i.e.d
Liam Dunbar stormed into the locker room, his feet stomping, his fists clenched as he slammed each and every door he walked through, making sure that the entirety of Beacon Hills was able to hear and feel his rage after what he had just found out. He stopped at his locker where he had left his bag, holding onto the mesh of it as he seethed with anger. The thought of playing his first game on the Cyclones, his first game as a werewolf against Devenford Prep had riled him, all of the schools that this town had to offer, and he was playing his old school. Where they all had a pretty good idea of what had cost him his place there, and none of the team had ever hesitated to mock his I.E.D, the things that it made him do.
As the boy breathed heavy breaths, he looked down at his pile of belongings, noticing that there was something that was missing. His lacrosse stick, perhaps this was the first of the pranks that Devenford Prep was playing on him, he wouldn't put it past Brett Talbot to have someone come to the school just to anger him before tonight's game.
The beta looked around him, asking through gritted teeth where his stick was, expecting that a player of Devenford Prep would appear from one of the corners of the room. As he stood there, he heard the sound of a stick being scraped along the sides of the metal mesh lockers in another part of the room. His head raised slowly as he listened to it, beginning to walk around to see who had his stick, who was taunting him with it.
An older man stood with his stick in hand, twizzling it around as he looked at it with the slightest smirk, Liam's eyes grew wide as he watched. He had been prepared to throw a few hits at one of Devenford's players, but this man was much larger than him, and he had to have a few years on him. He was no teenager, he couldn't even pass as a senior. The older man kept the stick still as he held it up to the beta, asking if it was his. Liam gave a slight nod, too anxious to move even an inch more than he had in giving that nod.
With that confirmation, the man looked him dead in the eye as he snapped the stick in half, the beta flinching at the sound. The two halves of the stick were thrown at the beta's feet as he had looked down at them, a rage filling him as he looked back up at the man who faced him, only it wasn't his human eyes with slight fear that met Derek Hale, but a pair of glowing yellow eyes a beta possessed. And this was an angry beta.
Derek raised a brow at the beta, silently questioning if he was going to do anything, or just stand there and let him break his stick. Liam lunged for the older man who had easily gripped him by the neck, throwing him against the metal lockers as he growled like a rabid dog. With the man's hand tight around his neck, Liam heard his name being called from across the room, it echoed in his ears as he turned his head towards it, his eyes fading back to their usual blue as he saw Scott.
The Hale looked at Scott, watching how he raised his brow at the beta, warning him off. Even if a strong feeling of anger still ran through him the boy took a deep breath as he turned back to the man with a hand latched around his neck. Derek told the Alpha that he was right when he'd said Liam was angry, then, he released the beta, dropping him to his feet.
Liam's chest still heaved as he looked at the Alpha, wanting to ask who the hell the person that had attacked him out of nowhere was, but Scott simply held up a lacrosse stick, telling him that it was his stick, not the one that Derek had snapped in half. With a curled-up lip and his stick in his hand, Liam snarled at the man who showed no remorse as the bell rang in their ears, it was time for the beta to head to his next class, Scott egging him to leave.
As Liam left Scott shook his head, he too wanted to know what the hell had happened when he turned to Derek, but the smirk across the Hale's face had distracted him. "What are you smiling about?" He asked with a knitted brow.
"You're gonna be good at this." Derek reassured him with an approving nod.
Scott scoffed in disbelief, asking if he was kidding. He was totally unprepared, he didn't need to know what few things Derek said he could teach him before, he needed a whole manual to have an idea of how the hell to handle a beta. Derek couldn't provide him with the training manual on betas, but he gave the wolf some insight. The anger that Liam had would make him strong, Scott added the word dangerous to the mix, Derek agreed to that too, anger like that would make him very dangerous.
The Alpha sighed as he sat down on one of the benches. "This was supposed to be the semester I could focus on school again." Derek took the seat beside him, prepared to listen as Scott got it all off of his chest. "But Kate's back. And I've got a beta. And there's a dead pool."
"If all of our names are on that list, then that's what we should focus on." Derek advised. "But if there's anyone that could juggle all of this, it's Scott McCall." The wolf reassured him. "I wasn't a good Alpha, but you will be. There are a lot of things you have that I don't. You have people that will back you through this every step of the way." Scott nodded in agreement, his friends were great. The best he could ask for. They had been the biggest support he'd had through all of this. "You know what else you have to get you through it all that I didn't?" Derek asked, Scott looked at him, shaking his head. "It's always good to have someone willing to fight for you, you have a hunter with talents some Alpha's dream of having behind them. You have a Kinsey."
Scott nodded, he knew he had gotten lucky to have a friend like Kinsey behind him, not just in a method of combat, but as a best friend who frankly, he would be lost without. "But she doesn't want any part in this. She won't even look at the dead pool."
"She'll come around." Derek believed. "She just needs some encouragement from her Alpha, she will be your beta too one day."
Kinsey Argent sat at an easel, a pencil in hand as she stared at a blank canvas.
She had done this a million times she told herself. She could do it again. Granted, the last time it happened was over an entire summer, and for a few months following that, it had been gradual, accidental, and stress-free. That wasn't the case this time. There was a time limit, pressure, and a dollar sign hanging over the head of all of her friends, herself too. From what those who'd seen the list had told her, the only person yet to have their name on it was Liam Dunbar, a slight relief to them all. They had one less supernatural to look out for, at least not because he was at risk of being killed. His anger issues were still a growing problem for them.
A warm waft of air blew down her neck as a particular werecoyote hovered over her shoulder in anticipation of seeing what the brunette huntress would draw on the canvas, she too was yet to see the Deadpool. After hearing that Kinsey didn't want to see it she thought it was best that she made the same decision, she trusted any decision her best friend made. Though she understood just why Malia was hovering around her, it was quite distracting knowing that pressure was just a few centimeters away from her. As a fellow harbinger, Lydia had known to sit a few feet away at the desk, the desk Malia was supposed to be sitting studying at while Kinsey took her turn trying to break the second key. Something Lydia had been trying to do all weekend, the Angel however, she had only begun trying to tune into her powers yesterday, and it hadn't been easy convincing her to do so either.
With folded arms Kinsey sat in the passenger side of the Jeep, a scowl across her face as she kept her eyes on Stiles, narrowing them at him, trying to burn the answer out of him. He, on the other hand, did anything but look at the girl beside him. For once, he had never been so eager to keep his eyes on the road ahead, not even tempted to take a peek at the girl like he usually was. This time he could rely on knowing that she wouldn't be looking out of the window in her effortlessly beautiful state. He could feel her wrath as it grew by the second like a cold draft against his skin. The longer the was left unknown to what was going on, what he had planned, the angrier she'd become. He hadn't told her a thing other than that they needed to go to his house sooner rather than later, she didn't know if what waited there was good or bad, but in this town and with all of the things going on in their life, she assumed it would be the latter.
She hated not knowing things, he knew that, she had said it enough times since the two of them had met. She hated secrets, perhaps she could be hypocritical with that at times considering she was yet to tell him that her change into a werewolf involved her death, but that didn't seem very necessary to tell just yet. What she hated more than being left in the dark was when Stiles knew what was going on, and continued to keep it from her. This wasn't the most appropriate time for him to be keeping secrets from her, not with the current status of her life.
During the car ride, she had come up with a long list of assumptions as to what was awaiting the two of them back at the Stilinski house- all of them were bad. The first being that Kate had made another appearance, that she'd somehow regressed yet another werewolf, perhaps today would be the day where she met baby Scott. She was a natural with kids, at least that was what she had been told, but she wasn't sure if werewolf babies were included in that. If not for another revival of her sociopathic mother, perhaps Lydia had uncovered another part of the Deadpool and that it was somehow worse than the first half with all of their names, bar Stiles' on it. If that were the case, Kinsey could see why he was being awfully quiet about it, she had spent all weekend trying to avoid the Deadpool like the plague. She didn't want to know the details of it, she knew that it had her name on, but she didn't know how much she was worth, she didn't want to know. She'd simply refused to see it. A number over her head was the last thing that she needed. There was a number over her mother's head, that one she chose to focus on. It was about time she called her best mercenary for an update on the whole rabid mother situation.
And then there was the final reason she had came up with, one that had been abrupt, in the spur of the moment, not as death-related as the other two options. Perhaps that was what had taken the girl by surprise about it, her whole life revolved around death, sometimes she forgot that she had the slightest element of a normal teenage life. Known as her "relationship" with Stiles. Her next assumption revolved around that element- that this was his way of breaking off whatever a complicated relationship like theirs could be called. Perhaps he didn't have the heart to do it at Lydia's house where Natalie could overhear them, so he was taking her back to his own house. It would be an awfully ironic and painful breakup, a full circle moment revolving back to when she was the one who left him standing in his bedroom before summer.
With that last assumption, Kinsey was set off on a tangent. Her worst one yet, Stiles had handled the other tangents about her mother and Lydia well- with silence, not giving her even a hint of if she was on the right track. But this time, that wasn't the case. She began shouting, insisting that if he dared to try and end things before they'd even begun she would kill him. Stiles's eyes grew wide, surprised that she had threatened to kill him over it, the surprise really wasn't going in the direction that he planned it to. He just hoped she didn't mean it. With the way she had behaved lately he couldn't be sure, that werewolf side that had been restrained for seventeen long years had begun showing itself a lot more lately, especially over the past few weeks of them knowing what it led to. All of her irrational behavior had reasoning now.
Kinsey began a long rant about how well things had been going for them, smoother than either of them had anticipated if they were honest. Even with professional assassins on their tail, they had handled things quite well. That, and the fact he had spent the past year pining over her to get a chance only to never give the two of them a real shot. And last of all, how he had been her rock since Allison died, how he had done so much to make sure she was healing only to add to it.
Stiles believed at that point it was time to stop her endless ranting, but it was just that- endless. Every time he tried to speak, she managed to think of another reason, she was spiraling, trapped in fears that she didn't even know she had until now. Eventually, he managed to jump in.
"I'm not breaking up with you." He deadpanned, looking at her, letting her see the sincerity in his words. Kinsey sank back in her seat, accepting it. "Why do you think that this is going to be a bad thing?" He asked, in the drive from the house she hadn't once listed a good possibility like a date or some kind of nice surprise.
"If it were good you would have given up and told me by now." Kinsey deadpanned. "This might be hard for you to hear, but you aren't very good at keeping secrets. So tell me what it is, Stiles."
The boy simply shook his head, refusing to tell her or look at her again. He could feel a smirk, he was trying his best to keep it hidden. He hadn't given up and told her like she expected, even the Alpha waiting for them back at his house was expecting him to ruin the surprise. But he was sure that this would be one that he wouldn't ruin. As for not being good at keeping secrets, Stiles had to believe that was a lie. Kinsey hadn't once questioned if he knew something about Malia. More than she did- the truth about just how close she and the coyote were.
For the rest of the car journey, Kinsey turned back to her theory that seemed the most logical, it was something to do with the Deadpool. Perhaps he had all of these insane tests waiting for her back at the house so she could figure out the next key, it wouldn't be the first time he pulled out a few of those tests. She believed he was cornering her. That she was becoming their last hope if Lydia hadn't figured it out by now. He would trick her into seeing her name on that Deadpool. It was a fair guess, Stiles could admit that it was definitely something he would do, but today, she could continue hiding from the Deadpool.
Even as they walked through the front door of the Stilinski house, she continued. Granted, he'd had to pull her out of the car to get her this far because she was so sure that she was right, even telling him that her Angel senses were tingling, that she could sense what he was doing. He was finding it harder to keep it from her by the second, but all he had to do was get her a little further until she reached the kitchen.
"I'm telling you, Stiles, if this is just some rouse to get me to look at the Deadpool I'll let Lydia kill you after all. After that stunt you pulled on Friday night she's more than willing."
Stiles hummed as he continued pushing her through the house, knowing that once she saw the surprise he and Scott had waiting for her he would forget about all of the things she'd said. She would be too busy squealing in excitement. Just as they were about to walk into the kitchen, it had been decided that she could no longer deal with guessing, she demanded to know. Kinsey stopped in the doorway, turning to Stiles with folded arms, narrowly missing her surprise as she turned. Scott came to the doorway as he listened to the girl ranting, wondering what the hell he had told her to set her off like this. Eventually, her surprise joined the wolf at the doorway, he'd matched her stance, his arms folded as he waited for her to turn. Both of them were patient but Stiles couldn't listen to her ranting for a moment longer.
He placed his hands on both of her shoulders, turning the girl around until she was facing Chris. Her surprise. The girl's face dropped, for the first time today, she was lost for words, music to all of their ears. Chris smiled, opening his arms up to the girl as she finally let out that squeal Stiles had expected from her.
"Oh, my God!" Kinsey beamed as she hugged her uncle tightly. "I can't believe your here."
"Well, I got Scott's text," Chris admitted, both turning to look at the proud wolf. Perhaps telling a man his sister had come back from the dead over text wasn't so bad after all. "I got here as soon as I could, I had to leave Isaac in France to handle all of the gun deals."
Kinsey smiled, hiding the fact she was just a little disappointed that he had came alone, she had to enjoy her uncle being here for as long as she could, none of them knew how long he'd stay, he told them it would be until they found Kate, but that wasn't something they could put a time on. Especially not with the Deadpool, it seemed as though their lives were about to get pretty hectic again, there would be no time for scouring the outskirts of town for wherever the woman chose to hide, waiting, plotting her next move.
After his comforting reunion with his niece that he had been anticipating, Chris couldn't help but ask as he looked at the three teenagers. What the hell had happened since he left? Kinsey looked at Scott and Stiles, frankly, they'd been wondering that themselves. The best way for them all to explain was to sit the man down, to run him through everything that had happened since they'd all met up at the clinic with their mutual concern- Derek. And they did just that. They told him all about Mexico, the plan Kinsey created, how it didn't go quite to plan, what Araya told them, or at least some of what Araya had told them when it came to Kinsey, something hitting Stiles's Jeep, finding Derek, seeing Kate again. A long list of very overwhelming things that Argent struggled to know how to react to. They told him everything that lead to now. A deadpool with their name on putting a price over the heads of every supernatural in town, Lydia trying to get the rest of it with Kira and Malia at the lakehouse.
With all of the new information behind him, Chris asked for a moment alone with his niece. Both of the boys nodded, excusing themselves to the next room where it was inevitable for Stiles and Scott to end up eavesdropping, despite Chris knowing that, he needed his niece alone to tell her what he'd been hiding from her. Kinsey grew concerned as she asked him what was wrong, what he needed to tell her that made him look so guilty, her first guess had been him, Isaac. But Chris assured her that Isaac was fine, that he really was back in France handling the gun business like he said he would when he left. Before Chris carried on to his main point, he reassured her again that she had made the right decision to stay in Beacon Hills, that this town needed someone like her. Someone willing to protect it. Kinsey nodded with a smile, unsure whether she believed his words, but she would have liked to think that this was the smart decision, even if it continuously came with the risk of getting herself killed.
Chris sighed, taking his niece's hand, placing something in her palm. With a furrowed brow she'd held up the small cylinder object that he'd given her, holding it up at eye level. A bullet shell. She looked back at her uncle, unsure what the meaning of it was as he told her to look closer. Kinsey did as she was told, twirling it around in between her thumb and index finger until she saw what he meant. The Argent symbol engraved into it. She knew it didn't belong to her uncle, which left only one person. Her doe eyes looked past the bullet, into her uncle's solemn eyes.
"It's hers, isn't it?" She asked, a lump in her throat. Chris nodded. "You knew, didn't you?"
"Not for certain." He admitted. "Derek gave me this the night that-" Chris paused, but she knew what he meant. Neither needed to speak of what happened to know that it was the night they'd lost the most important person in both of their lives. "I've been searching ever since. And then I got the text from Scott... And I didn't want you to worry. You were getting your life back, I wanted you to be a normal teenager."
Kinsey nodded as she placed the bullet back in her uncle's hand. With the piece of silver that sat around her neck constantly, she had all the reminder she needed of Kate and the things that she had done, she didn't need the bullet too. "Thank you." Kinsey mumbled softly, a smile across her face as she looked at the man, taking him by surprise. She didn't seem mad that he had kept it a secret from her, that he'd lied about what he was doing while he was supposed to be in France in the company of Isaac. "This is my battle to fight, too. She's my mother, her mistakes are mine to fix. She's hurt my friends, my family. I can't let her do it anymore."
"You're a teenage girl, Kinsey. You can't spend your entire life making up for all of the things Kate did because she didn't care about anyone but herself." Chris told the girl. "I know I've said some things in the past, but I didn't mean them. You're not like her, Kinny. You never will be. You care a lot more about others than you do yourself, that's more than what can be said for Kate."
A tear rolled down the girl's cheek as she nodded, wanting to believe that she would never turn out to be like her mother, but that was becoming harder to trust when she knew that she would become a werewolf one day, an animalistic, cruel perhaps, the true embodiment of her parents. Chris wrapped his niece in a hug, holding her tightly as he told her she knew what she needed to do. And it wasn't to spend the remainder of the junior year searching for her mother.
Kinsey pulled away from the hug, wiping her stray tear with the sleeve of her shirt, taking a deep breath, shaking it off before she dared to say it. She was still in disbelief that she was going to say it after all of the fuss that she had kicked up. Chris gave her one more reassuring nod before Kinsey shouted for Stiles, the boy came running around the corner, proving that he and Scott had been listening to the entire conversation after all. The wolf followed behind him slowly, both stood in the doorway with anticipation, wondering what she was going to say or do, what she knew she'd need to do just from her uncle's words.
She stood up, another deep breath. Show me the board, she said with hesitance still in her voice and dread rife in her mind. She would try and figure out the next key. Stiles's face lit up, finally it was time to show her the crime board he had worked up, all the pieces he'd put together. Kinsey only asked one thing of them both, for them to keep the current list from her. She didn't want to see it just yet, she couldn't handle it.
Scott and Stiles nodded, slightly relieved that she didn't want to see the Deadpool, because she would see what was written beside her name, not the number. The name. The name she shared with Malia. Both had been named a Hale on the Deadpool. This wasn't the way they planned on telling her that she and Malia were related. Sisters of all things. But the boy knew more now than ever that they had to tell them soon. Before they saw the Deadpool.
"Can you please stop hovering?" Kinsey begged the girl as she took a deep sigh.
"I'm not hovering. I'm waiting." Malia corrected as she moved to peer over the huntress's other shoulder, wondering if that would make a difference. "Draw something. Write something." She pushed. "We need to know who else is on that list."
"You mean, you need to know if you're on the list." Lydia corrected from the desk, flipping to the next page of her magazine as she looked through her eyelashes at the two of them. "I have seen the list, Malia, you could just ask me if you're on it."
Malia shook her head, insisting that she wasn't look at it until Kinsey did, no matter how much it bothered her not knowing. It was frustrating, a point she had made to Kinsey multiple times, but that didn't change Kinsey's mind, she was adamant about not seeing it. And for that reason, the coyote had to be too, proving her loyalty to the brunette. Though it wouldn't stop Malia from her attempts at convincing Kinsey to look, trying to make her just as tempted.
"If someone was coming to take my head off, I would want to know about it." The coyote said in the girl's ear as Kinsey closed her eyes, trying to not become the person to take Malia's head off. "Okay, I can smell that you're angry so I'm going to go and sit over there now." She suggested as she pointed at her empty seat beside Lydia where she was supposed to have been.
"Please." Kinsey breathed heavily. "You're making me nervous."
Malia plopped down in her seat beside Lydia who shook her head at the coyote, she warned her that Kinsey could get crabby when she was trying to do things like this. The huntress was known for her notoriously short attention span, and predicting death and listening to the voices talking inside of their head was something that required a lot of attention.
She watched the two of them in the corner of her eye, Kinsey with her eyes closed, her pencil an inch from the canvas as it lingered, Lydia on the opposing side, all of her interest consumed by a Cosmopolitan quiz. When it was clear neither was paying attention to what she was doing, she'd pulled out her other book from her bag, her supernatural book that she'd stolen from Kinsey, the Angel was yet to find out about that. Malia couldn't remember what Kinsey called the book but it sounded like something animal-related.
Just as Kinsey was about to draw something on the canvas, her name was called, the silence had been broken by the sound of her name being called from beside her, now the blank canvas was a piece of paper with a slight scribble on it, showing that the coyote had startled her with the little outburst she'd had. Even Lydia had been startled as she quickly shut her magazine. With both of their attentions, Malia suggested that the two of them needed help from someone else, a person like them, perhaps another Banshee. Lydia sighed, she knew who Malia meant- Meredith. Kinsey looked at the redhead with a shrug, questioning if it wasn't such a bad idea after all. But she was quickly drawn away from that when she saw the book in front of Malia.
With a sigh Kinsey took away the bestiary, putting it in her own bag. "Where did you even get it?" She asked with curiosity.
"You're a really deep sleeper." Malia deadpanned, Kinsey raised her brows. "I snuck through your bedroom window while you were asleep." She added with a shrug, an innocent smile across her face, seeing no wrong in it, Kinsey had snuck in through her bedroom window before.
Kinsey shook it off for a moment as she picked up her bag from the floor, pointing at the girl who sat with a magazine in hand, telling her it was her turn to try breaking the key again, perhaps she could call Eichen and see about the Meredith route. Lydia nodded as she put down her magazine on the table, prepared to take over again. Kinsey then pointed to Malia.
"You. Study." Kinsey demanded. "And no more sneaking in through the window, unless someone is dying. Then you can wake me up too."
Malia nodded, agreeing to it, though both found it highly unlikely that she would just stop after a few weeks of her sneaking into the girl's bedroom through the cracked open window, it was just a habit of Malia's now, a comfort to her when she got restless at her own house. Lydia chose not to comment on the conversation, the two girls had a dynamic she would never understand, that was just how they were, sneaking into each other's rooms in the middle of the night as though it wasn't trespassing. Frankly, she was surprised Kinsey even dared to sleep with her window even slightly cracked open. The Kinsey she knew this time last year wouldn't have dared, that Kinsey didn't even sleep with her curtains open she was so paranoid of the idea of someone climbing in through her window, especially after the whole Matt Daehler situation.
Instead of focusing on her best friend's mental state, she chose to listen and take over on the key breaking situation, as well as keeping Malia at bay in the meantime. She didn't ask where Kinsey was going, she didn't think it was important, if she knew anything it was to check up on Stiles to see if he'd somehow managed to figure out who the assassin was, or to simply get some air after sitting staring at a blank canvas for over an hour, it was quite the draining activity.
With her fingers pressed to her temples, Kinsey walked out of the art room, hoping to have just a few hours with a distraction to get her away from staring at a blank canvas or any other ideas her fellow harbinger came up with to find the key. They'd tried going back to the lakehouse, staring at the canvas or a blank notebook, plucking piano strings, but nothing was working for them. All of these so-called "gifts" that they had wasn't something that could simply be turned on like the lycanthropes of the pack could just extend their claws and bare their canines, she and Lydia had something different to that. It was a switch to be flipped. It was voices in their heads, telling the two of them what they needed to know, it was a cold shiver of pain in their spines when a person lost their life, a feeling that simply couldn't be described with any words in the dictionary. And it was frustrating above all things, it left them with a feeling of uselessness, in times when the two of them needed those voices inside of their heads they were nowhere to be found.
Kinsey opened her locker, placing the bestiary right at the back, its new hiding place until she'd found a place to keep it that Malia didn't know about, or anyone else for that matter. If it was so easy for Malia to sneak into her room while she slept she didn't know who else could do it too, a frightening thought with the current status of all supernaturals in Beacon Hills. It was too risky. If somehow the wrong crowd caught wind of the fact she had a book enlisting the supernaturals in this town and their weakness, they were all doomed. They'd know everything, they'd know just what they needed to do to make sure that the list was completed, every supernatural that lived here would be dead within the blink of an eye.
She had thought about asking her father to place it in the vault, she used to think that it was the most secure place in this town considering its hiding place beneath the school, but after recent events, she had begun rethinking that. There didn't seem a place safe enough on earth for all of the knowledge that the bestiary contained.
Kinsey's head turned to look at the series of pictures on the inside of her locker, some of her and Lydia, some with Scott, Stiles, Malia, and Kira. And then a particular picture that sat central to all the others. A photo of her with Allison and Isaac, all smiling, all so seemingly innocent, happy, at peace. Just looking at the image brought a lump into her throat, a stinging sensation in her eyes as she looked back into the abyss of her locker. She stood in thought for a moment before she'd chosen to pull out her phone, scrolling through the list of contacts until her thumb hovered over Isaac's name, unsure whether it was the wrong move to make. But one thing she hadn't done in the time that had been gone was call to check if he was okay, how he was dealing with their loss when he didn't have the support system in France that she had in Beacon Hills.
She sucked it up, pressing the call button, placing the phone to her ear as she listened to it ring over and over. And over. She didn't think too much about it at first, he was all the way in France, he probably didn't have the best cell service, not to mention that the wolf had been handling all of the Argent Arms business alone so that her uncle could search for Kate. He wouldn't be sat at his phone waiting for her to call. Eventually, the ringing turned into an answering machine, she kept the phone at her ear, listening to the message, his voice. A comfort after going so long in its absence. When she heard the beep, she finally put the phone down, accepting her fate. Perhaps when he wasn't busy, he would call back.
The brunette shut her locker, immediately startled by the boy who stood behind it. "Hey! There's my favorite girl!" Stiles beamed as he wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulder, smiling at her, but she could see straight through it, it was his devious smile, his I need something smile.
"What did you do now?" Kinsey asked through her smile.
"Nothing... Yet." He shrugged. "But I need you to do something." The boy proposed as the two of them walked around the corner, met with the sight of Kira and Scott standing at Coach's office, a weary smile across their faces. She recognized those smiles too. This was the kind of scenario in which Stiles had come up with a plan to do something stupid, in this case, it seemed to be a tale as old as time- breaking into Coach's office. But not only had he come up with a dumb plan, but he had roped all of them into it too. "We really need to get in there." Stiles pleaded the girl with a pair of puppy dog eyes, his hands pressed together, begging her to help.
Kinsey rolled her eyes at the boy, kneeling down at the lock of Coach's door as she dug through her bag for a bobby pin. The Kitsune watched in amazement, asking if that would really work, a nod shared between Scott and Stiles who had seen her do this a few times now, she made it all look easy, but they knew better than anyone that it wasn't. They'd tried to do it in her absence, it had never gone well. With the door unlocked the huntress stood up, brushing herself off, turning to Kira, insisting that she would teach her how to do it one day. An offer she'd never given either of the boys. Frankly, it was too dangerous for either of them to know something like that.
The huntress's skills of picking locks hadn't ended as the four of them snuck into the office, the Stilinski boy requested that she broke into the man's desk too, hoping to retrieve the key to all of the lacrosse sticks in the storage cupboard, searching for a particular one. At first, Kinsey hadn't questioned why they needed to search for a lacrosse stick, perhaps they needed a replacement one before the game tonight, she knew that Coach would kill them if one of them had somehow broken their own sticks. This seemed like the best way of avoiding that.
Only when they had retrieved the key and the sticks, they hadn't just picked one out. They piled all of them onto Coach's desk, pulling off each of the ends, looking into the stick, for what, she'd not managed to pick up just from watching them. Kinsey watched for a few minutes as the three of them searched for whatever it was, she intended on keeping out of it, she wasn't sure that she needed another thing piled onto her plate. She had done her part by helping them to break into the office. But temptation got the better of her. The longer she watched, the more curious she'd become, she needed to know what was so special about this single lacrosse stick they searched for. Why they all seem to find the matter so pressing.
With her question, Stiles gave her a simple answer, too wrapped up in searching for the stick to even turn to look at the girl as he told her the assassin was on the lacrosse team. He didn't give any emphasis as she stood with a slacked jaw, repeating the sentence in her head.
"The assassin is a teenager?" Kinsey asked as all three of them stopped, nodding in agreement. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." She deadpanned. "What kind of person hides their weapon inside of their lacrosse stick."
"Probably the same kind of person who hides a dagger in their boots." Scott proposed.
"Touché" Kinsey nodded at him, a point she couldn't argue with. "But don't most of the lacrosse team play with their own gear?" She asked again, Scott and Stiles both stopped their search, the two of them looking at one another, now she was making a good point.
"Maybe instead of trying to find a lacrosse stick with a hidden dagger in it, we should be trying to get the game canceled?" Kira suggested, Kinsey nodded in agreement. For once, she was opting for the safer option out of the ones they had been handed.
Scott shook his head. "The game's the best way to catch him red-handed."
"But what if he's red-handed 'cause his hands are covered in the blood of the person that he just stabbed to death?" Stiles chimed in, the three supernaturals looked at him, questioning if out of all the people he could have said that to, he said it to them. Three people on the list. "Which, by the way, could be either of you." He added as he pointed at Scott and Kira.
"Or Liam." Scott sighed. "We don't have the whole list and he could be on it."
Kinsey bowed her head, knowing that she was the reason that they hadn't gotten the other part of the list yet. Maybe if she hadn't spent two days avoiding it like the plague and had been at the lakehouse with Lydia this weekend they would have had the second key by now, maybe it could have all been over and done with, there would be no reason to worry about the game tonight. A hand was placed on Kinsey's shoulder as Kira tried to comfort her. She had seen how hard it was for her and Lydia to try and get grips on this whole harbinger of death thing, how both Lydia and Kinsey had driven themselves almost to insanity trying to listen to their attuned level of hearing.
Stiles added to Scott's point that not only did they not have the whole list, but they had no idea how it worked, or how it was updated, they knew nothing. He wasn't sure who had even held a supernatural census in the first place to fuel this whole list. How did they know all of the people who were supernatural in Beacon Hills? And how had they managed to go a year without seeing any of these people out on a full moon or lurking in the woods. They'd been a lot more hidden in the darkness than their pack had.
Kira asked how this person had figured out what she was too, she had only found out herself just a few months ago, and now, she was on a list with a bounty over her head. As Scott told her, they knew about everyone. Kinsey didn't want to know too much detail about the list, but now it had become even clearer that her life hung on a thread, she had to ask one question about it. Kinsey looked straight at the Alpha leaning on the table with a heavy head as she asked whether the list indicated that whoever had made it knew that she was more than just an Angel, if they knew the fate that she would one day meet, the thing she would become.
Scott paused for a moment, biting on his lip, not wanting to admit it to her, but he did, with just a slight nod. They knew. The price that she had been set at indicated that to them. He wanted to tell her just how high that truly was, but with a shake of the head from Stiles, he kept quiet. The huntress nodded in understanding before she bowed her own head, they were all screwed. She pulled the cushion from Coach's desk chair, burying her face in it as she screamed loudly, it was slightly muffled but loud enough that someone in the hall was bound to have heard it. The other three teenagers in the room looked at her with wide eyes as she placed the pillow back, taking a deep breath as she tried to collect herself.
Stiles waited for her to speak for a few seconds, wondering if that was what he thought it was, it took a little longer for anyone to ask her if that scream of hers had been a premonitions, if she'd just figured out the second key, eventually, Stiles asked. It wasn't in fact the scream of an Angel, as she called it, it was the scream of the most useless harbinger of death to ever exist. She could see the pitiful looks they gave her, but she didn't deserve it, she should have figured the key out by now. It had been days since they had uncovered the first.
He watched as the girl buried her head in her knees, mumbling to herself about Meredith while the rest of them hoped that this wasn't her spiraling herself into Eichen House. It was then that Stiles decided that Kira's idea wasn't so bad after all, they should be trying to stop the game from going ahead tonight. It wasn't just any supernaturals out on the field who were going to be at risk of being killed, Kinsey planned on being on the bleachers, hidden in a crowd of people, a target just as easy for them to reach, and one that might be more appealing considering her high place on the Deadpool. He didn't want to risk any of them getting killed out there tonight, but he especially didn't want to risk Kinsey getting killed because she had come to watch him play.
Scott pulled himself off of the desk, looking his best friend in the eye. He wasn't afraid. Kira took his lead, insisting that she wasn't either. If the game going ahead and risking her life was how all of this stopped, she was in. Both supernaturals looked at Kinsey, waiting for the huntress who'd never backed down from a fight to give her piece, to stand with them, but she remained quiet in her ball of comfort where teenage assassins didn't exist. Instead, Stiles took her cue, maybe the two of them weren't terrified, but he was, and he wasn't even on the list. He reminded them that these were professional killers, it was their profession. That one of them even had a thermo-cut wire that cut heads off, who knew what else they possessed.
Scott nodded, his best friend wasn't wrong. He walked towards the brunette sitting in Finstock's chair, placing a hand on either of her shoulders as he began his speech, asking if they knew what the assassins didn't have. Kira and Stiles looked at one another with confusion while Kinsey had slowly begun raising her head, dreading what was next to come out of his mouth. He gladly told them what they didn't have, as a wise wolf had told him this morning. They had a Kinsey.
·❥·
Kinsey walked into the Sheriff's Department with her car keys spinning around her index finger while she hummed a little tune. The lacrosse game was fast approaching, frankly, she and Noah were already late, she had spent a little longer getting dressed than she anticipated, but she had to make sure that her clothing was appropriate and snug for a long night of sitting in a cruel and cold January night. And most importantly, she was suited up with weapons for the battle they'd prepared themselves for on the field tonight. Scott managed to convince them all to let it all go ahead, to risk one of them being killed right on the field. It wasn't as if that was new to them. He had given one of his optimistic speeches that managed to rile them all up, making all of them as fearless as he was about the situation. There was still some underlying nerves, but she assumed that was only natural considering she was going up against professional assassins, risking being another victim to a thermo-cut wire.
One thing that allowed the girl to feel somewhat at ease was knowing she had the Sheriff beside her tonight, someone who could arrest an assassin on the spot, and who carried a gun in the off chance she needed some backup. She wasn't quite sure what Stiles had told his father, or if he'd told the man anything at all about what was going on with the dead pool, but she gathered that if he did, it wouldn't take long for Noah to mention it, he would check up on her the second she stepped into his office like he usually did.
And that was exactly what the man had done. As soon as the girl appeared in the doorway Noah had scurried to get from behind his desk and greet her. No matter what he acted as though he'd gone months without seeing the girl, like their every greeting was a big reunion. He would wrap her up in a hug and check up on her. It didn't matter if he saw her most days, or even if she slept in his house more often than not, their routine had never changed.
Kinsey feigned a smile when the man asked how she was coping with the whole dead pool, she chose not to fill him in on the feeling of her losing her mind over the second key. Luckily, before the man could ask about it in too much detail, his pocket began vibrating, he expected that he'd see his son's name on his screen, prepared for a long lecture over the two of them being late. As soon as the man answered the phone Kinsey could hear Stiles ask exactly that, shouting that the two of them were supposed to have been there and sitting on the bleachers by now.
Noah reassured the boy that they were coming, grabbing his jacket as he guided Kinsey towards the door, both of them had been stopped before they could step out of the office. Deputy Parrish stood before them, in just as much of a rush as they were.
"Sheriff, I know you're both in a hurry, but I was out on patrol and I found someone walking from the coast to the High School," Parrish explained, Sheriff Stilinski and Kinsey looked at each other with a furrowed brow, as Stilinski pointed out, that was at least fifteen miles. The deputy nodded at them, he knew that too. "She was pretty determined. And she was looking for you and Lydia." He said as he looked over to the girl he was talking about, Meredith stood waiting at a desk with a weak smile, her looks disheveled.
Kinsey was lost for words as she looked at Meredith, the men were too, both wondering how she had known to go to the high school to look for Kinsey, or why she was looking for her in the first place. Parrish looked back at the huntress, furrowing his brow at her, he still hadn't managed to figure her out, and after that exchange they'd had in the interrogation room she still freaked him out. There was something going on with that girl, with all of them. Noah suggested that he call a certain redhead for assistance, Kinsey nodded, still speechless, her eyes still on Meredith, only a little freaked out by all of this.
While waiting for Lydia and Malia to arrive Kinsey sat in the Sheriff's office, opposite the Banshee who had sought her out. Neither of the harbingers spoke a word, they just stared at each other, a complete silence around them while Noah and Parrish left them alone, expecting them to talk to each other about what was going on. But Kinsey was still lost for words, she wanted to ask how a girl who had been locked in Eichen House knew that she needed help, from her of all people. All of this was just too strange to be a coincidence.
Once Lydia and Malia arrived Sheriff Stilinski tried his best to explain the situation to them, he'd remained conscious of his deputies around him as he kept his voice quiet, he told them that he knew this probably had something to do with the Deadpool but he had to call Eichen about the girl who had somehow escaped yet again. Lydia asked him for an hour, but her ask had been too optimistic, Stilinski looked at her with a questioning look before giving her and the Angel already sitting in the office fifteen minutes to figure out what was going on here.
Before Noah followed the teenage girls into the office he was stopped by Parrish once again, he questioned the man calling Lydia, whether it had been because Meredith asked for her or due to the other thing. Stilinski repeated the other thing, looking for some clarification, he wasn't sure if Parrish had somehow found out, or perhaps Kinsey had told him in the interrogation room, he did seem pretty freaked out after she'd left. But when Parrish explained that he believed Kinsey and Lydia were psychics, the man was able to take a sigh of relief, laughing slightly, for a second he thought Parrish was joking, but the deputy remained with a straight face.
"You think Kinsey and Lydia are psychic?" Stilinski asked in a serious tone.
"Do you?"
Noah shook his head. "No, I do not. I think that they are, uh... intuitive." He suggested.
Parrish defended himself with that very point, that people used to call physics intuitionists, only proving that he had made a logical point in assuming that was what was going on with the girls in the office. It was the only kind of explanation he could think of for what had happened in the interrogation room with Kinsey, not to mention all the things he had seen from Lydia. They had to be psychics. Sheriff Stilinski shook his head, mumbling that he used to call himself somewhat of a rational human being, but that couldn't be said anymore. He walked into the office, calling the deputy in with him, he might just need a witness to whatever was about to happen.
Meredith sat down on the couch, surrounded by the five who patiently waited for her to begin a thorough explanation of what she was doing here and how she could help them. For a moment or two, the girl remained quiet, looking at them with fear in her eyes, like a lost puppy. Lydia had been clock-watching, conscious of their fifteen minutes slowly withering away, eager to speed it all up, she handed Meredith her phone, not a word spoken between them. Meredith looked at it, a slightly knitted brow as she looked back up at the other two harbingers, both encouraging her with just a small nod. The Banshee took the phone, looking down at it in her hand, Malia turned to Kinsey, about to ask what Lydia was doing but the redhead spoke first, asking Meredith if she was going to answer the phone.
The Banshee stood up, leaning in between her fellow harbingers, whispering in their ears that it wasn't ringing before she took a step back from them. Kinsey and Lydia looked at each other, an annoyed expression on the redhead's face as she grew frustrated, every moment that passed her today pushed her further to the edge of a breakdown, she had already snapped at Malia, now, it was about to become Meredith's turn.
Lydia released an aggravated sigh as she knelt down to meet the Banshee, Kinsey taking Lydia's lead as she joined her, unaware of just how close her best friend was to another outburst. She'd reminded Meredith that she had come here to help them, but Meredith objected, insisting that it was Kinsey who called her here. All heads turned to the very confused huntress who didn't recall having the Banshee in her contacts, or calling her, she shook her head as she tried to think of the right thing to say, but with Meredith, nothing seemed right.
"What do you mean I called you?" Kinsey asked softly.
"I heard you." Meredith insisted in a whisper, a prying look that made Kinsey think. Her eyes had widened when she remembered, how she'd sat in the office with her head buried into her knees, mumbling that she needed Meredith's help, but she hadn't thought it would do anything. Kinsey had deeply underestimated the connection shared between harbingers of death.
"Meredith," Parrish spoke from behind the huntress. "Can I ask you a question?" He asked as the Banshee timidly nodded in agreement. He joined the two girls kneeling down in front of her, the huntress stared at him as he knelt beside her, only now noticing the similarities shared between him and Isaac. Only able to shake it off when Parrish asked his question. "When you need help to find something, is there someone you reach out to? Maybe someone you call?"
The Banshee shrugged. "It depends." She told him. "Different people for different things."
"So maybe there's a number that can help us?" Parrish asked. "Someone we can call."
Meredith agreed that there was a number and that she would give it to them as she handed the phone back to Lydia, eagerly providing the digits they needed for this so-called help. Two. Four. Three. Six. A smile grew across the Banshee's face as she looked between them, but the rest of the room were still waiting for a few more numbers, one that could equal a phone number, and four digits was a far cry from that. Kinsey politely asked the girl for some more numbers, but she blankly refused. It was the number. Those four digits were all she could give them.
Lydia sighed in frustration again while Kinsey tried to keep her cool, as Malia told the girl, phone numbers were ten digits, Kinsey nodded in agreement, but the Banshee repeated that it was the number.
"Meredith." Lydia snapped. "Phone numbers always have ten digits."
"That's the number." She repeated.
"Meredith!"
"Lydia..." Kinsey warned the girl off, pulling her away from the other Banshee. "She doesn't have anymore, okay? That's the best we're going to get. We'll work with it, okay?"
"No." The redhead mumbled as she shook her head. "There has to be more." She turned back to Meredith. "What's the rest of it, Meredith? Hmm? Just concentrate!" She yelled at the Banshee as her eyes began swelling with tears.
"But that's... That's..." Meredith began to stammer. "That's the number."
Lydia kept telling the girl to concentrate, but Meredith had begun to spiral as tears filled her eyes too, she shook her head profusely, scared to death as she stammered to get her words out, she repeated the same sentence over and over. That was the number, she told them. But Lydia was a mess too as she finally took a step back with further encouragement from Kinsey, allowing Noah to try and calm down one of two Banshees. Kinsey took the redhead to one of the far corners as she reassured her once again that they would work with what they had, they would figure it out, they always did. Not only was she trying to get the Banshee to believe it, but she needed to also, they couldn't both spiral, everyone was relying on them to find the key and save lives.
Stilinski nodded at Parrish, silently agreeing that it had been long enough as the deputy began guiding Meredith out of the room, giving the other three girls some room to breathe, it seemed it was needed. Before he left his office he looked over at the Angel who nodded, knowing that he'd wanted to ensure they were okay before he left for even a moment, perhaps they weren't doing their best, but she tried to believe her own words as she repeated them in her head. They always figured it out. They would do it this time too.
Before trying to crack the code, Kinsey and Malia gave Lydia some room to breathe, sitting down at the desk so she could collect herself. She pressed her fingers against her temples, breathing at a fast pace as she repeated those four numbers in her head, wondering what they could be if not a phone number. But she was too frustrated to think. Meredith was supposed to be their savior, the one who allowed them to finally crack the case, but she had been deemed useless, at least it was how the Banshee saw her now. She wasn't sure why she'd considered Meredith, a girl from Eichen House to ever be a safe bet for them.
Malia looked at the huntress sitting at the desk, she looked exhausted, just as fed up with it as Lydia was, she could remember what the redhead told her earlier, they couldn't just turn it on. When it had all been explained to her Malia could have never imagined that it was like this, she was only now beginning to see the truth about the abilities that the two girls possessed, and it wasn't as glorious as it once seemed.
It was as the coyote leaned over the desk that she saw the numbers written down on a piece of paper, courtesy of Stilinski, but that wasn't what caught her attention. It was the phone that it sat right next to, the series of numbers and letters on the keypad. Her eyes lit up as she asked if it could be like algebra. Both Kinsey and Lydia looked up, a little confused as to what she meant. The coyote proposed that the numbers were actually letters as she turned the phone to face the two of them, their eyes too widening at the thought. She might just have cracked it.
Lydia quickly grabbed a pen and paper, drawing out a grid of letters, both she and Kinsey saw it immediately as the huntress pulled out her laptop from her bag, pulling up the Deadpool. She'd looked at Lydia for agreement, the redhead nodded, she thought it too. With a deep breath the huntress typed in the letters one by one, praying that it was right. A I D E N. The three girls sat in anticipation as one by one names began to appear on the screen, beginning with Kate Argent, a few more familiar names on the list. Kira's mother was on it too. But Kinsey pointed out another name on the list. Brett Talbot.
"Who's that?" Malia asked her. "Do we know a Brett?"
"I know that name." Kinsey insisted, but she didn't know how she knew it. "I know it. I know that I know it. I just- I don't know how I know it." The brunette mumbled as she tried to figure it out, a frustration growing inside of her. "I just... Have a feeling."
"A feeling?" Malia questioned. "Or a feeling?" She clarified, Kinsey knew the difference, believing it was the second option. "So what is this feeling telling you to do?"
Kinsey stared at the name on the screen, narrowing her brows at it. "To go to the lacrosse game."
The huntress barged out of the office, begging Stilinski to drive her to the game, he looked at her with a furrowed brow, questioning why she wanted to go now, it was a little late to catch it now, a lecture from Stiles was already on the cards for them. Kinsey gave him a pleading look, it was a look that he knew well as he nodded in agreement, giving Parrish some instructions to deal with Meredith as he and Kinsey began rushing out of the building with a mission, and that feeling she felt inside of her told her it was time-dependent.
Stilinski flashed his lights and sounded his sirens the entire way to the school, allowing them to easily move through the building traffic as Kinsey grew anxious in the passenger seat, biting on her nails as she tried to think whether this was the right thing to do. She still believed that Brett Talbot was a name she knew, how remained in question still, but she knew not to ignore it, that was something she just couldn't do. If driving like mad people to the school would give her one of the answers that she needed, then so be it.
As soon as they pulled up at the school Kinsey rushed ahead, running up to Coach who stood on the sidelines, asking if he knew a Brett Talbot, if there was a Brett Talbot on the lacrosse team, it was a name that seemed familiar to Coach too, but he couldn't put his finger on it, instead, he'd shook his head, believing that if this boy was on his team he would know about it.
About to give up, Kinsey sighed in frustration as she ran her hands through her hair, turning on the spot, and then, she saw one of the benched players looking at her with a furrowed brow, she could see he was questioning what she wanted with Brett Talbot. But this player didn't sit with a burgundy jersey on his torso, instead, a green one belonging to Devenford Prep, the team Stiles told her they were up against tonight. Kinsey immediately approached the boy with her finger in his face, asking if she knew who Brett was, he nodded with fear in his eyes, clearly intimidated as he told her Brett was on the team. She looked out onto the field, asking which one he was, but it was too late for that. The player informed her that Brett had been taken out on the field, carried off by a paramedic.
Her eyes grew wide, that was why she had the feeling. It was happening now. The assassin had begun playing his cards, he was killing Brett now, if he hadn't already. She turned back, asking the boy if he had seen a Scott McCall tonight. He knew that name too, it was a name that often came up in the lacrosse world. Apparently, he and another skinny boy had left a few moments ago, both heading in different directions, but he was pretty sure Scott was heading back to the locker room.
Kinsey needed to hear nothing more as she ruffled the kid's hair, telling him that he was a literal godsend as she began running towards the locker room. All of the players that beared witness to their exchange sat, puzzled by it as they watched her disappear into the distance.
The huntress didn't stop running until she reached the school halls, edging closer to the locker room, as she turned the corner, she found a paramedic passed out on the floor. For a moment a feeling of dread washed over her as she slowly approached the body, hoping that it wasn't dead because she had taken a little longer than anticipated. She slowly leaned over the body, and as she did, she felt a chill across her spine as she looked up, the feeling that someone was coming up behind her.
As the girl spun around she found a blonde boy coming up behind her, a lacrosse stick raised in the air, ready to hit her. Kinsey quickly grabbed onto the stick, pushing him back with it until he stumbled over his own feet, hitting the floor. She recognized him from the try-outs, but Lydia's impromptu lakehouse party too, the kid who had paid for the keg. A low growl escaped Kinsey's mouth as she walked back over to the boy, he picked up his lacrosse stick again, pulling off the cap, revealing a sharp blade still laced with yellow wolfsbane.
"I'll do it!" He threatened. "I know what you are! I know what you're worth!" Garrett yelled as he held the blade at her, his hands shaking around the stick.
"Then you should know not to go up against a huntress with that little blade." Kinsey snarled as she kicked the stick out of his hands, sending it flying down the hallway as Garret lay on the floor looking for an alternative way to claim his money by killing Kinsey Argent, a name anyone who'd seen that list knew very well. Kinsey stood over the blonde boy, watching as he cowered, closing his eyes tightly as he awaited a cruel fate. "Try harder next time." Kinsey suggested, closing their conversation with a punch to the boy's face, knocking him out cold.
Within seconds of her landing the blow to Garrett's face a pair of shoes squeaked from around a corner, Stiles quickly appeared, coming to a sharp halt at the sight of Kinsey standing over two bodies. His eyes were wide, wondering what had happened to her, or how she was even here, it had only been a minute ago that Malia called to update him. Kinsey turned to the paramedic on the floor behind her before turning back to Stiles. "That one wasn't me."
"And that one?" Stiles asked, pointing at Garrett.
"That was me." She nodded proudly, fixing her disheveled hair. "Where's Scott?"
Stiles didn't answer the girl's question before they both heard a commotion coming from inside the locker room, their heads turning towards it. With all the commotion out here Kinsey failed to hear what was going on inside there. She and Stiles rushed into the room, another pair of bodies inside the locker room too. One was Brett Talbot, alive, barely. The other a girl who Kinsey knew to be another freshman, Garrett's girlfriend of all people. They had their assassins.
Scott stood over the girl's body, he had been involved in a similar fight that led her to meet that same fate that her boyfriend had. The Alpha looked between his two best friends, suggesting a call to Stiles's dad. Kinsey was already one step ahead of him, with a quick text the man would be here in seconds.
"Is it over?" Stiles asked as he looked between the two of them.
Scott looked at Kinsey, she seemed more suited to answer that question. "No." She told them. "This is just the beginning."