Fay wiped down the gleaming counter of the All Night Café, humming a little as she worked. Behind her, she could hear Frank scraping down the grill, preparing for another day of business just like a normal diner might. Blackie was in his usual corner booth, apparently playing solitaire.
Then, between one swipe of the cloth and the next, Fay felt the world fade out around her, only to fade back in just as quickly.
"Gonna have another customer," she observed, as the hand holding the cloth became visible, as did the rest of her.
"Uh-huh." Frank emerged from the kitchen, and they both shot expectant looks at the door. When it didn't immediately open, they went back to work, Fay finishing the counter while Frank prepared a new pot of coffee.
As soon as the coffee hit the "2 CUPS" mark on the side of the glass carafe, the door opened to admit two young men. Both were about the same age and build; both had unruly hair that, in Fay's opinion, desperately needed to be cut, or at least combed. The sharp-featured one was scowling; his companion, almost baby-faced by comparison, just looked tired.
"Is that coffee?" Babyface asked, while his-friend? brother?-stalked off to throw himself down in a booth.
"Fresh brewed," Frank replied cheerfully. Fay let him serve, her attention on the one who was now sitting in the next booth over from Blackie. That was unusual; in an empty café, one didn't usually opt to sit next to a stranger. Of course, it could be Blackie's doing. Not that she didn't trust Blackie, she just...
Didn't trust Blackie.
She smoothed the apron of her waitress uniform and circled out from behind the counter. Frank had already engaged Babyface in conversation; she could hear them talking in low tones. Meanwhile, her target was glaring at the floor, and didn't look up when she stopped by the table. She waited a minute to see if he'd acknowledge her.
"What can I get you?" she asked when he didn't.
He grunted. "Coffee. Black."
Because you obviously need to be more wired, Fay thought. Aloud, she said, "Anything else?"
"No." A long pause and a shrug, as if he were debating with himself. "Burger, I guess."
"Burger and coffee, coming up." Fay turned, pretending not to notice the slight smirk Blackie was wearing, and returned to Frank's side. "Does yours take his coffee black too?" she asked under her breath, pouring a cup.
"He does. Then he puts half a cup of sugar in it." Frank lowered his voice further. "His name's Mark. His buddy's Jason. And Mark acts like someone who's very used to keeping his mouth shut."
"What do you think they're involved with?"
"I don't know. Jason looks like he could be the gang type, but Mark..." Frank shrugged. "Whatever it is, I don't think it's that."
"Well, I guess we'll find out what's going on soon enough." Fay tipped her head in the direction of Jason, who had shoved himself out of the booth and was stalking toward the men's room. "I can't see the café leaving him alone."
Frank chuckled. "I'll get his burger started anyway."
While Frank went back to the kitchen, Fay puttered around near Mark, wiping perfectly clean cups with a towel. "So, what brings you here?"
Mark shrugged. "We ran into...car trouble." He was looking down, so he couldn't see Fay roll her eyes. "Decided to walk until we found a phone."
Fay glanced at the pay phone, which neither Mark nor Jason had paid the least attention to when they came in. "It'll be tough to get a tow truck at this time of night." She hoped; she had no idea what time of night it was, wherever they were.
"The Ch...our father will send someone for us."
Fay filed that slip-up away, but before she could ask anything else there was a resounding thud from the direction of the men's room. With a speed Fay would not believe was natural, Mark was on his feet and through the restroom door. Frank was heading that direction a few seconds later, and Fay followed; given the nature of the café, and the sounds of fighting, she doubted she was going to be compromising anyone's modesty.
"What the hell?"
Frank stopped in the doorway; Fay had to crane her neck to see over his shoulder. The men's room was now some kind of gymnasium, with balance beams and uneven bars and other gymnastic paraphernalia, but the ceiling was too high to see, and the walls were broken by horizontal rods placed at varying heights. Movement caught her eye, and she looked up to see three children, a girl and boy of perhaps eleven and a smaller boy who couldn't have been more than five, were jumping effortlessly from rod to rod, pausing occasionally to spin around one with a laugh before launching into another ten or fifteen foot flight to a different rod.
They seemed as oblivious to the danger of their acrobatic stunts as they were to the fight taking place below them. Someone dressed in a garish purple Halloween costume, complete with cape, was brawling with Jason, only Jason had somehow gone from his late teens to his early teens.
Not that that stopped him from putting up a good fight, she noticed.
Mark, who had also lost about six years, was looking for an opening to join the fight. Frank didn't give him the chance.
"Break it up!" he yelled, wading into the fray with an amazing lack of sense and grabbing Halloween Guy's cape. He gave a tug. "I said, break it up!"
Mark and Jason both tried to jump Halloween Guy while he was being strangled by his cape. Frank deftly released the cape and caught Jason; Fay grabbed Mark by the arm.
"You heard the man," she said, shoving the boy into the dining room. She stepped back to allow Frank to do the same, noting that Halloween Guy had disappeared, and the men's room was just a men's room again. Then she followed Frank into the dining room, where they found themselves face to face with two very pissed off young men.
"How dare you interfere?" Mark snarled, shoving Frank against the wall. "Do you work for Spectra? Is that why you helped Zoltar escape?"
"Mark, knock it off," Jason said, literally pulling Mark away from Frank. "That couldn't have been real. We were kids again; Zoltar wasn't even on Earth when we were twelve."
"Those bruises look real."
Jason touched his split lip. "Something happened, but I'm not going to believe I found Zoltar in the bathroom of some cheap diner."
"Who's Zoltar?" Fay asked. Maybe these two were escaped mental patients or something. Buying in to their fantasy might keep them from turning on Frank, though.
They both looked at her like she was the crazy one. "Earth's been under attack for fifteen years," Jason said finally. "You can't have missed it."
"Noooo, but that doesn't tell me who Zoltar is."
"Zoltar's their leader," Mark said in disgust. "Zoltar's the one who killed..." He broke off, and took a deep breath. "Come on, Jase. Let's get out of here."
"Yeah, blame Zoltar," Jason muttered. "It's not like you gave the order or any-"
Mark's fist connected with Jason's jaw before Fay even saw him move, and Frank pulled her back, away from the combatants. "I think we should let them work this out themselves," he said quietly as they retreated.
Fay nodded mutely. Unlike the earlier brawl, the martial arts moves Jason and Mark were using on each other were things she was fairly sure no human should be able to do. And certainly not at that kind of speed.
"Impressive," Blackie observed, so close to her ear that Fay jumped.
"And pointless," she retorted.
Blackie smiled slowly, not taking his eyes off the fight, even though his hands were busy playing with his deck of cards, cutting and recutting it. "I think they'd disagree with you on that."
"Of course they would," Frank said. "They're teenage boys. Violence solves everything at that age."
"I don't remember being that age." Blackie glanced ceilingward; Fay thought she saw him nod just slightly. The cards stilled; he started to draw the top card, hesitated, then drew from the bottom of the deck instead.
"Remind me never to play cards with you," Fay muttered.
Blackie looked at the card, then held it up so they could see it. "Queen of hearts," he announced. He tapped it against the rest of the deck. "There's always a woman involved."
On cue, the café door swung open again, this time to admit a young woman with shoulder length black hair. She took one look at the fight, scowled, and waded straight into it, bullying Mark and Jason apart. "What is wrong with you two? Mark...Jason...stop it, you're acting like children!"
Her presence finally penetrated, and the two of them stopped trying to get at each other. They stood, panting, and stared at her while she tapped her foot disapprovingly.
"Princess...you're alive!" Mark finally exclaimed.
"And you're acting like an idiot." Princess continued to glare. "I thought G-Force meant something to you, Mark, but one little mission goes wrong and you throw it all away?"
"Huh?"
Across the room, the TV crackled to life with a newscast. Fay listened with disbelief to the report that G-Force had been defeated and was presumed dead, and alien forces were ravaging the planet. Blackie's expression was one of mild interest; Mark and Jason listened with expressions of growing horror.
"Killed?" Mark whispered when the TV shut itself off. "I got all of us killed? Princess..."
Princess was nowhere to be seen.
"I got us killed?" Mark repeated.
Jason looked around suspiciously. "It has to be a trick, Mark. We're here, after all."
"It could be a trick," Frank agreed. "Or maybe it's a chance to look at how you've been handling things, re-evaluate. Not make the same mistake again."
"I didn't make a mistake!"
"Yes you did!" Jason exploded. "You sent us in muzzled, Mark! You can't start a mission aggressively and then not let us do our damned jobs!"
"If you'd followed orders, everything would have been fine."
"We did follow orders. That was the problem!"
"Stop!" Fay ordered, before they could come to blows again. She huffed in exasperation. "Princess was right, you are acting like children. You're two little boys who are trying to blame each other for breaking the cookie jar." Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Frank covering his mouth to smother a laugh, and shot him a don't-you-dare look. "Now, I might not know what you two actually do, but according to the news all you're going to achieve is getting yourselves killed unless you grow up. So grow up already."
Frank cleared his throat; he still looked suspiciously smirky, but Fay knew hitting him wouldn't do wonders for her "growing up" argument and resisted the urge. "Why don't you two sit down," he suggested, "have some food, and discuss strategies you can both live with."
"Preferably strategies that don't end in your gory, flaming deaths," Blackie said under his breath.
Mark ignored both of them. "What do you mean, I muzzled you?"
"I know my job, Mark. You might not like what I've been trained to do, but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing. If you don't trust me, why am I on the team?"
"Of course I trust you."
"Then act like it! The mission would have gone differently if you had."
"Ask him how," Frank suggested.
This time, Mark did notice; he looked curiously at Frank, then turned back to Jason. "Okay, how?"
"You could have let me shoot our way out."
Mark shook his head. "Tell me how you would have stayed out of that situation to begin with."
Jason looked surprised, then pleased, and as he talked, he and Mark drifted toward the door. "Of course I wouldn't have charged in with guns blazing, but..." he said as the door closed behind them.
"Well, I'm guessing that was a successful second chance," Frank observed.
Fay hit him on the chest.
"Oww! What was that for?"
"Laughing at me."
"I just didn't know you could do such a good mommy lecture."
"I'm an older sister; it's a similar skill set." She glared at him a moment longer, then asked, "Are you as confused as I am?"
"I can guarantee it."
"You'll understand in another fifty years or so," Blackie called from his booth. He began dealing out cards again. "For now, you have a customer."
Fay glared at him, but there it was, the familiar fade out/fade in of the café finding a new location. The door opened, and a blonde woman rushed in from the darkness outside, a frantic expression on her face and a wooden stake clutched in her hand.
"This ought to be interesting," Frank muttered, as he and Fay moved to deal with their latest customer.
Fay heard Blackie chuckle behind them. "Aren't they all?"
