Play it Back

[ItsFulgrim]

The office smelled like stale coffee and regret, two things Jolyne was all too familiar with by this time. She tugged at the collar of her button-up shirt, the fabric stiff and unforgiving against her skin. It was suffocating, constricting, a symbol of everything she despised about her current predicament. A suit and tie felt like shackles, and in her mind, this office, this punishment, was nothing short of a prison sentence, maybe she was overreacting a little bit.

Heroes weren’t supposed to file paperwork or sit through disciplinary hearings like this! They were meant to fight, to protect, to be out there where they were needed most. And yet, here she was, bound to a desk by bureaucratic nonsense, and she was ready to jump to her feet and leave at any chance given.

"Suspension means you sit quietly and reflect," Her representative at the agency had told her, his tone firm, authoritative. "No field work. No unauthorized intervention. No bending the rules."

Jolyne had responded the way she always did, a simple, practiced smile masking the frustration boiling beneath her skin. She nodded as if she understood, as if she cared, and left the office by shaking the man's hand and thanked him for his time, leaving with a light skip on her step, reassuring herself this would be all okay once the agency lifted her time out.

The representative watched her go, rubbing his temples. He already knew, this wouldn’t be the last time he had to file a report on her this week. With the way things were going, he wouldn’t be surprised if she managed to make more agents quit. The last two had barely lasted a month with how many scoldings they got from their superiors, complaining on how unnefective Jolyne was.


Everything had gone downhill the moment Amadaine Inc. came into power. As soon as it did, all 'supers' were forced to register by the time they turned eighteen, signing away their autonomy in a flurry of legal paperwork and restrictions disguised as regulations. Jolyne had witnessed the debates as a teenager, had sat through endless discussions about what it meant for people like her, and now she was living through the consequences. The so-called heroes of the world were forced to jump through countless hoops, chained by rules designed to limit them rather than support them or their work.

Her latest transgression had earned her a bright red stamp on her record, banned from doing any heroics in an entire sector of the city after "disrupting an important mission." Never mind the fact that the mission had been botched from the start, or that she had stepped in only because the assigned hero had been too busy basking in the limelight to actually do his job. It didn’t matter. The rules were the rules. Amadaine’s president saw the rigid structure as efficient.

It most definetely was not.


Most zones had at least one so-called hero who was little more than a celebrity. Big on words, but lacking in action. They posed for cameras, smiled for the news, but when it came down to actually saving people? Useless. It was enough to make Jolyne sick.

Frustration churned in her stomach as she wandered downtown, though she wasn’t sure if it was hunger or anger, or maybe both, most definetely both. Either way, she needed food. Something cheap, something fast. A food truck, a convenience store, whatever she could afford. If things kept spiraling downward, this might be the last proper meal she had for a while.

With that sobering thought in mind, she stepped into the nearest convenience store, heading straight to the back. Candy bars. A fresh one unlike the stale stash she had back home. It wasn’t much, but at least it was something for now.


She looked around as if hopeful anything would take her out of the migraine she felt building up in her skull, at some point staring at a screen on one of the shelves, the news playing over the same things as always, celebrating some new hero who did a great thing or reporting the latest disaster striking town, but then again, was there anything she could do about it? Sure there was! Not as long as her actions were restricted though.

That is when she saw a few more people enter the store, giving them a quick glance without much thought, though the longer they remained in the space, the more she suspected the group was up to no good, she wasn't sure how to explain it, not that she had to convince herself in this case. The moment the group began to move closer to the worker behind the register, reaching for their pockets and the insides of their pockets, she could not hold it in any longer, her legs simply moved on their own, and there she went, like a dart made out of a violet blurr, a quick blink and she was already on the counter, her hands on her hips and a grin on her face.

"So then, I bet you are all having a great ol' time since old man Macoy Summers is on a break... Y'all got all the time in the world to bother innocents, making a big ol' mess around town? Well guess what, scum. Now you got me to deal with."

And the conflict started, thankfully no guns were involved, otherwise Jolyne might've had a much more different issue at hand.

The imp managed to count the group before her strike, six, enough for her to need a slightly more careful approach. A metal pipe was swung at her, quickly deflected by a shield formed from her palm, bouncing back onto the attacker. The rest joined, similarly armed, wrenches, knives, until the sixth decided to step onto the fight, a quick spark igniting from between his fingers as a surge of energy sent her flying back against a wall, crashing into shelves with a loud thud.

Lightning man, amazing, just what she needed. She stood up with a gasp, trying her best to look strong although she felt as if she would have bruises for the next few months. She was fast enough to dodge a few normal folk, but electricity wasn't exactly easy to dodge, particularly because these volts were following her with ridiculous precision.

Jolyne wasn't exactly sure how she would get out of this one.

 

[Katpride]

Lark was watching the altercation from the far corner of the convenience store, their head tilted back so that they could see the counter in the angled mirror set near the ceiling. They were idly turning a chocolate bar between their hands, tipping it end over end as they considered their options. The expression on their face was nearly unreadable, save for a spark of something calculating, spinning, perpetually-turning gears that were hidden under their general air of exhaustion.

They could just leave. It would be the smarter choice. Easier, too, and less of a mess for them to retroactively/preemptively clean up. They were supposed to be keeping a low profile, after all - and it was even more important not to get caught too close to the present, now that they had officially turned eighteen. But they couldn’t seem to tear their eyes away from the fight as it unfolded, watching the purple-skinned woman intently. One hero (no, heroic bystander, they thought, squinting, a hint of a frown touching the corners of their mouth) against six would-be robbers? It just didn’t seem fair.

There were already too many things in this world that weren’t fair. Lark refused to add to the count.

So, with a muted sigh, they slipped the candy bar into the pocket of their skirt, removing their hand from the pocket with several shuriken tucked between their fingers. (Later, they would travel back to the day before, and sabotage the store’s cameras. That would be their nod to discretion, they resolved.)

Keeping low, Lark stepped around the shelves separating them from the front of the store. A flick of their wrist sent the shuriken spinning off, with an eye for pinning loose fabric to nearby surfaces, and then in a flicker of not-there movement they were beside the heroine, reaching out to grab her arm and tug her behind a shelf before the lightning man could fire off another round. “On your left!”

They may not have been particularly strong, but they moved fast, even without accounting for them having more seconds to work with than the average person. With that, and the way they kept their eyes locked on the powered robber, ready to pull time to a screeching halt if he so much as twitched in their direction, they were cautiously confident in their ability to keep the two of them out of the line of fire. For now.

Provided the heroine didn’t take them for another threat, of course. Lark had gotten that reaction before, and even though they didn’t really care, per say, what random heroes thought of them, it did make dealing with things more difficult. For the sake of clarity, they turned a quick smile on the woman, the reassuring nature of it somewhat offset by the way they were already spinning a new shuriken around their finger. “Need some help?”

It was definitely a bit late to ask, but their smile seemed to imply that the question was meant to be ironic. It was a joke meant just for themself, messing up the timing of their own introduction.

 

[ItsFulgrim]

The shurikens reached their target with ease, throwing the attackers off balance, or at least most of them.

Jolyne's eyes widened in surprise as she was pulled aside with ease, then again, she was very small and light. She was quick to assume it was another attacker, but the zap of light flying over their heads made her realize she had been rescued.

A grateful smile played on her lips as her eyes fell on the stranger, accepting the joke despite the burning pain in her torso, and throwing a light jab of her own. "I think I was doing quite well on my own, but I don't mind a second pair of hands..." No time was left for introductions as another volt flew towards their hiding spot. She appreciated the lack of brutality from the stranger, from the position they were in, they could've absolutely done some serious damage to the "normal" assailants, and yet they opted for a distraction rather than harm.

The imp's mind fired around ideas on how to handle this, trying to catch a pattern or something to give them an edge in the fight,

One of them, she wasn't sure which, began yelling to taunt them.

"Come out rats! Where's the bravery, huh?!" Joly rolled her eyes; these guys were even worse at trash talking than her, but this was most likely a bad time to give them a talk on how to improve their "fight-talk".

The woman glanced toward her current companion, they were now dealing with this too, so she might as well get a plan going.

"Sparky over there is the big guy... He doesn't look very fast; I might be able to hold him down if he's distracted... Think you can catch his attention without getting hurt? I can cover your back and make sure the rest don't stop ya'."

She held her side for a moment, wondering if she'd broken a rib, but nothing felt too out of place at first glance, deciding to not put too much worry into that and focus on the task at hand.


One of the robbers tried to rush at Lark with a pipe. Jolyne, unaware of what abilities they had, kept her promise of taking care of them, tripping the attacker with a small shield, and sending the man face first onto the floor, rendering him unable to fight with a well place set of force fields, essentially putting cuffs on him, though she suspected a broken nose and loose teeth would deter most from going further into a fight. One down, five to go.

"So, whaddya say, partner?" She spoke amicably, basically adopting the stranger as her new teammate, despite them not knowing each other for more than a minute.

 

[Katpride]

There was a slight sparkle around the lightning wielder's hand, and Lark was already spinning themself and the woman out of the way, leading them down the aisle and into the next with quick steps. The electricity hit the shelf where they had been only moments before, frying a few unfortunate chip bags, but they hardly spared it a glance, flicking their shuriken in the man’s direction and continuing on without looking to see if it hit.

“Well, as long as you don’t mind,” they drawled, a hint of a southern accent creeping into their amused tone. They listened to her plan with polite attention, most of their focus still on keeping track of the unknown elements around them.

“Yeah, I can do that.” The agreement was almost immediate. Lark didn’t make a habit of putting themself in any position to get hurt, if it could be avoided, and as such they’d gotten pretty good at avoiding it. They glanced briefly at the woman, at the hand she placed against her ribs, and for a moment something like guilt dimmed their smile, passed like a cloud over their face. They pushed it down, looking away. Nothing they could do about that now.

Movement caught their eye - or maybe it was the glint of light off the metal pipe - and they saw the man who held it quickly approaching. Lark blinked out of sight long before he would’ve reached them, reappearing further down the aisle in the same instant. They watched with some amusement as their would-be attacker tripped on a pink bubble and received a face full of tile for his efforts. Unruffled, they plucked a handful of tic-tac boxes off the shelf next to them and smiled at their new accomplice.

“You can call me Lark. But, yes, that works. I’ll be watching your back as well,” they said, tossing one of the little plastic boxes in the air to test its weight.

It would do. They gave the woman a grin, and then disappeared again, slipping into the space between seconds and making a dash for the counter. They slid behind it, noticing only after they did so that the cashier was still cowering on the ground behind the register.

Time jolted back into motion. As it did, a ding! rang in the back of Lark’s mind, accompanied by a flash of neon green light from right beside them as a future Lark arrived. The marginally older Lark knelt to speak softly to the terrified cashier, but Lark paid them little mind. The lightshow had drawn attention to them. It was time to make good on their promise of a distraction.

“Tic-tac?” they offered, holding up one of the boxes of tic-tacs. Sparky seemed to take offense to this, if his aiming a lightning bolt right at their face was any indication. No matter. They flickered out of the way, then threw the box at him, nailing him right between the eyes. This only angered him further, and his next shot went so wide that they didn’t even have to dodge. They raised a judgemental eyebrow, then shook their remaining tic-tacs at him with a vaguely threatening smile. They could do this all day.

Behind them, the other Lark led the cashier into the back room, pausing halfway through the door to throw a shuriken in a seemingly random direction. It caught one of the robbers in the hand just as they were about to bring that hand (and the knife in it) towards Jolyne’s back. Debt repaid, they slipped into the back room. They had cameras to tamper with.

 

[ItsFulgrim]

Jolyne was rather, confused yet intrigued at the display. Hell, the distraction was meant to be for the lightning wielder, not her.

She pondered for the briefest time what their power was. Creating people out of thin air? That seemed odd, but it was not something like, shooting spaghetti out of their fingers or something like that. She could definitely get used to the extra pair of hands- And their extra pair of hands.

At this point, she didn’t know what was more amusing, her new partner’s near-effortless dodging, or the fact that the lightning wielder was quickly growing more frustrated by the second. She could see it in the way his strikes were getting sloppier, the way his stance lost its precision. Even a fool with electricity in his veins wasn’t immune to impatience.

Truth be told she did not notice the robber with the knife, at least not until she heard them wince in pain from Lark's shuriken. She nodded a simple thanks, still confused as to what to make of the situation, but she chose not to mind it for now, there were things she had to attend to.


With Lark's distraction working wonders, Jolyne made her move. A quick sprint to the side, and a sudden blink into the void allowed her to jump onto the attacker, clinging to his shoulders as if she was to bring him down with a wrestling move. Of course, her size wouldn't allow this, so instead she used what always worked. He barely had time to react before she formed a force field beneath his feet, tilting it just enough to send him stumbling backward.

She spun around just in time so she would not be trapped underneath him, forming a bubble around his wrists and hands, nullifying any chances he had of throwing his electricity again. In fact, he did try, but the bolt was trapped within the confined space, bouncing back into his fingers and causing him a painful shock that left him panting and very much unwilling to fight.

"Nice aim." She said quietly, nodding at the abandoned tic-tac box now crushed by sparky’s boot. "Not the most conventional weapon, but hey, whatever works, right?"


The remaining robbers were starting to back away, their bravado crumbling without their strongest fighter in the mix. One of them—maybe the only one with a shred of common sense-grabbed his fallen comrade and dragged him toward the exit, muttering something about cutting their losses. A couple others scrambled to follow suit, but the Imp's luck had run out, the light flickers of blue and red suddenly caught her eyes. Their antics had caught too much attention.


Jolyne gritted her teeth in discomfort; she had been careless again.

From the vehicle emitting the lights and the very obvious police siren, came a group of cops. Nowadays their equipment was a little different. The forces had to carry what resembled more of a SWAT team would carry back in the day, it made sense, considering the criminals that roamed now. One of them, clearly the lead rose his voice, telling Jolyne to stand down, which, despite her disagreement, she did.

With her hands up and a nervous look in her eye she simply stood there, hoping Lark was fast enough to avoid this issue, after all, she was responsible for starting the fight, no need to ruin someone else's streak.

 

[Katpride]

There was another mental chime and a flash of green light from under the door as the future Lark slipped away into the past. Lark noted the time absently, not allowing it to distract them from their current goal of playing the world’s most annoying lightning rod. They’d follow up with that loop in a moment, just as soon as… ah, there she was. They watched with no small amusement as the tiny purple woman leapt onto the back of the much larger man and took him down expertly.

“Whatever works,” they agreed, leaning over the counter to observe her handiwork. Internally, they bumped her back up from ‘heroic bystander’ to ‘definitely a hero’. No one learned to move like that by accident.

Just as they were about to congratulate her, or perhaps say their goodbyes now that they’d played their part, there was another ding! in the back of their mind, the usual ringing windchime that heralded the arrival of another Lark. The flash of green once again came from right beside them, and they turned to look at the new Lark with a frown. This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Coppers,” the new Lark said, succinctly. They already looked tired. Well, more tired. None of them really looked well-rested, after a certain age, but Lark could tell that this Lark had been running around for at least a few hours more than they had.

They were drawn from their inspection by the other Lark flicking them lightly on the forehead. They blinked, opening their mouth to protest before they caught the eyeroll of their elder self and snapped it shut again, vaguely miffed. “Just catch up,” the other Lark advised, already hopping over the counter and moving towards their (temporary) partner in crime.

Well fine. They would.

---

Lark didn’t have time to coddle their past self. They were cutting it pretty close to the wire as it was, only reaching Jolyne as the first officer made his way through the door to the convenience store, as the disappearance of their past self drew eyes in the direction of the counter. They didn’t have time to warn her, either, as they snagged the wrist of her raised hand and pulled, both physically and in a more metaphorical way, dragging the both of them into the fizzy green of the timestream.

It was a short dip, by their standards. They weren’t aiming for the distant past, just a past where they were in a different place than they started out. There were plenty of those to choose from, since they didn’t tend to stay in one place for too long.

They picked one that was close enough to their current time (okay, it was off by a few weeks, but who was counting? They were, unfortunately) and popped out of the timestream in the middle of a park that they were fairly sure was in the same city as the convenience store. There was another Lark there, of course, this one sitting in the grass reading a book and snacking on some pretzels. They looked up at the arrival of their future self, but, before they could peer past them and see Jolyne, Lark stole one of their pretzels and, ignoring the indignant exclamation from their past self, took Jolyne on one more hop to catch up to her present. The world shuddered, fading into green static, and when it resolved into a coherent image again the sunny day had shifted into something cloudier, the breeze a little chillier.

Lark had been holding tightly to the woman’s wrist for the duration of their travels, but almost as soon as the light faded this time they dropped it, taking a half-step away to reestablish their personal bubble. “Sorry about that! I just don’t really vibe with the whole you-need-a-license-to-hero thing, and I didn’t want to see you get arrested.”

They crunched on their stolen pretzel almost as an afterthought, watching her with slightly wary green eyes.

 

[ItsFulgrim]

Jolyne's stomach twisted as she stumbled forward, the lingering dizziness from the jumps refusing to fade immediately. The sensation was disorienting, an aftershock that left her struggling to regain her balance for what felt like an eternity- Though in reality, it was only a minute. She barely managed to keep herself upright, her muscles fighting against the nausea creeping up her throat.

Yet, what unsettled her more than the physical toll was the gnawing confusion clawing at her thoughts. Her companion’s abilities were becoming more of an enigma by the second. Cloning was clearly out of the question now. But the other possibility, the one her mind kept circling back to, felt entirely irrational. No one could just jump in time. That wasn’t how reality worked… right? Sure, she could jump into her own little pocket dimension, but time? That was a completely different skill she wasn't sure anyone could control.

No. She couldn’t afford to waste time- Well, technically, there was time, but instead of speculating, she could simply look for the truth directly. The questions boiling inside her needed an outlet, so she simply let her thoughts spill forth unhindered, as she did way too often.

"I don't- Mind. But I need to know just one thing." She took a deep breath, forcing air into her lungs as if it would steady her. The words came faster now, unfiltered. "What the hell just happened? Who are you? Are you from space, or another time? Are we still here?" Her voice sharpened with urgency, though she was hardly sure where here even was anymore. "And what do you mean by not 'vibing' with the license?"

There were more questions, too many more. but they drowned in the frantic stream of interrogations, lost before she could even voice them.

Eventually, she gave up trying to contain the chaos in her brain. Her body folded in on itself as she leaned forward, hands gripping her knees for support. Slow, deliberate breaths left her mouth. She felt absurd. None of this made sense, but she needed it to, it was simply how her brain worked.

"Okay- Okay. Just break it down for me." Her voice was softer now, pleading for information rather than demanding it. "What... happened?"

Her gaze finally settled on them. Doubt flickered in her eyes at first, shifting into wary curiosity. Then, unexpectedly, the warmth of quiet gratitude surfaced. They had helped her escape. That much was certain.

Did she fully trust them? Maybe, she wasn't exactly known for being careful when meeting new people. Could she truly know their intentions? Not yet. But she guessed they were not ill.

She could at least accept that they weren’t bad. They weren’t even evil- Maybe. Their alignment could be discussed later. For now, she just needed answers.