and no matter how often BLI tried to convince her that love was unimportant and her old life didn't matter, Lindsey knew better. She was again ashamed for a few days, not at breaking rules this time, but at letting their tenants almost make her lose sight of what she knew to be true.

She'd requested a position at a refurbished outpost out in Zone 4 as a spy, really hoping to see him- even just the beat-up old car he had been so fond of. But as soon as she knew, as she'd suspected from the start, that he was not only alive and running, but vehemently encouraging no more than freedom of speech, with a touch of violence only if really necessary, Lindsey also knew that she could never be a Drac because she had to be with him.

Well, then, she supposed it was kind of her job to monitor him. She had to have some way of making sure he was safe and of, however obnoxiously corny it sounded, renewing her love for him. If she couldn't see him, she had to find other ways of reminding herself that he was the man she'd dedicated her life to.

She knew she should've told him sooner that she still loved him, but now she figured that she'd find a way to announce it on her radio station by dedicating him something sufficiently slaughtermatic and as soon as she could, she'd ask Show Pony where in the hell their secret base was. Or maybe she'd just follow him back there. Whatever. But in any case, when she saw her husband again, she still wasn't sure whether she'd kiss Gerard or beat him to a bloody pulp for being such a risk-taker.

Lindsey jumped as a voice in the next room yelled, "I am not weak, I'm not a traitor, and don't you dare demote me!"

It was Leonard. She'd known he was being questioned as well, but she hadn't realized that, for one, they'd be interrogating him just before her, and for another, that he had anything to be so damn angry about. He had nothing to hide, what with his spotless history, but then BLI's security did need to be top-notch. She supposed they were threatening him.

She waited, tensely trying to hear any other bits of conversation through the thick door, but her efforts were in vain. Leonard still looked perfectly composed, as always, when he emerged from the office, but she detected a subtle urgency in the way he turned to her and said, "Hello, Andrea. I wouldn't have expected to see you here, but then I wouldn't have expected to be here myself." He glared over his shoulder at the door that had just shut behind him.

"How are you, Leonard?" she said conversationally, for lack of anything substantial to say; he'd taken the words right out of her mouth.

"Oh, I'm all right," the Drac replied, his typical air of superiority seemingly untouched by his recent, momentary meltdown. "I'm just off to pay a visit to the Fabulous Killjoys."

Lindsey very nearly had an aneurysm, but then remembered that Leonard was one of BLI's most effective spies; having lived out in the Zones almost as long as his enemies, he almost never returned except with important discoveries. Most of the information he gathered was what Lindsey knew to be truthful: having known the Killjoys before they were on the run, she'd been able to confirm a lot of what he found out.

"Do you know where their hideout is yet?" she asked, not bothering to sound casual.

"Yes! I finally found it!" Leonard exclaimed. (Well, it's about damn time, Lindsey thought.) "It's at the old diner off Route Guano, the one in Zone 5, you know?"

"Weren't you stationed, like, half a mile from there?"

"Yes, but they did a very good job of hiding it," Leonard replied defensively. "Anyway, I'm gonna give the Scarecrow unit the four-one-one. We should be there by sunset."

With that, he walked out, and the soft click of the door closing after him punctuated Lindsey's growing agitation. While Leonard's boasting would buy her some time, it was fortunate that she'd been the first to hear it; it put her a step ahead of the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W. But she'd still have to act fast if she was to warn her fellow Killjoys of the impending threat.

Lindsey was halfway across the room in pursuit of Leonard when the office door opened and Airi Isoda called, "Going somewhere, Andrea?"

Party Poison woke up late, sometime during midmorning, and a half hour later, he still didn't feel like getting up.

His head was crammed full of scenes from all that had gone down last night- the gunfight, the explosion, the bodies in the parking lot. But he pushed those terribly ordinary memories from his mind, returning instead to thoughts of his wife and how she hadn't recognized him, how she'd just left him there.

She'd proved that she knew nearly everything about him and his Killjoy group, and, if that was the case, she should know their true identities as well. So she should've known long ago that they had been married once.

Then why hadn't she said anything? Maybe she hadn't heard him last night over the incredibly loud music but she could've mentioned it before, at least. He wondered for a second if she even wanted to acknowledge their relationship (maybe she'd grown past it, or decided she didn't love him) but dismissed this as he remembered that she had kept the wedding ring, which was taking a pretty big risk because he was sure the Dracs didn't approve of jewelry, or least of all the sentimental value it stood for.

Well, then, what was her deal? Party sighed, running his hands over his face. He'd basically given up on his ability to understand women a while ago, so this was a hopeless case.

Stop being so angsty, he berated himself. You're just wasting your time on a bunch of what-ifs. How 'bout you go and-a knock on the door of the diner cut into his reverie- see who's outside?

Party heaved himself up and walked out into what passed for the living room. Fun Ghoul was sound asleep in a booth and Party regretted pushing him so hard the night before last. Meanwhile, Dr. Death Defying and Show Pony were deep in concentration on some antenna-like radio component while the Girl was looking between them and the main door nervously. He went to the door and peered through the glass at the woman outside.

She appeared to have stepped out of a '60s fashion catalogue: she had on faded bell-bottom jeans, a tie-dye T-shirt, and a long braid down her back. The laser blaster in the holster at her waist was multicolored as well, and had what looked like a peace sign on it.

She clearly wasn't a Drac, but Party Poison still opened the door cautiously, and she called through the little crack, "Hi! I'm Adrenaline Angel; I was Kobra Kid's friend. Can I come in?"

Lindsey sat stiffly in the chair across from Airi Isoda, feeling a bit like a troublesome kid in the principal's office. She was suddenly very nervous, and this was only compounded by her impatience: she wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, as she had more important and less government sanctioned matters to attend to.

"Andrea Ballato, do you know why you're here?" Airi began the questioning. Lindsey knew that these formalities, like referring to her by her full "name," were required so that the cameras in the room could keep records of those involved, and so that Airi didn't have to deal with any more paperwork than that which littered her desk.

Lindsey swallowed. "Yes; I was present at two recent Killjoy attacks."

"More specifically, you were the only survivor of two recent Killjoy attacks, excepting Leonard Connor, who has already been cleared of suspicion," the Head of Security noted.

Lindsey nodded. "That's right."

Airi folded her hands. "At the first attack, which occurred on Wednesday, August 15 and resulted in the destruction of the first and only Provision, Ammunition, and Reinforcement Transportation System- commonly referred to as the Party Bus- you were disrupted in your evening patrol by a pair of Killjoy vehicles, correct?"

"Yes," Lindsey responded, and, feeling that she ought to be just as precise, added, "One of those was a stolen Standard-issue Exterminator motorcycle, the other a 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am."

Airi nodded. "And you were driving the Party Bus at the time."

"I was."

"What happened when the Killjoys intercepted you?"

Lindsey tried her best to remember exactly what she'd told the Dracs at the outpost she'd gone to that night. "Um, they almost ran into the Bus, so I stopped, and when I got out to see what we'd have to deal with- how many Killjoys there were, and all- I found that they'd taken out the motorcyclists assigned to guard and patrol duty with us. The group of Killjoys took me hostage and demanded to know how to destroy the Bus. They threatened me at gunpoint, and I finally told them what I knew about the Bus being laser-proof. They decided to throw an explosive into the Bus, and while they were busy planning and executing this, I escaped on the least-damaged motorcycle."

Airi glanced at one of the papers on her desk. "All right, that's consistent with what you reported to Outpost 6 the night of the incident. But why didn't you alert the Exterminators in the Bus of what had happened?"

"Well, for one thing, the Killjoys would've shot me," Lindsey stalled. "And most of the others in the Bus were in no condition to fight: they were all drunk, that's why I was driving."

Her interrogator nodded sympathetically. This was a common complaint among designated drivers: the vulnerability posed by transporting inebriated Exterminators in case of Killjoy attacks. "Why not send out a distress signal?" Airi pressed.

Lindsey's mind worked desperately to come up with an excuse, and she replied lamely, "I-I didn't think of it then. I was too scared, I guess."

The Head of Security frowned in disbelief, but seemed to decide the matter wasn't worth pursuing, because she said, "I see. I suppose we'll just have to speak to the Health Department about adjusting your anxiety medicine."

Shiny, Lindsey thought sarcastically. More pills to not take. Her argument was apparently convincing, though, because Airi changed the subject.

"What happened at the second attack?"

Lindsey sighed, and started to explain, glad that this time she hadn't had a chance to make a report beforehand. It made bullshitting things much easier.

When she was done with her long-winded, half-true story, her interrogator simply smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

"And you insist you had nothing to do with the attack? You didn't take part in any of the planning?"

"No," Lindsey replied, trying to quell her nerves and keep her voice from shaking.

"Very well, Andrea," Airi replied. She opened the laptop on her desk and clicked something. "Could you tell me what this song is?" She played the intro to the revamped "Death Before Disco."

"That's a Killjoy song, one of the ones I play on my mock radio station."

"And how did the spoken words at the beginning, the ones in Japanese, come to be in the song?"

Lindsey hesitated. She wasn't sure why Airi was asking something that concerned her as well; BLI discouraged the upholding of many culture-specific behaviors, such as the use of any foreign languages. But then, Airi Isoda had always been granted special privileges as the company's Japanese ambassador; rumor had it that the woman was the sole owner of a legal katana in America, the thinking being that allowing her a strong connection to her country of origin would in turn strengthen the bond between Japan, the only known economic superpower besides the U.S. to have survived the Helium Wars, and BLI.

So Lindsey replied truthfully, "You gave me the recording of all that." She remembered the confusion she'd felt when her boss, whom she'd never considered to be more than that, slipped her the CD, with a translation attached on a Post-It, telling her to "put it to good use." At the time, she hadn't thought much of it, but when she was preparing her playlist for the attack, she had figured that this was the best use of phrases that were almost shiny enough to sound…rebellious.

Back in the present, Airi asked, "Were you aware that the file had a specific frequency attached to it, so that when played, it transmitted signals detectable using certain sensors?"

"No, I didn't know that," Lindsey replied, as a sinking feeling of dread seeped into her stomach.

"Our sensors picked up the frequency emanating from Outpost 9, the location of last night's attack," Airi continued, taking time to embellish the account for the cameras. "Since you were the only person with that recording, you were the only one who could've caused the signal. So tell me, Andrea, why did you play a Killjoy song at an Exterminator celebration minutes before the building was destroyed?"

Damn. "I…I, uh," Lindsey couldn't think of a single thing to say that would get her out of this. "Th-the Killjoys there demanded that I play that for them so they could, like, make a statement…" That was the best she could do, and it was rather pathetic.

Airi smiled again, maliciously, condescendingly. "You've always been a terrible liar, Lindsey."

The Killjoy's eyes widened in shock at the use of her real name.

"That is what your Killjoy friend- or should I say husband- calls you, isn't it?" Airi stated calmly, with a significant glance at Lindsey's left hand. She moved it quickly under the table, and her interrogator shook her head, sighed, and pulled a cell phone out of a drawer in her desk.

"This recording was given to me by Leonard Connor after his questioning today. It was taken by him immediately before the explosion." Airi explained, as she plugged it into her laptop and brought up a larger picture. She pressed "play."

It was footage of Lindsey, clearly identifiable since she'd forgotten to wear a mask- I'm such an idiot! she thought- and Party Poison, wearing his trademark yellow mask, emerging from the back of the building. They exchanged a few words, and Lindsey sealed up the door before getting on her motorbike to make her escape. She came very close to the camera at that point; Leonard must've been hiding behind a sand dune nearby. How had she failed to notice him? And Gerard, the beautiful, sentimental fool that he was, declared his love for her, using her fucking real name, and the video ended.

Lindsey was definitely going to have to beat him to a bloody pulp, then.

Adrenaline Angel was very easy to talk to, as she always gave you the feeling that she was truly interested in every word you had to say- Fun Ghoul supposed that was why Kobra Kid had been friends with her in the first place. For about an hour or so, all the Killjoys sat around and just talked. Dr. Death, Show Pony, and the Girl did get the retelling of the raid they'd wanted, minus a few small details like when Fun broke that Drac's neck. He was almost positive that Party Poison was hiding something too, because the redhead quickly changed the subject when asked about how he and Hot Chimp had fared.

The conversation shifted to Adrenaline Angel and what her life was like. She explained that she ran a music and art supply store in Zone 6, and that she was the one who had sold Kobra his sparkle-covered bass. She seemed a bit surprised when they showed it to her. "You still have it?" she asked unnecessarily. "You didn't burn it when you got the news, then?"

"No," Party said simply. "We wanted to keep it for sentimental reasons."

Fun, however, was rather irritated at her assumption. "Why the hell would we burn it?" he asked, more harshly than he'd intended.

Adrenaline Angel smiled with no real happiness in her face. "A lot of Killjoys cremate items belonging to their fallen friends, as a way to say goodbye…I'm glad you kept that guitar, though," she added, her voice heavy with nostalgia. "It was always my favorite."

They let her listen to their nearly finished nine tracks and Adrenaline Angel told them vehemently that they were the best songs ever. She hung out with them for the rest of the day, sharing their lunch. No one complained, though there was little to go around, because they all felt better having somebody there who had also known Kobra. It was nice to be with someone else who was missing him, too.

It was shortly after the multiple cans of dog food that passed for dinner when Fun Ghoul ran in from out front with the announcement that a S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W van had just pulled up.

Everyone reacted at once: Dr. Death Defying gathered all the most important things from his desk, Show Pony grabbed the back of his wheelchair, and they, along with the Girl, started for the old van parked behind the diner; Party Poison made sure his laser blaster was set to "Kill" and had a good amount of battery power, and Fun Ghoul did the same; Adrenaline Angel peeked out at the enemy vehicle with a look so enthusiastic it was almost frightening.

The twelve S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W, carrying laser rifles, were led by a single Draculoid with an ordinary laser gun, the ensemble made all the more formidable and eerie by the weird, smiley-face masks they wore.

They came up to the "patio" area- really just a patch of concrete- and the Drac knocked on the door. It was oddly polite for someone who was about to attempt massacre. Instantly Adrenaline Angel had her laser out and aimed at the Drac's head; Party opened the door, about to shoot as well, but his enemy said, "I am sorry about this, Party."

For the second time in a week, Party had the sense of knowing a voice from somewhere, but not being able to place it. He didn't have to wait long to find out, though, as the Drac pulled off his mask, stepping out of the doorway and into the rarely-used porch light as he did so.

It was Sweet Revenge.

Party had barely registered this, and blurted in the first feeble sprouts of rage, "How could you- " when Fun Ghoul charged forward yelling, "Die, motherfucker!"

He clearly wanted to use whatever tiny element of surprise was left on their side, but this was an underestimation of his enemy's training: so quickly that no one registered it 'til after it was done, Sweet Revenge (it couldn't be him…could it?) whipped a gun from its holster and shot him in the neck, then turned and dashed off the porch.

Adrenaline Angel raced out the door, shooting at the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W wildly; she grabbed his hand and yanked him along after her.

It was the farthest hundred yards he'd ever run in his life, with the heat from every laser blast that barely missed him singeing the hairs on his arms and his clothes, with Fun's slack, defeated face seared into his mind, blurring all his other perceptions…

He can't be dead. No. Not Fun Ghoul too.

Lost in horrified denial, Party barely felt it when Adrenaline Angel caught him and slammed him back into the side of the Trans-Am; they were crouched away from the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W with the car between them. Angel jumped up whenever she could to fire suppressive lasers at the approaching foes, but she couldn't hold out for very long.

"Grace? Where are you?" Show Pony called.

"What do you mean, you can't find her?!" Dr. Death snapped from the van's passenger seat.

"What do you think I mean?" Show Pony snapped back, glancing around desperately. She'd been right next to him a second ago.

Their frightened, terse exchange was interrupted by a loud crack and a high-pitched scream that could only belong to a young girl. Show Pony dashed back into the diner, where the sound had come from, and found Grace crouching under a window next to Fun Ghoul's body, clutching a revolver.

He ran over to her, said something along the lines of, "Grace, it's okay, I'll cover you. Go get in the van." He took the gun from her, and saw as she stood up that she'd been sitting protectively near some kind of explosive device. He picked that up too, and followed her out, trying to ignore his friend lying on the floor with a burn mark in his throat.

Show Pony made sure she got into the van safely, which was good, since he was hit in the shoulder with a stray laser a second after closing her door. He retaliated with a shot from the revolver, but missed completely; he wasn't used to guns that had recoil. Show Pony was about to run around to the driver's side when he realized that Dr. Death was already sitting there. He mouthed to Show Pony, "Come on!"

Show Pony managed to open the door while cradling the bomb with the same arm; his left arm seemed to be entirely nonfunctional, as the shot had hit a tendon or something bad like that. Dr. Death drove up alongside Party Poison and Adrenaline Angel, hiding out behind the Trans-Am, and gestured for them to get in. Party shook his head, and Show Pony rolled down his window.

"I'm not leaving Fun Ghoul," the leader elaborated.

"But it's way too risky to just leave you two here and- " Dr. Death's protests were cut off by Show Pony, who snarled through the growing pain in his shoulder, "If he wants to stay, let him stay."

After a second of thought, he said, "But take this," and handed the bomb to Adrenaline Angel, who grinned.

"Perfect," she said, and that was the last thing Show Pony heard before he passed out. He woke up about a minute later, and a good thing too, because Dr. Death had no idea where the hell he was going.

Lindsey raced down Route Guano as evening fell and wondered three things, her thoughts flashing past faster than the lines on the road.

The first was why the Killjoys had to locate their stupid secret base so far out in the Zones. The second was why her boss's goddamn fancy, polished, borrowed motorbike couldn't go any faster, while her mind raced a hundred miles a minute and was still trying to process exactly how she'd gotten out of that one.

The third was whether her husband was dead yet.

She gunned the throttle even more, speeding past her radio station and into Zone 5. At the sight of a van coming towards her she tasted bile in the back of her throat- but it was an odd light blue color, not the bleached-bone white of the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W, and she left it in the dust without a second thought.

She pulled up in front of the old diner, jumping off the bike and almost falling down in her haste. She ripped off her helmet and, for a moment, all her energy drained away, replaced by an icy chill of fear that paralyzed her.

It was worse than she could've possibly imagined.

She hadn't known such a feeling was achievable, this sort of ecstatic terror, this tremulous bliss. Every high-pitched whistle of a laser that barely missed her made her want to scream and collapse into hysterical laughter simultaneously. So when she saw that a few of the Scarecrow soldiers were advancing under the suppressive fire of the rest, she had been freaking pumped. Soaring on this internal high, Adrenaline Angel finally realized the sense behind her name.

She soon realized, however, that the attackers were gonna be really hard to deal with, trapped behind the car as she was. She could see what they were going for- to get close enough that they could simply reach around the car and shoot her and Party Poison. Whenever she got a clear shot, she'd jump up and blast laser-light at the oncoming enemy, but her shots were few, far between, and hard as hell to aim.

She had just gotten around to asking herself what Kobra Kid would do (or would've done, rather) in this jam, when a loud bang rang out from the direction of the diner; one of the soldiers fell, bleeding from a hole in his chest.

That gunshot- who the hell used bullets anymore?- had resounded through her, increasing her agitation until all she wanted to do was rip out some throats, and raising the hairs on her arms and her exhilaration to a fever pitch.

And if course, it also freaked out the Scarecrow, and gave her time to plan her attack while they located the source of the shot.

She knelt in the dirt with her back against the car's tire and studied the deadly gift she'd been given. It was hooked to a time-delay detonator, which appeared to be set for twenty seconds. Normally, she'd have been worried about whether that was long enough, but now she was confident it was all the time she would ever need.

Turning to her best friend's oh-so-famous brother, who looked like he wanted nothing more right then than to curl up in a corner and cry, she said, "Cover me," and handed over her totally tricked-out laser gun.

"What are you doing?" he asked desperately, his voice hoarse and weary from stress.

Adrenaline Angel pressed the trigger button, and felt yet another surge of fearful joy as the small, red numbers began to count down. Her heart started to beat in time with them…19...18...

She smiled at Party Poison one last time and said, with more sureness than anything she'd ever heard herself say, "I'm going to meet Kobra Kid."

Adrenaline Angel leapt up and dashed around the side of the car, pelting towards the enemies and their identical masks, every inch of her skin tingling. A blast to the leg, which instinctively she knew to be hot enough to vaporize most of her cells, wasn't strong enough to break through the feeling that had consumed her.

Adrenaline Angel had never felt so alive, and just as she reached the group of S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W, she went out with quite a bang.

Lindsey walked around the small, smoking crater and charred bodies in the yard, and through the door of the diner. Gerard was there, hunched over Fun Ghoul's body, and she was so full to bursting with anxiety and relief and sympathy and exhilaration and freaking emotion that she dropped to her knees beside him and, when he glanced up in shock, kissed him like he was the only thing that mattered to her in the world. Because right then, he was.

They parted, and he managed to stutter a surprised, "H-hi..." His eyes flickered back to his friend's body, and Lindsey asked, "Is he alive?"

"Yeah," Gerard responded, his voice weak with relief. "He's breathing."

"Let's get him outta here, then."

Together, they carried Fun Ghoul out to the Trans-Am and laid him gently across the back seats. Lindsey gave a small exclamation when an important memory broke loose in her mind, and reached into her shirt pocket. She removed a small, vacuum-sealed packet and tore it open, unfolding the thin blue film inside and rubbing it between her fingers to activate it.

She placed the now-cool piece of material over the burn mark on Fun's neck, and told Gerard as he watched curiously, "It's a special device BLI invented to speed up cell regrowth. He should be fine by tomorrow."

"Thank God," her husband whispered, and walked shakily over to the passenger side, where he collapsed into the seat. Lindsey got in on the driver's side, and Gerard handed her the keys.

As she started back down the highway to her hideout, she said conversationally, "I love you, Gee."

"…love ya too, Linds," he muttered before slipping off to sleep.