"Aislin! Turn on your transponder, Stark can track you - "

“I’m sorry, Peg. Not this time. Tell you what though, if I make it, I’ll take you dancing.”

"You better. Next Saturday at the Stork Club. Eight o' clock sharp. Don't you dare be late."

“We’ll get them to play something up beat. I’ll swing you around,” Aislin laughed. Maybe a little weakly. 

The ticking stops. Aislin tightens the field. 

"Aislin - " she says, choking.

-- the world freezes around Aislin, the explosion centimetres from consuming her.

Aislin keeps her hands up for a moment, thinking that maybe she was somehow doing this-

-but then she sees the fox. She frowns. "Okay..." She spins on the spot. The flames of the explosion are incredibly close but not coming any closer. And she seems to be the only thing in the room moving. "Peggy?" She calls to the radio, not really able to see if it was intact.

"You can keep trying, if you want. Not going to do much. Also, I'm a jackal. So much cuter than a fox."

"Particular about that, are you?" Aislin stares the little creature down. She refuses to be intimidated by a talking jackal. Not when she is everything that she is. "Why have you frozen time around me?"

"Would you rather be dead instead?"

"I think you'll find I expected to be dead. This is unusual." 

"Unusual times for unusual people. You are very unusual. Interesting too."

"You say that like you've never seen a girl blessed with incredible power working for the US Military."

"Maybe I'm new. Maybe I was travelling the multiverse and came across you and was like 'Oh, that's neat.'"

"Multiverse." Aislin scoffs. 

"And now you've saved me, momentarily. What's your next move? Confuse me to death? The bombs would do a quicker job."

"That's not really my style. Not in this continuity, anyway. I was more thinking of pushing the plot forward a little bit. Maybe around... sixty-ish years?"

"What plot? What the fuck are you talking about?"

Aislin lost one of the loves of her life, and her other one just listened to her die over the radio. Or nearly die, whatever. This was beginning to make her want to tear her hair out.

"Just imagine you're a character in a play. Either your story can end here... or you could jump ship into another one altogether. Is that clear enough for you?"

"You can't just...I don't know, jump me back to London? Or Brooklyn?"

"That's really not how this works. Not really narratively pleasing either."

"What's not narratively pleasing about reuniting a girl with the woman she loves?"

"Boring. Not enough drama and angst for me. And don't you want to be reunited with -- oh. That's spoilers. Don't want to ruin the big twist."

"So this is what you do? Jumping around between people's lives, deciding to help only when it interests you? And then you put conditions on that help?"

"Who said there were any conditions? I'm only offering you what I can offer. I'm not all-powerful."

Aislin was quiet for a moment, and lowered her head. 

"So, I'm saved from the explosion, but I lose 60 years."