10270/Squad Assessment: Killer Frost

Squad Assessment: Killer Frost
Date of Scene:	01 December 2019
Location:	Belle Reve Penitentiary
Synopsis:	Killer Frost is presented with an offer to continue working with the Suicide Squad, but she establishes some requirements for her participation.
Cast of Characters:	Rick Flag, Killer Frost

---

Rick Flag has posed:
BELLE REVE PENITENTIARY - RECREATION ROOM

The rec room at Belle Reve is named as such because it's the one room where convicts' restraints are relaxed enough to let them stretch their limbs--although doing so too quickly tends to warrant a half-dozen jabs from guards' stun batons.

Today, though, the room is almost empty, the only guards in earshot standing outside the door. An old television in the corner plays its one unending loop of wholesome children's programming. At the moment, Mister Rogers sings softly about helping others.

Rick Flag leans against a heavily padded ping-pong table that hasn't seen use in decades. He folds his arms over his chest. "So you haven't gotten sick of the Wall yet? That's saying something. Most everyone else I've talked to would love to get their hands around her throat."

Killer Frost has posed:
Ha. The Rec Room. A few ping-pong and card tables, children's programming on repeat, and a handful of the most dangerous human beings in the United States at any given moment. Sure, it's nicer than The Fridge, but Snow's only really ever been recovering or suffering these days. She's 'let out' as much for her survival as her enjoyment, and this is a fact Waller has made *extraordinarily* clear to her.

Right now, Caitlin Snow is hunched over a growing graveyard of styrofoam cups. A quarter of them contain blocks of ice, while the others steam gaily, topped-up with simmering tap water. She's made overample use of the water cooler's heater. The rising steam from the water bathes her blue-toned face and platinum hair, and every now and then she'll slip a finger into scalding water. A moment later, it joins the pile of icecubes, she looks a little less dead, and the guardsmen on the room's periphery pay a little more attention to her.

Seven cups. That's all she gets. She's on six right now.

"We're all just doing our jobs, aren't we? If the system that exists has loopholes large enough to fit a metaphorical *truck* - which the Wall does her best to approximate - who am I to complain? The system she abuses is the reason I'm leaving tomorrow." Snow fixes her arctic gaze on Rick Flag, cobalt lips curling into a small smile. Her face responds a fraction of a second too late. Just enough to be unsettling. Skin has a habit of jogging - not running - when it comes to chill temperatures.

"Why are you here? It's the day before my 'parole'."

Rick Flag has posed:
With a half-hearted shrug that seems way more practiced than it's meant to suggest, Flag clears his throat.

"I'm here for the same reason I'm usually here. The only reason I'm here, actually. To see if you want a ... different deal than what they'll offer you tomorrow." He looks down for a moment.

"As far as the parole board knows, you've been doing fine. And maybe you'll even get out of here. But you know that only means they'll watch you like a hawk for some fuck-up so they can toss you back in here."

Rick pushes himself off the table and steps slowly toward the collection of ice-cube cups. He looks into one, not moving too close to Frost.

"You /could/ always stick around instead. Rather than live a life of paranoid parolee--do some more jobs and just get the sentence ended that much more quickly." Flag glances at the door. "That's what I'm authorized to offer you. Of course, if you really wanted to be a squeaky wheel, you could consider doing that work while you're on parole."

Killer Frost has posed:
With a careful glance at the guards - yep, they're watching her like hawks - Snow elects to save her last bit of dinner for later. If she takes that last cup of heat she'll have the rest taken, and the guardsmen don't really understand thermodynamics. Water is certainly a better conductor than solid mass, but even water can't uniformly distribute the heat it contains. Overenergized molecules move too rapidly for the fluid matrix to contain, become gaseous, and...

Caitlin rests her cheek in a hand, ever bathed in the rising heat from the water beneath her. Ice crystallizes on her features, less a function of her mindset and more a statement to her passive absorption of the steam touching her body. Notably, that hazy moisture doesn't pass beyond her form. Nobody else seems to understand the game she's playing, but Rick - adept as he is - just might.

The ice cube cups Rick looks into are all uniform. Each one holds a block of ice, with a divot in the shape of Snow's finger in the middle.

"You're suggesting a lessening of my parole limitations? I don't believe you. Rather, I *do* believe you, but only in the sense that you believe you're offering me something superior to The Wall's offer. There's no way off of this leash, and I think we both know that." Caitlin Snow taps fingers along the tabletop, thoughtful.

"...You've read my dossier. You know my motivations and abilities. You're not afraid to look at me because you know I'm alive, which is more than the staff here can say. And I'm not so dull as to be unaware of the malleability of my 'sentence'. You want me on retainer, in exchage for some sort of permuted parole sentence? Let's try this, instead: You can have me as your pet, and I'll pretend you're doing just as Waller wants you to do. In exchange, I need you to do what you can to find me *leads*. High-yield energy experimentation. Heat sources. Money."

The air around Flag grows cooler, enough to allow him a single frigid, visualized breath. The statement is clear: Killer Frost has taken in enough heat to do as she likes. She chooses not to.

Rick Flag has posed:
Flag's visible breath is slow and long, lingering in the air in front of his face. He's quiet for several beats, his face scrunched as if in consideration of Frost's counter-proposal.

"Well," he finally says, his voice quiet, "I'm not sure we can make that happen. I suspect you're not going to have much support among the Task Force brass for whatever research you're interested in conducting." He nods his head at the ice. "There seems to always be an unexpected--if not undesired--side effect. Or maybe it's the primary effect."

Flag rubs a hand on his jaw. "But let me see what I can find out. There are ways around official channels. But the pace is slower, and you'll have to be content with a trickle of incoming resources--assuming there's even that much."

The man glances at the television and allows himself a smile. "Of course, I expect that you knew all this already. I figure if you didn't, your first response would have been to spit at me and turn it into an ice bullet or something along the way ... parole be damned."

Killer Frost has posed:
"Mister Flag," breathes Killer Frost, attention wandering from the sublimating heat before her to the condensing heat before Flag's mouth. Her attention is... it's absurd, the way she watches vapors and mists as though they were succulents vanishing before her eyes. Those pupils track to Flag's carotid artery and trace its line along his cheek, 'till her gaze meets his own.

"I am *dying*. Every second of every minute of every day. I do not *want* to..." She inhales, eyes closing - there's a clear hesitation. "...*take* what I take. The 'side effect' is my life, and I'll defend that to my last breath." The air around Flag becomes chokingly cold. Facial hair, nose hair, *all* hair stiffens. Breath is an invitation for a barbed intruder to enter your throat, to set endothelial tissue aflame and ignite the nerves.

"Still, I understand your intention. As I imagine the asks of me - your requests, filtered from Waller through you - will be nearly impossible to achieve, I ask that you offer me something *salient* once every thirty days. Is this acceptable? I could always refuse your illusory offer and take my chances with the parole forces, same as I will when I take your illusory offer. It makes no difference to me... I just want to resolve my condition."

Rick Flag has posed:
Flag nods slowly as Frost speaks, punctuating the statements. "Everything you've said is ... fair," he notes, weighing the last word before speaking it. "I need you to recognize that my response here is contingent on higher approval, but I suspect you'll get an answer soon."

He pauses again before continuing. "The thing is--"

Flag is interrupted by the television. Its loop is disrupted by a split second of garbled transmission before an advertisement plays.

"...YOUR MONEY, USE IT WHEN YOU NEED IT!" a sing-song voice calls out, the actor on the screen winking at the camera.

Then, the transmission returns to the familiar children's programming.

"Strike that," Flag says. "I think it's fair to say that this is something we can make happen."

Killer Frost has posed:
As quickly as it had gone frigid, Rick will find his air restored to its breathable condition, and his conversational opponent engaged in a slight smile. Sustained now as she is, her skin is more responsive, the pallor leaving her cheeks, her eyes less 'white' and more 'blue'. There's almost a bit of a flush to her cheeks. If you were insane, you might call her cute.

"Thanks for understanding my situation, Mr. Flag. I think I'm beginning to understand it, myself." She sets a finger into one cup of still-scalding water, and the fluid becomes ice as so many had before it. Her flesh pinkens, her eyes brighten, her hair becomes less stiff and more flaxen. Guardsmen respond - as they have been trained - but Snow backhands the rest of the styrofoam pyramid to the floor behind her in a splash of painfully hot liquid and so much unrecyclable waste.

"I want you to understand that I don't take promises lightly. My own, or those I receive. And when you're *me*, Mr. Flag," Caitlin intones, standing even as guardsmen rush to form a tight perimeter around her. Each of them is equipped with a LexCorp Refrigerator Beam projector - tech that would make Victor Fries lose his mind.

"When you're *me*, you don't have much of anything to lose. Your life, theirs, *anybody* else's... it's all food to me. We're both working towards the same goal, you understand? When I get what I want, you'll be safe. Until then..." Ice erupts from the television, a vicious curving stalactite that bursts from the center of the plasma-screen display. Mr. Rogers is destroyed, milliseconds after the blue spire splits his perfect HD forehead.

Immediately, Frost is subdued by a bevy of chill beams - she's on her knees within seconds, hissing against the onslaught of unwanted refrigeration, eyes squinched shut, limbs gone stiff in agony. The attack lasts only a moment, just enough to drain, daze, and confuse.

Rick Flag has posed:
"Yes," Flag replies in a flat tone, even as the alarms in the recreation room sound.

A synthesized voice intones over the speakers: <<RECREATION PRIVILEGES FOR INMATES REVOKED FOR 48 HOURS. RECREATION PRIVILEGES FOR INMATES REVOKED FOR 48 HOURS.>>

"I think we understand each other quite well," Flag continues. He nods and makes his way out of the room while the prison guards stand poised for a continuation of their initial containment strategy.

As he leaves, Flag is handed a radio, which he speaks into. "Flag here. I know you got all that. Let's see what we can line up to buy us some initial goodwill--and time for whenever we begin to hit some dead ends."