Jesse stepped into the clearing in the junkyard, and the world exploded into light. When her eyes adjusted, four pillars of light drew them like magnets, beckoning her. She took several steps forward before she could stop herself. Without knowing why, she knew she would burn in the light as surely as a moth in flame. Desperate for anything to take her attention from the solid, meter wide bars of blue-white light, she glanced around for something else to look at.

Her jaw dropped when she finally took in what she hadn't noticed before. The four pillars...

Danged pillars, mustn't look at them!

The things she couldn't even think about marked the corners of a massive pyramid of brilliant blue beams of light. She wandered toward the pyramid, not realizing its true enormity until she reached one edge. Midway between the corners, the angled bottom beam hovered, enticing her, nearly ten feet above her head. Without thinking she stretched one hand up to run her fingers across it.

"Mother fudger! Sugar honey iced tea! Gosh darnit!"

Before anyone could respond to her predicament or her swearing, she spread one hand to the size of a baseball glove and caught her falling, severed fingers. The moment they touched her skin, they merged with her hand, and her shortened digits grew out to their full normal length. She stared at her own hand, engrossed to the point of distraction from the shining, irresistible death lurking above her head.

***

"Uh, guys? I think Jesse's having some problems. Also, why the heck did you use cutting lasers for a light show?"

"Oh, god, Chuck, what did you do? Find this one a few weeks ago and leave it to get ripe?"

Charlie sighed in frustration. He'd wanted Steve's initial reaction of surprise, or Jack's understated awe. Even Jesse's odd, wordless fascination pleased him more than Angela's criticism, and Steve just had to distract everyone from his moment of shock by calling everyone's attention to the stink rather than the show.

"I didn't use cutting lasers. I used high power pointers for the pyramid and the core of the beacons. They're strong enough to light a cigarette with continued exposure, but not strong enough to cut."

"Jesse's fingers fell off, Charlie. I think you might have wired them wrong."

Charlie shook his head, walked over to one of the beacons, and stuck his hand into the base of one of the smaller beams of light. The skin went red immediately, and he jerked his hand back.

"Ow. That's hotter than I expected. Maybe what you'd get from an electric stove. Shouldn't be enough to cut fingers off, though..." He stepped away from the beacon, eyeing it warily. "You might not want to get close to the center of the beacon."

"Yeah, we figured that, Chuck. Too bad they're not real fires, or they might take the stink out of the air."

"Shut up, Steve." Charlie turned to the imposing, dark skinned man in a suit walking beside Drew. Drew wanted to be an FBI Agent. Drew was a good guy. The FBI were good guys. Charlie held his time while he waited for his pulse to slow. When he had it under control, he let it flow again. "Agent Johnson?"

"Mr. Morgan. Thank you for calling this in. I know you've heard it before, but please let me say again how grateful we are for your complete cooperation in the murder investigations you've been pulled into."

The Agent wasn't implying anything. Charlie did cooperate fully. Trying to hide once you were already in sight implied guilt. Charlie hadn't ever killed anyone; the sitter lived, and he got therapy, and he'd apologized to her once he understood what he'd done. Charlie held his time again until his heart beat normally.

"Thank you, Agent Johnson. I found the body right over there. If you'd like to examine the scene before the Forensics team gets here, maybe mark out how much of the area is going to be off limits to my crews until the investigation is complete?"

"I'll do that. I take it you had something you were planning on talking to your friends about?" With that, he left.

The Agent had taken the hint. He even took it openly, which eased Charlie's mind, until he realized it meant the Agent knew about his condition, which implied a level of play one level deeper than Charlie assumed previously.

"Okay, Chuck, what's up?"

"What do you mean, Steve?"

"You smell excited."

"There's an FBI Agent on my property, investigating a murder. Of course I'm nervous."

"I didn't say nervous. I said excited. You've got something cool to show us. Something besides the pretty light show, at any rate."

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Before Charlie could answer, Angela looked over from where she had a comforting arm around Jesse. "Speaking of which, how long are you going to keep those lights up?"

"As long as we need to." He didn't think they'd understand, but he had to tell them, right up front. Keeping secrets hidden always led to disaster. Keeping secrets in the open let those who needed to know them in on things.

"Isn't the FAA going to have something to say about that?"

"Yeah. I have to notify them if I'm ever taking one or more down for maintenance, so they can let pilots know. They're going to be on all the official navigational charts."

Angela's jaw shut with a snap. Drew sauntered over and stared Charlie in the eye.

"Okay, then. Why did you bring us here?"

Charlie blinked, held his time again until his reaction to Drew's proximity died down.

"Chuck, stop doing that."

"What?"

Steve stared at him, tilting his head as if to say ‘really?’ "Nobody's scent changes that fast. Now stop trying to be all cool and collected and just show us already."

Charlie gestured to the pyramid. "You see this, and you think you haven't seen it yet?"

"We know you, Charlie. It's incredible. Now tell us."

He frowned. His friends were used to him going so far over the top most people couldn't even see him from the top, but he wanted to surprise them. Time for part two.

"Okay, you got me. Just a second."

He held his time, raced over to retrieve the folding table he'd brought a few days before, set it up, and dropped the briefcase on top of it. He let go of his time and threw the locks on the case.

"I want to go into business with you guys."

Angela shook her head. "Charlie, we've all got jobs. Careers even. I mean, you might get Steve, and I think Mr. Maliss might want to get back into the workforce, but the rest of us..."

Other people called him paranoid and obsessive when he prepared. He reached into the case, pulled out the old-fashioned stack of paper with Angela's name on it, and handed her the stack and one of the faintly glowing, heavy pens tucked into the case's lid.

"Section seven, clause forty-two."

Angela tucked the pen into her lab coat pocket, fanned the pages, and paused when she found the right one. Her eyes flicked across the page, and she opened her mouth, already shaking her head. A moment later, she stopped, eyes flickering across the page and the next one, and met his eyes again.

"You son of a... This is enough to equip a major metro hospital lab. You've got this stuff?"

He shrugged. "Some of it is still being shipped. Other stuff is in storage until the facility is built."

She quirked an eyebrow, opened her mouth and froze again. Mouth hanging open, she glanced at the pyramid, then back to Charlie. "Blue. Blueprints. Holy crap. You're serious."

Charlie started handing out contracts and pens to the rest of the group. After a moment, Jack joined him, reading his own only once Drew and Jesse had theirs. "Did I mention the position is salaried, with full partnership including profit sharing?"

Angela still stared at her contract, lost in the possibilities of her own lab. Her right hand scrabbled for the pen seemingly without her conscious intervention. Steve slapped his down on the table, flipped to the last page, pulled open his pen, and looked at Charlie.

"Time to work out?"

"Yeah."

Steve smiled. "Time to party?"

"Yeah."

Steve's smile widened. "Money to keep my car and clothes?"

"Oh, yeah."

The smile disappeared. "I'm still gonna be fighting fires, aren't I?"

Charlie finally returned his smile. "Sort of."

Steve signed and handed his pen and contract back to Charlie, who took the contract but indicated Steve should keep the pen with a gesture. Angela riffled through the rest of her pages, glancing at each one once before flipping to the next. Her head shook constantly, denying the existence of what she read. Jack looked up at Charlie from a page near the end.

"This in American dollars?"

Charlie blinked. He hadn't considered anything else. For the first time in years, someone noticed something he should have prepared for when he didn't. "Yep."

"Do I need to kill anybody?"

Charlie shrugged. "Nope. Shouldn't have to."

"You need a foreman on this?" He nodded to the pyramid of light.

"Only if you really want to. I had other ideas for you."

Jack signed the paper and handed it over to Charlie. He blinked once and looked up at his new boss. "Glowing blue ink?"

"Yeah. Novelty pens. Amazing what you can find on the internet."

Drew hadn't even opened her contract. She alternated between staring at it like a viper and glaring at Charlie. When he had Jack's contract packed away, he turned to her.

"You know I want to go FBI, Charlie. I'm... I'm good at... Dammit, I want to be a cop."

Understanding your own drives well enough to counter the unhealthy ones meant you could pick out other people's unhealthy drives pretty well, too. "Yeah. No, you don't."

"Mind telling me how you know what I want and don't?"

"You want to be a good guy. You want to be a hero."

"Yeah, a cop. I'm not into burning buildings or classrooms."

Charlie grinned. "You're so into paperwork, though." She blinked, and he knew he had her. "Your salary is a matter of public record. Kinda why I based the numbers off it. Base is four times your annual now, for doing the same job."

"Same job? What jurisdiction?"

"However many we can get the contract for."

Her jaw dropped open. She didn't sign, but she did open the contract and start reading.

Angela stared at one page in the last third of the document. "Charlie, what's this about code names and uniforms?"

Jack's eyes narrowed, and he stepped behind Angela to read over her shoulder. Charlie stepped around until Drew stood partially between himself and Jack, then replied. "Yeah, that went across a couple pages, sorry. The company will be taking care of copyright monitoring on your code names and covering all uniform related costs."

"What kind of uniform do you think you're going to put me in?"

Charlie shrugged. This one he suspected he'd be overridden on eventually, but for now he wanted what he supported on record. "Whatever you want, really. You just need a few of them, so you're recognizable. A blue theme would be good, though."

Jesse spoke before Angela could reply. "Are you going to be making the costumes?" Her gaze still locked on the beam above her head, she half-staggered, half-flowed toward the table as she talked. "Because yours is awful."

"Hey!"

"It was."

"Fine, we'll hire professionals."

She grinned, the expression stretching past the sides of her face. She set the stack of paper on the table, flipped to the last page and, without looking, scribbled on the line. The manic, gleeful grin seemed permanently etched onto her face, because just like before, she got it first.

"I'm gonna be a superhero."