the_element_son:

Since the Outsiders were one of the few groups out there with a true secret headquarters, bringing GK back there hadn't been an option.  Joey had, instead, opted to meet and pick up his date at the coffee shop where they'd met.  True, going on a date in the middle of a possible zombie invasion wasn't necessarily the best idea, but as far as he was concerned, if they needed more heroes, they'd page.  Whatever was going on now, it was way above his paygrade.

He checked his watch.  He was a little early.  Good.  Drawing a handful of stares, but if the last few days and coming close to dying had taught him anything, it was that life was way to short to even begin to worry about that.

Weird thought.  This was, technically, his first real date in a long while.   Oh, sure, they're been any number of chicks with tattoos and piercings and dye-jobs off to piss off daddy by dating the elemental freak, or the one who'd had a fetish for having melty-stuff on her, and plenty of other fly-by-night girls whose names he could probably not remember....   But this was the first true date, as opposed to a hook-up.

Huh.  Maybe we was growing up after all.

Scary thought.

sonoftheatom:

Dinadan Palmer straightens up, stepping off the back of Thomas Dinawa, the older man's heart in his hand. The Lighter Than Air Society had holed themselves up in Professor Kettering's basement again, like they almost always did. It had made them very easy to find, and the fact that each and every one of them had babysat him made them easy to dispose of. Dinadan has the vague sensation that he ought to say something pithy, but with the cessation of that bubbling noise he doesn't have an audience left to appreciate it. So he says nothing, but walks across the blood-slicked floor to the telephone.

This has been a good start, but there's someone special he thinks he ought to go look in on. He dials Petra's number without hesitation, the dead not having the worries and distractions of the living to cloud their memories.

After Petra, New Morlaidh, he thinks as he raises the phone to his ear. Won't Mother be surprised.

The phone rings.