tushanshu | one ( video )

[ the video clicks on with a flash of something bright and red and orange before it clears and there's a blonde-haired girl wearing a black bodysuit and looking very worried and confused. she's speaking, muttering to herself: ]

Is this on -- I think so... I can see myself, but I don't know if it's even pla -- Oh. Oh. I can see the like, little red -- oh god, that means they can --

[ she cuts herself off and yelps a little before putting a hand to her chest, taking slow deep breaths, furrowing her brows and trying to calm down. she's wigged out and she's scared and she wants out. ]

Oh my god. I -- uhm. [ gulp ] Hi. My name is Liz Allan. Lizzie, I guess. I'm -- I'm new. I have -- [ she counts on her fingers ] -- four questions.

One. Is this... like, computer thing fireproof? Two. Are we --- are we really, seriously on a turtle? I guess I saw since no one actually told me, but... There are no turtles that like, grow this big. Otherwise it'd be all over the news on something.

Three, has anyone seen -- er... two of my friends? Jea -- Karen Grant [ she still doesn't know which to refer to her as ] and Derek Morgan? Please let them know I'm here. [ not that Jean won't figure out herself if she's here too ]

And finally, this... has to be a dream, right? A hallucination? Because this is so crazy and unreal that it can't --

[ and the feed cuts ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He's not that old; he's only twenty-five! He just...ages slowly.

His eyes widen a bit and he is so excited.]

Criminy, I thought I saw some heat there earlier! I've never met a girl Torch before, you know.

[ she blushes. hard. out of embarrassment, mostly, but the whole mutant thing is still a little frustrating for her. ]

I'm not -- I'm not like, Johnny or whatever. I'm -- [ she cuts herself off, shoulders rising to her ears and head sinking ]

[Why is she shrinking back like that? Was it something he said?]

Johnny? That Storm guy? No, no, I was talking about us, my partner and I. Pappy is the Human Torch where I'm from--there isn't even any Johnny Storms around. [That he knows of.]

I'm not like him either. I was born with my powers--well, some of them. I'm a Torch, he's a Torch, too, I guess, and so are you. Doesn't matter how you got your powers. What counts is setting yourself on fire to save the world. [He means the last bit as a joke.]

[ liz pauses, dragging her fingers through her curls and smiles a little. toro manages to get a lot of those out of her.]

I'm called -- um -- Firestar.

Firestar? Oh, that's a dandy. I think it suits you. [He is already adopting her into the Torch family in his mind.]

Not sure how much secret identities matter here, but code names always sound cooler when you're having to plan things out, don't they?

[ blushing again!!! ]

Oh, yes, like, definitely! I mean, mine wasn't really for my secret identity. I didn't, like, have much of one after I got outted. [ as a mutant...!! she did it to herself but whatevaaaaa ]

Neither did I! Like, you can't really hide when it happens on stage in front of a full audience of people. Everyone took it pretty well, but I think having Torch around helped since his powers and mine were so much alike.

People freaked out when they found out what I was. Like, this guy -- a friend of my brother's -- he pulled out a gun and started to threaten to shoot people and he shot -- he shot someone. We were in school.

And so he tried to shoot my brother, but he's a mutant. Like, you can't really hurt him, and everyone started freaking out. [ she takes a deep breath ] And so I flamed on to protect him and suddenly we were the bad guys, even though we did nothing wrong. Suddenly, everyone hated us.

[ :( ]

[He's a bit shocked about hearing all of this, because it was never something he had to worry about as a kid. His friends in school knew who he was and what he could do. It was a handy excuse for why he disappeared for days and then months and weeks during the war until he eventually dropped out.]

That's...terrible. They shouldn't have blamed you when you were just protecting yourselves. [Even though he knows it happens a lot more often than people think.] People used to talk about Pappy--Jim that way, too. But he sure showed them and now he's one of the biggest known heroes in the world. Didn't make that they were jerks right, but it made him really determined to show them up and prove how wrong they were.

I'm sorry that it doesn't look like times have changed that much.

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