TRIAL BY HELLFIRE
(part eight)

==========

Daphne knew that she had to look ridiculous...here she was, five-feet-two-and-three-quarter inches tall, and she was struggling with a large garbage receptacle almost as tall as she was. The Greek grumbled darkly as she wrestled the sizeable garbage can through the back door of Franklin Hall.

"...razzafrazza stinkin' Nina! Lying bitch!" Daphne scowled. Nina had managed to frame Daphne for making a huge mess of one of the classrooms, so the teacher had assigned the little freshman to garbage detail. Daphne was not amused...and was also abyssmally unaware of someone rooting through the dumpster for breakfast...or at least some cans and bottles that could be exchanged for money...

"Awwww--screw this!" Tired of having to try to carry/drag a heavy can almost as large as she was, Daphne activated her mutant powers, picked up the can in one hand and trotted over to the dumpster, chortling. "Heh heh heh--if Nina could see me now, she'd mess herself, boyyyyeeEEE!" An imperious wave of her hand signalled the magnetic manipulation that caused the dumpster's doors to open wide, then she used the power to chuck the contents of the garbage can into the huge metal container. "Ta-daaaAAAAA!"

"HEY!" Suddenly a head popped up from within the dumpster, causing Daphne's eyes to open wide in surprise as she froze in place.

"Uh oh!" Daphne had to climb up on the dumpster to peek in, automatically apologizing to the person there. "Oops...sorry!"

Wait--someone was inside the dumpster..?

The girl--she couldn't have been older than Daphne herself, looked up, her clothing ragged, her hair a mess--there might even have been lice crawling on her--looked up with mutinous emerald eyes. She definitely did not look like MassAcad material.

"Whaddya think yer doin', norm?"

"Norm..?" Daphne echoed, blinking. "...ummm...throwin' out the trash, thanks to some harpy I know...what are YOU doing?"

"I'm lookin' fer my breakfast, norm." the dumpster-diver shook her (was that blonde?) head. "Most important meal of the day, ya know." The Greek girl blinked again, automatically drawing on her knowledge of the flora surrounding the school.

"Wouldn't it be better to just pick nuts & berries in the woods? Most of the strawberries are gone but the blueberries and raspberries are plentiful, and there are just scads of walnuts around..."

"I don't have that much time, norm." the stranger replied scoffingly. "I have ta get somethin' ta eat and get out of here before the FOH come after me." She shrugged. " 'Sides, nuts and berries don't hold a person as long."

"F.O.H.?" Daphne repeated cluelessly.

"Friends Of Humanity--" explained the other girl, "--you know, the jerks who take mutants and shove them into camps? Where yer been, norm? Mars?" Between the girl's defensiveness and this surprising new information, Daphne was too surprised to do anything other than tell the truth.

"Close...I was in Greece until June...Friends of Humanity? Are they legal?"

"Nawww...not that little details like that would stop 'em..." the blonde climbed out of the dumpster to stand beside Daphne--yup, they were similar in age and even build, but the blonde looked harder - colder, most likely from life on the run. The girl scratched her head and kept her distance. "Ya got any rubbin' alcohol, norm? I think I got lice."

Daphne considered the circumstances this girl was in--on the run...obviously had been for quite some time...underfed, and in need of basic food and shelter. Fortunately, there was something that Daphne could do...not much, but better than nothing at all...

"Hmmmmm...I can help you...follow me." Daphne turned and started towards the woods that edged the school property. The blonde looked back at the dumpster--the pickings from Franklin Hall had been better than most inner city containers...but something about this brunette triggered a tiny spark of something that she'd been sure that she'd lost long ago...a modicum of trust. She shrugged and followed the weird norm.

"My folks didn't like me bein' a mutant, so's they handed me over to some cult callin' themselves 'the Friends of Humanity,' an' they were gonna try 'cleansing' me or somethin'..." the girl half-mumbled in explanation. Daphne, apparently oblivious to the battered second-hand clothing of her soon-to-be guest, was looking around as she went into the woods, picking certain plants and flowers.

"...a little rosemary..." she mused, "...now all I need is a citronella bush..."

" Ya know yer herbs - they teach ya that at that fancy school, norm?" The Greek shook her head, concentrating more on the landscape than the blonde's question.

"Nope...learned it when I was kid...ah, here we are!" Daphne harvested several branches from a fragrant bush as the other girl scratched again while trying not to appear to be scratching.

"Lucky kid..." Was that envy in the blonde's voice? "All I ever learned was pain." She cut herself off, as though she hadn't meant to talk so much, but was prompted to by an overwhelming need to reach out to someone.

'That could be me.' Daphne thought to herself. 'If it hadn't been for Papa and Mama being so understanding, I might have wound up in a camp...or running for my life.' As the petite brunette mulled over her good fortune, the pair arrived at a secluded clearing...the one with the entrance to Daphne's cave nearby. Daphne walked over to the cave and went right in.

"Well, if you've been running from these FOH people, I'm not surprised...what they're doing isn't right, but Papa was afraid that mutant rights were going to get trampled--looks like he was right." Daphne's frown was on her face as well as in her voice as she led the way through the cave tunnel.

"Mutants don't have no rights, norm." the other girl told her flatly, her own voice sounding slightly stifled by the closeness of the tunnel walls. "But what would ya know about it? Yer just a nice, normal human - a norm. No powers. No weird fur. No third eye." Daphne stepped into a wider area of the tunnel, noting to herself that the blonde looked completely normal...

Inside the cave was warm...and surprising well-lit, the homeless girl thought. Closer inspection of the walls revealed phosphorescent lichens lighting the interior almost as well as the average set of track lighting in an average room.

"Whoa--Shangri-la!" she announced in an awestruck voice. Meanwhile, Daphne addressed the girl's perception of her.

"Normal? You think I'm normal? Tell me, can a normal person do this..?" The petite Greek knocked in special cadence and a hole opened up in the cave wall. "I'm a mutant, too...now, come on and let's see what I can do for you..." So saying, Daphne stepped through the new door. The blonde followed her.

"Then how'd ya get into that fancy school? Most schools don't wanna touch mutants with a ten-foot pole..." The homeless girl's voice trailed off as she registered the proportions and appearance of the new cave: the new chamber was wide and round; in one area was a pool of water with some steam rising from it. In another alcove was a hutch made of stone.

"They don't know I'm a mutant." Daphne told her. "But I like to practice a little...and have a place to be alone. That's why I have this..." The little Greek spread her arms wide and circled in place. "My own private, uhhhh...bat cave." She giggled and winked at the other girl. "I come here when Nina and her group get on my nerves."

"Swanky...real swanky!" the blonde nodded, impressed. Daphne pointed to the pool.

"That's about three or four feet deep--it's really warm, probably fed by underground thermal springs--I use it like a hot tub." It took the homeless girl all of two seconds before she started stripping down to nothing and jumping into the hot tub, submerging briefly and coming up smiling.

The blonde had been without food for a very long time, to judge by her wretchedly bony appearance. Daphne turned her attention to mashing the plants she'd gathered on their way to the cave, using a stone mortar and pestle that seemingly popped up out of nowhere.

"Look, I have this stuff that's an all-natural shampoo, guaranteed to relieve you of dandruff and...um...any critters you may have picked up along the way." She took the bowl over to the girl and set it down on the edge of the hot tub. "Oh, by the way...I'm Daphne."

"Clio Hartley." she replied, scooping up a handful of cleansing goop. "Yer parents got a thing fer Greek myths too?" Clio began to wash her hair, sighing happily as the itch in her scalp was instantly relieved. Daphne grinned at her.

"Sure do--last name: Popadopolous...we're 100% Greek!"

"Eh - not me. British here. Fact, one of my cousins was the band leader on the Titanic." Clio ducked under the water then came back up. Her voice took on a defensive edge. "My folks were just crazy about the stories...told 'em to me all the time...'till they found out I'm a mutant." Daphne was rummaging through her hutch for some jogging togs.

"Oh? I'm...surprised that being a mutant should make a difference...when *my* mutant powers suddenly developed, all Papa could talk about was how to protect me..."

"Well, they found out I was a mutant a coupla years ago." Clio said as she scrubbed the rest of her body. "Thought I was gonna be one of them 'mutant menaces' like the X-Men or somethin'...so they would beat the livin' daylights outta me. Then they decided that they didn't have the strength to save humanity from me...an' that's when they handed me over to the FOH...so's I could be cleansed properly!" Clio snorted even as Daphne gasped in shock.

"What happened?" the Greek girl asked.

"The FOH 'control officer' arrived at our house in the middle of the night wearin' some kinda cybernetic armor. I prob'ly woulda been dead meat, if'n my powers weren't able to control machines of all kinds." Clio grinned, her emerald eyes twinkling. "When that goon grabbed me, I took control of his suit...made him perform I'm a Little Teapot...heh, heh, heh! You ain't seen nothing until you've seen an armored dude do that Teapot dance!"

"Oh, my!" Daphne grinned and laughed at the thought, then sobered a bit. "Then what did you do?" She opened the hutch and got out a can of ravioli from the munchies she had stored in it.

"I ran off...but the FOH has a couple of goons tryin' to track me down an' take me back for their 'cleansing'...whatever that is." Clio shrugged, then submerged to her chin. "So now I'm on my way ta New York. Enough homeless teens there ta hide easily." The brunette, in the middle of opening up a can of ravioli, was suddenly struck by a horrible realization even as Clio continued to rattle off her own plans.

"...Plus I can use my powers to rob the ATMs--only the back accounts of pimps and drug dealers though. Might as well leech off the truly rank members of the population..."

"...your...parents...did that to you?" Daphne finally choked out.

"Yeah. They really hate mutants. Think we should all be dead...or at the very least fixed like animals so we can't 'breed'..."

"...can't breed..?" Daphne's voice squeaked, then she gulped. "Geez...they'd REALLY hate me, then--one of the side effects of my powers is that I breed like a rabbit...literally."

FROM THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF DAPHNE POPADOPOLOUS:

I met a runaway named Clio Hartley today while I was throwing out the trash (Nina strikes again! Bitch!) She told me about how her parents tried to turn her over to some group called Friends of Humanity. I just can't get over that her own parents would do something like that to her! I mean...they're her parents!!!

Clio looks like she's been on the run for quite a while. She isn't much taller than I am, though she has strawberry blonde hair and green eyes, and when she took a bath in my hot tub, I saw that she hadn't eaten very well in months, and even that she needed some medicinal herbs and stuff to take care of some sores she'd developed.

It was scary--and it made me think how lucky I am that Papa and Mama went through so much trouble to protect me from the current anti-mutant atmosphere that seems to be everywhere now.

I've given my cave over to Clio--it's obvious that she needs the safe haven much more than I do--besides, it's still warm enough that I can use that swimming hole when I want some privacy.

Since Clio and I are practically the same size, I gave her my spare togs that I had in the cave. I need to see about shoes, though...her feet are just a little wider than mine. I managed to get a tree near the cave to swell up some roots to act as a shoe-stretcher (hey...a literal shoe tree! hee hee hee!), so I made the sneakers that were with my running suit fit her.

I mentioned my stash of Oreos and offered them to Clio, and she said "Demeter, if ya have that, I'll worship ya." Then it struck me that Demeter is the Greek goddess of the earth, the harvest and even fertility. ha ha ha

I showed Clio how to make the phosphorescent lichens that light the cave dim or brighten (clap on! clap off!) and the secret knock that will open the portal. I'm going to let her stay as long as she wants. I hope that will be a long time. Maybe I can sneak some books and other stuff out to her...it shouldn't be too hard.

It's the least I can do...because there, but for the grace of God, go I.

==========