***GABE***

Finals - done. Harris and I cross the street to go home just long enough to drop off our school stuff before meeting the two halves of Fionsi, plus the Patel brothers, at the movies to see Warcross.

At least, so our plans go.

I get the feeling those plans are changing the second we see this one guy flying rapidly down from his balcony on the third floor. Our floor, but he lives on the other end of the building from me and Harris. Anyway, he's flying, his white wings snapped wide open as he streaks through the air down to the ground.

At first, I think he's just showing off. Probably a newcomer - you can usually tell a brand-new scriv. Harris actually broke his arm in mid-June in our first week together as Guardians, because he was so eager to try flying that he just leaped out the window in Bearville and collided with the next building because he was looking back at me to look at my reaction. We ended up both benched for a month as a result.

This guy, however, I don't think he's showing off. When he reaches the ground, he dusts himself off with one hand, while in his other, he holds something that I can't really make out at this distance.

Harris and I both find ourselves walking his way. While we've got our pre-existing friends here in Spellman, we've had trouble making new friends in town, probably because we've had experiences none of the other average undead people around here have. But we've both agreed that we should try and put ourselves out there a little more. Especially in the event that we find some other queer dudes to make friends with. (I'm still a little bummed that Annie didn't move Kyle's scriv to Spellman with us - instead, he got reassigned to Tahoe to help with ongoing relief after Preston Holly's attack there, and I haven't seen him in six months.)

"Impressive wing work," I say. "You a natural-born scriv, or former human?"

As we get closer to the guy, I notice that the object he's holding in his hands is a pair of glasses with large black frames. He puts them on and blinks to recalibrate his vision, then crosses his arms, which are bare despite the cold. Those arms are ropy, bulging with muscle. He actually reminds me a little of Kyle - tall, beefy, with light brown skin, which makes his white light-scriv wings stand out more.

"Would you believe I'm none of the above?" He folds his wings up. "I actually started out as an angel, but after I died, I got a dual elemental. Light and water."

I look at Harris, whose jaw has been slack (probably from appreciating the sight of this guy), but now he speaks up. "Dual elemental? And you got the opposites of mine." He wrings his hands, hiding the tiny green Peppermint Corporation leaf symbols ink-dotted on his wrists.

"Oh, you got the same marks?" The guy holds out his wrists to reveal his own dots. "Yeah, they told me what these are supposed to be for. Some kind of mind-control shit?" He laughs and fiddles with the strip of cloth tied around his neck like the bastard child of a necktie and a scarf. "What, these green dots would let me hypnotize you?"

"Uh...not exactly..."

"Just kidding," he says with a suddenly serious look on his face. "I know what it's really for. Don't worry, Dom Park's told me to beware of Peppermint people too." He holds out his hand. "I'm Tommy Grant. But you can call me TJ."

Harris and I give him our names. "Short for Thomas?" I ask. "Haha, that's my middle name."

"No shit! Gabriel Thomas...did your parents name you after that one Die Hard villain? No, wait, you were probably born before that movie came out."

I shake my head. "It's my grandfather's name."

"Hey, you wanna come to the movies with us?" Harris asks, pretty much out of the blue.

"Depends," says TJ. "What movie is it gonna be? Please tell me it's that new Avatar movie. I almost thought they were never gonna make that-"

"No, even better," I say. "Warcross."

He snaps his fingers. "Warcross, you say? Okay, just let me go upstairs really quick and get my hoodie. I promised myself I'd see this movie before Christmas, but I didn't think I'd get a chance, you know?"

"What, your friends didn't wanna go?" asks Harris.

"Nah, they're all going on some 24-hour pub crawl or something," laughs TJ. "Like they're even old enough to drink. They think they're somehow more invincible now that they're already dead."

"Trust me on this, they're not." I shake my head for emphasis. "So should we wait up for you, then?"

"Yeah," Harris chimes in. "If you don't mind hanging out with high schoolers."

"How'd you know I wasn't in high school?"

"We'd have probably seen you around there if you were." Harris jerks his thumb at the school across the street.

"Oh yeah...good point."

While TJ gets his hoodie, Harris and I fly up to the roof to wait for him to rejoin us. He sits on the edge of the roof, keeping his wings outstretched in case he falls off somehow. In one hand, he plays around with a small fireball. I've noticed that a lot of fire elementals do that sometimes, keep their elementals active outside their bodies. Fionna and Luca both have histories of doing that - I've seen them in action. Gives rise to a certain stereotype that fire elementals - or Fire warlocks, as Harris still insists on calling himself - are perpetually restless, unable to stop moving or else they'll burn up from the inside. And given that Harris also has Dark warlock powers, I wonder how much danger he'd be in from having the really explosive dark energy inside him catching fire at some point.

Most of that last is bullshit pseudoscience, and not even of the Fringe variety. I mean, are there really organs somewhere in all our bodies that are full of our elemental energies? Enough of us angels, demons, warlocks, etc. have been dissected at medical school by now (or worse, I suppose, for people on Earth, 'cause they probably did the dissections for warlocks without consent, and maybe even before they were cadavers) that if that were the case, we'd know.

I lean against the water tank that covers the northern side of the roof, watching Harris keep on playing with his fire. I can't help but want to hug and kiss him just about all the time, but I have to restrain myself. Even when he's been on a horny streak, he sometimes has to admit that he needs space. And while we've been in school, we've found ourselves taking time away from each other quite often while we work on our own homework, our own studies. Of course, now that it's Christmas break, we can spend a lot more time together, maybe just Netflix and chilling.

(Be aware that I mean that literally, not in the popular figurative sense. I'd rather have sex to music than to an episode of, say, Jessica Jones.)

TJ rejoins us after a minute or two, zipping up his jacket. "I swear, my wings got bigger after I died," he says. "I'm still not used to scriv-sized wings."

"They're not that much bigger," Harris says. "Look, look, see?" He stretches his out - I hadn't even noticed he'd retracted them. "Go on, Gabe, show him."

I shrug, then reveal my wings as well. They're cold as long as I'm not in flight, though - they don't retain warmth very well when they're featherless.

TJ gapes at the sight. "Are those...those are demon wings? But how? I thought demons didn't get full-sized wings when they died."

"Did I mention I'm an angel-demon hybrid?" I feel myself blushing. "That's how this happened."

"But look, my wings are still smaller than his." Harris stands back to back with me, his wings brushing against mine.

"I dunno." TJ walks around us both, pulling up his glasses as he inspects our wings. "Your wings look about the same length. And since Harris is smaller, shouldn't his wings be smaller?" He clears his throat. "Uh, sorry about that-"

"What, pointing out that I'm not a tall, tall guy?" Harris retracts his wings. "No biggie. I'm used to being pretty average."

"So..." I wait until we're all in the air and heading for the movies before really collecting my thoughts. "So since you're not in high school...are you in college?"

TJ rubs his neck, adjusting his scarf, which he's still got tied in place under his hoodie. "You say that like that makes me some kind of desirable."

"No, no, no, not at all..." I glance nervously at Harris.

"Haha, I suppose only a high schooler would want me anyway," TJ laughs. "I used to be cool before I died. Now I'm a total slackoff. I'm taking too much advantage of being on a super-long break between semesters."

"How long?" I ask.

"Six weeks. The spring semester doesn't start till the final week of January."

Harris whistles. "What? That's hella long! Lucky you!"

TJ really rubs his neck. "Will I ever get used to the word 'hella?'"

"If you're not from around here," I say with an apologetic smile, "signs point to no."

"So does that mean you're not from the Bay Area?" Harris asks. "Or any other part of NorCal, really, but especially the Bay Area."

TJ flaps his wings a little faster and flies a little ahead of me and Harris. But then he slows down and draws level with us again. "I'm actually from Oregon. Portland. But I came down here 'cause Portland in this 'verse got pretty hard hit from that dark army of light scrivs or whatever." He retracts his wings, as if ashamed of having them because they match those of the light scrivs who flew and fought for Preston Holly, but then reverses course when he realizes he'll be falling a little too soon. "You hear about any of that? Or, uh, were you involved?"

"I wasn't," Harris says, "but only 'cause I came here after all that."

"Mm-hmm. And you?" TJ turns to me.

I don't speak up. I just stare ahead at the movie theater, which isn't in the same place it's at back in Heaven. Again, there's no real sense of urban planning around here - it's all compacted and squished together. Really, we could've just walked to the movies, but where's the fun in that? Not on the ground when it's sometimes hard to get a glimpse of the sun as you walk between buildings. Sure, it's not like it's the Kowloon Walled City or anything, but compared to Heaven or Hell, trips through the streets of the Second 'Verse can feel downright claustrophobic at times.

By the time I get down to the ground, Fionna and Kensi wave us over to the seats they're sitting at with Yash and Aditya. "Guess there really must be someone who's out to screw up the cinematic experience for everyone," Kensi says with a glare at the snack bar, and then at the box office.

I follow her stink-eye and see what she's talking about. While this isn't the same as Spellman, Heaven's movie theater, this place is pretty similarly furnished, with digital displays above the box office outlining the day's movie schedules, and also to show the menus above the snack bar. All of them, however, are glitching something fierce, and the box office cashiers are scratching their heads as they try to figure out what's happening, and why nobody in the low-key angry line before them can get a ticket.

"How long have you been sitting here?" I ask.

"About five minutes," Fionna says. "What took you guys so long? Besides picking up a new friend? Speaking of which, what's his name?"

"Oh, hi." He steps out from behind me - I think he was taking advantage of my height to give himself a place to hide. "Tommy Grant. TJ. And, uh, well, if there's some kind of computer glitch, I might be able to take a look at it."

"You sure?" asks Yash. "Unless you're a Second 'Verse native, you're probably not all that well-versed in the tech around here. It's a little more advanced-"

"I'm not a local by birth, no." TJ crosses his arms as he gazes over at the box office, where the cashiers look like they're bracing for a mass cash register explosion. "But I've been taking a semester's worth of computer classes. I just hope I remember enough to actually be of help."

Yash turns to Aditya, who's passing the time by playing on his phone. "You sure you can't help?"

"If I'm not jailbreaking someone's phone, I probably can't do it."

"Hey, why are you playing around? Are you using data? There's no Wi-Fi in this place, you know!"

While the two brothers start fighting over the phone, TJ skulks over towards the box office, and in spite of myself, I follow him. "You guys need any help?" He drums his fingers on the countertop for a moment until one or two of the cashiers takes notice of him. "I might be able to figure something out."

"Like what?" asks the nearest one, a pale woman in a Doctor Strange T-shirt. "Here, here, look at what we've gotta deal with right now." She takes her register - actually a tablet, one of two propped up with their backs to each other. The one that's for the customers has a black screen, except for a small white dot in the middle. The business end, though, is shining with red, white, and blue bricks of light, like some kind of patriotic game of vintage Breakout. The colors, however, keep shifting and flickering, and I have to look away from the screen after more than a couple of seconds.

"Don't look," I warn the crowd. "Especially if you've got epilepsy."

"Yeah, trigger warning," TJ chimes in. "Uh, okay. Have you tried resetting either of these tablets?" He pokes at the power button on the glitchy one, but the cashier - "Olivia," her nametag reads - shakes his head.

"First thing we tried," she says. "What kind of computer training have you had?"

"I haven't," I say, because for some reason she's looking at me. "He says he's taken some classes, though."

"And I'm a light elemental now that I'm dead," TJ says, showing a couple of small light blades extending from the tips of his index and middle fingers. "Which means I can probably drain these and fix 'em up. You haven't tried that yet, have you?"

Olivia looks around at her fellow cashiers. "Uh, no, none of us are light scrivs."

"Technically, I'm only half-scriv," TJ says. "I dunno how it works either. Something to do with the Peppermint Corporation."

"Oh, really?" Olivia taps the tablet screen. "These are Peppermint devices here."

"No shit!" I look down at the screen on the customer tablet and see that, yes, the tiny, tiny dot in the center is a Peppermint leaf symbol. "Well, personally, I'd advise you to make a change ASAP. Peppermint is not to be trusted."

"They're better about virus protection than, say, Windows or Apple or Android," Olivia comments. "Or so they'd have us believe." She looks up at TJ expectantly. "Go ahead, man. Do your light-scriv magic."

"Half-scriv," TJ reminds her. "And half-angel."

"Hmm. Never heard of scrivs and angels marrying before."

TJ winces slightly. "Uh, well, I'm not actually...see, I'm an angel. Or, uh, I was. I just have a scriv power, for some reason..." He covers the dots on his wrists as he wrings his hands, then produces those light blades again.

"Wait, are you gonna try to power the device up?" I ask. "Would that even help?"

"No. I'm gonna do the opposite." He positions his fingers close to the charging port on the bottom of the glitchy tablet - well, technically, the side on the device's current landscape orientation, but you know what I mean. Then he crooks his fingers a bit, and the light blades connect to the charging port, but I see the current flowing, very subtly, into his fingers and out of the tablet. After a few seconds, the screen goes black. Unresponsive. This tablet is now legally dead, for the moment.

I turn around and beckon to my friends. "Hey, Kensi!" Angling my head at another tablet station, I add, "You wanna see if you can help too?"

"Help with what?" she asks before watching TJ depower the tablet at the customer end. "Oh, should I do that too?"

"Uh-huh."

"All right." She cracks her knuckles. "Stand back, sweetheart, and let the professionals do their job."

Yash and Aditya follow right behind her. I'm not 100% sure what their elementals are - and, being Terminal residents, I'm not entirely sure they have any. The Terminal doesn't quite follow the same rules, being between universes and all. But something tells me if the Patels do have elementals, they're probably both light, given that both of them have a certain propensity for electronics and/or programming. Even if Yash mostly just operates medical technology and can't really fix it, or Aditya mostly fools around with-

"WHOA!"

Kensi jumps back, almost crashing into me and knocking over TJ in the process. "What is it?" I ask as I help her get back to her feet.

"That damn tablet tried to shock me!"

"What?"

"Yeah, this one!" She points at the customer tablet on the second station from the left, immediately to the right of the one TJ's been working on. "I tried to do what TJ did, pull the current out and depower it - it static-shocked me!"

"Say what?" TJ pauses in the middle of trying to repower both tablets at the first station and examines the second. He pulls a bit of current out of the charging port, but suffers no ill effects.

I look at Kensi's hand, and especially at the small black marks she's got on the tips of her fingers. "You don't think...?"

"What, that I'm not able to do my warlock thing with these tablets 'cause Peppermint didn't experiment on me in my tank?"

TJ takes a look at the second station's tablet and starts pulling charge out of it, again with no ill effects...at least, until he finishes the job and finds that he can't move his hand more than an inch away from its current position. "Say what?" He tugs harder, but his fingers won't move. "What the hell?" Then his hand jerks, his fingers splay out, and even under his hoodie sleeves, it's clear the muscles in his arm are bulging. "Whoa! Holy shit, what is this?"

"What's going..." My voice trails off when I see the tiny Peppermint symbol dots on his wrists glowing bright white. The same glow soon crawls up his neck, trailing what looks like a white-colored version of his jugular, and then disappears into his skull before shining out of his eyes.

"Oh my God! It actually worked!"

It's TJ's vocal chords making the sound, but the cadence of his voice is all wrong. Too chipper and cheerful, for one thing.

Kensi and I stare at him in horror. Or, more accurately, at the person who, apparently, has figured out how to possess him digitally.

"Penner," I breathe. "Is that you?"

"D'oh, you spoiled the fun of the guessing game!" Penner makes TJ smack his head. "Well, at least I know this works with Peppermint plants. Haha, if any of you ever see Ariel again in the Third 'Verse, please send him my thanks for inspiring that line, huh?"

"Get the fuck out of his head!" I grab TJ by his shoulders, but Penner, still in control, makes him push me away until I collide with the door to the box office just as one of the employees - Olivia, I think - opens it.

She's first to try and help me up, but I only let Harris do that when he runs up to me. Huh - I know he's my guy and all, but normally I'd expect Fionna to be the first one to rush to my aid, actually.

Though the mystery of why she isn't this time soon resolves itself when I see her breaking away from Yash and Aditya and running up to TJ, grabbing his hand while hers is on fire.

He howls in pain, and the white light disappears from his eyes and his other hand, the one still involuntarily connected to the tablet.

While he sinks to the floor, nursing his hand, all the computerized displays around us suddenly come back to normal. I watch as the people in the box-office line lower the phones they've been using to film all this - shove off, you fucking vultures! - and scratch their heads. At least one mutters something like, "What's this, some kind of promo?" "What, for Warcross?" "Come on, they don't do this kind of shit for money! This is real!"

Fionna kneels in front of TJ and touches his singed hand. "Sorry about that," she says as he pulls away. "I mean, it worked for Indy in Temple of Doom...guess Spielberg was on to something, huh?"

TJ grimaces at her, but then gets to his feet, sticking his hand in his pocket. "He usually is. And don't sweat it. I'll live. You didn't burn me that bad, Fionna."

"Oh, you heard my name in my head? Yeah, I don't think I got around to telling you..."

Kensi and I step in at this point, pulling TJ away from the box office, as I also do with Harris. "I think if we still wanna see that movie," I say, "we should find a theater that doesn't rely on Peppermint tech."

"Yeah," Aditya chimes in as we all head out the door. "Or we could take this as a sign that we're not supposed to see this movie today, period."

"A sign from whom?" Yash shakes his head at him. "No, no, don't answer that. I know you don't believe in God."

"So what? God doesn't do shit for me!"

I smile at the younger Patel. "A kid after my own heart."

TJ smiles. "You two and my brother should never get in a room together. You'd probably be fighting over who's the most atheist among you. And that's before I throw my hat in the ring, and you know you'd all lose to me."

I raise my eyebrows. Sometimes, I wish mine were as thick and dark and attack-ready as Alex's, even if they wouldn't gel with my hair that way. "Is that a challenge?"

"I just got possessed by a literal ghost in the machine," TJ says as we walk out the door and back into the cold. "I mean, Park warned me weird shit could happen, but...let's face it, that's not the weirdest shit. You should've seen the total freak way I died." His face clouds over, going surprisingly ashen - not that it wasn't after Penner got into him. "Or, better yet...you don't."

My curiosity is piqued, but I'm not about to make him uncomfortable with a line of interrogation. I mean, there's busting the new guy's balls, but that takes it a little beyond the pale.

So I, along with everyone else, mercifully, stay silent as we take off flying for the next-nearest movie theater in hopes of not repeating this one-star-Yelp-review experience.

Courtesy of Simon Penner, of course.

Curse his motherfucking guts.