Life Ore Death - DC Feruchemy [Young Justice]

[Obloquy]

I am now proud to be a YJ author who has passed New Year's Eve in-universe and graduated to making original story events of the following year(s).
Renka is not an SI, she's from a medieval era society (Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy), and she knows all about her own powers but she starts with no clue who the Justice League are, what the plot will be, etc. Renka's main power is Feruchemy, where she stores traits - strength, healing, senses, body heat, emotional connection - in a metal "battery" and taps them later to bolster herself.

Life Ore Death updates once a week, is written with enough explanation for newcomers to either series (I hope), and has recieved a lot of compliments for characterizing people well and having traceable ripple effects. Thanks for reading!

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Life Ore Death​

Episode 1 - Declaring Dependents

* June 24 [Lois Lane Focus]
As the woman known to be connected to Superman, Lois Lane of the Daily Planet was well aware of the risks of superhero life, particularly the risk of abduction by super villains with intent to draw the Caped Crusader's attention. When she heard her name spoken by an unfamiliar voice, Lois twisted in her chair just enough to get a good view across the room of the likely speaker. The details of what she saw were enough to keep her focus and make her prick up her ears.

A raggedly dressed, dark skinned, besmudged young woman spoke to one of Lois's co-workers.

'Likely age: somewhere between an old sixteen and her early twenties. Ethnicity is indeterminate, potentially mixed, but likely around the Indian sub-continent. She definitely speaks with an accent that I've never heard before, which is new, and she is visibly impoverished,' Lois Lane assessed. 'Those clothes probably came from a charity bin, have seen some wear and tear since, and it doesn't look like she has reliable access to running water for laundry or showers. That canvas grocery bag probably holds most of what she owns.'

One part of Lois Lane felt her heart go out to the poor girl in such an unhappy situation. The journalistic part of her simultaneously wanted to weave the stranger's story into a heart wrenching op-ed about homeless youth, and Lois wondered if the girl was seeking her out because she had a story tip. A more maternal aspect of her wanted to bundle the poor dear away in blankets, never mind that it was summertime, and feed her full of soup, bread, and vegetables in the spirit of Lois's late mother.

The jaded, jumpy fraction of Lois Lane wondered how a girl in that condition could have gotten past the Daily Planet's security without superpowers, and guessed that another abduction was imminent.

The intern pointed the girl straight at Lois, who waved one hand in acknowledgement. The girl waved back with an uncertain smile and began carefully making her way across the room. She seemed in no hurry.

"Hello, I heard you were looking for me." The girl paused, a little startled at the greeting. Lois tensed nervously as she reached one hand into her bag, but no weapon was produced. 'Maybe she's holding onto a security blanket or something?'

"Hello," the girl pronounced carefully in her unrecognizable accent. "I speak English not well. I am sorry. My name is Renka. Do I speak with Lois Lane? Superman's girlfriend?"

"Yes, yes, focus on that and ignore my career and multiple journalistic awards and accomplishments," Lois replied drily. Renka flinched uncertainly. Lois felt like a cad when she remembered the first thing the girl had said. "I am sorry," she said slowly. "You still understand me?" Renka nodded. "I am Superman's friend. Why do you wish to know?"

"Can you-," she paused. Rearranged her grip on whatever she was holding in the bag. Lois tensed again when she heard the clank of metal, but nothing untoward happened. "Can you put me in contact with Superman?" she said in a rush, slightly more fluent than before.

"A lot of people want to talk to him. Is it an emergency? About a villainous plot? Is a bad person about to do a crime?" Lois corrected when Renka looked for a moment like she didn't understand.

"Um, stop a crime from happening?" Renka hazarded. After a moment she elaborated: "I have no home. No money. No family. But I have powers." She shrugged. "I can either commit crimes or stop them."

Lois couldn't help but find something starkly depressive about that blunt commentary on modern society.

"I... see. A wiser choice than many people your age. But it may be some time. Can you wait a few hours?" Renka shrugged.

"I have no job. No place to be. I can wait all today and tomorrow."

"Well then, if you don't mind you are welcome to wait here until the day is done," Lois invited. "After I finish this article, perhaps I could interview you? Talk to you about your life and history?"

"In some hours," Renka allowed, "but spell I use to speak well is almost out. Need a few hours then cast again?"

'She's a magic user, like Giovanni Zatarra? Interesting.'

"In a few hours. Have a seat," she invited, pulling out an empty chair. Renka smiled beatifically and plopped down, placing both hands inside her oddly clanking bag.

For the next few hours, Lois half forgot that the girl was there for the most part, other than answering a few questions if someone else dropped by to ask around. The last person of the day to do so was Clark, back from whatever lead he'd been chasing.

"I see you have a guest. What's the occasion?" he asked gently, offering out his hand to the unknown young lady. She took it and shook politely after a moment, before returning her hands to her canvas bag.

"She wants an in with Superman," Lois told him. Clark looked surprised for a moment, and he gave Renka a reassessing glance. "Her name is Renka. She's a young, homeless meta-human with some sort of magic ability. Her options, as she pointed out, are either committing crimes or stopping them. Isn't that an optimistic thought? She asked me to make an introduction. Smarter than most of the punks running around, isn't she?"

Clark nodded and departed with a minimal amount of discussion and banter.
~
"We'll just be waiting here, and Superman should probably drop by within a few hours," Lois Lane told Renka, closing the door to the newspaper building's roof. There had been an embarrassing moment when she'd almost forgotten about the young spell caster and walked out without her, but Renka had thankfully caught up quickly and reminded her. "As far as I know, he usually does patrols in the air starting around this time, and anyone on a rooftop will be in his line of sight pretty clearly. While we wait, could I interest you in an interview?"

Renka dipped her hand into her bag. "I'm sorry? Say again? Please."

"An interview? Tell me about your life? Your past?"

"Um, in a few days? After I settle in? Still have, uh, little investiture." Lois guessed that that was how she referred to whatever mana she used for her spells. That, or Renka wasn't willing to put in the effort of an interview if it didn't result in her link with Superman. Neither of which was totally unreasonable, given her situation.

"In a few days," Lois agreed, and she handed Renka a card with her contact information.

"You rang, Miss Lane?" Both women spun to find Superman hovering in the air off the side of the building. "And who might you be?" he asked Renka. She took a deep breath, bowed and answered in a rush. Lois noted that her accent had decreased.

'Is that a comfort thing, or… it would make sense if there were translation spells with that effect, I suppose…'

"Mister Superman. My name is Renka. I have powers, but I don't have a home, or connections. I hope you can help me find work other than crime."

"I see." He smiled warmly and dropped to the roof. "Well, I'm always willing to help where I can. The Justice League as a whole is very interested in recruiting the next generation of heroes as well. I won't force you into it – if you don't like the lifestyle we won't throw you out on the streets – but there are definitely some arrangements I can make. Would you be willing to show me a little more about your powers, first?" She nodded.

"I can," and she hesitated, glancing between Superman and Lois Lane. "I really hope you are good people," she muttered. "I can store things inside metal holders and draw them out later in greater amounts for a period of time."

"Things like… money? Weapons? Food?"

"Food a little," she laughed. "Things like strength, speed, weight, hope. Language speak well," she added pointedly. "Can you pick me up?" she asked, pulling a rusty nail out of her bag and extending her arms. Superman scooped her up easily. "Feel the difference? Store away weight and be light. Then pull it out and be heavy."

"Is she doing it?" Lois asked.

"Yes. Not enough to stress me-" obviously, "-but she was very light and then about as heavy as a car for a few moments. Are there any limits?" She dropped and hopped back on her feet.

"Only as much as I can store."

"I see. I can certainly arrange a place for you to stay for at least a few nights." He smiled warmly. "The League will ask you some questions, ask for a few demonstrations, and we'll see where to go from there.

She bowed twice. "Thank you, Superman. As well, thank you, Miss Lois Lane."

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* June 28 [Lantern Stewart Focus]
"This one is the best, sir" Renka finally told Green Lantern John Stewart, setting aside the alloy sample that matched her specifications. She smiled, and he returned a friendly nod. The homeless girl's good manners kept her on his good side through the 36 total hours of synthesis and testing it had taken them to identify all sixteen metal formulas that worked with her abilities.

"Then I believe our work is complete. I will pass these on to Batman and he should have the metal-minds ready for you in a few days. Remind me, are there any specifications for the designs?" He believed her claim was that only the chemical formula was important, but that had been said near the beginning of the testing, when his ring hadn't sampled her language thoroughly enough to be certain of what she said.

Renka paused, considering the question.

"I don't particularly need the metalminds in a specific shape to use them, but for convenience something I could wear, and several copies of each formula would be much appreciated. Rings, piercings, and arm bracers are most traditional. There are a few details specific to a few of the metals that merit some tweaks." He made a show of producing a green pencil and notepad, which made her giggle. "Tin-minds should be pretty small, because I don't need to charge them much, but I also need five or more of them because they each hold a different sense. I need two of the bendalloy-minds for similar reasons, please, and nicrosil-minds should also be small and numerous. Also, since gold is valuable, I'd appreciate if it were more surreptitious. If all that isn't too much to ask, sir?"

"Not at all. I hope your studying goes well, and you should have these ready in a few days." She turned to and passed out the door, returning to her assigned guest room in the Watchtower. Green Lantern Stewart gathered the metal samples and transported to the room where Batman and Superman were waiting.

"Anything additional to report?" the Dark Knight asked, turning away from the monitors that had been viewing the room.

"So far she seems to have a good character. Renka has been dedicated, possesses a serious work ethic beneath her good cheer, is strikingly intelligent despite her lack of education, and has been at least upfront where she is not straightforward."

"How so?"

"She hasn't told us what all of she can do, but she hasn't bothered to lie about it, simply claiming that either it is complicated to explain, she is uncertain, or she does not wish to answer. She has not gone into detail about her home world but scans of her antibodies and genetics indicate diseases and inheritance traits that are human, but not native to the humans on Earth. She studies and reads voraciously in her spare time, she has consistently shown manners and discipline despite working long hours, and whatever her background is has instilled in her a firm belief in Right and Wrong, despite the places where her code does not overlap with our own."

"I'm glad that my walk-in has such potential," Superman said. "We're agreed that she can stay?"

"On probation. Wonder Woman has also expressed interest in meeting another heroine. We'll need to get quite a lot of work done on her, though. Can you take the time to arrange it all?"

"Physical tests and training, as well as getting her literate and fluent in one of our languages? Clark Kent can take a day off for the first, and periodic check-ins for the second are easily doable whenever I drop by."

"More than that," Batman corrected. "She will need vaccines and medical inoculations, because she has no resistance to many of our diseases. She needs a legal grounding in our codes of conduct and engagement, and the way our governments work. I can get papers for her secret identity, if she so desires, but she'll need to be told about the possible countries and what citizenship entails. I also want you to try to find out more about her history and home, as well as how she came to be here."

"Wasn't what she mentioned in passing enough?" Lantern Stewart asked.

"Your ring's translation abilities did not extend through the camera. I was mostly working off of body language and tone," the Batman countered.

"I will send you a transcript of our translated conversation," John Stewart said. "The most prominent bits are some specifications for a few of her vessels, which she calls metal-minds, and the fact that she comes from a parallel universe."

"Would that be why her accent and features appear slightly off and unplaceable?" Superman guessed.

"Most likely. What details did she reveal?"

"It's a planet with an entirely different continental arrangement and history than ours, so I doubt any diverging point occurred in known history; she mentioned that they had no moon. Recently there was a tremendous civil war, but before then the government was a tyrannical monarchy and she was raised as a member of one of the slave races. The social upheaval had some correspondence with a metaphysical upheaval among higher dimensional being that she considered her gods, with the result being some environmental and cultural changes. She claims that her powers originated from one of these gods, whose name I believe translated as Harmony, but she was more reticent about how she worshipped and what commandments she followed. She did not recognize any of our religions or languages. Also, her earring is a religious artifact brought with her from her home."

"Her earring did not correspond to any metal known to your ring. Did she explain what it was made of?"

"She said, 'I know what it is but I do not feel comfortable discussing it. It is not dangerous.'"

"I'm willing to take that on trust," Superman said. "But you support keeping her around?"

"I do," Stewart affirmed.

"Wonder Woman makes three, and if Bats here ever learns to ease up a little she'll have four of us willing to vouch for her. I'll tell her that we'll work on her abilities and conditioning in a few days, and to keep up the good work with her studies until then." He started to walk away, but paused in the doorway. "Hey, John, did you ever get her to mention her age?"

"In passing. She wasn't certain of the exact dates and her world uses a different calendar system – I think their days are a different length as well – but when I scanned her she registered in early post-adolescence. Eighteen to twenty, we could guess. Probably of age, or we can call her seventeen if you need to."

"Do you think she's safe?" Batman asked.

"Treating her like she isn't is the best way to make it so," Stewart answered. "If she is this good an actress and liar, then the best thing to do is give her a chance to act on it; I think she's clean, if confused, but I know the way your mind works."

"Is it safe to let her leave?"

"Certainly. If you are worried about her stealing information of hacking our systems, keeping her up here longer only makes that more likely. Or are you thinking of offering an inch and seeing how much she tries to take?"

"Would introducing her to one of the sidekicks help?" Superman suggested. "We could send her on a low-level mission or two and see how she reacts. I certainly wouldn't complain about a chance to take on a partner of my own, no matter how different her skill-set is from mine."

"You don't think she would hold you back." Coming from the Batman, it was neither a question nor an accusation.

"Anything with enough threat to get past me and put her in danger should have half the League beaming over as back-up. You can't seriously want to keep her up here forever, Bruce, can you?"

The Batman said nothing.

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This is my first time posting my own story on Sufficient Velocity - I've usually been an anonymous lurker/guest - so I'm still going to be experimenting with writing and formatting styles. Any and all feedback is helpful. Seriously, I love posts, no matter how small, unimportant, or insulting the subject is.

I'm also not nearly as well-versed in DC comic lore as most of the people writing these, so if continuity errors are pointed out they may or may not be ignored because Plot, but suggestions for characters and ideas are always very welcome.

Maybe other people will run further with the possibilities and drop off characters who become villains, or are reincarnated, or don't appear until after the time skip, or have to grow up and travel back in time along with Impulse... or maybe this will turn out to be a flop.
Either way, I intend to enjoy finding out.

By the way, this is the first post, but I moved the prologue to page 10 or so, which is where the << Index button will take you.

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[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Declaring Dependents - part 2

* June 30 [Renka Focus]
Rubbing the gauze pad bandaged to her arm, Renka followed the Man of Steel into a room filled with complicated, padded, seats attached to other equipment vaguely reminiscent of a rack. She might have guessed it was some sort of complicated interrogation/torture room, were it not for the fact that it was cheerily lit and in the home of people who had thus far been virtuous and heroic.

'I may never get used to that. Not for a while, at least,' she figured as the door closed behind her automatically. The level of technological disparity and the variety of abilities she had observed in this new world was intimidating, but it was a welcome challenge and encouraging for the development of her own home. 'Even if I'm not likely ever to see it happen,' she mused. 'Bah! Enough moping. I don't want to tap connection this early in the day when I was doing well before, so what is this room for? Those odd seats, but there are also gripping bars on the wall over there, and those mirrors, and weights. Oh, weights.'

"Practice?" she asked, making a biceps-curl gesture to get the point across. Superman smiled and nodded.

"Practice. I want to see how you work out and I can show you how to use anything you don't recognize."

'He intends to watch me… watch my work ethic? I put on a show for him, using the things here. No, I'm not tapping now. Wait, did he want it with or without Feruchemy to increase my physical capabilities?'

"Magic use, yes? No?"

"No, just show me what you can do on your own."

'On my own… Only the things that I own? Except not using my metal-minds. Skills and experience? Am I overthinking this? …Well, he'll tell me if I do anything wrong. Should I put these somewhere?'

"Yes? No?" she asked, taking off a few of her finger rings. He pointed and she stuffed them into the indicated cubby. Walking past the unfamiliar mechanisms, Renka squared her feet in front of a suspended bar, and with a huff of effort she began a smooth set of pull-ups. Superman stood by, watching approvingly, and felt no need to move until after she had completed an even one hundred, though she was visibly straining at the end.

"What are you-" he began, when she twisted and began clambering around the bar. Then, with a quick glance for permission, she started on her sets of upside-down sit-ups.

Over the next hour he showed her how to use the weights and equipment, which was when she finally gave up and increased her language abilities for the sake of certainty. Last of all was the combat training.

"You are sure I will not injure you?"

"Using only your hands, and without magic, yes, I'm quite positive. It is very difficult to hurt me. Just make sure to say if I actually hurt you." Renka nodded, reassured, and when a sound screeched with no apparent origin- 'I'll need to get more used to that.' –she twisted into a kick aimed at the pads on his arms. Superman obligingly let it push him back a little, and she followed through with a few more kicks, then knees, then an elbow strike that she turned into a leverage off of his upraised arms to hit him in the face.

She had to flinch back a little to keep from automatically gouging out his eyes, and Superman took that as his signal to begin fighting back.

Her kicks were mostly ignored, even when she got desperate enough to aim at increasingly vulnerable targets. Holds, grips, and throws were disregarded by his strength. Her few attempts at blocking knocked her back several steps each.

'Fighting an unstoppable, overwhelming enemy without any metalminds to even the odds. It's like the Year of Ruin all over again. Joy. At least there's only one of him.' Superman obviously wasn't really trying to injure her, keeping his movements slowed and intentionally telegraphed, but she obviously wasn't getting in any hits that he wasn't letting her have, and if he'd been putting in much effort she'd have been ripped apart.

'I am not in real danger, this is only practice, he's not going to hurt me hurt me hurtkillme!'

Adrenalin spiking, Renka capitalized on another slow swing of his arms to drive her fingers into his eyes, leaning her whole body weight against him, and using the recoil to push away and gain breathing room.

'OhnoIhurthim! Rustrustrustrustrust'

"Superman! Rusts and Ruin! Hurt are you?" she babbled.

"Yes, yes, quite fine," he reassured her, blinking for a few moments before he met her eyes easily. His vision was undamaged. "I am rather hard to hurt. That was a good trick, even if it was brutal. Do you normally fight with a weapon?"

"I, uh-" 'Thank the Mists; I thought I'd done him a lot of harm. I guess those few images I saw were accurate. His whole body is protected, not just his skin.' "Sometimes daggers. I spent a while carrying around an obsidian axe I took off an Inquisitor. There was a big Koloss sword, but that was unwieldy so I left it behind as a trophy." She stopped when she realized what she'd just revealed. "I am not trained in any weapons. Also, I usually have a metal-mind or more to help me. Most of my fights against superior enemies end with me making a distraction and running, or outlasting them." She wiped a bead of sweat off of her forehead.

"Untrained, but you've had experience fighting," he summarized.

"Yes. Um, I'm almost running out of language," she warned. 'Technically not true, but I'm running low and I want to charge some more.'

"You did well. Do you remember how we got here?"

"I do." 'Out the door of my room and left to the end of the hall, turn right and walk to the third door on the right with the buttons, wait and walk into the moving room and press the button with the squiggle mark after tapping with the rectangle that tells the tower who I am, then left, second right, up the hall and through the door at the end.'

"Keep your card and come back whenever you like to work out. I won't be here tomorrow, but one of the others might want to meet you. Later we'll work on teaching you a specific martial art and introducing you to the obstacle courses. May I walk you back to your room?"

"I think I'll try the machines. Thank you." She bowed politely and didn't turn away until Superman had exited the room. Then she finally took a moment to collapse next to her cubby, discarding her duralumin armband so that she didn't tap it from habit. "Rust and Ruin! That could have been bad. Maybe I should rethink my distaste for copper. I could do with getting rid of a few bad memories if they're going to bother me that much." She fiddled with her earring, wondering whether she had her connection to Harmony still in this new world. He'd told her it would be uncertain….

"Right. Okay, what is my order of priorities at the moment?" 'And is it safe to think out loud? That's a bad habit that's gotten me almost killed a few times, but this place is safe. As safe as I can be in a place where I don't know where I am, I can't leave, and I've known no one for more than a few days except by hearsay.' "Safe. I'm safe enough. Okay." She fiddled with the earring again.

"First, what do I need to worry about? I don't know where I am. I don't know the local language very well. I have no money, very few possessions, and no friends or support. The people here are capable of things that amaze me, both with and without their own forms of investiture, so I am functionally out-classed and out-numbered, despite the fact that many of them fight with each other.

"What have I already done about it?" 'I've kept secrets about exactly what I do and how I do it, and I'm brainstorming and willing to experiment with new tricks.' "I've recruited help, so that I can get training, education, and resources. I've gotten on the good side of the law by agreeing to fight crimes instead of commit them-," 'anymore,' her mind added.

"I've gained more materials of better quality than ever before. I'm learning the language and culture without relying on connectivity. I am-" 'hopefully,' "-making friends and finding allies willing to get me more help, and who I think I like enough to help in turn.

"What can I do from here, and where do I want to go? I think I want to hear a bit more about heroes before I dedicate my life to that cause, but a year or two or five is not unreasonable. Beyond that, I want to get to know more about where I've ended up." 'I know that I won't ever go home as long as I live, but I'm living on extra time loaned to me by a god who was nearly my step-father, so that doesn't matter as much.' "What jobs are available? I should ask about that. I don't think carpentry or metalworking will be very valuable to people who can build these things-" Her eyes sweep across the room. "-but no one else should be able to do what I do, so there should be some way to use that.

"Short term list: learn fighting instead of winging it; ask about jobs and skills; more language study; and try to talk to old heroes about how they got that way." 'Charge my metal-minds more and learn how to actually use them properly. I don't think I should be burning through hours' worth of connectivity as quickly as I do, so I might be doing something wrong.' "But for now, I should try my exercise trick."

The Batman had been very generous when providing her with metal-minds; enough so that even if the heroes were secretly maleficent, she would go along with them for some time just to repay their generosity. Except for gold and electrum, she had been provided with several shapes and sizes of each metal-mind. There were rings and small piercings, nuggets and small plates, necklaces and bracelets, and arm bracers, in various mixes of the metal types. The Green Lantern had informed her that the look on her face had been quite amusing, and both he and Superman had returned her hugs when she jumped on them.

'And okay, it was a bit pre-meditated as hugs go because physical contact and affectionate gestures encourage emotional bonds to develop and I want them to like me, but I genuinely wanted them to get how grateful I was too!' she admonished the jaded part of herself that was always paying attention to her own manipulations.

Wearing pewter on her arms – or anything on her arms when she planned to tap pewter – had proven painful in the past, but if she would only be storing then it should be safe enough. Renka thus put the pewter ring she had brought on her left hand, wobbling for a moment as she began actively storing a chunk of her strength away.

A steel ring on her right hand that received a portion of her physical speed joined the pewter piece, and she added small tin studs that would more totally store her unneeded senses of hearing, taste, and smell. Since she would be lifting weights it seemed unwise to alter her own weight, and if anything she would be tapping electrum for determination to get through this instead of storing it away, but because this was mindless, repetitive work she slid zinc around her ankle to store away acuity for when she needed to think later.

Then she began her exercises.

The weights and the laps were only parts of her full capabilities, albeit large parts, but training her strength and speed while also storing was a trick she had developed on her own. The logic was that tapping strength to lift weights was counterproductive for exercise, because it didn't stress her base strength. Conversely, then, if she cut her strength in half and trained she would strengthen that half faster, and the increase would then remain when she regained her full strength!

Perhaps it worked that way, and perhaps it was just placebo. But she liked to do it like that, so she did.

Two hours later Renka stumbled back into her assigned room, disheveled but satisfied with her efforts. She stripped off her clothing (loaned to her from the Justice League, but in approximately her size comfortably made), dumped them in the pile, and picked out replacements (this wasn't the first time she'd had more than one, two, or three sets of clothing, but she'd never had as many as she did now, nor in such diversity and good condition).

To conserve water, they'd asked her not to spend more than twenty minutes on ablutions, but she put on a necklace with a brass charm (her favorite, and practice keeps perfect) and spent those twenty minutes in a steaming hot, soapy paradise. 'It's a large change from usually cold baths or splashing water around in rivers and creeks,' she considered, toweling off contentedly. 'And it's in my room, for my use alone, and there's running water and a sewer system that doesn't stink. That was one problem even Harmony couldn't quite fix, last time I looked.'

She couldn't cook in the room, but her card gave her access to a small, shared kitchen area. There was also a supply of snack bars and drinks that she preferred to hoard in the room. Technically, she knew how to cook, but most of that was over open fires using her native ingredients, and she didn't feel like pressing her luck unsupervised. Not yet.

'Not until I've gotten up the gumption to try manipulating my luck,' she figured ruefully, considering the collection of chromium pieces that she had barely dared to handle. 'Yeah, no. Not until I'm in a position where my luck running out isn't likely to kill me.' She washed down what was an almost sickeningly sweet granola bar with the oddly chemical water and pressed the buttons that began her language-study program on the screen.

"Weight, speed, strength, health, and connection," Renka counted off, gathering five metal-minds she could charge while working on her language skills simultaneously. Then she sidled onto the bed, propped herself up, and after the mental workings that began making her less than she was, Renka focused on the discussions happening on-screen. "Oh, wow. Do they really keep that much food in one place?" she wondered, watching the characters grocery shopping in a supermarket.

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* July 1 [Batman Focus]
"She isn't otherwise occupied?" Diana of Themyscira double-checked as she and Batman strode down the Watchtower's halls.

"She went to bed slightly before midnight, Metropolis time, as has been her habit," he answered. "She woke-up at nine a.m., Metropolis time, and had a carbohydrate-heavy vegetarian breakfast. She did a brief set of stretches in her room and reviewed the animal-focused section of the program, which appears to be her favorite by far. She briefly traveled to the gym to run a few laps but appeared to decide against working out strenuously, and instead returned to her room. Her lunch was a plate of granola bars, raw carrots, and raw potatoes, eaten while working through a new section of the study program. She spent some time writing things down in her native language and is currently either meditating or napping, which appears to be a requirement of charging her spells, to judge by how often she does so."

Batman did not feel guilty or uncomfortable about invading the stranger's privacy so thoroughly, not when she was an unknown in their most secure base with an uncertain history, but he had expected that Wonder Woman would chastise him for the invasion. He noted that she did not, tentatively adding it to a list of uncertain things about the stranger in their midst. 'The real question, of course, is how she might have affected Wonder Woman when they have never met? Perhaps it has to do with the claimed religious origins of the spells conflicting with Wonder Woman's divine heritage due to conflicting theologies? But we would have expected to see that in other, prior interactions with other pantheons, then.'

"She has also been eager to place herself at our disposal the past few days, and made large shows of gratitude for what we have provided. I doubt she has any action that she could do here and be unwilling to interrupt it if one of her benefactors asks her to. What are you planning to do?" he added.

"Teach her some formal combat skills, primarily. See how she can work her powers into combat as well."

Batman stopped a few doors early, preparing to disappear back to the Watchtower, and then to Gotham, but first he wanted to see what happened when the two met face-to-face. Wonder Woman hadn't included the rather simple statement of wanting to get to know the would-be heroine, which was a second mark in as many minutes.

His façade almost broke into a boggle when Wonder Woman made a third uncharacteristically uncaring act by using her card to immediately enter the room instead of knocking to request permission.

'What is going on with her? Or is this affecting all of us?' He resolved to have Martian Manhunter and Giovani Zatara check everyone over for telepathic or mystical influences as soon as was feasible.

____________________________________________________________________________​

* July 1 [Wonder Woman Focus]

Diana strode assuredly into the dim room, the lights reactivating as she did. The object of her interest was on the bed, almost asleep and with her clothing in disarray. The young woman's shirt was hiked up halfway, exposing her bare stomach, and her hands balanced eight pieces of jewelry on the exposed skin as her eyes hovered on the verge of being entirely closed.

But the young woman was not entirely asleep; Diana saw her give a twitch of recognition that someone had entered, and then the jewelry clinked and slid to the bedcover as she sat up-

Diana suddenly realized that, in JLU's Watchtower or not, she had committed a rather severe breach of etiquette by entering unannounced and uninvited.

The young woman- 'Renka, her name was Renka.' –picked up the pieces of metal, stood, and bowed. Her hands were busy re-affixing some of the bracelets and bangles, and Diana took a moment to wonder if it was a trick of the light that those well-muscled arms had seemed so withered a few moments ago.

"Hello. I am Renka. I think you are Wonder Woman?" she managed choppily. Renka finally rose from her bow.

"Yes. I apologize. I am sorry for entering your room uninvited." She bowed, which triggered another bow from the Watchtower's newest resident, and both stayed silent for a moment.

Renka sighed and relaxed, her body posture seeming more open, suddenly.

"Is this important enough for my language spell, or not?"

"It… should not be. Not if you want to practice speaking, although it may be handy later. I wanted to invite you sparring and offer to show you some martial arts. That's why I barged into your room. Which I'm sorry for," she stammered again. Renka's posture closed off again slightly, but she smiled warmly all the same.

"My room in the house that is yours," she answered in her original, methodical speech. "Practice?" Renka added, miming first a biceps curl, and then an exchange of punches.

"Yes, practice," Diana agreed, more comfortable on the familiar ground. "Exercise," she made the weights motion again before switching to the punches, "and sparring. Perhaps a little language practice as well?"

"Exercise and sparring," Renka repeated. Diana guessed that she was trying to memorize the new vocabulary. She said, "Language practice," with a nod of understanding, but was more obviously iffy on the "Perhaps?"

"Maybe. Might. Could."

"Maybe. Yes," Renka agreed with another smile. She looked to leave most of the metals behind, but that wasn't what Diana wanted.

"Bring them," she instructed, pointing. "Yes. Bring them." Renka fiddled with a bracelet before her body language opened up again and she focused on her conversational partner.

"I'm sorry, I should bring the metal-minds?"

"Yes please," Diana asked, slightly abashed at having been less than polite in her requests. "I hoped to see how well you could fight while using them. I also planned to teach you some unarmed and weapons combat techniques."

"Oh! Thank you. I should warn you, I have limited use of my metal-minds and won't use them much in sparring or else I might deplete the charges. But I can do a round or two. I'm turning my spell off again?"

"Quite alright," Diana agreed. "Do you realize that you're speaking Greek instead of English? Themysciran Greek, for that matter?"

"I'm using magic to speak with you," Renka explained with a shrug, gathering her chosen metal-minds. Then the more closed body language – 'That is the sign her spell has dissipated run out or been stopped, I believe,' – returned, and Diana nodded. They shared a mutual smile and walked together to the gym. The Amazon didn't need to do warm-ups or laps, but she stretched and ran beside Renka to help build up a rapport. The two moved mostly in silence, save for the introduction of bodily vocabulary – "Toes, feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, hips, stomach," – until Diana waved Renka over to the sparring platform. "Metal-mind sparring," Diana proposed.

"Metal-minds. One? All?"

"All. I want to see you fight your best. I will not be hurt," she explained carefully. 'It would take much greater physical or magical force than you can probably bring to bear to harm me, so don't let fear stop you.' Renka nodded, and she fiddled a bit to rearrange the way she was wearing her jewelry. "Take your best shot."

'She moved a bracelet to her ankle? Really? I wonder why: does the placement affect how quickly or well she can use her spells?' Renka moved her feet into a loose stance, probably cobbled together. The buzzer sounded and Diana had a moment to realize: 'Oh, the bracelet might have been uncomfortable if she wore it when her arm muscles swelled.' Then she needed to get back on her feet and reassure Renka that being punched halfway across the room had not seriously harmed her.

"You is not hurt? Are not hurt?"

"It is, 'You are not hurt,' or 'Are you hurt'. And no, I am not hurt. Surprised and impressed, but not hurt." 'I barely saw her muscles finish swelling before she had closed the distance and decked me. Her footing was sloppy and that right hook was not the best way to deliver the strike, but it was still certainly effective.' "Once more? Spar again?"

Renka slowly looked over her jewelry before she nodded. "One more spar," she specified.

They retook their positions in the ring and the bell sounded once more. Diana had been prepared for Renka to try another rush, but she wasn't taken by surprise when Renka instead stepped forward more cautiously. Her arm and leg muscles had also swelled noticeably less than in the first round.

'Either she wants to show off greater diversity with her skills, she really did expend a lot of power and is being more conservative, or both.' Diana moved her eyes to focus on Renka's feet and movement. 'If I had to guess, I'd say she's seen trained fighters enough to notice how they moved, and tried to do something that looks similar and feels comfortable, but never received any long-term, formal combat training.' Tension in Renka's ankles and calves telegraphed a roundhouse kick well in advance, and Diana passively got a little of her own back by catching Renka's leg and effortlessly flipping her backwards.

"Oof!" Renka had never properly learned how to fall, Diana assessed, but she did roll with the momentum and scramble to keep distance until she could stand. When she was on her feet Diana went on the offensive to test how she handled aggression.

'Renka has been in several high-stress combat situations in the past,' Diana judged, considering the flashes of panic and tension in the younger woman's eyes and facial muscles as she dodged. 'Most her fights have been against superior opponents who she wanted to escape, rather than defeat, I'll wager. She's making much more effort to stay mobile and out of reach than is warranted against me. Well, more than is warranted against what she's seen of me; I'm not using anywhere near my full abilities.' A slow, directionless anger began to simmer in her stomach at the thought of this young woman forced to run, hide and fight for her life against unknown, overwhelming opponents.

Which, when put into context beside the fact that Renka was capable of punching one of the Justice League's founders across the room faster than she could react, raised some very uncomfortable questions about what in Tartarus young Renka had been fighting for her life against.

Kick, leg sweep, retreat.

Jab to the face, grab, throw, recover.

Twist, hold, break, knee, kick, elbow.

Grab, headbutt, retreat, double-back and kick!

The two women pressed each other back and forth across the ring for the better part of half an hour before Diana capitalized on a mistake and threw Renka out of the ring.

'I wonder if she gave me that opening just to end it,' Diana considered, knowing that Renka had slid away from a similar maneuver several minutes earlier. 'Perhaps I simply wore down her stamina.' She had noticed something about Renka's enhancement spells, though.

"You weren't using your metal-minds at the end of the fight, were you?"

"Not before, after… um, I stop when I kick and you, ah, catch... number three kick catch," Renka confirmed, getting to her feet and giving a bow that Diana made certain to return.

'She stopped after the third time I caught her kick and turned it into a hold against her. That was a little past the halfway point of out match,' Diana measured when she glanced at the time.

"Impressive. I am impressed. You were good, you did well," she corrected when Renka's face betrayed a lack of comprehension.

"Impressive. You did well," Renka repeated slowly.

"Yes. May I show you show combat forms now?" Diana suggested. Renka nodded agreeably.
~
"She proved to be an adequate student, picking up what I showed her well enough despite retaining a few bad habits. Other than a few more lessons, she'd be best left to practice on her own with the occasional check to ensure that she isn't slipping into bad habits, and eventually move into live combat," Diana finished. "Now, will you tell me what spell effect you believe I am under? Giovani's presence outside the door is not exactly subtle," she added archly, after Batman and Superman shifted guiltily.

"I cannot detect any mind- or behavior-altering spells on you, Diana," Giovani reassured her. "However, from what I observed between your actions with her on the monitor, and your summary just now, I do agree that something unusual is going on." Diana arched an eyebrow. "Between spending time in young Ms. Renka's presence, and describing that time spent to us after leaving her presence, you became much more perfunctory and disinterested. I would have predicted you to be ecstatic about a new female hero and far more invested in planning further lessons and keeping in touch, as opposed to the distant and uninvolved descriptions and training plan you outlined."

"Batman thinks I am under the same influence, since I've not been dropping in on her two or three times a day, even though I've been on the Watchtower for other reasons and had the opportunity to do so," Superman added. "I told him that I just didn't see the need, and he pointed out-"

"That usually meeting and making friends with someone like her would be a draw in and of itself, even we weren't interested in her history and abilities," Batman continued. "Furthermore, despite both of you," he gestured to Superman and Wonder Woman, "possessing warm, compassionate, and outgoing personalities, neither of you have referred to her- to Renka by name. Instead you use more impersonal pronouns and references. Additionally, Wonder Woman, you are not one for faint praise, but you downplayed Renka's accomplishments when speaking to us in comparison to what you told her to her face. That isn't even taking into consideration the way you ignored her privacy by barging in before you and Renka ever met, only to realize the issue once you met her in person."

"I… I don't… I'm just not…" It was difficult for her to put into words just why the shine had worn off of the girl after they parted ways. "I believe you may be right," she admitted, pinching the bridge of her nose to stave off the expected headache.

Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta and Crown Princess of the Amazon Nation, closed her eyes.

Diana, the Wonder Woman {{The Nascent Titan, she who illuminates the beauty and truth of the Wide World, opened her eyes and sought inward.}} opened her eyes and locked gazes with Batman.

"I don't feel any specific magical or telepathic suggestions in myself, other than J'onn's scan of my mind, but there is something odd about my bond with her. With Renka. The closest description is that it feels worn out, but not... frayed. Flimsier. As though we hadn't been in contact for a long time and lost some of that closeness. Hollowed out, instead of solid. Does that make sense?"

"I also have detected no telepathic interactions or implants, Diana, but I touched the young lady's mind before scanning your own, and I noted something potentially dangerous to her well-being," the Martian Manhunter informed the group as he faded into view.

"Hm? Anything I need to know before I check her over for magic?" Giovani asked.

"I could not feels her performing or preparing any of her spells, although I suspect I felt her decision to begin doing so at one point. Yet, I was most alarmed to realize that something appears to have left a synthetic 'back-door' into her mind. It is closed but not locked, potentially leaving her more vulnerable to any telepath with sufficient power."

"How vulnerable?" Batman asked sharply. "Do we need to worry about her being controlled or having her mind raided for information?"

"I will give you more information when I better understand the matter myself. However, we may wish to ask her, as whatever this was appears to have been incorporated into her mind, so she may be aware and accepting of it. Other than that, the emotions I found included a cautious hope, a small amount of paranoia, and an admirable resolve, but nothing malicious."

"Did you introduce yourself to her, or scan her secretly?" Giovani asked. Batman answered first.

"I asked him, and will ask you, Giovani, to scan her without her knowledge so that we can get a baseline of her mind and readings before asking her to consent to other, more thorough tests if we need to."

Diana raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "She is our guest here in good faith and she has expressed little negativity that I am aware of. Perhaps that small amount of paranoia J'onn mentioned is warranted and more, if you need to so thoroughly invade her privacy. Have you considered whether this strain on our bonds with her is also affecting you?"

"Yes, and I am being certain to follow protocols that I wrote down well before she ever contacted us," Batman answered. "Moreover, she is an unknown in the center of our world-wide operations, and if she is not trustworthy then she may have access to all of our databases and many of the unsafe weapons and materials we have confiscated and stored here."

"Following protocols," Superman mused. "Well, if there really is some curse keeping her from having friends, I might want to try that out to make sure that she doesn't slip through the cracks. Write myself a note to check-in with her- with Renka I mean, once each day whether I think I need to or not. You up for the same thing, Diana? Maybe once every other day or so?"

"I believe I will try that," she agreed, still distracted by contemplating what possible forces might have influenced her mind without notice.

____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________​

AN: The dark gray bits, by the way, are the closest I can figure out how to do invisible letters.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Declaring Dependents - part 3
* July 7 [Superman Focus]
'There definitely is some odd effect here,' Superman considered once more as he stood in front of the door to Renka's assigned room. 'Nothing is pushing me away or telling me not to bother, but even standing here again, this still feels like a business meeting, or like meeting a new person instead of meeting a young woman I have begun to know and respect. Granted, I do have reasons for letting her- for letting Renka slip through the cracks these few days, what with-' Painful thoughts. He grimaced in distaste as he remembered the events of CADMUS's activities and the bombshell that he had been cloned. '-everything that happened, but it doesn't feel like a failure of promise or responsibility, just slightly annoying.'

"Renka?" He knocked on the door instead of opting to override the lock or peer through and check with his x-ray vision. "This is Superman. Are you free to talk?" He resolved that if the answer was no – Wonder Woman said she had spent the last hour with Renka, working out, when they ran into each other in the Watchtower halls – he would still return after several hours to be certain that he did not skimp on this responsibility he had chosen to undertake.

Especially considering the idea Batman, Red Tornado, Black Canary, and Martian Manhunter had been bandying about and developing for implementation.

"Renka, are you in the room?" he called again, knocking louder. His intentionally toned-down super-hearing still caught the sound of bustling and soft footsteps padding to the door.

"Yes?" her voice asked as the door slid open.

An awkward blush dusted Clark Kent's face as he wished he had used x-ray vision so he could have known to come back later.

Wearing only a towel, a necklace, an earring, and a bracelet, Renka flipped a bit of wet hair back from her face and smiled.

"Superman! I am sorry, please come in," she invited.

__________________________________________​

* July 7 (same time-ish) [Renka PoV]
'I hope I never get used to this,' Renka decided, stepping into the steaming water. It far too hot for her body, and tinges of discomfort began arcing across her arms and back, but the familiar act of charging her brass medallion stored the excess away again and left her at the most comfortable temperature. 'It would be a shame to stop appreciating such wonders.'

Then, over the drizzle of water drops, Renka heard an impact and a voice that may have called her name. She stepped out of the shower, stopped the water, and tipped the six-minute timer hourglass on its side.

"Just a moment," she mumbled, using the towel to dry the duralumin-mind bracelet she had been storing her connection into. She took another moment to ensure that she had ceased the storage process, since diminishing her connection to people while there were people around to have that relationship diminished might harm their goodwill towards her.

She was halfway across the room before her observations about the local culture's location-appropriate-exposure beliefs rang an alarm in her mind. "Mists!" she muttered, doubling back to grab the towel again.

'I think, unfortunately, that I haven't gotten down all the intricacies of when it is or is not appropriate to wear or not wear things. Rusts! I mean, yes the Rachel woman was a few threads short of naked with scores of people around on that… 'beach?' That sounds right. But then she was wearing a big towel in the privacy of her own home….

'Given what happened when Eric showed up, I hope I'm not giving out any invitations, but they were shown together and kissing well before then, which still looks like a romance-only act in this world too. Wait, she was wearing a towel on her head too, should I grab a second one?'

"Renka, are you in the room?" Superman's voice called, knocking again.

'Harmony! Thank you, universe. I know their culture emphasizes monoamory – well, monoamory for women and monogamy for men in relationships – and Superman is with Lois Lane so he's safe, and there are never two men involved in that sort of thing so even if he isn't alone I don't need to worry.'

She quickly wrapped the towel around her torso in imitation of the women she had studied on the screen, and pushed the button to open the door with her free hand.

"Superman!" He was alone. "I am sorry, please come in," she managed in his native language. Her fluency was increasing, although she would soon need more exposure to practice in real life, if her experiences learning old Terris held true to English as well. She stepped back to let him in and caught his blush. 'He's been a good man so far, so I hope he'll forgive any missteps I make. Should I bother tapping duralumin?' When he began trying to say something while refusing to look at her Renka gave in and pulled connection from her bracelet.

"Okay, I'm using the spell. Is this immediately important and did I make a horrible misstep?" she asked quickly.

"I, well, no, it's just a little embarrassing. Usually it is improper for a grown man to be alone with an undressed young lady, especially for the lady." He still didn't really look at her. Unimpressed but worried, Renka arched a single eyebrow.

"I have no interest in fornicating with you and I believe you are promised to Miss Lois Lane." she pointed out. "If you respect this I am willing to trust you in my room like this, or if not I can throw on the clothes I just took off. Those are drenched in sweat, and I feel I don't really want to sully clean clothing when I am unwashed. How urgent is this?"

"Not at all urgent; I just wanted to check in on how you were doing and apologize for not doing so the past few days. Things were rather… unpleasantly busy," he admitted. "I also have an idea about your progression from here that I want your opinion on, but it can wait half an hour while you shower."

'But your time is valuable because you save people's lives everyday, and I don't care,' Renka finished mentally. 'Considering what I know about psychology, maybe this is an appropriate place to drop some harmless tidbits about where I come from,'' she decided. 'I certainly haven't been betrayed yet, after all.'

"Growing up," Renka began, "the first decade and change of my life involved common use of communal bathing facilities shared by both genders and multiple ages. I was also somewhat intentionally de-sensitized to certain acts, ostensibly for my own good, until I ran away. Then my experiences involved either washing in rivers out in the open with no privacy, or in tubs under the eyes of whichever families were willing to put me up for the night.
"What I've seen and heard suggests that I have nothing to fear from you," she continued blandly as he began to look more directly at her, "and unless this particular propriety has significant repercussions I am willing to either speak with you in a towel, if you do not object, or to speak with you through a closed door and over the sound of running water as I shower, letting you more quickly get back to saving lives. Your choice," she finished. It looked like Mister Superman need a few more seconds to process this.

"You are a mature young woman," he said, looking her only in the eyes. "You need not feel that I am in any way wasting my time spent with you, but I am willing to speak through a door if you are and you want to shower so badly." A faint smile as he sniffed and added: "You certainly do need it, I admit." Renka knocked her knuckles against his arm.

"Come in then, and sit on the bed or chair, it's your League's room and I don't care," she ordered, turning and stalking back to the bathroom. Her smirk twitched a little wider when she heard him choke as she unwound the towel a few steps before crossing into the tiled room, but she closed the door four-fifths of the way and stepped out of sight of the crack before anything else was said or done.

'I wish I'd gotten a good look at his face. He didn't even see anything other than my back - they show more than that on commercials in children's television episodes - and that sound he made was hilarious.'

Satisfied, Renka flipped the hourglass up again, restarted the water, and stepped in. Storing one attribute while tapping another was more difficult than storing multiple attributes, but still well within range of her skills.

"Lovely," she murmured, still a little discomfited by the sound of her own voice in what she knew was a foreign language that she shouldn't have been able to speak or understand.

"Mister Superman? You said yesterday was busy, but do you want to talk about it? Did you fail to save some people's lives?" Renka asked sympathetically. She had similar memories of several times people had been murdered for the 'crime' of offering her shelter.

She also had memories of doing said murdering, but she dismissed those emotional twinges after a few moments of self-examination.

"No, that wasn't the... the issue. I'd rather not talk about it," he answered. Renka hummed an acknowledgement and busied herself with working the soap into lather.

'He'll either tell me on his own or he'll bring up something he does want to discuss.'

"How have your language studies been going?" he asked instead.

"I feel my progress is more than adequate. For the most part, I have acquired a ranged vocabulary, though I primarily know the simpler synonyms and cannot use or differentiate between more advanced words. Like synonyms. Syn-no-nym," she repeated, cutting the duralumin draw to ensure that she knew the sounds without that aid. "I didn't know that English word until the spell made me say it, but I believe I could have managed 'simple words with the same meaning,' if I'd used that type of phasing when I thought it in my language. I think it is quite an interesting effect." Renka closed her mouth for a moment as she washed and rinsed her face. Then she continued again as she turned to apply shampoo to her hair.

"As I mentioned, though, I think my studies are going well. Without spell enhancements I have progressed to writing some conversation scripts in English, not having much chance to practice in person. I believe I did well conversing with Wonder Woman, though. I don't suppose she had anything to say about my conversation and combat skills?"

"Wonder Woman has had nothing but good things to say about both. Would you be interested in spending more time with native speakers your own age and potentially making some friends?" Superman asked. He sounded hopeful to her ears.

"Yes," Renka decided immediately, "although a little more detail would be helpful."

"Certain members of the Justice League are… assembling a team. Putting together a group. Do you know what side-kicks are?" Renka frowned at the question, running the suggested meaning through her understanding in her own language as she scrubbed her arms. She bought herself another moment of thought by rinsing her hair and face again.

"Side-kicks. Side. Kick. Probably doesn't have to do with kicking out to the side in a fight. I remember the word from te-le-vi-sion. Heroic assistants? Apprentices? Are those thoughts close to precise?" She turned the water pressure down a touch since she didn't have a tin-mind handy to increase her hearing and waited for Superman's answer.

"Apprentice is a close match, I suppose. Younger people, not yet strong or experienced enough to act alone, but working with and helping a more adult hero as they learn the ropes: that is a good way of describing a sidekick. I ask because several members of the Justice League have sidekicks, and in light of recent events we have the idea of putting them together to work and train with each other while the hero they work with may or may not be in contact. Are you interested?"

'Is he offering…? No, I think he would have said. But still, I can definitely appreciate this if it is like I think. A training program and a chance to meet other people in the group? Sold.'

"Very," Renka assured him. "I wouldn't unlike a better idea of what I am wanting to agree with. Would they be living in the other rooms on this hall? Might I know how many apprentices would there be? How long would we be together? How often we would meet? Would I still keep contact with you and Wonder Woman?" She briefly turned the water all the way off, both to hear more clearly and to finish scrubbing without the suds being immediately washed away.

Silence stretched on for a little while. Renka very intentionally did nothing to fill it, despite the growing tension in her shoulders. She flipped over her hourglass to reset the timer. The sounds of those few falling drops were about to drive her mad when she pulled on an extra dose of connection from her duralumin-mind and made a questioning noise.

"There are four heroes with sidekicks who expressed interest," Superman said slowly, "as well as another member who wants his niece to begin working in the 'job,' so to speak, and a… possibly a sixth with no experience and no… patron, depending on circumstances beyond my control."

"May I impose on you to describe them, or is that a violation?" Renka asked.

"One of them is an alien: an intelligent and aware person though not a human being," he clarified. "She would also be the only other female. She has no past experience with what we do. Of the five boys, one is around your age, and while he can be a bit stiff and has a temper, he is ultimately a good young man who wants to help people.
"The next oldest is not much younger; like you he is technically human but comes from a very different place, and is still learning some of our ways. He also served in his home's military, and I do not have much more information to offer. The youngest boy is Batman's sidekick, and he is very intelligent, but also terse and suspicious." Superman stopped talking.

Silence dragged on. Renka turned the water back on, noticed that the hourglass had run out, and reset it again. After this timer ran out she would, sadly, have to turn off the water and dry off.

She considered asking about the last boy that Superman was hesitating to talk about, but decided to enjoy the water instead.

Superman spoke, but she missed it.

"Excuse me? Because I had water in my ears I missed the words you said."

"I said…" he repeated with a heavy breath, "do you know what clones are?"

"Clones." She considered. "Copies? Imitations? Copies of the same thing made repeatedly? Copies of the same idea? Multiple things that are identical, whether or not they were made the same way? I don't really recognize what you're trying to say," Renka admitted. She turned to keep her back under the hot spray, eyeing the hourglass speculatively as the sand trickled away.

"Well, none of those meanings are wrong, per se," Superman conceded.

The sand trickled down.

"In this case the word has come into a wider use from a more scientific term. It involves growing new things designed to be exactly like the original form which the sample was taken," Superman said.

Renka considered this, imagining growing new trees, or minerals, or even buildings from small samples.

'Being able to do that seems very useful. Grow more copies of a crop that is especially prosperous, or a well-made house.'

Steaming water drummed against her back. The heat would have been beyond scalding, had she not been siphoning the excess heat away and storing it in her brass-mind.

"You don't have to discuss this if it makes you uncomfortable," she allowed, despite ominous wonderings about the subject that had such a severe effect on the Man of Steel.

Steam wafted around the shower, vaguely reminiscent of the beautiful mists from her home.

"The last member, assuming he wants to… he's really only a few days old, technically, despite having an adolescent body. He's a clone. " This told Renka absolutely nothing, other than hints about the discrepancy in his ages. "A clone of a person is what you get when you take someone's blood and use it to… to grow…."

"Superman?" she asked worriedly, pulling another extra dose of connection, because there was no way she had understood that correctly and he was drifting away. Tapping deeper like that was sloppy and could potentially become a bad habit, but connection largely worked in both directions, and she cared for his mental well being as much as she intended him to care about hers.

"A clone is an artificial human grown from stolen flesh instead of born from love between two parents," he revealed.

Renka stopped, her attention utterly seized. Her brain whirred into activity as everything else shut down for the time being.

'Artificial. Arti-ficial. Artificial: a thing made, produced, built, or constructed instead of grown.'

She stopped listening and missed whatever else Superman may have said.

'Artificial human.'

She stopped fidgeting and shifting her weight, and even the minute movements people tend to forget about ceased.

'Artificial human… grown.'

She stopped breathing, for a short while – the idea Superman had introduced literally took her breath away.

'Grown… instead of born… from two parents.'

She stopped tapping connectivity and storing warmth, unmindful of the way the scalding water scoured her skin.

'Clone: a human made from a sample of flesh; a child born without a woman being pregnant? Is that what it is?'

Renka left the water running, disregarded the hourglass, passed by her towel, and ignored the rictus-mask her face showed as in the mirror. She threw open the bathroom and stalked out.

"Can you really do that?" she demanded.

Superman spun around, babbling something in English that she didn't bother with.

"Shut it!" she hissed grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around through his sheer shock to look her in the eye. "Tell me, right now! Tell me there is really some way to create newborn children without impregnating a woman to carry them."

He said something in English that she couldn't make out, deafened by the sound of her own pulse pounding through her head. Reality crashed back into place a moment later.

"Rust and Ruin!" she hissed as the pain flared across her back began to register. Renka staggered back onto the bed, grabbed the newer gold-mind she had started building up, and tapped its store of health just to make the burning stop. She realized she had also stopped tapping the duralumin-mind that let them communicate clearly. "This is a mess. Ashes take it all."

"I dearly apologize for my actions, but you hit a sensitive subject," she said in English. 'Superman still isn't loo… oh. That's what he's about. I should grab the towel and stop the water.' "I was asking," she explained as she backed away, "if people really have a way to make new human life – babies and children and infants – what is with these synonyms? – without needing sex for conception or a mother to carry it to term. You can look now, I have the towel." She turned off the water in the shower. "I am sorry about that. If you, you know, feel uncomfortable, I mean. And thank you. Um. For trying not to look. I believe I also owe you an apology about grabbing you, too."

Superman coughed awkwardly. "Yes. That was unexpected. I think I can answer your question if you ask it more coherently, but an explanation would be appreciated, please." It was not, particularly, a request.

"…Yes, I suppose I owe you that. Pass me those clothes please?" She retreated into the bathroom and began to dress. "Where should I begin…?"

"Why you reacted that way?"

"Rhetorical question, Mister Superman." Renka sighed heavily. "Procreation and childbirth is… let us say there are rules and traditions and it is a very important subject back home for women of my culture, heritage, ethnicity. Wow. Your language has a lot of words for those things."

"English is fond of synonyms," he agreed awkwardly.

"I am the fourth-eldest of my mother's fifteen daughters, eighth in total, to put the subject into perspective. The idea that a child could be brought into the world without the need of sex… struck me in a sensitive place, and I got a bit out of hand seeking clarification. I do sincerely apologize for my inappropriate actions. Now will you please explain what you said?"

"Fifteen? Really?"

"Really," Renka answered impatiently, and left the conversation hanging as she walked, fully clothed, back into Superman's line of sight.

"Cloning is very uncommon in the modern day," he hedged, "requiring technology, skills, and resources available to only a few people, and it is rarely used legally or ethically. But yes, it is possible to take a sample of flesh and blood and use it to grow a new life in a vat or tank without any, that is, intercourse being used in the process. The result is visually and biologically identical to a younger copy of the source the flesh sample was taken from."

"Am identical person? A new child, alive with its own mind?" A horrible thought struck Renka, and '-if it works like I'm afraid of, then I absolutely must take the third metallic art to my grave, no matter what!' "Does the clone have the mind of the original? Does it," she hesitated to ask, "have no mind at all and is used for spares?"

"Spare resou- no! God in Heaven, no," Superman assured her. "The clone has its own mind, or it is supposed to at least, and can be an entirely new person. Except it has the same DNA – the same blood, the same appearance – as the source, as though it were a younger version of their body with what is supposed to be a different mind."

"I think I see," Renka mused, considering this. "Excuse me." She wrote down several sentences in her native language and a further few of her more personal ideas in Old Terris, which even Mister Green Lantern shouldn't be able to translate. "I want to hear more about this later," Renka insisted, but then she drew a mental blank. "I admit, I do not remember why we were discussing this. I think I may ask you to remind me?" It took Superman a few seconds as well.

"Clones. Sidekick team. The last member of the sidekick team I hoped you would join is a clone the Justice League discovered yesterday, which is why I was busy and forgot to meet with you," he summarized, a darker mood overtaking him once more as recent events returned to the forefront of his mind.

"A clone you recruited yesterday? So he has no hero experience like me?" Renka clarified.

"He has no experience with anything in life at all," Superman laughed bitterly. The sound crawled down Renka's spine and died in the pit of her intestines. "We only took him out the vat he was grown in yesterday; that's why it is so important that he socialize and learn to interact with real people." Renka boggled.

"I must be losing something in translation," she muttered, fiddling with the duralumin-mind that had, at her current rate of use, between thirty and forty more minutes of charge. "The Mists know I know how important human contact is to young children, because I helped raise a dozen of my younger siblings. But. There is no way that I heard you suggest that putting a newborn baby on a team of apprentice heroes could be a viable idea."

"I did not," Superman affirmed. "The difference is, because clones are grown in vats, they do not need to be 'born' as infants. Moreover, people with the technology and willingness to create a clone may also have and use other technologies as well. The clone joining the team is physically in his teens, and he possesses knowledge of languages, sciences, and other things that was given to him while he was growing, but he was only taken from the vat yesterday, and the Justice League can't think of anything to do other than take him in, train him, and watch over him."

"People can be taught languages in vats?" Renka asked, for lack of any more coherent thoughts to voice.

"It isn't safe, it can cause long-term mental damage if it isn't done correctly, the methods aren't entirely understood, and it would require the teachers to root around your brain and fiddle with your thoughts to make the lessons stick," he warned her. Renka twitched.

'Great, more of that freaky telepathy stuff. First I thought that Brass Soothing was the worst way to wreck minds, then learning about Hemalurgy and receiving Ruin nearly literally ruined my head and almost got me killed half a dozen times before I lucked out and learned how to hide, and now I discover an entire subset of powers more invasive than Soothers and Rioters combined, and on top of that they can do a similar talking-in-heads trick and pull off some type of head-memory editing that would have Ruined everything old Worldbringer K'waan dedicated his life to saving! Why did I not agree to a simple death and afterlife when I had the option?'

"Never mind," Renka said aloud to Superman. She changed the subject. "The four I might be working with: one girl that is an alien, meaning a person without being human; one man my age with experience saving lives despite a temper; one slightly younger man also from another world-"

"Just another kingdom," Superman corrected. Renka felt a twitch of envy when he continued to explain, "Atlantis is on Earth, even though it is very different, and isolated, and many of its people like to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist."

"Was he exiled? Framed for a crime and on the run to clear his name? Ran afoul of some arbitrary law and can't go home? Escaped slave hoping to return and free his people?" she asked.

"No, he is apprenticed under the king of Atlantis, who wants to change his country's solitary ways and is giving his student a better taste of the outside world and its people. I'm sorry, it must be tough hearing that he can go home."

It was, just a little, but, "No, not very upsetting. I know that I will return home eventually and I decided that I would enjoy my time here while it lasts. I'm glad he has a happier home than I do. The next younger boy is a clone who is an adolescent in body despite being born yesterday, you said?"

"Yes."

"Lastly you mentioned a younger boy who is well-trained despite his age and has the sharp personality to be expected of someone who had to develop and use those skills at a young age?"

"That describes Robin frighteningly well," Superman agreed.

"I thought you said there were five boys?"

"I forgot Kid Flash, didn't I? He would be the third oldest, I think? I'm not certain, but that sounds right. Kid Flash is actually quite friendly, with a good sense of humor, even if he sometimes lacks a sense of tact and takes life a bit lightly. None of which lessens his willingness to put his life on the line for the well-being of others," he added quickly. Renka was smiling oddly.

"So one of them actually sounds like a mentally healthy young man, and you think I'd think that was a bad thing?" she teased. "All the better. I'm willing to meet them whenever is good."

"You'd be moving to a different building and rooming near the rest of them too," Superman warned. "But if you can get everything together we can bring everyone together for introductions in an hour or so." Renka twitched.

"You know, my English is still mediocre at best, and wouldn't I want to make a good impression the first time I meet them? Would early tomorrow work, so I can have some time to refill my metal-minds?"

"Well, at worst we can introduce you to them later tomorrow, if you're that worried about it. Even then, though, I don't believe any of them would judge you; none of them speak your native language at all, so you can one-up them there," he joked.

"Yes, because introducing a significantly older unknown figure into a group that's already had time to cohere is a wonderful way to avoid ostracization, awkwardness, and encourage bonding," she snapped waspishly, tapping deeply into her accumulated connection to make her point more succinctly. 'That really will become a bad habit soon.' "…I do apologize for that, Mister Superman."

"You know," he laughed, "I don't believe anyone has called me 'Mister Superman,' before. Just Superman is enough for most people who aren't trying to insult me."

Renka… hesitated, unable to tell if he was offended or not. She decided an explanation was in order.

"I use honorifics because I wish to show the recipient that I believe them deserving of honor and respect, such as acknowledging that 'the strongest hero of Earth,' who has saved the lives of more people than I have seen in my entire life, does not deserve my backtalk over a personal tic that it is not his fault for triggering."

"I see." He either considered the matter, or made a show of considering it for her benefit; Renka was not quite certain which. "Well, if you'll tell me what triggered that reaction, I'll tell you what you can call me in formal situations. I'll even tell you that if you don't feel comfortable telling me anything," he added with a wink and a corny grin.

"You rather have the right to know, after that, so I'd tell you even if you didn't tell me anything," she retaliated with what she hoped was a morose smile. "I just have had to make so many life-changing decisions on snap judgments, and had to suffer the years of consequences from those choices, that being… pressured on those things is a bit of a peeve now." And that was all she was willing to share on that subject, because running away from home, theft, assault, surrender, and betrayal were personal matters that she couldn't imagine telling anyone in this world at the moment.

Especially not if her moral transgressions earned her the scorn of her hosts.

"I can understand that. I'll speak with Bats and Red Tornado and see if we can delay any meetings for bit. Pull yourself together so you can knock everyone's socks off and I'll bring you to the new base in the morning."

"Thank you," she said softly. A gurgle interrupted further conversation. Renka didn't blush, but she wilted slightly. "Quiet, belly," she scolded. Superman chuckled and stood.

"Hey, how about I take you up to the larger kitchen and whip us both up a meal? I haven't eaten in a few hours too, and I need an opinion on a change I'm making to this recipe. If you've really been subsisting on granola bars, cold cereal, and sandwiches then I bet you would love to get a hot meal in that belly." Renka flicked her eyes up hopefully.

"Three conditions," she hedged hopefully, and he nodded. "One: I'm going to charge the language spell while we do this, so keep your words simple but don't treat me like a piece of mobile furniture." Superman chuckled. "I'm serious! I think that's an actual risk that might happen."

"I promise, I promise," he told her.

"Thank you. Two: I would be much obliged if you could show me how to work the appliances, because I can make things edible over open flames and fire stoves, but I haven't dared cook here in case I set myself on fire." Renka began idly sorting through and putting on more of her charms, rings, and bracelets.

"I doubt you could set yourself on fire in our kitchen if you tried, but agreed. You might need to run the language spell right at the beginning while I explain, but after that it should be simple enough."

"Thank you, and I am willing to do that. Three: could we please make a recipe that results in a lot more food than you think the two of us could eat? I promise to clean all my plates and not leave any leftovers."

"You say that like leftovers are a bad thing. At least promise to leave some for me to eat tomorrow so I don't need to cook again."

"Deal." She grabbed a few empty bendalloy-minds, excited to finally experiment a bit with them.

"Well then, let's get cooking and see how much cornbread, pork, and fried okra a frail young flower like yourself can put away."

"Hee~eeey," Renka whined with an exaggerated pout.

________________________________________________________________________________________​

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Declaring Dependents part 4
* July 8 [Lantern Jordan PoV]
"You're certain she isn't horribly sick, or poisoned?" Superman asked, hovering worriedly.

'No, Clark, the most advanced piece of technology in this solar system might have misdiagnosed a simple case of indigestion. *Sigh* I should cut the poor guy some slack. Between picking up an unexpected protégé off the street and discovering that you have a kid clone psychically programmed to kill you, he's been under a lot of stress. Run the physical scans again. Account for potential variables caused by differences in her genetic structure, body chemistry, past environment, unknown disease and medical history, recent inoculations, other medications, as well synthetically introduced elements.'

<Affirmative. > The information flowed into Hal Jordan's mind. He ignored the repeated alert about her earring in favor of parsing through the more pertinent messages.

"Yes, I am certain," he repeated to Superman. "Your guest's discomfort is a result of her body's attempts to process and digest unfamiliar animal protein previously absent from her diet. You fed a life-long mostly-vegetarian a lot of pork for the first time in her life and it's causing some stomach cramps, nothing more. I am wondering why you," he redirected to Renka, who he knew was awake and mostly lucid despite the pain, "insist on clutching onto a leather belt with abnormal plates of half-a-dozen metals, including gold and electrum, attached to the inside." Renka cracked an eye open at Superman through her twitching and cringing.

"I told you I didn't eat too much," she whispered. "I wish ask I was eating what first." Jordan could nearly feel a pulse of green will as the young woman took a fortifying breath, stilled her shudders, and forced her body to uncurl and sit upright. "I can do this," she hissed. "I hurt, but I still want to go to the meeting. You already put it off once on my behalf, and I've had a few hours to prepare. I can do this. I've been in far worse shape and done tougher things than this before, and if I want to work as a hero I'll end up doing it again."

'Bold words from the person Superman found curled up, whimpering in pain, and half-asleep on the cluttered floor of her room this morning,' Hal Jordan judged. Then he reconsidered. 'Maybe I'm being a bit too hasty. We've all had our off days; glowing space rocks, after all, knock out Superman ridiculously quickly. If she's serious about working through the pain, I can definitely respect that. Not that I'm going to make her do so when she doesn't have to.'

"No need to struggle so much, there are several ways to treat this and make you feel better," he told them both. A weight seemed to lift from Superman's shoulders. Renka turned to blink blearily at him.

"Not know," she finally said. "Are you the same powers-person with a different face, or a different person-face with the same powers?"

"I'm sorry?"

"She spent a day and a half working with Lantern Stewart while you were out of the system," Superman explained.

"I see. I am Green Lantern two-eight-one-four A; I am a different person from the man you met but with the same powers. We work together to keep this sector safe for the people who live here." Turning back to Superman, he said, "There are a few stomach settlers and digestive medicines we could try to give her, but the fastest way would be for me to just go in and fix her with my ring."

"What do you mean, 'fix me'?" she yelped, more than a note of terror in the question.

'Bad phrasing. I guess she's had an encounter with a mad doctor type or something in the past.'

"The problem is your body has difficulty handling the meat proteins in your stomach. I can use my ring to speed it up and break them down more manageably. You should be feeling better within a minute or less once I finish." He met her suspicious gaze with as much earnestness as he could muster. She narrowed her eyes.

"You don't need to feel pressured," the Big Blue Boy Scout added quickly. "The team won't be meeting for another hour or more, so you can feel free to take your time choosing and recovering." Seemingly unimpressed, Renka raised one eyebrow.

"…Is he trustworthy?" she asked.

"Yes," Superman replied instantly. She eyed Jordan again.

'Definitely some trust issues in the past. Maybe I should just get her the medicine.'

"Do you," she said slowly, "actually need my permission for this, or could you do it and I not know you do- did it?"

"You would definitely notice tendrils of bright green light sinking into your stomach," he assured her.

"I could not stop you, just by saying no. You could do it whether I wanted you too or not, for my own good," she surmised. Jordan looked her in the eyes, noting the oddly tawny tinge to their coloration.

"It could be done, but I will not do that." Renka held his gaze for several seconds more. Finally she looked away to Superman, then at the belt in her hands. She shifted her fingers along the inside plates before coming to a conclusion.

"After ten minutes, please pull this out of my hands whether I want you to or not," she instructed the Man of Steel. "Then you have my permission to do the thing, because I'm not certain how quickly I become lucid. Trying something new."

"Ten minutes," Superman promised. Renka nodded, turned her attention down to the belt, and… something happened. Her body language or her posture, or simply the instinctual feel of her presence shifted in a way that Jordan could not quite put into words. A few minutes passed.

"I assume she would object to my scanning her like this," Green Lantern Jordan asked. Renka did not break her meditation, but Superman still shot him a warning look.

"Object strenuously," he finally said. After a pause, he spoke again. "I don't know the details, but she's suffered through some hard decisions at the hands of people in authority before, and Renka wants to trust that we are different but doesn't quite dare to, as far as I can tell. I refuse to betray what trust she has shown us, and having outside forces messing around with her insides is a serious fear of hers. Renka's worst nightmare, as far as I can tell, would be to find herself at the mercy of a malicious telepath."

"She's not alone in that," Jordan agreed. The nature of green light and the ring made him more resistant than many other people, but no one sane liked the idea of have their heads messed with. He considered playing devil's advocate, but kept his peace. "…Ten minutes," he finally told Superman, who pulled the belt from Renka's unresisting hands.

She blinked, coming out of her trance. "Ummm, ugh," she mused vapidly, and added something in an unknown language. After a few more moments of collection she appeared mostly normal. "That was… not nice. Not fun. …Have you do it?"

"Right now," Jordan assured her. 'Aid, assist, and fix,' he commanded the ring. <Affirmative> She squirmed a bit beneath the green glow, but it was done after ten seconds. "If everything was done properly and is functioning as it all should be, I am confident that you should begin to feel better before I finish saying this admittedly long sentence," he told her. She met his look with an amused grin.

"Metal-minds, please," she requested, and fastened the returned belt around her stomach.

'No belt loops. She wants the metal touching her skin,' he surmised.

"Well then, let's clean the mess off of your floor and head over to Mount Justice," Superman suggested lightly, much more relieved than when he had walked into her room and found her lying there.

"Mmm, please more one minute," she requested, shifting and stretching her sore muscles.

"I'm not certain," Lantern Jordan asked, similarly unable to place where her looks came from, "where does that accent come from?"

"Scadrial," she told him through a yawn. "Almost good," she added, rolling her shoulders.

'Ring, search internal database for location: Scadrial.'

<Affirmative. 14 phonetic matches found in alien and/or extinct languages, but no use of the term refers to a location. >

"So where is Scadrial?" he asked idly, following as Superman and Renka walked out of the medical bay. Renka shot a look toward Superman, who shrugged one shoulder in response but nodded when she did first.

"Scadrial," Superman told him, "appears to be the name of her home-planet. She's been a little reticent on the details, and she does have a right to some privacy, but Renka appears to originate from a different planet in another dimension."

"Like those Justice Lords?" Jordan growled. "Well, it does explain the oddities in her DNA and biochemistry. How did she end up here? Sorry, how did you get here?" he asked her directly. Renka hummed and looked back at her patron.

"Renka is still learning the intricacies of English and prefers to listen more than talk when she isn't using a spell to increase her language skills," Superman covered for her. "She was involved in some form of accident that mixed oddly with the after-effects of certain magic rituals she had been through, with the result sending her here instead of killing her outright. She hasn't shown much interest in seeking a way to return home, largely I assume because her world is much less technologically advanced, despite the greater prominence of magical or meta-human abilities."

"Yes," she agreed, producing her keycard. "Open," Renka said, sliding it through the reader beside her door. Jordan wondered if she knew that she didn't need the verbal command to make it work.

'Wait, of course she knows, we went through how many doors on the way here?'

"That room is not as wrecked as you made it sound, Superman," Lantern Jordan told him. There was definite disarray right around the bed, where the sheets were tangled and nearly torn out, but aside from the jewelry scattered across the floor everything seemed clean and orderly. The main standout was a tipped-over, worn, tote bag of the type sold as reusable at some grocery markets. Second to that and to the bed was an open briefcase that contained a larger amount of her not-scattered-across-the-floor metal jewelry.

"I pulled metal-minds out to finding, I mean found belt in the dark," Renka told them absently, sorting and storing the pieces with deft hands.

"Metal-minds. That's what she calls jewelry?"

"Proper translation are one word: metalmind, ironmind, goldmind, bronzemind," she listed, and he could hear the slightly faster phrasing that she rattled off. "But confusing English, I make more simple and break up with line-sprint. Dash. Line dash."

"But because the one word translations were confusing in English, I made them simpler, or more simple, by using a dash mark," Superman corrected mildly.

"Thank you: because the one word translations were confusing in English, I made them… simpler, by using a dash mark," Renka parroted, not pausing in her sorting. "Simpler, more simple, same thing? Why one, why use two? Um, sorry. Why use one or why use the other? Why when? When use?"

The older men shared a look and Superman shrugged uncertainly.

"Same difference," Lantern Jordan told her. He did not blush when Renka paused her sorting to turn and stare at him, unimpressed. "Sorry, bad word choice. There is no real difference, but 'more simple' is formal and 'simpler' is casual."

"Thank you. I use- using- …I will use more simple. Is same, ah, is the same for other, 'verb-er' and 'more verb' words?"

"Yes, the rule is the same," Superman said. Renka clicked the briefcase shut and stood.

"Yes. Okay. I be, is, am, are, I am ready to go to meet people," she told them, hoisting the worn bag over her shoulder. Then she looked back at the bed. "I need to clean the bed? Do I?"

"No, it isn't important, people don't usually sleep here and we need to change the sheets anyway," Superman told her. "Let's head down to Mount Justice. The Zeta Beam Transponders are this way."

"Have you given her a passcode?" Jordan asked. "For that matter, is Renka her real name or her cape name?"

"Real name? Cape name? My name is Renka," she said, displaying her rote knowledge of introductions, but it was clear what she was asking.

"Superheroes usually have a 'secret identity,' they use when they aren't being a superhero," Jordan explained. "A hero name and a different normal name. Though if you don't have a secret identity you might not need one."

"Ferrous," she told them immediately, and both men paused to look at her in surprise. Superman nodded slowly.

"Okay. It will take me a minute to program the change into the Zeta Beam system and upgrade your security clearance."

"Program. Upgrade. Clearance," Renka/Ferrous repeated to herself. "Program. To program. A verb for tee-vee program or learning program?"

"Close," Jordan told her. "Noun 'program' is a, um, a thing written and then used. Instructions. Verb program means the act of writing or changing those things. Upgrade means-"

"Up not down," she supplied, pointing to the ceiling. "Grade is level or a score. To move up or lift up a level or score?"

"Largely correct," he congratulated. "Can you get clearance now? From clear?"

"Clear. Adjective clear is mean- means a thing that is like glass, people can see it, see behind it. Also being clean so that people can see behind it. Verb clear means clean thing so adjective clear is using- used?"

"Used," he said. "Can be used."

"Thing so adjective clear can be used." She nodded. "Because of that, clear-ants… clarence… clearings?" She shot the Green Lantern a curious look. Jordan acceded to her plea for help.

"Clearance," he repeated, and his ring hung the spelling in the air for her to read. "But there's another, more colloquial- um, more casual meaning of clear. Instead of free from mess, it means free from interference- ah, sorry, free from things that could stop or slow you. Free and in the clear. A clear path with nothing you might run into. Being cleared and being allowed to do something."

"Thank you. Clearance. A level or score that is upgraded… Clear, no things are to stop me… Clearance means the level…" she broke off, muttering rapidly in her native language. "Clearance means the level of height I am above things to try to stop me? Like, a skaa could never enter Kredik Shaw, but a low noble may, a high noble may with more easy, and a priest does things he wants?" It took Jordan a moment to decipher.

"Yes, you understand the idea. Upgrading your clearance will let you go more places and do more things in the Watchtower and in Mount Justice."

"It denotes you as a member of the team now, instead of a guest," Superman told her warmly, stepping back from the console. "Congratulations. I've set the system to Mount Justice, so go ahead through."

"Yes, thank you." She stepped into the tube and vanished.

<Recognized: Ferrous, B 06 >

Jordan took the chance to put out an arm and stop Clark from immediately following.

"Superman," he said, "Clark, I really want to talk to you for a minute."

"About Renka?"

"About Renka. I know that she wouldn't be here if Batman or John had given a serious nay-say, and I could probably find out more, faster, if I looked at her file, but I want to hear it from you. What do we know about her, and what safety checks have we run? Because that earring of hers triggered some serious unknown alerts for my ring, but she didn't give the same paranormal energy responses from when I've scanned magic and magic users in the past."

"I understand, though you really should just read the file," Clark told him with a resigned sigh. "Batman has been observing her, and both Giovani and J'onn did their specialized tests on top of some additional scans that John did. She doesn't register as particularly magical, but magic may function differently in her home universe, and there was some form of unknown mana around her.
"He also said that her earing was solid, heavily concentrated but inert mana of some kind, and Renka identified it as a religious artifact, which she always wears. There's another, larger piece in her bag that she never wears and it might be the earring's counterpart. She's been closed-mouthed except to say that she will consider our touching any of the pieces to be a utter breach of trust and it could hurt someone."

"Do we know how her powers work?"

"She opted to keep the exact details a secret, but what we do know implies that her magic is actually far more limited and sensible than most of our powers," the Last Son of Krypton noted with a chuckle. "Renka stores up attributes like strength, speed, weight, and language proficiency in her metal-minds and draws them out in more concentrated levels later. But her stores are finite and she can exhaust them quickly."

"So she says. Not that I suspect her of anything specific," Jordan denied, "but my ring readings really weirded me out. She seemed like a perfectly nice and intelligent young woman; I only worried that it was too convenient, for her to show up and contact you right now, in such close connection with the discovery of Superboy." Clark stiffened.

"Yes," he said tersely. "Well, regarding how quickly she fits in, read Batman and Wonder Woman's observations when you read the report and they might surprise you. Also, remember that she was here a solid week before CADMUS happened."

<Recognized: Superman, 01. >
<Recognized: Green Lantern A, 07. >

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Episode 2 - Safe Harbor part 1
* July 8 [Kid Flash/Wally West Focus]
A disadvantage to super speed is that you have no excuse for being late other than carelessness, and when your mentor decides to be early you end up that way as well.

"Boo~ooorrred," Wally West groaned. He winced when his mentor appeared beside him in… well, the Flash appeared in a flash, arms folded with a smarmy grin.

'I respect the hell out of him, but man oh man do I not like the look of that smile on Uncle Barry's face,' Wally thought.

"Hey now, this is your guys' big induction day, but if you really want some stuff to do I can find a few chores that would be more your speed, like installing some new parts into the systems." Wally hesitated.

'On the one hand, I get to do stuff and mess around with the tech systems here. On the other hand, busy work, and it probably won't be anything too critical.'

<Recognized: Ferrous, B 06. >

Both heroes turned to look at the arrival with the unfamiliar designation.

'Ooh, a girl! She's a bit too buff to really be cute, but she's older than me without actually qualifying as an, 'older woman,' and there's some definite charm with the way her clothes clash with the briefcase and the dirty bag. Is that a retro-anti-fashion statement, or just a personal keepsake thing? I really hope she isn't an enemy, 'cause not only would it be a shame to pick a fight with her, but what if other baddies can get through the system and they aren't as pretty or more dangerous, though I really shouldn't assume she isn't dangerous 'cause if he heard me think that Barry would let Wonder Woman kick my ass across three time zones. She's still walking and looks nervous but not aggressive, so maybe she's someone I haven't met yet, which is really a sad fact that I should change.' He zoomed over to stand in front her, giving a charming smile.

"Hey there, I'm Kid Flash and it is a crying shame that we've never met before. May I ask your name, ma'am, and offer to escort you on a tour a tour around our fabulous base that is still undergoing some renovations?" Another zip heralded Barry's appearance slightly behind him and to one side; the old guy was leaning against a wall, just watching, which wasn't a bad sign but suggested that either Wally or the girl was about to suffer some odd surprise. Wally really didn't know who he wanted to suffer the expected amusing-but-embarrassing incident.

Taken aback, the mystery girl just looked at him for a moment, her mouth moving silently. Then she appeared to rally, collecting her composure and appearing far more comfortable.

"Name? My name is Renka, and it is nice to meet you," she recited. "I hope that was what you said instead of maybe challenging me to duel at dawn. I am still learning English, you see, and I'm afraid you spoke a bit too fast for me to understand unprepared."

"Renka? A pretty name for a pretty lady, and I would never have guessed you're still learning English, since you speak really well. So how did you get involved with the Justice League, it isn't that easy to get in here?" Wally tensed slightly as he asked the big question, because if she was going to attack it would be now, but she certainly didn't look all that aggressive, which wasn't really a good data point because lots of the really dangerous people didn't look nasty until they suddenly did.

"Mmm, I learned if you have powers but don't have a home, or money, or friends and family to ask for help, then the two big options are being a hero or a criminal. I did not want to end up in jail, and I want to believe in the importance of law and order, so I thought I should ask a big-name hero to get me help so I could help them combat crime. Kid Flash you said? I heard a bit about you: the 'friendly one with a good sense of humor' but still willing to risk himself to do the right thing. I'm glad to meet you and I hope we can work well together." She extended her free hand.

"Oh, I think we will get along really well," Wally said cheerfully, shaking her hand. "The other thing I mentioned was giving you a tour of the place if you want, since the thing I'm here for isn't for another hour and I can't think of a better way to spend it than with you." Her eyes lit up.

"I believe I would greatly enjoy that, if you don't mind, sir. I assume you are member of the Justice League, but I'm afraid that I don't recognize who you are." She extended her hand to the old guy as Wally reacted.

"What! How can you not know who the Flash is? THE Flash! He's only the most awesome hero since ever!"

"The Flash, like junior here explained," his uncle said, shaking her hand warmly. Kid Flash swooned in mortification at being called 'junior'. "You said your name was Renka? The girl who walked up to Lois Lane and asked for an introduction to Superman?" Wally gaped at that little revelation, because seriously, doing that took some serious guts. He liked her more and more now. "You have a lot more good sense than most kids, especially the numbskulls with powers. Don't be afraid to knock this numbskull-" Kid Flash suddenly found himself suffering an affectionate super speed noogie.

"Ah! Ow ow ow you rotten old maa~aaan!"

"-back onto the right track if he gets out of line. But I've got to get back to running deliveries and other glorious hero stuff. We'll get to know each other later."

<Recognized: Superman, 01. >

<Recognized: Green Lantern A, 07. >

"Supes! Greenie! I met the newbie and I'm sticking my midget here with tour guide duties until we can get this party started! Anyway, I spent enough time here, so I reallygottarun!" Wally caught Renka staring at the blast of wind where his mentor used to be.

'Of course the girls always go for the even more incredible Speedster instead of the knock-off. Come on, I can definitely impress you with all my awesome skills too, just give me a chance!' he groaned internally. 'All right Wally, game face on and charm her socks off! Though I might wanna make sure I don't step on Big Blue Boy Scout or the Green Spotlight's toes first.'

"Mr. Superman! Mr. Green Lantern! How nice to see you. Like the old has-been said, I just was offering to show Renka around the mountain, if she's allowed to see."

Superman and Green Lantern shared a look.

"If Renka doesn't mind, go ahead. She's cleared for all the same areas you are, and it would be nice for her to start making some friends. You don't mind if I leave you?" he asked her.

"Not at all. You've already done a lot for me, and I'm very grateful," she told him. "However, is there anywhere I can put the briefcase down?"

"Just dump your bags on a couch or in a corner. They won't get stolen in a mountain chock full of awesome superheroes," Wally told her.

"If you don't mind, I can just hold onto them for you," Superman offered. Renka shrugged and passed him the briefcase, but nearly jumped back when he also reached for the worn out bag.

"Not this!" she yelped. "Um, sorry. This bag can not leaving my sight until I can put it behind a solid lock. I did not try to yell, though."

"Not at all, I understand," he assured her, and the older two heroes floated away.

"Whoa. I don't wanna be too pushy, but that was a bit strong. Did you really think Superman, the Biggest, Bluest, Scoutiest Cornflake Boy in the world was going to steal your bag?"

Her gaze fell on him like the target light of a sniper rifle.

'Ah, crud crud crudcrudcrud! That was definitely way too forward and aggressive you slick-less, half-assed illthoughtoutexperimentidiot! What if she had her underwear or other unmentionables in the bag and it sounded like I didn't think she needed to worry 'cause well she doesn't but she might not see it that way!'

He wilted under Renka's justified glare, but she relented after a few seconds.

"You... know people have saying it was really weird for me to just ask Superman to take me under his wing?" she hazarded. Wally was briefly distracted by some thoughts about Superman and Superboy and the strangeness of that whole fiasco, but he nodded and got his min back on subject. "When I asked him, I was homeless with no money, no job, no family, no friends, and almost no language skills outside of cheating. The metal-minds in the briefcase are... gifts, generous gifts that I am grateful for, but I lose not much if they get lost or stolen. I do not care." She started walking toward one of the doors to another room and Wally followed. "The things in this bag are everything in the world that I can actually claim to own, and some of it is private and some of it is embarrassing and some of it is dangerous. That all. Is all- that is all."

"Oof, yeah, sorry. I was a real heel right then, it wasn't any of my business to ask you about that when the big guys trust you." Renka looked at him oddly. "What, is it that odd to hear a guy apologize for being an ass?"

"Still learning English now, that's all. What do 'oof,' 'heel,' and 'ass' mean the way you used them?"

"Oh, yeah, you said. 'Oof' isn't actually a word you see, it's an onomatopoeia for when you get hit and it hurts you a little, and I was using it to show that I received and understood your anger. 'Heel' in this case is someone who is mean or does mean and rude things – I think it started as a reference to the phrase 'grinding people under your heel,' from when one person doesn't care about stepping on other people's toes and hurting or upsetting them. 'Ass' can refer to an animal called a donkey, but it can also refer to your butt," he slapped his own playfully, knowing that if he tried it on her she would slap him worse, "and either way it's an insult like heel, except maybe a bit worse?" She was still giving him that look. "Oh, sorry, did I talk too fast? It's a hazard of super speed. I can say it all again slower if you like?"

"No, I cheated a bit and heard you, but if you could speak slower I would appreciate it. Just two things: one, which direction should we go?" They had walked into the hall and she was looking around.

"How about I take you to the kitchen first so you know where to go if you get the munchies?" He certainly had the munchies again, no matter how much it annoyed or embarrassed him, but he could definitely sneak snacks and play it off with the 'teenage boy' card.

"I want that," she agreed. "Two thing is, what does onomaddy-peeah mean? Yes, I do know I just said it sadly wrong."

"Sorry about that. Onomatopoeia means a word that represents a sound, I think? So you know how there's a sound when cars crash, or when you punch someone, or when you drop a plate. Onomatopoeia is describing when that happens with stuff like: 'Smash!' 'Pow!' 'Tinkle,' or 'ka-blooie!' for an explosion. I learned the word by thinking: 'Oh no, ma, two pieya!' Pieya is a really yummy dish with fish and rice, and I don't know why it would be bad to have two of them, but it was what worked."

"Oh no ma, two pieya," Renka tried out slowly. "Onomatopoeia. Thank you, Kid Flash," she said warmly. "So this is the kitchen?"

"Yup. I can only cook okay even though I like to eat a lot, but no teenaged boy doesn't," he brushed off with a grin, segueing into, "Speaking of, are you hungry enough for a snack?"

Renka considered the thought, looked down at her stomach while fiddling with her jewelry, and admitted in a tone of surprise, "Actually, yes. Before you mentioned the question I was ignoring it, but I haven't eaten since dinner last night. Um, no pork please, though."

"Really? Okay, does beef work? Are you Muslim or vegetarian or vegan or Hindi or something? Just a personal taste?" Wally asked, zipping over to the recently stocked refrigerator. 'Score!'

"No, I'm a follower of Harmony, but before last night I never had pork and it made me sick. I forgot about breakfast this morning, which is why I'm really hungry unless I decide to cheat, which would be a waste. I did discovered that I rather like granola bars, though, if I'm allowed to have any."

"I would never dream of forbidding you, and if anyone gets upset you can just tell it's my fault." 'Chivalry, reassurance, and humor is always a charming mix. Let's see you try to resist my suave now!' "Do you prefer chocolate or fruity stuff?"

"Something that's sweet but not really sweet?"

"Peanut butter granola it is. Water? Milk?" Wally asked, setting out the fixings for his sandwich at super speed while juggling her requests.

"Please, I want water. I hope that second one could not be what the translation sounds like. If it is not a bother, can you make me a wrap or something with the bread and vegetables?"

"Does a veggie BLT sound good? A sandwich made with bell peppers, lettuce, and tomatoes? I think we have beets if you want some of those?"

"Would both work? Should you like, I can help cut and sort things that do not use fire. Excuse me. I can cook, but over a campfire. This stove and oven are too… too… sorry, too much upgraded technology? Does that make sense? I use a wood fire."

'I wouldn't have guessed that a girl as tough and gutsy as her would be this shy. Maybe she's one of those geniuses really great a certain things like fighting or math but really sucky with people. Or maybe she's just nervous about new people. And a new language – it's only the really small things that give her away, otherwise I probably would forget that bit.'

"Here," Wally offered. "I assume they have sandwiches in your home, and it's the name that gives you trouble? No need to be nervous, I really can't speak any other languages at all, so learning a second one is much better than me." He set up a cutting board with ingredients and knives laid out as he spoke. She slid next to him and began deftly peeling, slicing, and piling her eats.

Wally had forgotten, while he was listening to her voice more than looking or standing up close, that she was rather physically impressive. Not in the sense of T&A assets, which Renka was a touch lacking compared to many of the superhero women Wally interacted with, but in the adult build, wear, and tear on her body.

'Geez. You know, if you talked to her without ever seeing her, like over the phone or something, you'd think from how she talked that she was one of those shy little Japanese middle school girls, always flustered about talking with their beloved Sempai and crying themselves sick when puppies get little bitsy boo-boos, but damn! She's bigger than me by four inches and at least twenty pounds of bone and muscle.'

"How ol-" he began, and both of them stopped when they realized the other was talking too. Renka motioned him to go first as she taste-tested a slice of beet and hummed agreeably, but Wally felt chivalrous and guilty about almost tuning her out in his own thoughts and returned the gesture. "You talk first, you are the guest."

"Very kind," she said, and gave him a cocky grin. "I dislike to talk about myself, but when… I thought it was funny when you said two languages was so good. I speak five, plus English one equals six. I got that right: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten?"

"One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten," Wally agreed, "and if two was good then six is really super incredibly good! Congratulations."

"Thank you. You said bee-el-tee sandwich has bell peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, and beets? Which is which? This one tastes like home, and this is lovely colors, and this is very new."

"Home is beets. Color is a bell pepper. New is a tomato. Other one is lettuce," he told her, being careful to use simple words. "Understand?"

"Beets, bell pepper, tomato, and lettuce," she listed, sliding a layer of each onto her sandwich.

"Do you want any mayo or mustard?" he asked, producing bottles of each as he applied the last layer of his own ham-turkey-chicken-salami-cheddar-provolone-lettuce-cucumber-tomato-onion-green-red-yellow-bell-pepper super sandwich. 'Enough to gorge most people for a day, and this might actually last me only all the way to lunchtime,' he thought ruefully.

"Mayo? Mustard? I do not know what this is," she told him, which wasn't a no.

On impulse (a time-traveler yet to arrive sneezed forty years in the future) Wally squeezed a small glob of mayonnaise onto his bare finger (having removed the hero suit gloves when he washed his hands before handling the food like mom always taught him to) and extended it with the offer, "Try a taste of the mayo."

Renka looked at him oddly for a moment, and Wally felt the beginnings of a blush. 'Crud, I think I pushed too far, that was really forward and we didn't meet that long ago and she is totally going to slap me now and I deserve it,' he thought as she frowned and shifted her arm.

Brusquely, Renka's hand pulled at his wrist as she leaned forward, and her mouth bit the creamy substance off the end of the extended flesh with a vicious teeth-click that actually stopped the teenaged boy's libidinous thoughts for a full seventeen seconds.

'Oh wow. I'm not sure whether she's cutting me personally some slack or if she's just generally less uptight about this type of stuff than most of the girls I know but I get the feeling that I got off really lightly just now, ' he realized while she rolled the mayo around her mouth and wrinkled her nose.

"No taste. Too… smooth? Slimy," she decided, visibly scraping her tongue against her teeth. Then she extended a finger. "Mustard is better?"

"More taste," Kid Flash told her warily, squeezing a bit onto the digit. She taste-tested again, and her face all but lit up.

"More taste. Yes please! …Ah, I mean, I would like some mustard please."

"Then of course you may have your mustard," he told her with mock sobriety, passing over the bottle as he added mayo to his own sandwich. She gave him another look, but didn't make anything of it when he didn't.

"Was your question about the mustard, or something else? When at the same we spoke," she clarified.

"When we spoke at the same time?"

"When we spoke at the same time. Thank you." Renka repeated the gesture inviting him to speak. Wally took a bite instead as he retraced the winding path of his thoughts and then tripled-back to get to where he was supposed to be now. Renka took this as a sign to begin munching as well, and the two teens simply ate at the counter without plates or napkins.

"I wanted to ask how old you are? I mean, I have quite a bit of experience at this, and Robin has a bunch, and Speedy looks about your age, but you said you only just started being a hero even though you already look the part. Impressive, you know? I'd hate to fight you for real. And you speak six languages too? How old are you to be able to do all these cool things?" He knew he was laying on the flattery a bit thick, but he had already been a prick not too long ago, and asking a lady her age was always risky.

Besides, Robin always said that the way to tell a man's true colors was to see how he treated the people below him, but in Wally's experience, seeing how they reacted to praise was also a pretty good gage. Renka didn't preen, smile, or blush; she squirmed uncomfortably, but not very much so.

"How much do you know about my past?"

"Only what you told me just now: you didn't want to be a villain, so you asked Superman to teach you and said yes. Before that you were homeless and helpless except for your powers, and now you've been training and studying and earned their trust." Well, the awkwardness was probably less her personality and more something about her age in particular that prompted the response. 'Wait, don't tell me…? Please don't let her be one of those supernaturally pretty and young people who are really seven hundred years old! I mean, Vandal Savage and Ras al Ghul aren't really or even at all young or pretty, but even if she's secretly seventy or sixty or even thirty she'd probably never give me a second look and I don't stand a chance!'

"I," she began slowly, "do not want to talk too much about my past because many bad things happened in my past. Because of this, please do not talk about me to other people; Superman and his friends do know, but they also said they would keep it secret."

"I promise. Scout's honor," Wally swore.

"Right. Yes. Okay. I come from another world."

"You're an alien? Like the Martian Manhunter?"

"This is similar. I am human by blood, but from another world where we all are human." She frowned.

"Oh! An alternate dimension!"

"Yes! That is right- the right words! Alternate dimension are the words Superman used. I came here with almost nothing and I still am getting used to the differences in this world."

"Cool!" Wally told her, making sure to smile. "The Flash and the others had a run-in with people from another dimension once." She looked at him in surprise and chewed faster. "They were called the Justice Lords, and their dimension was different because their Flash died and they all went a little crazy, which is why I know the Flash is best hero ever. Who else keeps all the other heroes from going bad?"

"Say that again?" Renka asked slowly. She took another bite to keep him from making her speak.

"Alternate dimensions are different because a thing that happened here happened differently there, right? That's why they split into two dimensions. In that dimension the Flash died, and in this dimension he stayed alive." Renka was focusing on him intently, and he almost felt something pulling at him in her gaze, but it was probably his imagination and he wasn't going to let that distract him from something that caught her interest this much, unless he started imagining he had upset her but right now she was just really focused so it should be alright. "So what was different in your dimension? Did the Nazi's win World War Two, or did the Roman Empire never fall, or did the powerful nations of Africa draw the maps with the South Pole on top and-slash-or send slave-" that twitch was probably bad but too late now, "-ships to raid Europe instead of the other way around?"

Renka took a deep breath.

"I think… that our two worlds were never the same one. At least, not unless it was so long ago that humans never existed then. We have different histories, different skies, different magic," she didn't notice Wally's snort at the memory of Abra Kadabra, he hoped, "and different gods. If I thought more about what I think you just said, I might be very scared, so please let us not talk about that." Wally almost apologized but she moved on. "We use a different calendar in our world, and the years have been different length days, so my age is a little complicated. Might there be a piece of paper I could use?"

"I'll be back in a flash," Wally promised, and he zoomed away to find the requested materials, which took him no more than six seconds, tops, before he returned. "Here, you can use these."

"Thank you." Renka took a bite and began scribbling down numbers and multiplication figures and eventually a division figure or two….

"Complicated," Wally said.

"Our days are the same length," she muttered, half to herself. "The Catacendre was eight, sixteen, forty-eight… seven, eight, nine! One-hundred twenty-nine days after my sixteenth birthday added to sixteen years of three-hundred forty-nine days is…" Wally was amazed to realize that she wasn't even writing down the figuring itself at this point, having gotten into the groove; Renka was just noting down the end numbers she got from the calculations in her head.

"Brains are totally hot," he muttered, and instantly gave thanks that she was too occupied to notice.

"-totals to five-thousand, seven-hundred thirteen days before. Add it to thirty-two days short of three years with three-hundred eighty-four days each is six-thousand eight-hundred thirty-three days old before I arrived here!" She announced triumphantly. "What is the date today?"

"July twenty-ninth," he managed dumbly. Renka wasn't even writing things down now, except for some idle scribble as her brain whirred along other, more elaborate tracks.

"Thirty days hath September, April, June, and what were the months before this?" she queried.

"April? May? June?" He tried, barely remembering after her display stunned him.

"In that order? I thought it was-"

"July is after June is after May is after April is after March is-"

"Let us leap over February since I do not need to bother with it," Renka declared, and he caught scribbles that might have been the days in each month or might have meant something in her native language.

"Yes, let's," he agreed slowly, still staring as she turned back to her paper.

"The song says, '~there are three! hundred sixty-four and a half! un-birthdays~' in every year, so divide the total day-age that today is six-thousand, nine-hundred nine days old by those many per year and rounded up I am nineteen and ninety-five hundredths Earth years old!" she declared proudly.

'That smile may be the most beautiful thing I have seen since I saw Wonder Woman trying on a bikini for that bet against Black Canary,' Wally decided. He wasn't blushing the way he had then, but he felt his face grinning back just as hard as Renka was smiling brilliantly in success. 'Okay, second or third most beautiful total after that glitter thingy at the nightclub when what's his name attacked because he thought it was a something-or-other, and even if I got barfed on being handed those newborn twins to kiss was pretty awesome, but still!'

"That was awesome. Has anyone told you you're really good at math?"

The smile dimmed, but it felt like a happy ending to the expression rather than a sad one.

"Of the many things I have been told about me, I do not think that is one of them," she mused. Renka swallowed down the last of her water and asked, "Should we put these away and clean up? The Superman taught me that when you cook you clean."

"Yeah but it can wait until after we've finished eating."

"I will do it instead of wait for you, and then there is no wait while- before we go to the next place," she suggested. Looking at the counter, Wally was startled to realize that she had actually finished her not-really-small-at-all sandwich before he had. He scarfed his down in a flash, faster than was strictly a good idea, and followed her lead in cleaning up (which he admittedly wouldn't have done if her initiative hadn't guilted him into it).

"Where to next?" he asked.

"I do not know what there is to choose," she pointed out. "Just lead."

"Righty-o! This way," he decided.

They ambled briefly down the halls, stopping at or through a few rooms with little to differentiate them, save for the time they waved to Green Lantern Jordan and Red Tornado as the two reviewed plans for the power distribution system.

"Oh, look!"

"What does it say? Robin? That is the red-breast-bird that comes in spring, yes?"

"Yes, but in this case Robin is also a name. The name of my fellow heroic teen, Robin the Boy Wonder, partner of the Batman himself! They put his name on the plate near the door because-"

"It is his room where he will sleep and keep his things. His assigned bedroom. We did, surprisingly, have those things in my home universe as well, just like stoves, plates, chairs, soap, and even clocks," Renka deadpanned. A play of muscles in her face was the tell he recognized as probably her prelude to another apology, and instead Wally interrupted.

"Exactly right! You know, you said it was private, but if you do ever want to talk I'd love to hear about the world that gave birth to you." Renka stilled and her head swiveled around at him, which set off blaring alarms in Wally's head, amplified by the smooth way she reached into her ever-present bag.

"I do apologize, but I either misunderstood or drastically misheard what I think you said, because it sounded like something that would be a rather nasty insult," she said in an all too frighteningly mild and pleasant voice.

'Holy crap her language skills just jumped a bunch and her accent is like half what it used to be and oh s___ she is definitely really pissed at me! aLert! AbORt! Backtrack! Except I didn't say anything that should be doing this to her to me!'

Renka watched evenly as he tried to stumble through a panicked and repentant apology, neither smiling nor frowning, until finally a small pout and disappointed sigh persuaded Wally that for once, honesty might be the best policy.

He repeated the comment word-for-word.

Surprisingly, she relaxed.

"No need to worry, you are 'all good'," she assured him. Renka removed her hand from the bag and her accent was suddenly back in full again. "Bad choice of words, because I thought it sounded like something else. You are all right, and I was wrong." She smiled at him and offered a pat on the shoulder.

"No worries," Wally agreed. "Hey, let's see if we can find the other guys' rooms."

The exploration went around quite a bit, leading them past a door for 'Speedy,' one for 'Superboy,' and 'Robin' again before a dry spell in the hall that came to a screeching halt with the words:

"Hey, I found your door!"

Renka stared dumbly at the door marked with her name.

"You wanna go in and take a look? See how bouncy the- the chairs are, sorry? If you've got enough closet space?"

Renka stared dumbly at the door marked with her name.

"Hey, Renka? Renka? Earth to the heroine Ferrous? Is something wrong?"

Renka stared dumbly at the door marked with her name.

Wally abruptly realized that she was breathing intentionally slowly, and probably blinking back tears. In his smartest decision of the day, he stayed in her line of sight, but made no more moves to touch or talk with her.

Ninety seconds later, Renka was mostly back in control of herself.

"This… is my room? Belongs to me? No one else is allowed if I say no?"

"I think so," Wally answered. "Let's see." In a significantly less smart decision, he tried to enter, but fortunately (for Renka's sense of security, he would later discover) the only reaction was a harsh buzz. "Well, I'm not allowed in. They might not have keyed you in either yet, though," he warned.

"Stay here please," she said hoarsely, and tried to enter. The doors slid open.

Wally busied himself a bit zipping up and down the hall for the next few minutes, but he never tried to peek in as his companion examined, refrained from crying, investigated, hiccupped, experimented, and finally started swearing in some foreign language or three.

"Can you help me please with the instructions on the lockbox?" she finally asked.

"Sure thing." He translated the instructions left for how to open it and how to reset the lock combination, and looked away while she did so, which is when he noticed the contents of her bag spread out on her bed.

Most of it, which may or may not have been surprising, was junk: several crushed pop cans, a rusted piece of what might have been part of a car fender, several mangled pieces of what may have once been a Campbell's soup can, several pennies with or without some of the coating scratched off, a few nails & nuts & bolts & screws, a tube probably from a trumpet or trombone, and some other scraps not fully dumped out or uncovered from the bag.

But the main eye-draw was a pair of thick, intricate, and elaborate pieces of twisted metal jewelry. There was a not-quite-oily sheen to the surface of the metal, and the slightly wider ends of the metal spiral looked as though extra metal had tactfully been smithed on after the fact, but there was something….

"Hey, what are these?" he asked, extending his arm. Truth be told, they were obviously important to a girl who obviously valued privacy, and he wasn't going to touch them, but in hindsight he could see why Renka freaked as hard as she did.

(In further hindsight, when he knew her better, Wally would be both grateful and impressed that she only freaked as hard as she had.)

"Don't touch no!" she shrieked, instantly in front of him, slapping away his arm with one hand while dragging him bodily by the waist halfway across the room. "No no no no nonono!"

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorryI'msorry!" Kid Flash babbled.

It took a solid ten seconds of noise for them to stop jabbering over each other and calm down. Wally cringed back and gestured for Renka to say her piece.

"Please, very, very, really," she began, before she grimaced, fiddled with a bracelet, and began again with her accent once more lessened. "Right. Okay. I am calm. Still. Please, Kid Flash, do not ever touch those metal-minds. Not only are… they are important religious items for me, and they are also very, extremely, rare, precious, and dangerous. You could damage them, you could damage you… they are especially what I wanted to lock away safely in the safe. Never, not even if I tell you to, touch them unless I have already told you why they are dangerous so you can know how to handle them, and I do not ever expect to do that. Please promise me," she pleaded in a voice more worried than angry.

"I promise. I wasn't going to touch them, just point at them, but I shouldn't have done that when you said the stuff in the bag was so important. It won't happen again, really."

"No, it won't" Renka said simply. She turned away, and two minutes later her shoulders untensed when she finally had them locked away safely. Wally had not quite dared to move until then, but the air finally felt safe.

"So... I have a question or two if you aren't still angry at me," he hazarded, having noticed something.

"Angry at me for being careless with Bands," she sighed. "Go, ask."

"Is your earring the same metal that those twists were? And, since you said they were religious," he hazarded, "would you like to share a little about your faith, so I know what not to do if it comes up? And, you know, is your earring dangerous like the twist things, because it looks like they're made of the same stuff?"

Renka folded her arms and looked coldly at him, but her ice melted after a few seconds of glare.

"Earring and bands are the same, but I will not talk about what they are made of or why they are dangerous. But I will talk about Harmony if you also like to talk about your god."

"I'm really not very religious," Wally confessed. "Robin used to be, before he, uh, became Robin, but now he isn't either. I don't think very many heroes are, because if there were gods then there wouldn't be a need for us."

"I think need is not the same as want," Renka snorted. "Mmm. Worship of Harmony is a very new but growing faith back home, because many of us met him or witnessed his acts. It is both simple and complicated: we are only given five important orders, but how we do them is up to us."

"Only five Commandments? Christianity has ten, and a whole bunch more abominations. You lucked out. What are they? Is there anything I shouldn't invite you to or do nearby?"

Renka shrugged. "First we must remember that all truth is important, be it in whole or in part. Next, we do not pursue lust without binding ourselves. Then we are to look for strength even in flaws. After that we must give to the world and humans more than we take from them; a high order since we were 'given' life to begin with. Lastly is the funny order that confuses many people," she added with a grin.

"The funny order? I never knew a god could have a good sense of humor," Kid Flash replied. "What is it?"

"Do not waste time by worshipping Harmony."

Wally stared.

'Huh? I mean, just, what?'

"Wait, really? A god says not to worship him? I thought that was the whole point of being a god! Why?"

"You are like many other people who also hear but do not listen or think," she told him with a hopefully exaggerated pout. "It is not, 'Do not worship.' It is, 'Do not waste time in worship.' We worship by giving help and doing good however we can. Just praying worship is no more than fifteen minutes in a day, when we think about what good we have done and what more we want to do. Harmony is a god of acts who fixed the world so that people may live well in it."

"Fixed the world? Did Harmony also create it? I thought gods usually did that stuff."

"No. Mmm... I think the way we use the word 'god' is different, but I do not yet know enough to say. We were created by other gods, Ruin and Preservation, who fought and died. Harmony became the god after them only a few years ago."

'Oh, she's probably trying for a word more like Saint or Holy King it sounds like. Eh, it would be a lot of trouble to try to explain right now, and there's nothing wrong about what she says now.'

"Ruin, Preservation, and Harmony? Are those the actual names, or can't you say the names and those are titles, the way Christians just say 'Our Lord'?"

"Hmmm… I think I understand your question but it is difficult. Words are names that describe, but they have other names. In my old family's language, Preservation was 'Terr' and they were the Terris people in his honor. The meanings that stay the same is a description of the god's… desires? Origin? Goal? One word is like that." Renka shrugged carelessly. "There are other names, more personal," she allowed, "but I want to not say them. Okay?"

"That's fine. You're already being really cool about telling me about this stuff. Are you going to try to convince me to convert? A bunch of earth religions do that a lot."

"Convert? Change what?"

"Convert to Harmony. Do you want me to follow Harmony?" Renka looked at him really oddly.

"You are a hero, aren't you? You do good and help people? What would be the point?"

"On Earth a lot of people argue that their one religion is the only right one. It causes a lot of fights. I think Buddhists mostly sidestep the fights, which is cool, but I really like a religion that teaches that it isn't important. Oh! Hey, if this isn't too personal, could I hear about your powers?"

"Why?" she asked sharply, sitting up from where she had been lounging on the bed.

"Because I'm curious? Because it's a pretty common way for heroes to chat? I'll totally brag about all the cool things I can do if you'd rather hear that, but most girls don't want guys to talk about themselves a lot."

"What can you do?" Renka asked. "You tell, I will tell… I know you move very fast."

"Very, very, very fast. The Flash can run around the whole world, you know, and I'm almost as fast as him. Run across water, or straight up walls… and punching people when you move that fast does a lot of damage." Renka was openly staring at him now. "It's all true, I swear."

"Like compounding steel," she muttered, which Wally guessed might be an obscenity or expression of disbelief. "I can do a little, but if true then you are scary," she told him seriously. "Do you need anything?"

"Need anything to run? Just enough space to move and enough food to stay on my feet!" he boasted. 'Of course, the real Flash doesn't actually need nearly as much food and he's always on his feet further and faster.'

"Scary. I only cheat on my speed a little, nothing like that," Renka told him, shaking her head.

'Well, I'm choosing to take that as an awed compliment instead of actual fear. Though what did she mean by cheat?'

"Cheat? What do you mean? Can you do super speed too?"

"My skills can raise my speed a bit, but that much would be insane. There are limits."

Wally snorted. "Magic? What like Abra Kadabra? No, really, what do you do?" He immediately realized that this was a ginormous mistake, but she was already looking at him.

"I am not sure what you just said, but I will hope it was not as insulting like it sounded," she said threateningly. "I put my magic in my metal-minds and pull it out again to make me better."

"Yes, but… oh, I know! I think you're using the wrong word, because magic doesn't really exist," he explained. "There's a scientific explanation for everything, and magic is just what people call things they don't want to try to understand. One of the guys I fought with the Flash is called Abra Kadabra, and he pretends to use magic to walk through walls or make things disappear, but it's really all cybernetic implants and nanotechnology."

"What are those?"

"Cybernetic implants, ah… talk to machines to make them work at a distance. Nanotechnology is so small that you can't see it. But it has clear rules and limits which actual magic wouldn't."

"Hmmm… If 'magic' is what you say, then you use magic, not me," Renka told him.

"Eh?"

"My magic has rules and limits and logic, and I spent a lot of time making math about how I use it. I put strength in and I pull it out. All you say you need to run is food and space, which is the same as me without magic, but you say you run much, much more fast. Faster. Where are the rules in that?"

"It's chemistry! Ah, sorry… It's all chemistry, really. The first Flash discovered the Garrick Formula and it gave him super speed, and then the second Flash and I both did the same things and got the same result. Science. But if you say you have rules and you know how it works, then you should call it something other than magic."

Renka shrugged, and the motion of the muscled arm reminded him once more that he'd been yel- shou- talking loudly at someone bigger, heavier, and older than he was who had undefined (to him) powers to boot. 'I'm really glad she's so nice about this.'

"Words. Meaning. Bah. What should I say?" she asked him.

"I don't know? Do you literally call it magic in your home language?" Renka became speculative at this, and her mouth began moving silently as she, he guessed, tried out syllables and sounds.

"Feruchemy," she finally concluded.

"Sounds like chemistry, which I like since they're both science." Wally gave her a thumb's up. "So you are a Feruchemist then, not a magician. Congratulations. I don't suppose you could show me some stuff? I mean," he whizzed out the door, down the hall, and back again, "you've seen my super speed. What can you do?"

"You know that before I talked much better?"

"Your accent changed and you used bigger words? Yeah, I noticed, but I wasn't going to say anything."

"Language spell. Ah, language Feruchemy. I spend time putting half my language skill into a metal mind, and then I spend the same time later being good plus half at language. Understand?"

"Yeah, that's pretty cool. You said you could do speed too? Can I see?"

Renka pursed her lips. "I did say it," she mused slowly. A shrug. She picked a pillow off the bed, stood, and threw it across the room.

In a blur, she had crossed the room, passed the pillow, and caught it inches from the far wall.

"Cool? Good?"

"Very cool," Kid Flash assured her. "Any more tricks?"

"Later. Secret right now," she told him, tapping her nose. Then she reconsidered, dropping the pillow back on the bed. Renka held out her arms. "Okay. One more. Pick me up," she challenged.

"Pick you up? Okay." She yelped when he heaved her into a bridal carry, which Wally had actually been uncertain he could do. A lot of his use of strength was in striking and momentum instead of lifting.

Oddly, Renka was quite light in his arms, as though she were carved from Styrofoam instead of her very warm and bouncy flesh, which she might not realize how much of said flesh he was feeling.

"Move your hand," she told him, prompting a quick apology, which she met with an odd, brittle smile. "Past I said, push weight in… and pull it out."

"Oof!" he choked, as the pressure on arms multiplied and drove him to the floor. "Ooooooh, my tailbone. Ow." 'Passive-aggressive for me accidentally copping a feel? Okay, I'll let it pass. At least I didn't get slapped.'

"You see?" she asked cheerfully, hopping off and ending the compression of his ribs.

"I see," he wheezed. "You lost weight, and then you gained it back with interest. You do that with speed and stuff too? Cool."

"Thank you," she preened.

"So, going by all the metal you wear, I'm guessing that plays a part in what you do?" She only smiled and helped him to his feet. "Well it was either that, or you could have a religious prohibition against wearing regular clothing. This has to be the emptiest closet ever owned by a teenaged girl in the history of ever." He gestured at the empty wardrobe and dresser.

"Clothes. Clothes? Oh Rusts," she groaned. "I think I need some help with your world's manners and ownership rules."

"Yeah? Do you want to go buy some stuff, because I am not the best guy to bring shopping – I hear Speedy really loves that stuff," Wally dodged and volunteered shamelessly.

"No, no, I have no money. But the Justice League gave me some clothes to wear because I only had two outfits when I showed up, and I left them in the other room. What might happen?"

"I guess maybe you'll just have them dropped off later? What was in the briefcase you gave Superman, if not clothes?"

"More metal," she mentioned dismissively. "Should we get them from going?"

"Your clothes? All of them?"

"Not many. Four copy outfits? Five? I can carry them all on my own. I… don't want people who save lives to as well have to run around and pick up my mess like I am four years old," she admitted. "Take me back to the 'Zeta Tubes' please, and I can bring them all by my self."

"Eh, I'll help you," Wally offered. "Carrying clothes is apparently a time-honored male tradition. Just in exchange…"

"Yes?"

"Promise me that you'll take Speedy or Robin when you next go shopping instead of me."

"…If they want? I will not take you," she told him with a shrug.

"Great! Just follow me."

__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________​

Author's notes:

Well, it's interesting. I haven't read the books but the power set seems to make enough sense though I have no clue about the religious earring and whatever the other thing that's made of the same stuff is. The process of her learning english is also done pretty well, reminds me of when I was starting off with french though I wasn't lucky enough to have a spell.

Click to shrink...

The earring is from the Alloy of Law books, and Pathian's (Harmony's worshippers) wear them to connect with Harmony. Renka is unusual in that she wears hers all the time, which you usually aren't supposed to do, but she has her reasons. I'm glad I got her language abilities right. She also has almost no experience using the metal-minds that let her do the language trick, which is why even when she's tapping her abilities can be unpredictable.

It's a Hemalurgical Spike that lets her commune with gods that have the right set of skills, specifically Harmony--the one in charge of Scadrial after the events of the first trilogy.
The bigger one is another Hemalurgical Spike, which has probably degraded quite a bit by now, because they need to be stored in fresh blood or piercing a body to maintain their power. What they do is steal an attribute from a victim (Killed with the spike), and give it to a beneficiary (Who gets pierced by that spike afterwards). It's Mistborn's "Dark Magic" equivalent, because you cannot create a working spike except through murder--but actually using a functioning one is morally neutral. The irony of Harmony--probably the only Cosmeric God who takes his position and role seriously--having to use Hemalurgical Spikes to communicate with his servants is not lost on him--but you need a slight hole in someone's soul to speak to them when you're not a physical entity anymore.

Click to shrink...

Pretty much, and the earring and bigger two pieces are all made of atium.

Thank you for reading!

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Safe Harbor - part 2
* July 8 [Wonder Woman focus]
'The new team of heroes in training is off to an ominous start,' Diana considered. Speedy had walked out rather than be a part of something he viewed as beneath his aspirations to the Justice League, 'which is an excellent demonstration of his maturity and level headedness that we will keep in mind when he does apply to the League, I hope he realizes,' while only Robin and Aqualad had been left with Superboy to meet Miss Martian, because Kid Flash and Renka had last been seen in each other's company and were no longer in the mountain.

The briefcase in her hand felt a little heavier at that thought. She had known that Clark was still very rattled by the discovery that he was functionally the father of a teenager now, but the extent to which the idea disturbed him left her worried both for and about him.

Handing off a responsibility he promised to fulfill over to her in favor of ducking out after Superboy arrived was very uncharacteristic, and Diana resolved to corner him for an appropriate conversation sometime in the future.

Batman had simply begun his speech at the scheduled time, ignoring the absence of nearly half of the intended audience, and the other assembled heroes were sharing looks as it quickly wore down the sidekicks' patience.

"~the six of you will be that team."

"Can you even count?" Superboy shouted. "There aren't six of us here. There won't be six of us because one of the people who helped rescue me walked out!" Robin coughed.

"Try to stay whelmed, Superboy. Still, I hate to say it Batman, but come on! You're reading from a script and ignoring everything in the world, which isn't what you taught me. Starting without Kid Flash, because there's no way he would have walked out ever, and you really should have adjusted your numbers if you wanted us to believe that you care about or believe in any of what you're saying about us being important as the next generation. Unless this is a test," he added, his mind almost visibly going into overdrive as the student of the world's greatest detective began to refocus his attention.

Bruce accepted the interruption with good grace. "I began the meeting without Kid Flash to make the point that crimes will not wait for your convenience, and you must be willing to drop your activities and arrive on time when you get the alert. If you cannot get to a pre-scheduled meeting with plenty of notice, then you risk losing people's lives when you immediately need to get to the scene of a crime. Also, if you had paid attention to information distribution, Robin, you would have known-"

<Recognized: Kid Flash, B03. >
<Recognized: Ferrous, B06. >

"Who?" all three boys asked at once, their heads swiveling to the Zeta Tubes. Poor Miss Martian also checked as well, but looked much more awkward and alone when she did so.

'I hope not being alone in a gaggle of boys will help her fit in more easily. Both of them. The two should fall together quickly, gods willing.' Then Diana had so hide a smile at the embarrassing situation about to play out.

Kid Flash and Renka had their arms full of piles of clothes. Both teens stilled when they were face to face with an unexpectedly full room of heroes.

'And the poor girl walks into this meeting with those tucked visibly under her elbow. Today is probably not a good day for her,' Diana sympathized, waiting to see if she needed to swoop in and salvage the young woman's dignity.

"Was this the meeting?" Renka asked nervously.

"Hoo~oooh boy," Kid Flash sighed. "Sorry we're late Batman. I-"

"My fault," Renka interrupted, rearranging her baggage to let her give a bow. "I apologize. I was moving into the new room and realized I had left my clothes in the old one, so Kid Flash offered to help me get them."

"But it's my fault that I didn't check the time, since Renka doesn't know how to tell the time yet."

She gave him a look but didn't argue. "Thank you," Diana saw Renka mouth almost silently.

"This is a safe time at the beginning to make mistakes," Bruce told them, "but if you make mistakes like this in the field it could cost people their lives." Renka straightened.

"I understand, Mister Batman." That answer got a noise out of Robin, though Diana couldn't quite specify whether he laughed or gagged. Renka, or Ferrous as she apparently was now called, placed her clothes out of the way on the floor by wall, grabbed and repeated with Kid Flash's bundle, and walked over to join the line-up of sidekicks. She she scanned the room and frowned slightly. Her eyes returned to Diana, who offered a smile and wiggled the briefcase reassuringly.

'I never really noticed when we were alone together, but without Speedy here, Renka really stands visibly alone here. He would have been the only one about her age and size. I wonder if he would have left if he knew he wouldn't have been totally alone in the situation. Though, yes, he probably would have.'

"Ferrous, I see you've made acquaintances with Kid Flash. This is Robin, Aqualad, Superboy, and Miss Martian, who will be the other members of the team. Team, this is Ferrous, a recent recruit by Superman with some physical enhancement magic-"

"Feruchemy!" Kid Flash contributed. Everyone turned to him. "Ah, you know, because magic isn't real? She wasn't using quite the right word-"

"My name is Renka," she said with another bow. "I am still learning English, and I have no experience with being a super hero, but I hope we can get along well." Diana guessed that Robin wanted to ask if Batman really was sure of this, and why, but trusted his mentor/father too much to burn bridges with that public question. Also, the mention of Superman had tweaked Superboy's ear, but he didn't appear to have any plan to act on it.

"I will dispatch you when I have identified missions appropriate to your mix of skills and experience," Bruce continued. "In between missions Black Canary will offer training sessions. Red Tornado has volunteered to serve as your Officer in Residence, and will be in charge of helping in any day-to-day issues you have in dividing up maintenance duties, resources requisitions, and interpersonal spats."

Meaning the teenagers' inevitable problems with daily chores like laundry, grocery shopping, and the fights from living in close quarters with other strong personalities. Diana smirked, not unkindly.

Which isn't to say that it was a nice smile, either.
~
"Ferrous," Diana called lightly, walking up after Batman officially called the meeting to a close. "Superman asked me to pass on his apologies for not keeping this himself, but something came up in Metropolis that required his attention. But I believe this belongs to you." She handed over the briefcase, which Renka took with a relieved sigh.

"Thank you, Wonder Woman. I'm glad he didn't let me stop him from helping, and you didn't have to trouble yourself with this either-" Diana opened her mouth to say it was no trouble at all, but Renka apparently hadn't reached that part of social interaction in her studies yet, because she continued, "-I wouldn't have minded if he'd trusted his apprentice with this instead of asking you." Everyone in hearing range immediately glanced between her and Superboy.

Thankfully, the young man did not quite vent a display of temper. Possibly he hadn't caught the implication, or he just didn't know how to react.

"Also, you may please use my name Renka," she continued.

"Pretty bold," Robin commented, "using your real name that freely. You're really willing to trust a bunch of people who've never heard of you with that?" Part of Diana wanted to scold the Boy Wonder when he threw down the gauntlet like that, but another part knew it was better to sit back and let the kids work out their hierarchy issues early before things had a chance to boil over later. Also, she wondered how Renka (who was probably older and hopefully more mature) would handle this.

"Trust? Giving you my name is just manners, I think," Renka replied, and Diana recognized the lessening of her accent as a sign that she had engaged her linguist spellcraft.

Or Feruchemy, as Kid Flash so enthusiastically named it.

"I support the idea, though I understand why others do not feel comfortable," interrupted Aqualad, stepping forward and extending a hand. "I am called Aqualad in public, but if we will be on the same team then please use my name. I am Kaldur. My full name is Kaldur'ahm, but I prefer Kaldur, if you would thus use it."

"Hello, everyone! I'm M'gann Morrz, although on Earth I think I'll just use Megan," M'gann added, jumping in to offer her introduction and handshake as well. Renka shook Aqualad's hand, and then indicated that he could shake with Megan first.

"I am glad to meet you," she said. Turning from M'gann to Superboy, she extended a hand as well while Kid Flash and M'gann met, meaning that he tried to flirt with her and she wasn't advanced enough in Earth's social customs to pick up the cues. "I am Renka, although my cape name is Ferrous."

"…Superboy. It's the only name I have," he said, gruffly shaking her hand. Robin gave in to the inevitable and shook as well.

"Robin, protégé to the Batman. I've been a hero for three years and I've never heard of you. How long have you been doing this gig?" he asked, unable to not drop another challenge. Diana could feel Bruce firmly holding in a depressed sigh somewhere behind her. Poor man, his boy wasn't quite as ready to leave the nest as they'd thought.

"Gig?"

"Being a hero," Kid Flash told her. "A gig is slang for a job."

"Thank you." To Robin and the rest, she said, "I'm not really a hero yet. Today is the eighth of July, and I only got off the street on the twenty-fourth of June. I've probably committed more crimes than I've stopped, but I'm here because I want to change that," she admitted easily.

"Less than two weeks? How the hell did you get Superman to take you on as his sidekick?!" Superboy nearly yelled. Diana winced in sympathy for the situation and was glad Clark had left, even if it left the rest of them with this.

"What?" Renka asked uncertainly. Kid Flash happily filled in the details.

"Oh, it's this great story. She knew that Lois Lane had been kidnapped by baddies and rescued by Superman a lot, so she walked into the Daily Planet and asked Lois Lane to introduce her so she could ask him to sponsor her. Just like that, straight to her and then his face. And her powers are pretty cool and she has the craziest background story ever, so he said yes and here she is!" Robin and Superboy appeared to have trouble with this.

"You just asked him? And he said yes just like that?" Now the young Kryptonian appeared more depressed than angry.

"Less than two weeks after you walked in off the street, and they trust you enough to let you here already?" Robin managed through his surprise.

Diana intervened. "While her history is odd, Ferrous has been thoroughly checked by myself, Superman, Martian Manhunter, both of the green Lanterns, Giovani Zatarra, and Batman. We're hardly going to turn away someone who says they want to be a hero, considering how many people your age decide that they'd rather commit crimes instead."

"Which isn't to say that we're going to trust you unconditionally so soon, either." Bruce said from behind her. "There have been several worrying things that I would like to address with you in a more private place, but it can wait. I will however introduce a few requirements during your trial phase, if you understand that term?"

Renka tilted her head and hummed a note.

"Either you may be putting me on trial of law about something, I assume, or trying me out to see how I work. I'm glad that you're smarter than I feared." Bruce indicated that he didn't quite understand that bit, which was fine since Diana didn't either. "I don't trust me, much. If I did, I wouldn't think I needed help and teaching to be a hero, I'd just go out and do it. If you did, I would worry if I could trust what you think. What do I have to do?"

There was something very disconcerting to Diana with the easy way she had admitted and accepted these things.

"First, please do not leave the Mountain or contact anyone outside of it without someone with you. If you need to reach one of the Justice League, either Red Tornado or a teammate can help you send us a message."

"I accept this," Renka said.

"Second," he produced a small gizmo, "please keep this tracker on your person or very nearby at all times. It will let us know if you move somewhere you have promised not to, and also allow us to rescue you if you are kidnapped during a fight."

"Even when I bathe?"

"If you are in your room or such, merely having it nearby will be enough. It is meant to be a fallback, not a leash." Bruce waited while the rest of the team and Diana were silent, mostly due to a jumble of confused emotions.

Diana wanted to be incensed that he was doing this, except that Renka herself was not visibly upset, so she merely watched.

"If this is sufficient, then I accept," she answered, putting it in her pocket.

"Good enough. The third will be the most difficult, which is why I want to give you several months before you need to follow it." Renka nodded along. "I know you value your privacy, but I wish you to choose one person whom you tell your entire story to, both your personal history as well as the uses and limits of your powers."

Renka said nothing.

Through her silence, Renka's expression reminded Diana of the evening sky: beautiful and awe-inspiring, but also slowly and steadily darkening. Her nearly tangible fury radiated out like heat, before it suddenly cut off, and then a trickle began to ebb out once more.

"I ask this of you because there may come a day when you are injured or unreachable, and knowledge of your powers or past may be needed to save you or someone else, not because I wish to make plans against you, although I will also do this too, I admit," Bruce told her solemnly. Diana couldn't quite think of what to say, and recognized that Renka's unaltered reaction was also important to their understanding of the mysterious young woman. "I will not insist that the person you choose be a member of the Justice League, only that we can contact them if there is information that we need to know. Understand why this concerns me." Another minute of slow anger passed before Renka spoke, more eloquently than Diana had yet heard.

"You appear to be a very smart and cautious person, Mister Batman. Tell me, please, whether or not you apply these protocols to yourself and have a person who knows your secrets?"

"I do," he immediately confirmed, to the surprise of everyone that did not know the name Alfred Pennysworth. "Furthermore, I act as this contact for several other League members, and can access the contacts of the others."

"Do you make plans against them as well?"

"I do. In the hero world, far from impossible for people to be compelled to betray you against their will, as you have already learned about through mind control or other forms of coercion. Part of heroism is the willingness to sacrifice your own wellbeing for the greater good, and every member of the Justice League would rather be taken down by their fellows than forced to turn their powers against the innocents of the world."

Which… was not something Diana could or would argue against, since she had those same feelings as well, and expected such thoughts and behavior from the people she fought beside.

The oppressive (only objectively, because Diana subjectively was well above being affected by it) presence of Renka's offense receded somewhat, but she had one final point to make.

"Do you even have plans against yourself, Mister Batman?"

"Yes. It was the first such plan I formed, which is why I helped found the Justice League in the first place." After a moment to let it sink in, the meaning of that quip startled a bark of laughter out Renka and a few of the others, including Diana.

"How long is 'several months'?" she asked.

"Within three months: October eighth."

"Three months? …With that time-span, fine, I accept this condition," she decided. It was not spoken in the casual way of the first two, but its grudgingness was an honesty of its own, Diana knew.

"Wonder Woman and I both have elsewhere to be, but I will be in touch with all of you. Robin, don't forget to drop by the cave every so often or you may have a worried visitor come to check that you are changing your underwear every day."

"Ba~aats! I can't believe you just said that! Go hang from a ceiling somewhere, why don't you?"

"C'mon Robin, try to stay whelmed," Kid Flash said.

"Whelmed?" mused Renka. "Like overwhelmed and underwhelmed? I will have to remember that."

_______________________________________________________________________________________​

* July 9 [Overview]
"I'm not going to suddenly start trusting her just because you don't like treating pretty girls as threats," Robin told Kid Flash as he typed away furiously on his room's desktop.

"I'm not asking you to trust her because she's pretty. Heck, I'm not even asking you to trust her at all! I'm asking you to trust the guys who taught us everything we know about the hero business, including your dad! Do you really think they would have let her near the mountain if they had any doubts about her?"

"Given the restrictions Batman stuck her with and the fact that she clearly doesn't trust us with much at all, yes."

"I believe the specification Wally wants is reasonable doubts, just like your American courts require," Kaldur pointed out. "The Batman's thoroughness and paranoia is something my king speaks about with equal amusement, awe, and frustration, but I do know that his precautions turn out unnecessary more times than not. Or they only become necessary years after they were created, and my king has stated his belief that for every incredible plan that saves the day against long odds, the Batman also formulates a dozen unnecessary plans that rarely see the light of day because they are too specific or ridiculous."

"...I can't really argue with that," Robin admitted, "unless it's to vouch that the number is more like twenty-to-one, not twelve, but consider that this is a plan that we see, and that Batman made a point of displaying right in front of us! Are we supposed to ignore that?"

"Have you ever known him to be that upfront about what he's really planning?" Kid Flash pointed out. "Maybe it's a blind and he and Renka talked about it beforehand and set it up to distract from something else."

"Maybe, but the only way we'll find out is if we follow the path he laid out until it stops going anywhere," Robin told them. "So I'm going to keep an eye on Ferrous and find out what she wants hidden so badly. Maybe it's nothing. But…"

"But what? Come on, Robin, there's something about this that's got your panties in a twist. Something personal."

"I do agree with him," Kaldur put in. "I would have expected Superboy to get along the worst with Renka, so the fact that you obsess over her more than he does, given who sponsored her, is rather concerning. Tell us what evidence is particularly raising your hackles enough to call us in here while the others are busy."

"…Ferrous reminds me of some of the rogues from Gotham." The other two boys tried to process this. "The way she walks, and the way her eyes move, remind me of people like Riddler and Penguin. They aren't as demented as the Joker, and they aren't trained combat specialists, but they fight smart, they fight dirty, they fight sadistically, and they are always looking for angles and hooks. The way she went from placid to menacing was like the Riddler, one time I saw someone completely spoil his games. He didn't freak because he was losing, he freaked because the loss stopped being fun for him, and he got really dangerous. I'd be a lot more mellow about Ferrous if I knew her tics better, KF."

"I've already told you, Rob, I'm not betraying Renka's confidence about how her powers work or what I know about her past, and if you go poking into her private stuff too far I will hold you down while she beats you."

"I did take what you said about her room and the safe very seriously, Wally," Robin told him, turning away from the computer to make brief eye-contact. "You have my word of honor that I have not and will not break into or bug her or anyone's private rooms."

"…But you totally bugged all of the public areas, didn't you?" Kid Flash realized.

"Duh," Robin answered. "But it hasn't really done much for my search. I get a bit about her being periodically weak, but her meditations and stuff are still holding out on a few missing links. And that's just about her powers, not her personality." A minimized window flicked across his screen to open full-size on another computer halfway across the wall.

"~Once upon a dream,~" sang Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the movie the two girl were watching from the couch in the main social room. Megan and Renka were curled up, with the latter's arms skinnier than usual and her face blotched with cold sweat, warm cheeks and a runny nose. They were talking quietly about the movie, and what they understood of what they saw.

"By the way," Robin added, "KF, this is your last chance to give me the lowdown on Ferrous, before I find out for myself."

"Wait, what?"

"I've got the Justice League's non-classified file on her right here. Wanna read it?"

"Dude! Robin, that's a major invasion of privacy! If she finds out she'll flip!"

"It's not anything the League doesn't know, since it's their file. It's not even the really classified files, just the one any of the League members could pull up if they felt like it. Besides, don't you want to know whether what she told you was the truth or not? She won't find out unless you or Kaldur tell her, after all."

"I am less than certain about this course of action," Kaldur muttered, but he didn't leave.

"Like I said, this is all stuff she already told people, so it isn't secret anymore. I'm about to open it, KF. Do you want to leave or do you want to find out enough to give you a better chance of getting to kiss her."

"Oh, hey, I like Renka fine, but Megan's actually more the type of girl I'd want for that," Kid Flash objected. But, he didn't leave either.

"Last chance to leave. Opening the unclassified file in three, two, one."

First Name: Renka Last Name: N/A Professional Name: Ferrous Species: Human*
Birthdate: N/A (August 16*) Age Met: 19 Current Age: 19 Citizen: N/A* Date Met: June 24, 2010
Height: 5'11" Weight: 168 lbs Ethnicity: N/A* (brown pigment skin) Eyes: Tawny Hair: Black

First Encounter: Renka entered the Daily Planet building on June 24th of 2010 and peacefully arranged for Lois Lane to arrange contact with Superman. At the resulting meeting, Renka expressed interest in gaining Superman's patronage in her attempts to enter super heroism. After a discussion and demonstration of her powers and motivations, he took her to the Watchtower her she was kept for further observation and basic training, until she was transferred to [censored].

Powers: Renka is adept at a form of magic named Feruchemy, which is based upon the storage and retrieval of physical and metaphysical traits through the use of physical mediums.
Uses: by decreasing one of her traits she may store the unused amount in a metal container for retrieval in part or in whole at a later date.
Example: storing 50% of her strength for one hour will make her weak and frail for that hour, but later she may retrieve it to spend 60 minutes with 150% normal strength, 30 minutes with 200% of her normal strength, etc.
Renka has been observed using Feruchemy to affect: linguistic ability, weight, physical strength, and physical speed. It is suspected that other powers may include regenerative ability, nutrition, mental processing, and charisma.

Other Skills: Though not formally trained, Renka has displayed a warrior's instincts and pragmatism, indicating a large amount of past combat experience. She has also mentioned in passing skills in nature survival, metallurgy, concealment, cooking, and particularly language: Renka claims to speak five languages* and is learning English as a sixth. She is also adept at complex mental multiplication and addition, but may not have been taught much of algebra, geometry, or calculus.

Limits: The reserves Renka may draw upon for enhancement are limited by what she has previously stored, rendering her abilities finite and prone to being exhausted in prolonged combat.
She also appears to require the "metal-minds" in which she stores these traits to be on her person for use. There appears to be a limit to the size of a metal-mind's maximum capacity based on its physical mass, but its shape is unlikely to have an effect.
She appears to be limited to 16 traits that it is possible for her to store and draw upon with Feruchemy; this number is suspected because she identified 16 metals and alloys that she required the metalminds to be made from, and she must store certain traits in certain metals. She has confirmed that she can use impure compounds for storage, but with decreased efficiency.

Additional: Beyond her Feruchemy, Renka appears to be a baseline human with good physical conditioning, a sharp mind, uncommon good sense, and a history of surviving harrowing circumstances.

Giovani Zatarra's second-level mystic scans of her person can detect that there enchantments on her metal-minds, but not what the enchantments or stores' natures are. He also reported metaphysical scarring and residue that suggests she once encountered a malicious Class >6 supernatural entity and survived. When questioned, Renka affirmed that such an incident had occurred, and that she was aware of the residue, which she claimed was dormant and should not pose future problems to her functioning. She declined to give specific details about the encounter.

J'onn J'onnz performed a second-level telepathic scan without Renka's knowledge, and he concluded that she held no malicious intentions toward the League other than mild frustration, moderate anxiety bordering on paranoia, and hope. He also identified what he states might functionally be a telepathic "back door" into her mind that appeared to be synthetically placed. When questioned about this, Renka demonstrated awareness of the phenomena and its implications that she may be vulnerable to mind control, but also expressed a distressed alarm that people with telepathic powers existed* and were capable of poking around her mind. She asked that such scans not be repeated outside of immediate emergencies, and expressed interest in learning telepathic defense until it was mentioned that such would require her to undergo telepathic assault as part of the process.

Renka wears at all times an earring with a pattern of ten interlocking circles, which she claims has religious significance and she never removes, even to shower or sleep. It is made of an indeterminate metal that resisted Green Lantern C's ring identification scans. It may also act as a metal-mind, and Renka has stated that she considers attempts to remove it to be worse violations of trust than an unprovoked, violent assault on her person.

* Renka's stated backstory is that she originated in an alternate universe/plane/dimension, on a world named Scadrial, and ended up in our world as a result of an unspecified metaphysical event (possibly connected with her contact with the Class >6 entity). As a result, she has no citizenship to any of our nations, and English is the first of our languages that she is learning. Her birthdate here is uncertain, but she calculated the number of days she has been alive, and going by our calendar she chose to identify her birthdate as August 16th. Her claim is born out by the presence of uncommon and/or non-native gene sequences and antibodies in her body, though no changes are enough to disqualify her as human. She has also tested positive for the inter-dimensional radiation observed in the [censored] incident.

Comments:

Superman: It was a surprise to have someone walk off the street, but in hindsight I wish more young meta-humans showed her common sense and dedication. She's definitely lived a hard life, and I hope the League can give her some happiness. She doesn't appear to trust herself much, and she doesn't trust others easily.

Batman: She is very suspicious, but no worse than many other people we have worked with in the past. There are chances that she may be an infiltrator or vulnerable to subversion, but steps have been taken to minimize risk, and I agreed to place her with the others trainees to help build bonds and stabilize her.

Wonder Woman: I personally like the idea of a young heroine willing to seek out training in her drive to do the right thing. When I am with her, I think very highly of her, but I want more study done of the supernatural effect that alters her social bonds with people once they leave her presence.

Green Lantern C: Her body's readings support her story according to my ring, including the trace amounts of harmless radiation that attach to dimension shifters. She personally struck me as an intelligent and likeable young lady, despite shadows in her eyes.

_________________________​

"Hey, KF, does this match with what she told you?" Robin asked.

"…Yeah. She didn't go into nearly that much detail, but different dimension, the metal-minds, the religion and jewelry."

"I believe you may owe our eldest teammate an apology, Robin," Kaldur pointed out. Robin dismissed this.

"I'm being careful, just like I was trained to. Besides, this isn't a heavily classified file on her, which I wouldn't be able to get to through Batman's programming locks, so nothing in here is too personal. Just so long as you guys don't tell her we did this, she'll never know. If she finds out on her own, I'm going to be more worried about how someone who can barely use a computer sniffed me out than I am about offending her." Changing the subject, Robin added, "It looks like Superboy is done cooking dinner, so you two go on ahead and I'll shut this down and clear my history. Tell them I'll be along to eat in five."
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Author's note

Atium Spikes?
*Screams Externally*
...
SHE HAS THE BANDS?
*Screaming Intensifies*
So, uh, when's *REACTED* going to show up to nick those?

Click to shrink...

Who is *REDACTED* because I can think of several possibilities?

I just found this and haven't made it through all of what's posted yet, but so far it looks promising.
One thing that kept bugging me was John Stewart's minimal use of contractions. Having gotten a bit further, it suddenly made a whole lot of sense. That was wonderfully subtle, and subtly amazing.

Click to shrink...

I'm totally flattered.

Im pretty sure Ruin is very very dead at this point

Click to shrink...

Well Ruin is pretty much the Divine Intent to kill and destroy things. You know what they say: "in strange aeons, even death may die". DC time period on earth is pretty strange, don't you think? Or maybe I'mm pulling your leg. Or maybe that's a blunt to distract you from my actual plan. RAFO.

Atium's Hemalurgical use is "Steal anything you want."
That's why I'm screaming externally, because there are Atium Spikes in the DC Universe.
I don't think the world is prepared for someone to steal Superman's kryptonianness.
The Bands being present here is just icing on the horror-cake.

Click to shrink...

Regarding the Kryptonianness, remember that a) atium can still only steal one attribute at a time, and b) she would have to find some way to hammer an atium spike through a Kryptonian chest.
Worrying about Renka stealing Kryptonian superpowers is just plain silly.
...
Martians, on the other hand, have telekinesis, telepathy, shapeshifting, and no insane invulnerability. The Flash has an ordinary human rib cage, Atlanteans can breathe water, and there are how many other metahumans more easily available? That ignores what regular, non atium spikes like iron (physical fitness) or copper (intelligence) could steal from people like the Terror Twins or Dr. Roquette.
Really, stop worrying about the people who can tank anti-aircraft fire to the chest without a scratch. Kryptonians are perfectly safe from Renka.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Safe Harbor part 3
* July 18th [Renka Focus]
"Hey, Renka! Megan asked me to ask if you're interested in a trip out on her bio-ship?" Kid Flash called. Renka let the weights drop back to their ready positions and nodded.

'I can always come back later if this isn't a good team bonding thing, and I'm glad M'gann kept to what I asked about not speaking in my mind. Do I need to bring anything for whatever this is?'

"Yes, please. But what is a bio-ship? Should I bring anything?" she asked him aloud, toweling off a bit and replacing the metal-minds she'd removed for the workout.

"Oh, well, you know what a ship is?"

"No."

"What, really?" he asked as they moved down the halls. "You've never been on a boat?"

"Oh, boats! Like barges? I know about those; I was even on one a few times back home. A ship is like that?"

"Yeah. Then there are rocket ships, which travel up in space."

"Airplanes?"

"Well, in this case yeah, but rockets go really, really high, you know? Well Megan's bioship is like a rocket and a fighter plane, except it's alive instead of made of metal. It's how she got here from Mars. She offered to take us all on a trip, and sent me to invite you since you've got your no telepaths thing."

"…I think I will just have to see what it is when I see it," Renka decided. Wally's words she understood, but when she put it all together things still weren't making sense. Everything moved through space and time, after all, and these rockets sounded more like elevators than airplanes – weren't rockets those spears that shot out of big guns and exploded, anyway? English was hard, even though now she had a bunch more people to talk with and watch movies and TV shows and ask questions to.

They entered the 'hangar,' the room was called.

"She said yes," Wally called to them all. Renka waved, keeping her smile peaceful and friendly. The 'bioship' was big, but Renka was still whelmed for the moment.

"Glad you could come. I remembered what you said," M'gann said to her, a touch awkwardly.

"You did, and I am glad. Thank you for respect," Renka told her, being sure to make her smile larger.

'I still think I was totally justified to freak the Rusts out when she got in my head, but I should handle it better from now on, as long as she doesn't do it again. M'gann said it's how she talks at home, which makes sense if everyone can do it, and I can remember how different it is if she slips up as long as she is genuinely trying.' More than a year of venomous whispers and a few harsh moments of realization bubbled up to her thoughts. The bubbles were calmly examined, popped, and the memories dropped back into the depths of her mind.

M'gann led them into the 'bioship'.

"Grab a seat and strap in for launch. That means you-"

"I can tell," Renka reassured M'gann, using the seatbelt.

"Okay, everyone in?" She set her hands on two glowing spheres. "Red Tornado, please open the bay doors."

Renka almost asked how bay doors were different from ordinary big doors, but the view stole her breath away. She'd been up high climbing trees, mountains, and a few towers, but Superman had only flown with her once when they left the Daily Planet building, and then she was too concerned about not falling.

"Incredible," someone breathed.

"Beautiful," she agreed, filing the new word away absently.

"Yeah, she really is," Wally mused. Renka turned towards him, keeping her eyes more at his window than him, but concluded that yes, he had said something odd, since everyone else was looking at him too. "Ah, I mean the ship. Which, like all ships, is a she."

'Oh, they have that tradition too?'

"Fast with his feet, not so fast with his mouth," Robin quipped. Renka laughed along with others, assuming it was a play on words about dexterity or skill with talking vs walking.

'I never noticed that,' she realized suddenly. 'Talking, walking, and another word for stopping is balking. I bet 'alk' is a root that denotes a wide range of actions. I think I've heard 'stalk' used too, for following or seeking something – I'll have to look that up.'

The good natured mockery continued, and since Wally was playing along it seemed she didn't need to try to rescue the young man who had been nice to her.

"I've never asked," she mused instead to Superboy beside her, "but do you know how they make tall buildings?"

"Huh? The same way as usual," he told her, which really told her nothing. "They build a metal skeleton and then build bricks and concrete up around it, and do the inside of each floor once the ceiling is there. And cranes, and stuff."

It was an answer to her question that, at her currently level of language comprehension, still did not actually answer her question. Renka nodded, smiled blandly, and decided not to press.

She had an odd thing with Superboy, she was pretty sure, and wasn't quite confident enough in her verbosity to get his side of the story. She might have stepped on his toes by stealing his mentor, except she hadn't actually seen Superman interact with him, which was either a good sign that she hadn't stolen his attention or a bad sign that she had stolen not just some but all of it.

She put working that out with him on her to-do list: get more cooking lessons with modern equipment; ask Kaldur what being a clone was like so she could consider doing it in the future; try out storing luck in chromium-minds; contact Ms. Lane about that interview she promised; and work out whether Superman and Superboy were master and apprentice, blood relatives, or just an idol and his fan.

Robin asked something that she didn't quite catch, and M'gann stood up in answer. Then M'gann changed.

"Are you a Kandra!" she heard herself almost shriek. M'gann spun around, still wearing Robin's body which they weren't supposed to be able to do, and Renka realized that the entire ship was staring at her.

"Hey, I know it's a little weird to you, but there's no reason to call people names," Wally told her, sounding disappointed. M'gann was looking straight at the floor as she reverted back to her former, default body. Renka panicked, ever so slightly.

"No no! Yes, good! Good name! Kandra good name," she babbled, waving her arms. 'Okay, stop, get your thoughts together and line up the grammar. And tap just a little duralumin-connection to get the point across.'

"I'm sorry," M'gann mumbled, "I should have guessed that would have got you upset after I-"

"No," Renka tried to interject calmly. "M'gann, I am sorry, the kandra are good things. The kandra are holy messengers back home, the faceless ones who are the hands of Harmony. I was not upset, I was impressed." Her memory threw up an image of a human with wings. "They are like angels," she assured. 'M'gann obviously didn't eat Robin so I don't need to worry about that either.' "Can you turn into me?" she requested, hoping it was an appropriate peace offering. Thankfully, M'gann perked up a little.

"Oh sure, you're much easier than the boys!" Beginning at the feet, M'gann's skin and robes rippled upwards, shifting color, texture, and size. "I don't even have to worry much about different body types and skeletal shapes with you," the Renka copy chirped. "Well? How did I do?"

"I like it," Renka told her, glad that no one noticed her twitch at the comment about skeletons.

"Totally radical!" Wally said. "You even got her metal-minds right."

"Huh? What are metal minds?" M'gann asked. "Your jewelry?"

"My jewelry," Renka confirmed. "I use them in my Feruchemy. I am very impressed that you changed those and your clothes as well. Real kandra can't do that, as far as I know."

"Hey, if Megan is better than your angels, does that mean you need to start worshipping her?" Wally asked. It was obviously a joke, so Renka smiled, laughed, and took it as such.

"Red Tornado to Miss Martian." They all turned to M'gann as she sat and began controlling the bioship again.

"Miss Marian and the others present, Red Tornado."

"An emergency alert at Happy Harbor power plant." Renka frowned, guessing that he didn't mean a strong tree or flower or piece of grass. English had a lot of words with different or the same meanings. "I suggest you investigate. Covertly. I'm sending coordinates."

"Received. Course adjusted, we should arrive in under two minutes."

"What does covert mean?" Renka asked Superboy.

"It means undercover."

"Cover blankets? Cover roof?"

"Undercover as in disguised or secretly," Robin called.

"Thank you. So we let no one know we are there?"

"Like there will be anything there to find out," Kid Flash scoffed. "I bet this is just someone tripping into a fire alarm or something. Red Tornado is keeping us busy. Just like Speedy said."

Another mention of the mysterious Speedy, who apparently would have been the teammate closet to her translated age if he hadn't left because he felt he was being held back.

Which Renka could understand, if he was genuinely ready to be a journeyman instead of an apprentice, but still….

"I don't think that's natural," Superboy said, pointing.

Renka followed and saw something she didn't know-

"Ohshit! A tornado, move move move!"

-something called a tornado that looked like an ash swirl multiplied by a few thousand. The window spun wildly and she had the disconcerting feeling of looking up at the ground while staying flat on her feet.

"C'mon Renka, we need to get our game on!" Wally yelped, zooming in front of her to undo the buckle she was fumbling with and dragging her to the bioship door.

They jumped, Renka stored away her weight, the world spun, and she landed and rolled to distribute the confusing tangle of momentum as the wind clawed at her clothing. She followed Robin into the building and stopped at the door to watch the more experienced hero work, letting her team run past her a few seconds later.

'I'd better make certain to make my first outing as Ferris a success. Tapping zinc to accumulate acuity at ~350%. Huh, I wonder if I need a uniform like the others. Well, Superboy doesn't have one either, so I think not. No need to walk around with a big Ferris Wheel motif on my chest.' The world slowed slightly as her mind leapt to task, cataloguing details. 'One: people are screaming and running away, so the threat is serious and dangerous to average people. Found it, the man in red and black armor with ropes around his back. And he's twisting the air and dust around him… powers like fire and water are common here, so this would be wind? He probably can't create vacuums or we'd be choking already, but in case he can I do have some cadmium on my right ankle. Not much though, since I hate trying to store it. There is a gold ring on my left hand and a gold plate on my belt, which also has steel for speed, pewter for strength, iron for weight, and extra zinc, electrum, and duralumin that I shouldn't need.

'Aannnd he just threw back Robin's charge, and blew Superboy back into M'gann, and Wally's running kick almost worked if he'd had more weight, so I can try the same thing if I get a chance. He hasn't attacked anyone while they're down, so he wants to test or play around with us. Theory: he's the distraction while other people do something else. Theory: this is a safe test of our abilities set up by Superman and the others. Theory: he's here to fight and destroy but doing so against his will and sandbagging. Theory… no, never mind, those are the big three.

'No matter what it is we need to take him down hard and fast instead of trying to exhaust him, so I've got to start digging deeper. Tap zinc to accumulate acuity at 500%,' she noted as the world slowed even more and she saw her teammates try another set of attacks that the enemy rebuffed with non-brutal violence. 'And I'll start drawing on pewter and steel to prepare for pulling more out on short notice, and maybe tin will help see the way he's using the wind.

'Notes. Enemy generates air manipulation from places on body: palms are two, potentially shoulders and back equals six points he attacks from. Attacks always spiral like corkscrews instead of straight gusty bursts. He can generate ash-swirl-ish tornados like spinning tops, but only if he first directs the wind at the ground. Helmet probably limits his sight and hearing, and he has attack origins on his back to cover that expected weakness, but none on his legs, helmet, or breastplate. He responds with appropriately minimal force, possibly to limit damage done or to buy time or to conserve energy. Armor suggests that he needs defense because he can't heal, so an incapacitating strike to his ribs should stagger him if I can get through the armor. He is still reacting to each person's second attack in 60-70% the time of the first, and he cut Wally off without letting a solid hit through this time.

'Plan: Charge him once at 200% speed, 180% strength, and decreased weight to better manage fall and throwback. Upon second charge, drastically increase speed, strength, and weight when he raises an arm to target me, slink sideways low to the ground, and smash him in the floating ribs or that crease in his solar plexus. First sprint… Now!' She tapped steel for speed and moved.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________​

Broken powerset is broken. For those who haven't read the books, she can use all 16 super powers and each one is as broken as any meta in the DCU so she is worth 16 superheroes and using gold and was it electrum or whatever each one pretty much makes her a god (ie superman/wonder woman level) so yea, she is broken if she ever starts using her powers the other way (burn instead of store). Ofc it isn't like she has a big bad so she has no reason to do anything like that so story makes sense so far, especially since she wasn't sent here for any reason thus allowing her to follow canon and not mess anything up really.

Though i fear the mission where they lose 6 months of their memory will cause her to kill everyone in sight... I mean that is what she did before she "died" and without having memory of said death... you get the idea.

Click to shrink...

Don't forget that Renka is not a Misting or Mistborn. She cannot burn any of the 16 main metals. Each Feruchemical power is limited by how much she can store, tap, and carry at any one time. Her running out of reserves is going to be a thing. Also, no matter how much she taps, there is pretty much no way for her to fly, or to seriously hurt a super-tough foe. So she is broken by Cosmere and Scadrial standards, but merely above-average in DC Universe.
Don't worry, this will not be a total rehash. I've already got plans for where things go off the rails. The one thing that constantly annoyed me about Young Justice is the number of places where the villains won by dumb luck and it's treated like they planned out the entire thing perfectly.
Example: in Homefront, all Tornado had to do was think, "I should let the others check these robots out for traps before I touch them," and the Justice League could have deprogrammed Inferno and Torpedo and brought the whole plan crashing down. For that matter, it was sheer dumb luck that he happened to touch them at the exact moment that they came back on-line. Villains winning just because the heroes make more stupid mistakes than the villains incenses me. It may happen if situationally appropriate, but I want to try to avoid it.
As for the rest: RAFO.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

[In which People talk about fighting more than they fight, I'm afraid.
You might want to stop halfway through and skip the rehash.]​

Safe Harbor part 4
* July 18 [M'gann Focus]
M'gann winced as the wind threw her and Superboy heels over head again and she saw Renka lurch into a sprint. 'That lurch is probably my fault,' she realized. 'It was her first time flying on a ship and I flew right into the tornado, no wonder she landed badly when she fell out of the ship.' M'gann's impact with the wall disrupted this line of thought, but she caught herself with telekinesis just before she fell onto Superboy.

A blast of air passed and Renka- 'No, I should be thinking Ferrous right now, since we're on the job.' –and Ferrous fell far more gracefully out of the air and landed beside them as Robin tossed another set of his disks.

"Can you attack him from above?" Renka asked. "Make him raise his arms?" She gestured and it clicked for M'gann.

"Oh, get him to move his winds off of us, aimed up? Yes, I can fly above him."

"None of that will stop him from just lowering them again," Superboy grunted, deflating her happy bubble. He simply rushed forward again, intent on powering his way through the winds. 'I bet he probably can, too. He's so much stronger than the rest of us.' Renka sighed.

"You do it? I have a plan."

"I'll do my best," M'gann promised. 'I really hope I can get some good credit back with Renka if this works. She shrieked and got really scared when I forgot and talked in her head, and then she spent most of that day flinching when I walked into the room, and then I did to Superboy the same exact type of thing I did to her, and then I made myself look like an idiot flying the ship and she's already got a plan to handle Mister Twister. I really want to show her that she can trust me.' Squaring her shoulders, M'gann levitated higher and rejoined the fight.

"-are. Have you no adult supervision?" Mister Twister mocked as he blew Robin back again. "I find your presence here alone quite disturbing, little ones." M'gann pulled to mind what she hoped was an appropriate taunt.

"Hey, um, you Windbag! Less talking and more fighting! Try to get me now!" She dived down towards Mister Twister and then pulled up; sure enough, he raised his hands to follow and target her.

Only he caught her with his winds and threw her back again. M'gann's world spun as she flipped and slammed into something metal hanging down from the ceiling, but she'd caught the beginning of Ferrous's sprint again.

'No, I didn't do enough! He'll reorient too quickly!' Mister Twister brought his arms down, winds pouring out once more.

Renka seemed to vanish mid-step.

*KLENGK-CHREEEEEGK*

Renka's voice let loose some foul words in her original language.

"Hah! More impressive than I anticipated from children, but still not enough."

"Help someone please!" Renka shouted, her voice strained. M'gann forced her body free of the bent metal as the team answered.

"Hang on Ferrous!" Kid Flash shouted. More metal groaned into a shriek as something tore.

"Get clear of the opening!" Robin yelled, throwing more of his devices at Mister Twister. Ferrous was grappling onto their enemy with Kid Flash zipping around them, appearing to try and land hits while avoiding Mister Twister's winds.

Winds Mister Twister was blasting Ferrous with at point blank range in an attempt to get her off of him.

Whatever leverage she was using, she finally lost it and Twister tossed her up and away. M'gann reached out with her mind and caught Ferrous before she hit anything. Robin's payload arrived just as the gales died down, exploding in Mister Twister's face. When the smoke cleared, they saw he had defended by blowing his body backwards, largely out of range, but was not unharmed. The armor was scorched by the explosion, and some sparking wires were visible inside a torn gap where Ferrous's hand had been.

"Is that just power armor or is he a robot?" Robin wondered. "Miss Martian, scan to see if he has a mind in there!"

"Down please!" Ferrous shouted, wind-milling her arms as she floated helplessly. "Move me down!"

"Right sorry!" M'gann babbled, letting Ferrous hit the floor as she focused her mind on their target.

She could feel him, but only telekinetically. Feel it, or maybe still him if he was a 'Mister'. Either way, Mister Twister was physically present, but not the bit of him making decisions or feeling emotions.

"No mind! He's a robot," she announced, before it all clicked. "Hello Megan! He's a robot with wind powers and he's testing our strength: he's Red Tornado in disguise!"

"A test? Really?" Ferrous asked. Then, "What is a robot?"

"Red Tornado did say we would be tested soon enough," Aqualad mused.

"It's the type of thing they would do: school tests and kid gloves, just like Speedy said," Robin grumbled, slipping out of his fighting stance.

"Okay, it's a test, so let's hurry up and beat him and pass it," Ferrous suggested.

"No. I refuse to indulge them in these stupid games," Robin said. She huffed.

"Fine, but I and Miss Martian need now practice, because this is our first hero fight. You want?"

M'gann felt a rush of happiness that literally lifted her off the ground.

"OfcourseI'minIreallywantotworkalongsideyouifyouwant! Um! That is- I mean, okay, let's do this," she answered, hoping she was coming off as cool and in control, the way Robin and Superboy always did.

"Good. Any advice?" Renka asked, smearing blood across her cheek when she rubbed it. The other three present did a double-take.

"Ferrous, your hand! How are you not screaming?" Robin asked.

"You should not go into further combat injured. Not when the test will not put anyone in real danger," Aqualad told her. M'gann was speechless, staring at the mutilated right hand Ferrous had hit Red Tornado's disguise with.

The elder girl's fingers were discolored and misshapen, her fingernails each splintered into not less than three pieces and dripping blood. The third joints looked as though someone had tried to beat them back down into each second joint with a hammer. M'gann didn't know pain and bodies the way humans did, but she imagined it had to be agonizing.

"Storing tin to not feel," she grunted. "A test with no danger is the best kind of test. Also, I have had much worse than this in the past," Ferrous told them, smiling bitterly. "I will heal later. M'gann, any plans?"

"Not really. And it's Miss Martian right now."

"Hey, you guys!" Kid flash called as Red Tornado again rebuffed his and Superboy's assault. "We could use some help over here! Hurry up, will you?"

"We go,? Ferrous suggested. Mister Twister lifted himself into the sky, flying on the wind. "Um, I can not get that high. Can you… move me again?"

'She trusts me! She wants to fight me- fight with me- um, fight against another person together! Yes, and she'll let me use telekinesis on her!' "I can do that!" she volunteered, feeling the slight pressure as she enveloped and lifted Ferrous with her powers. "You don't weigh a lot, you know?"

"Storing weight to hit being heavy again later," Ferrous told her.

"Kid Flash, Superboy, don't bother!" Robin yelled, stalking into the open as the young women zoomed up and after the robot. "It's just Red Tornado in disguise, playing with the kiddies to test us, so Kadur and I aren't going to bother! The rookies want a go at him for practice, so just let them play the Justice League's stupid game!"

"You think I'm Red Tornado? Laughable." Mister Twister began to generate some larger storm construct, the winds tearing at Ferrous and Miss Martian as they approached. Sparks of electricity began to crackle.

M'gann suddenly realized what had produced the sound of screeching metal when Ferrous attacked: a small chunk of armor had been torn out of the chest area, leaving an exposed hole of slightly greater area than her human form's hand.

"You own any weapons to stick in there?" Ferrous asked.

"No, I don't," she replied, making certain to answer with her mouth and vocal chords, not her mind. "Sorry." It was hard to hear over the screaming winds, but they managed.

"Neither am I," Ferrous said with a shrug. "This is why we learn. How we get close?"

"Quickly, before Red Tornado finishes the big thing he's doing – he'll probably fail us if we let him get it off," M'gann realized. 'That would definitely count as a lose condition for the game/test.' "I've got it! Red Tornado doesn't have those tubes on his back. It's probably just extra equipment he's using, and taking it off him won't hurt him but probably counts as a win."

"I have gold and iron, so just throw me. I'll be the distraction this time, you go in after."

"I'm not sure I can hit him with enough force, and you might get hurt."

"I can heal, but really once well only, so I just let as much damage group up before I heal it all. Need you not worry."

"Really? Okay, but what can I hit him with that he won't see coming and blow out of- Oh, I've got it!"

"Good! Throw me soon!"

M'gann twisted her telekinesis to launch Ferrous up and over, following her at a lower, slower arc as her telepathy reached out behind them. Something changed about Ferrous's flight arc even before the winds hit her, and when the winds did hit they didn't hit quite hard enough.

"Children, if you continue this foolishness I will have to harm you more severely." Red Tornado threw his twisters at the falling Ferrous, but quickly realized he had to stop adding to the storm construct and use both arms and significant power to redirect her parabola. M'gann came in below, idly catching Ferrous as she fell and swinging up during the brief pause in wind production.

"You are insignificant!" Red Tornado told her as she closed range. He extended one arm back to the sky and storm construct while aiming the other at M'gann. She heard Robin try to yell something, but not what over the winds.

"Oh sh- . . . – rtian, Ferrous, make spa- . . . –ot the real R- . . . –nado!"

She smiled, sensing the invisible movements in the air.

'We win, and we're just the two beginners here! Yes!'

The first wisps of a blast headed straight for her face from the extended arm.

The cloaked bioship, as per M'gann's mental commands, rammed its full weight into Red Tornado at its greatest feasible speed. The impact staggered his twisters and drove him straight into M'gann's waiting grasp. She latched on just as Ferrous had earlier, sprouted several additional arms, and began ripping out tubes and circuitry.

'I just really have to hope Red Tornado has enough redundancy systems that this won't hurt him, but Uncle J'onn told me about that time when he lost all his limbs and his head and he was still fine, so let's win this!'

Tubes still in her hands, they hit the dirt hard, M'gann's mind focused enough to call off her ship and let Ferrous touch down more gently. And now she became aware that Robin, Superboy, Aqualad, and Kid Flash were- Kid Flash had already raced past them and started sticking some things in the hole in the robot while the others were running towards them.

"Get back and take cover!" Robin yelled, "That's not the real Red Tornado!"

'What?'

"What? But he's-"

"Back at the base. I called the League to yell at them for pulling this shit and Red Tornado picked up the- oh crap!"

"Foul, I call foul!" Yelled the human who had just been ejected from the robot suit.

"Oh, so that's what Red Tornado's face really looks like," mused Renka vacantly, which sparked something in M'gann's mind.

'Correction: yelled the robot ejected from the robot suit. He still doesn't have a mind, and he's not a friendly hero testing our skills but an enemy trying to hurt me and my friends, calling us all those horrible things because he meant them instead of to test our reactions and tempers, and he hurt my ship! You call foul? You know what I call you, robot? I call you scrap!' Grabbing a boulder with her telekinesis, M'gann slammed it down on the machine as soon as Wally was safely out of the way.

"Bwuh. Di' M'gann just gill the Re' Tornado? I thoug' we were'n allowed to do 'at?" Ferrous muttered blearily.

"Aww no. Hey, Robin! I think Ferrous here has a concussion!" Kid Flash called. M'gann glanced her way worriedly.

"He was a robot after all, but not Red Tornado," said Aqualad, walking up to her and extending a hand. "Well done. It is shameful, that we four let the two of you handle such a potent foe alone. But even before then, you two were the first to deal significant damage. Congratulations."

'Yes yes yes yes yes! I did it! I'm in! I proved I'm part of the team! Yes!'

"Thank you," she said aloud, glad that there were no other telepaths to feel her mind at the moment – to her fellow Martians, she may as well have been singing and dancing and she knew it.

"Whoa! How did you do that?" Kid Flash asked. M'gann turned to see her partner in crime-busting standing, and the past few minutes and Renka's condition came flooding back.

"Renka! Sit down, you really need to get medical attention!"

"No, she doesn't," Robin told them.

"All better, see?" Renka wiggled her fingers at them. Her whole, unbroken fingers.

Granted, Renka's hands were still covered in her blood, but none of it was fresh anymore.

"So you can use your Feruchemy to heal," Robin affirmed. "Useful. Any other tricks you want to share with us? How did you do that first thing to Red- um, to Mister Twister?"

"Which thing?"

"The first one, when you hit him and held on even through his wind."

"Weight. First I was really light, so he only used a little wind to blow me away. Then I was heavy, and he thought too late that a little wind was too little. Why did M'gann kill Red Tornado?"

"He's not dead!" M'gann objected. "That's not really Red Tornado, either. He didn't have a mind so I made that mistake, but I was wrong. Sorry."

"Not Red Tornado? Huh. I did think why he would wreck a building and scare innocent people for a test, but I thought you knew something I didn't." Renka pursed her lips. "But we won, yes? Correct? Congratulations."

"To you too," M'gann replied brightly.

"To both of you," Aqualad said. "Ferrous, Miss Martian, we four owe you an apology. It is shameful that the experienced four of us allowed our emotions and frustration to compromise the mission, while you two stayed on task. We shall not fail you in such a way again."

Renka shrugged and summarized: "Because we thought Red Tornado gave us a test, in fact we gave us a test. Gave ourselves a test. But, ah, can someone tell me how it did all that without a person? Was it magic?"

"There's no such thing as magic," Kid Flash objected. "This was about as sciency as science can get, with robots."

"I still do not know what a robot is."

"A robot is a synthetic intelligence in a body that was artificially created," Kid Flash rattled off.

"The same as a clone?" she asked Kaldur. M'gann felt Superboy's anger spike.

'Oh, this is not going to end well. can I ay anything to-,'

"No!" he roared, stomping heavily and getting in Renka's face. She lurched back in shock, but then she re-balanced quickly and met Superboy's eyes as he shouted: "Clones and robots are nothing alike! Robots just… just do what they are built to do! You can turn them on and off again and replace them! They are heartless! Clones are nothing like that!"

"I understand. I am sorry I was wrong. Thank you for making me correct." Superboy let out a huff as Renka turned to Aqualad. "To you as well, Kaldur, I am sorry if I caused hurt with my words."

The rest of the team shared a look.

"I… took no offense at your words, Ferrous. But please, call me Aqualad while we are on mission."

"I will then, Aqualad. And Miss Martian. But is the mission over?"

"Not until we report back about everything that happened here," Robin told them.

"I understand."

___________________________________________________________________________________________​

* July 18 [Kaldur focus]
Shame burned in Kaldur's stomach as most the team lined up for a debriefing with The Batman.

'I have failed… no, I have not failed my king, but I have disgraced him and his teachings. It is, in some ways, worse than failure; failure is at least expected as an occasional part of life, and has happened before, and is not always my fault. But today I literally have no one to blame other than myself. If nothing else, I know that My King would counsel me to own up to this shame and learn from it. I will do so, as he would desire. But please, Great Neptune, don't let him come here in person to hear of this shame.'

<Recognized: Batman, 02. >
<Recognized: Black Canary, 13. >

"I understand that despite Red Tornado's report of success on the impromptu mission, there were still some irregularities in the events and their aftermath. For Robin to be so reticent on the subject is irregular, but I have respected his wishes to not discuss the matter until now, the debriefing," The Batman told them as Robin rushed over to join the line. "I do not know what happened, other than no one is known to have died but Black Canary and I wish to inform all of you of an important fact before we begin."

"Bad missions happen," Black Canary told them sympathetically. "Civilian casualties, the loss of allies, pyrrhic victories, and all other sorts of things happen in our line of work, and such events can break us badly if we are too rigid in our minds and hearts. Missions can go wrong because of faulty intelligence, flawed decisions, or even for no perceivable reason. However bad it was, you all walked out well enough to still stand here, and your enemy did not. That in itself is a victory; things can, and one day will, end much worse."

"The only thing you have to be ashamed of is failing to do your best," The Batman continued. Aqualad flinched.

'Which is exactly what those of us supposed to be the best did.'

"The only time you truly need to be ashamed of that failure is when you do not learn from it. Discussing this 'abnormal' mission may be an emotionally taxing event, but you will walk away from this as stronger people." The Batman stared evenly at the line of young heroes. "Who wishes to give the first report?"

Kaldur had been waiting for this, had resolved to prove to himself that he will grow from this, and so he immediately stepped forward. "Me, sir."

"Begin at the most pertinent time and continue with the following events, keeping to your own viewpoint and observations without hypothesizing or judging other's actions. They will have their own turn to speak."

"Yes, sir. Events began when we received a message from Red Tornado regarding an alert at the Happy Harbor power plant. We flew to investigate, and encountered a tornado. When all of us were on the ground, Robin went ahead without us, and in hindsight I realize that Ferrous also did so, but hung back at the building entrance and I did not then realize I had run past her.

"Inside the power plant was the one responsible, a robot that identified itself as Mister Twister, which I witnessed rebuff multiple attacks from each of us. It possessed atmospheric manipulation systems similar to Red Tornado's which was what led to the later misunderstanding that we-,"

"You are getting ahead of yourself," The Batman instructed, "describe the exchange of attacks between you and the robot."

"Yes, sir. I first attacked in the aftermath of Mister twister using its wind to rebuff Superboy and Miss Martian. I used my water-bearers and attempted to close the distance and use a close-range maneuver to test its armor. I was rebuffed.

"I did see Kid Flash successfully use a running start to deliver a two-legged jump-kick to its torso, at which point Mister Twister grabbed him and threw him backwards. Superboy and I attempted two simultaneous attacks – I conjured electricity for a longer-range technique – but we still were within its attack range and it generated a twister from each arm to repel us.

"At this point Miss Martian, in what I believe was a coordinated-"

"Do not hypothesize or extrapolate teammates' actions whose reason are unknown," The Batman interrupted.

"Usually, a debriefing of this particular type could be done with each team member giving a separate report, not knowing what the others said, but we're doing it a little unconventionally this time," Black Canary added.

"Yes. As Superboy and I were rebuffed, Miss Martian approached the robot while flying, intentionally- my apologies. Miss Martian used verbal insults, which gained the robot's attention. As Mister Twister raised his arms to target Miss Martian, Ferrous began her second assault with a dash straight forward. Mister Twister repelled Miss Martian and attempted to target Ferrous, but her speed drastically increased, and Ferrous closed range and struck before she could be targeted.

"I believe she targeted a chink in Mister Twister's torso armor, left by one of Robin's projectiles. Her blow was sufficiently powerful to pierce through and rend Mister Twister's armor. Ferrous then pinned him down and grappled with her other hand, which allowed the rest of us to attempt several attacks when we had a clear enough view to not strike her as well.

"Mister Twister turned his winds on Ferrous at point blank range, and she held for several seconds. She was blown away moments before Robin used explosive projectiles on Mister Twister. When the smoke cleared, Mister Twister was somewhat damaged, and he retreated outside.

"Robin had seen the wiring of Mister Twister's exposed insides and asked Miss Martian to scan his mind and determine if he was a human using power armor, or a robot. The revelation that Mister Twister was a wind-manipulating robot, combined with our suspicions about Speedy's predictions and Red Tornado's warning that we would be 'tested, soon enough,' led to the conclusion that Mister Twister was in truth Red Tornado in disguise, testing our combat abilities. Ferrous appeared unbothered by this - she stated her desire to pass the test and prove herself - but Robin and I were resentful of the implication that we were being treated and tested like children, and communicated this to Superboy and Kid Flash, who agreed. As the two inexperienced team members, Ferrous and Miss Martian volunteered to engage 'Red Tornado' and prove their worth as teammates, and the other four of us chose merely to watch.

"Miss Martian lifted Ferrous into the air, and they flew up to confront Mister Twister, who was beginning to generate a storm cell of some form. I do not know what plans they arranged while up there, but the four of us on the ground discussed the trust in our abilities that we felt the Justice League lacked. Robin quickly produced his communicator and attempt to contact the League.

"Our distress when Red Tornado answered the call was… significant. When the realization was clear to us, we raced for the girls, shouting warnings, but it was unnecessary. I saw Miss Martian catch Ferrous as she fell and use a telekinetic strike to pull in Mister Twister and rip out the exposed tubes on his back-,"

"Um?" Everyone turned to look at M'gann. Batman raised an eyebrow behind his mask but motioned for her to go on. "I ordered my ship to cloak and ram into Mister Twister and I grew extra arms to hold on and pull off the tubes. I figured, since Red Tornado didn't have those, taking them off shouldn't hurt him and probably counted as winning the test. Just thought… my telekinesis isn't what I used to hit him like that. I thought you should know."

"I see," The Batman said. "Continue, Aqualad."

"Yes, sir. With all three of them down, Kid Flash took explosives and electronic disablers and began applying them to the robot while we checked our teammates for injuries. Miss Martian was largely unharmed, to my knowledge. Ferrous had a mangled hand, and Robin also identified cracked ribs and a concussion, but she used her abilities to quickly heal herself and has since suffered no ill effects that I know of.

"The only further notable events were when Mister Twister discharged a second robot, apparently human, but Miss Martian caught the deception and crushed it with a boulder before anything untoward could happen. We then collected the remains and returned to the mountain."

Kaldur finally stepped back into the line. He felt somewhat tired, and somewhat raw, but also cleaner. The poison had been sucked from the bite, and even though bleeding it out had cost more pain, now it could heal.

"I see," The Batman said slowly. Aqualad waited for the expected yelling, but it did not come. "Ferrous, please state your recollection of the events." Given that she had probably done the most of them in total, Aqualad could definitely see why The Batman would order this. It hurt his pride still, but he knew that the pain was largely self-inflicted, and did his best to remember Ferrous's smile when the more experienced fighters had stepped back to let her take point.

'I suppose this is what they call, being right for the wrong reasons.'

"We listened to orders from Red Tornado and flew to the power plant. When the tornado hit, Kid Flash helped me out of my seatbelt and out the door. I followed Robin's lead through the door, then moved to the side and watched to get a better idea of what the enemy was capable of and how the more experienced fighters would attack. I kept doing this until after the others had all attacked at least once, then I grabbed my observings and made a possible plan."

"I believe the phrase appropriate is, 'assembled my observations,' and I wish to know what you observed and concluded, and why," The Batman informed her.

Renka did not quite roll her eyes, but her feet slid casually apart and she brought a hand up to gesticulate. Kaldur was reminded less of a soldier giving a report, than of a teacher lecturing at the Academy of Sorcery. He also noticed that Ferrous's accent had diminished again.

"Mm-hmm. The first thing I noticed was that the enemy wore full plate armor and was much larger and heavier than I am. From past fights, I knew that I did not want to get in close with him, although my usual wish to run away did not apply, as I am a hero now, so I chose to watch instead. I saw that he used wind when he blew away each team member in turn. These winds were always spinning like corkscrews and never straight like gusts, and he usually aimed both arms but could use each one alone. I also realized, because he never attacked them when they fell and only countered when they attacked him, that he did not want to kill the team. I also suspected that he could produce wind from the… blue things on his shoulders and back," she gestured, "but was not certain. He did not create gusts from his head, chest, or legs.

"He did not fight to kill, so I had four possibilities: he was fighting us against his will and wanted to do as little harm as possible; he had some goal that did not involve killing; he was buying time until something unknown happened; or he was acting as a loud distraction for other, quiet helpers to do something else somewhere else."

Kaldur started slightly, and noticed Robin do the same as the whole team re-evaluated the eldest of their number. 'I had not considered those last possibilities, even after the fact. I focused on us more than on Mister Twister, and forgot that such scoundrels usually have reasons to do what they do. I knew it was not a test, but did not think about what it was other than a villain's chance to cause havoc. Now I wonder why Mister Twister attacked the power plant so near to our new base, and if he had intended to draw us, despite his claims to the contrary.'

"I did not know what the reason was, but no matter what we needed to end the fight fast, instead of draw it out, exhaust him, and put together a more complex plan. I decided that a strike hard enough to deform the armor over the floating ribs was the best opportunity, if I had a way to avoid the wind from his hands. I also had noticed that the enemy reacted faster to the second attacks, but also used slightly less force in favor of directed control. I decided to give him a false assessment of my abilities to mislead his next counter and charged headfirst using some increased speed, but also storing away my weight."

"This was the same spell you demonstrated to Superman at your first meeting with him?" The Batman inquired. Renka nodded. "And decreased weight let Mister Twister blow you away more easily, until you reversed this on the second run," The Batman assessed. Renka nodded once more. It took a few seconds more for her to realize she was supposed to keep speaking.

"I landed near Miss Martian and Superboy, and Miss Martian agreed to draw his fire up by flying. He would raise his arms to hit her, and I would run in much faster before he could lower them. Even if the wind did hit me, tapping weight should keep me on the ground. It worked, and I ran in tapping as much speed, strength, and weight as I thought safe. My target changed at the last moment to a chink – Kaldur said it was from Robin's weapons, but I did not know then – and I hit him in the chest like this," she made a rough knife hand and struck forward, "while I weighed very much, was very strong, and moving very fast. It did hurt my hand, but I have had worse and knew I could heal it later.

"I grabbed my other arm to his waist, attempted to pull out the insides of his armor to get to the man inside, and held on as long as I could. I heard Robin yell to get clear, which I knew meant move away, so I let go. I missed what happened after I went up in the air, because Miss Martian caught me and I did not get hurt worse," she smiled at M'gann, "but he was outside and M'gann announced that he was really Red Tornado. It made sense, so I assumed that it was like more difficult sparring with Wonder Woman, and did not see why anything needed to change because we knew this. I was glad it was a test, because we would not die if we failed, and it made sense that my first fight as a hero was a test to see if I could do well in real fights."

"Miss Martian agreed that she and I were the ones being most tested, since we were the newest, and the team stood back to let us try. Miss Martian floated us both up, because I have no way to fly, and neither of us had weapons to stick in the hole in his chest, which is something I want to be fixed. I had no good idea about how to do it, but Miss Martian got one to try and I was happy to play bait. She threw me while I was light, and the time I fell I became too heavy for him to blow away and make the storm bigger. Miss Martian caught me before I hit the ground, so I did not get hurt more from the fall, then she did… what she said she did to bring enemy to the ground.

"I was a little woozy until I tapped into my stored healing, which I waited to do until I thought the test was over, so I do not very much remember of right what happened… do not remember very much of what happened right then," she corrected, "but the important parts were that it was not a test, he was not Red Tornado, M'gann did not kill him, and robots are very different from clones. Also, Kaldur apologized for doing what I wanted and letting us prove ourselves, which I do understand not, but I told him it was okay, since I wanted it. Also, I need a bit more study of language before someone tries to again explain how aliens, clones, and robots are different, because Superboy said it the best but I still do understand not." She shrugged. "Is there anything else I should say?"

"No. Superboy, we have thus far heard the least about your exploits, so you report next."

"Alright," he said, stepping up as Renka stepped back.

___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________​

AN: I hope the second half wasn't too trying to get through; I can never tell. We're finally nearing the end of the more boring bits of setting the stage. I'm also going to switch from 3rd person to mostly 1st person PoVs within the next few installments, because it better suits the style I'm trying for. Everyone, thank you for reading and commenting.

If you've read Secret Histories and Bands of Mourning, you'll know who I'm talking about.

Click to shrink...

Oh. Well, she actually met him before in an event that will be revealed later, but the Bands you're thinking of are ones he hasn't made yet. It's only about three years after the Catacendre and Harmony that Renka 'dies' and moves to DC.

I don't think Batman's revealed his identity to many people beyond the Bat clan inner circle, Superman, maybe Wonder Woman, and possibly a few others of the Justice League Core. Even if he did, Robin's been trained heavily regarding separation of identities. He'd only refer to him as Bruce if he was referencing something he did in his Bruce Wayne identity.

Click to shrink...

You are absolutely correct. I believe I wrote that bit thinking that Robin had already told KF and Aqualad his secret ID, but only KF knows I think and Robin still wouldn't mention it in that context. I tried to edit out all the mentions to read Batman instead of Bruce, and if you or anyone else catches an embarrassing slip up like that please let me know.

I'd advise removing the emotional coloring. It works for the Power Ring SI's because they're naturally empathic and see things in those colors, but it doesn't really add enough to a normal story to justify using it. Unless of course you're planning on doing something with the Emotional Spectrum?

Click to shrink...

I do have plans, but they are a ways away and not the biggest plans. I'll leave in the stuff already in, but keep it out of the new chapters [unless there's an appropriate reason, like a Green Lantern Ring] and see how that goes. It will be a relief not going through and putting all that stuff in. And thank you for your later compliment.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Safe Harbor part 5
* July 20 [Overview]
"If it really is bad, I want to know," Renka instructed them as she and Red Tornado brought plates to the table. She had taken dinner duty (provided someone showed her how it all worked), and while Red Tornado did not cook or eat, he was their live-in supervisor and could provided appropriate recipes and explanations of the directions.

Robin and Kid Flash were eating with their families, as was usual, and as she placed the first platter on the table it was the three least human inhabitants who shared a look and thought a thought synonymous to almost all humans at one time or another.

Oh no, Brussels Sprouts. Ick.

Red Tornado placed a large bowl of steaming rice, which Renka followed with salad, fruit salad, mixed roasted root vegetables, and warm garlic bread.

"Are you going to eat?" she asked Red Tornado as he began to walk away. Everyone else realized the table had not been set for five by accident.

"Negative. I do not require food."

Renka shrugged. "I thought everything needed to eat, but if you say so. Still, you do live with us, and if 'I do not require' warm baths, I still enjoy them."

"To rephrase, I cannot eat your food, unfortunately. I am a robot."

"Oh. Oka~aaay," Renka admitted. "Hmm. Dinner was always a time for people to come together in our house," she said slowly. "You do live with us. Unless you really dislike the presence of food, because I do not want to offend or upset you." Red Tornado did not exit.

"Such bonding is something I do not fully understand, but am willing to participate in," he announced. Renka smiled.

"Good," she said, and kicked out the last chair for him.

M'gann got a brief case of the willies. She had respected Renka's request to avoid telepathic contact, and Renka had shown no desire to end their times together studying Earth culture through movies and television as long as this state of affairs continued, but….

M'gann would not enter Renka's mind, the same way she would not enter someone's house to rifle through their belongings. However, she could still tell at a glance, while standing across the street from a house, which lights were on or off, and guess in which rooms they were. Her willies were not signs that Renka was lying, per se, but probably indicated that the older girl was intentionally manufacturing what she believed to be an appropriate response. It was something M'gann did as well, but far less often, and to see another human do it among fellow humans was… unsettling.

'These are good," Superboy allowed, taking another spoonful of rice. "This isn't too hard or too sticky. Some of the vegetables are a bit burned, though."

"Less time in the oven the next time I cook?"

"And a little more spice. And no nutmeg, that is not good for these."

"I like them that way. It reminds me of some of the food from home," M'gann put in.

"In Atlantis we rarely have food warm, unless it is a special occasion. The water steals heat quickly unless certain spells are used. We are very developed in types of… I believe you call it sushi? And seaweed salad. Also, there are many restaurants with the water-repelling charms where we wear water bubbles instead, so it is perhaps more common than I suggested. Still, this is a good array of well-done dishes. Perhaps next time I cook, you would be willing to help me and we can learn more together?"

"I like that idea," agreed Renka. "Although, I do understand not what you mean by water bubbles that you wear in your home."

Red Tornado answered that. "Aqualad is from Atlantis, a kingdom on the ocean floor, underwater. Most of its citizens breathe water, which is a reason why he has gills, and the only way to have open air is to generate pockets of it through magic."

"Oh, that's what the gills are for! That makes more sense than what I assumed, for which I apologize. Thank you, Red Tornado," she added. No one quite wanted to risk asking what her original assumption about the gills had been. "A kingdom under water. That sounds very different from what I have heard of. Could you tell me a little about it?"

Superboy snorted in disbelief. Renka turned to look at him placidly. M'gann tried to figure out a way to signal, 'Don't do it! Drop the subject!' without telepathy, but came up blank.

"You're wanting to hear about our homes? For a girl who never mentions anything about her own past, you certainly don't mind digging into ours."

"Superboy," Kaldur warned, but Renka's eyes had surprisingly lit up.

"I do not want it spread around, but we have fought with each other, and I will tell you about Scadrial and the Final Empire and the Elendel Valley if you want. I will not say some personal secrets, but in general I will let you know if you wish."

M'gann did not get a case of the willies from this, and it took her a moment to re-realize how lonely she would be, with no one to trust enough to even discuss what it was like on Mars. Earth was wonderful, but if it weren't for the White Martian persecution thing she would have a hard time not telling her friends about her home planet, and as it was she still slipped bits here and there into everyday conversations.

"What's Scadrial? I never heard of it," Superboy told them.

"Ferrous-," began Red Tornado.

"Scadrial-," began Renka. Both paused. "Please, go first. It will sound more real coming from you."

"As you suggest. Ferrous actually comes from further away than even Miss Martian, since she originated on a planet in another dimension."

"A parallel Earth?" Kaldur asked cautiously, knowing from his talk with Ronin and Wally that he knew too much about this to get away without suspicion. "Like from the Justice Lords incident, where they found another Earth with all the same people, but acting in different ways?"

"No," Renka said immediately. "Scadrial was never like Earth. Our stars, our lands, our history, our origins, and our gods are all far too different."

"How so?" M'gann asked. Renka took another bite to formulate her thoughts, and then she began.

"I was born into the Final Empire, named because it covered the known world, was ruled by an immortal god, and would thus be the last empire ever known to man, lasting forever. Growing up, I had no reason to disbelieve this." She took another bite.

"I assume it fell?" Kaldur asked astutely, being on safer ground with newer, less known information.

"Eventually. When I was… fifteen? In your years. But before then, I grew up. Our planet, Scadrial… life should not have been able to live on it, after the mistake of the False Ascension, when the Lord Ruler became a god. We were too close to our sun, and life would have boiled away. We lived at the magnetic north pole, where the magnetic field and ash-throwing volcanoes kept us from burning away. But this very ash also choked most plants and animals. Until the Rebirth when I was sixteen, everyone alive knew that plants were naturally brown, with the exception of a few brightly colored yellow and red ones. Outside of cities and factories, we lived in what I am told was… twelfth, I believe the Superman said twelfth century technology. With a few exceptions in sciences like metallurgy, mechanics, and clockwork. No electricity, no…" she shrugged. "I see on your faces that you think it was bad, but nature had been that way for one-thousand years, and we all knew it was the life that we lived."

"The environment you describe could be natural, but you yourself described a False Ascension, and made it sound like the situation was engineered," Red Tornado pointed out

"Who here believes in gods?" Renka asked.

"I follow a form of Hellenism, like my king and the lady Wonder Woman. I believe they exist, although I do not pretend to always understand them."

"I suppose," M'gann answered. "I revere the sorcerer priests on Mars, although I was never particularly religious."

"I have witnessed such acts. I may not believe that god is an appropriate descriptor, but higher-dimensional energy beings fitting the description are known to exist," Red Tornado said.

Superboy shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Renka nodded and continued.

"The full story of the gods is not one I will tell here, but the Final Empire was formed when the Lord Ruler got his hands on a few minutes' worth of divine power. He maybe did his best to try to save the world, but he did so very, very clumsily. More sun to burn away the choking mists, then volcanoes at the north pole to block the burning sun, then new plants and germs to survive in the ash… and then the power ran out, and he took what he remembered of the gods' knowledge and went out to conquer the world and rule it for one-thousand years."

"That sounds like a dark history," Kaldur said. Renka shrugged once more, and M'gann slowly began to suffer another creeping case of the willies.

"It is history, long and complicated. In another month or two I may tell you the rest. I grew up in a mountainous, rural village in the Terris Dominance, far from the center of the kingdom. The Terris are my 'ethnic' people, and we are farmers and villagers, weavers… several of my brothers were trained as butlers for nobility."

"How many brothers did you have?" M'gann asked.

"You first," Renka invited smoothly.

"Okay, I'm one of thirty siblings, pretty evenly split between boys and girls. I don't think either of the boys has any siblings." They both shook their heads. Renka stared, for once visibly off-kilter.

"Huh. I did not expect that answer. Weird. I am the eighth oldest of my mother's twenty-seven children, and the fourth girl. We have our big families in common, I suppose." She smiled faintly, and the full willies were back again. Renka probably had a big family, but she definitely didn't feel entirely calm and happy thinking about them.

"You said you had factories and mechanics, but also twelfth century technology. How did that work?" Superboy asked.

"The Lord Ruler let technology advance or remain the same a little bit in some places, like architecture, aqueducts, and canning factories, but stopped many things. What you call 'gunpowder' was briefly discovered a few times over the centuries, and just as quickly not-discovered by the government. Clockwork was kept, but pocket watches from before False Ascension looked very much the same as those made at the end."

"How did a government with one-thousand years to entrench itself come to an end?" Kaldur asked. Superboy humphed.

"The same way they all do," he said. "The people get upset and fight, a natural disaster wipes out resources, a leader dies. I really doubt that everyone was exactly happy with the government breathing down their necks."

Renka tapped her fork down against her plate with a click, looking sober.

"You are right, and you are wrong. The Lord Ruler… I was in his presence twice in my life. I use Feruchemy, but I was far from the only Feruchemist on Scadrial, nor is Feruchemy the only magic. The Lord Ruler was by far the most powerful magic user ever to live, and even with divine help, the Warrior Ascendant would never have been able to touch him if he had also been not crazy and depressed. One of his powers was the ability to change emotions, and he made helpless despair when he was near… there are reasons that telepathy and people touching my mind are upset me." She stayed quiet for a moment. "Two more questions, then I want to hear about your homes."

"You have displayed a great amount of fighting experience from your past," Kaldur noted. "Fighting for your life is not something I would expect to happen to a girl who grew up in a small, rural farming village. What happened to endanger you?" Renka stilled dangerously at the question. The others the table held their breath. Finally, she sighed.

"For reasons that I will not tell you, I ran away from home when I was... twelve?" More silence pooled around them. "I ran from soldiers, I ran from priests, I ran from hunters, and I ran from monsters. When I could not run, I fight. Fought. Yes? Last question."

"You've mentioned Scadrial is the world and the Final Empire, but what is the Elendel Valley?" Superboy asked her. Renka nodded.

"The Final Empire fell when I was fifteen. In its place was the Next Empire, led by Vin Venture the Warrior Ascendant and New Emperor Elend Venture. That lasted through two years of civil war as other kings and Dominances tried to claim their own lands and crowns. I mentioned the False Ascension, when the Lord Ruler first Ruined the world? There was a True Ascension two years after the collapse, when the damage done was undone, and we all ended up living in Elendel valley, where we found for the first time green plants, colorful flowers, clean air, and furry animals. Now, Kaldur, tell me about Atlantis please?"

"Yes. Atlantis was once a kingdom above the water, but when it sank to the seafloor we used our magic to continue to live in what had always been our home. Magic is far more prominent there than on most of Earth, where technology that we have difficulties building are more common. For many years there was no contact between Atlantis and the surface world, and it is only with my king's ascent to the throne that such has begun to change, since he has one parent from the surface world and the other from Atlantis. He joined the Justice League, and has begun opening trade between Atlantis and countries of the surface world, even though many purists and traditionalists object to this decision."

"I come from Mars, which is a completely different planet too," M'gann put in, and the table turned to her. "What you said about your world being ruined reminded me of Mars's history. We believe that Mars used to be green and beautiful and full of life ten thousand years ago. That's twenty thousand Earth years ago." Renka's eyebrows shot up at the number. "Then some sort of disaster that we don't know about happened, and it wiped out… almost everything. Modern Martians live in caves beneath the surface, and there are only a few naturally occurring plants and animals left, compared to everything on Earth. No historical records, no fossils, no archeological records, no technology. An entire history wiped away by whatever happened."

"I… don't really have any stories like that," Superboy told the table. "I know a little of it – Superman was sent to Earth from his home planet Krypton before it was destroyed – but I don't know anything about Krypton aside from it being destroyed."

"Destroyed? A planet destroyed?" Renka asked, frowning.

"Yeah. But I don't know how." Superboy shrugged.

"Scary," she said solemnly.

___________________________________________________________________________________________​

* July 21 [Overview]
"And the final victory goes to team tall and small!" Robin crowed, exchanging high-fives with a milder Renka as they all cleaned up the aftermath of a series of three-way capture the flag rounds.

"Very whelmed," Renka agreed placidly. "We have any more plans?" she asked Aqualad, who had organized the set-up. Drawing on his military training, he had stepped up with training plans for individual and group coordination in the aftermath of the Mister Twister incident.

"Only for dinner," Kaldur told her. "Robin has won the most games in total, and therefore is allowed to choose where we make Kid Flash run to pick up our take-out. It does have to be in Happy Harbor, so you have that limit."

"Unless it's that Pizza Moregano's in Central City! I'd totally jump in the Zeta tubes to get that stuff, or even just run straight over," Kid Flash volunteered.

"Ugh, not Moregano's, never in a thousand years. They use the wrong type of greasy cheese and their crusts are thick and full of chemicals that kill you slowly, and you do not want to know what other than tomatoes goes into their sauce," Robin groaned. "Never in a million years am I buying from Moregano's and I still don't get why you go there."

"Because the cheese and crusts are awesome, their pies and slices are super-sized for the prices, and they give you two free toppings to start with on any orders!" Wally exclaimed. "What's not to love? C'mon guys, back me up here."

A shared look made its way around the listening four.

"I do not eat often enough at such restaurants to have a preference, although I look back fondly on the place I went to with Speedy in Star city," Kaldur decided. "I do not believe the others have any experience at all with pizza."

"No… pizza?" Robin asked, stopping in place to swing around in in horror.

"No. No, no, no, nonono! Say it ain't so guys!" Kid Flash begged. "Surely one of you has had pizza before?"

"No."

"No."

"I have."

That got everyone's attention, as the idea that Renka had more knowledge of something from Earth culture than M'gann or Superboy was unexpected.

"Really? When?" Robin asked.

"Three times. Pizza is the circle of bread, then red, then melted cheese and other things, yes?"

"That's right. The red is tomato sauce," Kid Flash told her.

"Like bee-el-tee tomatoes? I am surprised."

"When did you have pizza, and where?" Robin repeated.

"And how did you like it?" Kid Flash added.

"Three times. One and… The first and second times," she corrected, "were before I met Superman. The last time was two days ago, when M'gann and I went to look at the stores of Happy Harbor. When we had lunch, she had noodles and I had pizza."

"Oh, so that's what pizza is! Hello, Megan! I like, totally should have remembered that," M'gann agreed.

"There's a pizza place in Happy Harbor that you know already? Cool, I was worried I'd have to run around Gotham or something. So what did you think when you had it?"

"Warming and filling the stomach, but some bit messy," Renka judged. "I would have it again if that's what Robin wanted. It was not just pizza. Ai-ta-lion Village sold noodles, and… some other things."

"Italian Village? It's worth looking up," Robin decided. "We should get to know some of the local food places."

"What does the name, 'Italian Village' mean? I said it correct?"

"That's right. Italy is a country, the country where pizza, pasta and calzones all come from. So the restaurant means a village in Italy," Robin answered, pulling out his little computer. "Let me just look up the menu and number…"

"Still won't be as good as Moregano's, but oh well," Kid Flash mourned. "Hey Renka, think you can remember the directions well enough to tell me how to get there?"

"No. I can go with you," she offered. "Help to carry food?"

"You're not- oh yeah, Wally would count as a chaperone. Normally I wouldn't call him very responsible, or even sponsible at all, but even he couldn't mess this up," Robin commented.

"Chaperone. Sponsible," Renka mused, rolling the words around her mouth.

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________​

@ Wawv
Thanks. One of my points of inspiration was to make Renka the opposite of the more common SI.
Instead of knowing a lot meta-secrets about everything and everyone, she knows next to nothing. Instead of having to learn how to fight and use her powers, she's already survived her own personal adventures that taught her how to do most of these things, and needs to learn to tone the violence down. Instead of being mystified by how she came to DC, she knows exactly how and why she is there and is confident about returning to her home's afterlife once she finally kicks the bucket.

I'm glad I am succeeding in getting her nature across, although I think finally getting to... (double-checks pre-written stuff) yes, I switch to 1st person PoV in the next installment. Finally!

Also, I'm short on ideas for what to name the Drop Zone version of this. Anyone have any appropriate titles or puns?

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Episode 3 - Dropped Plot part 1
* July 22 [Renka PoV]
"We are approaching the prison," Aqualad's voice revealed. His hand touched my shoulder. One by one, I cut off the flows I had been storing in my separate metal-minds. First I stopped storing my trickle of mental speed in the zinc ring on my left middle finger. Wakefulness was next, as I left my doze and ceased directing it into the bronze ring on that same pinkie. Then resolve returned to me in full as I regained the flow I was storing in electrum – one of the several plates on my belt.

The return of my strength thickened my arms when it no longer was stored into a pewter-mind anklet. A similar iron-mind anklet on my right leg held several hours more of well over half my weight than it had before the flight began. My right middle finger and pinkie both had steel-mind rings with respectable stores of speed, as it was a trait I tapped both often and skillfully.

'After everything, I am still not certain how much practice versus natural affinity, and preference versus distaste affects the amounts and efficiency of metal-mind storage.' I sighed and continued storing away body heat in a small brass-mind. It was my favorite metal, 'and it's undetectable, so using it like a security toy doesn't put the mission at risk.'

I pulled the sweater over my head only after I had ceased storing my senses of smell, hearing, and night vision in the tin studs along the arch of my left ear. I ended the trickle of about health each to the gold in my belt and the ring I always wear on my toe, feeling less miserable as I scanned around the cabin of the bio-ship at the other. I wasn't bothering to store anything in my small cadmium-mind nose stud, because I don't like hyperventilating.

Lastly, I stopped trying to store my identity in the aluminum-mind plate of the belt. Aluminum remained one of the metals I was worst at using, but I was slowly and steadily improving my ability to make and measure stores of identity. Once I could store away identity at 100% (aluminum-mind identity was one of the few traits that could be wholly stored without endangering a Feruchemist's life), it would open a wide variety of potential creations and developments.

I could hardly wait.

"What is our the status?" I annunciated carefully. There was also a 'sit' word I could have used, but I didn't perfectly remember its pronunciation.

"Twenty minutes before the first drop, which gives us time for one final review," Kaldur said.

'No, we are "on the clock," as the term is,' I chided, 'so I should use their cape names. Hero names. Whatever.'

"Oh come on, we all remember the plan. Do you think we're babies?" Wal- Kid Flash complained. Robin folded his arms as well. I resisted the urge to fidget.

'Should I swallow my pride and ask for a review, see if Aqualad will go over it whether we complain or not, or keep my peace and try to dance along to what I remember of the tune? Rusts. This is reconnaissance so no innocent lives should be in danger, but it's our first formal mission and I want to look incompetent to the Justice League even less than I want to look forgetful to my team. I'll just have to say it.'

"I wouldn't mind hearing it all again. Stealth mode is go, by the way. I mean, Hello Megan, I totally should have said that stealth bit first."

'Thank you Megan, though if you did that because you read my mind we will be having words. But I will have faith and will not leave you out to dry.'

"I also believe I want one more review," and I was proud of using the new word here, "as well, please. But my feelings on telepathy have no change, sorry." M'gann was obviously put out, but I had too many horrible memories of the voices in my head trying to kill me, or worse, trying to kill other people. Superboy was in agreement with me on this, even if the others were willing to try a limited telepathic link on the mission.

"I will take the first drop off the coast, to disable the ground-based sensors," Aqualad began.

'Sensors are like the senses, only for technology instead of living things' I remembered.

"I will update you on my progress through a telepathic link with Miss Martian and the consenting members of the team. Superboy and Ferris will always remain with one of the others to be kept in the loop." He looked firmly at the both of us. Superboy folded his arms firmly while I gave a brief, apologetic/subservient bow of acknowledgment to the added difficulty this gave the mission.

Yes, I knew it was annoying to all of us involved, but I had my reasons and rights, Rusts take them! I was hardly going to suggest that Superboy do something I would not – I have been many things, but I dislike hypocrisy – and for all I knew his reasons could be as good as mine. They had something to do with the people who raised him, named Cadmus and the Genomorph family, but other than that I knew nothing about his past and he did not want to share.

I would respect that.

"Team 1 will consist of Miss Martian and Ferris, who will be dropped between the shore and Santa Prisca. They will continue toward the prison. I hopefully will rendezvous-," which I was mostly sure meant catch up, "-with them before we penetrate the prison. Team 2 will be Kid Flash, Robin, and Superboy, who will drop closer to the target, but on the south side. They will approach, handle any situations and we will discuss it further through the link."

"And in emergencies," Miss Martian began, only to wilt under Superboy's look.

"In case of emergency," I recited, having seen and heard that phrase several times, "Superboy and I will join the link and deal with it. In case of emergency." I nodded to Miss Martian, keeping my smile far more relaxed than I feel about the idea of having someone in my head. The team began to suit up.

'I don't really want a cape outfit any more than Superboy, but I'll probably have to eventually and I wouldn't mind some actual armor. Superboy and Miss Martian I can understand, but in a world where the gunfire arms are so much more common and dangerous than arrows, how can they leave their heads so utterly exposed? Maybe after I get a helmet I should try to concuss them in spars to get the idea through their skulls.'

"Drop point A, Aqualad," Miss Martian announced, and he dove into the water. I would have offered to join him and we could have had three pairs, like in the capture the flag games, but I was too inexperienced both in swimming and in using my cadmium-minds to store and tap breath.

It was just too annoying for me to constantly hyperventilate for more than two or three minutes, and cadmium wasn't available before I came here so I had no prior experience with it.

"No capes, no tights, no offense," Superboy said.

"It totally works for you," Miss Martian assured him. It was an accurate statement, given his rather frightening toughness, but I got the idea that she wasn't talking about function.

'I wonder if this is the first sign of romance. Well, the first sign of not-Wally-flirting romance on the team,' I considered as Miss Martian continued sticking her foot in her mouth until the arrival of our drop zone rescued her.

"Drop zone A," warned Robin, who had taken over the ship's controls.

I grabbed onto a line, shunted most of my weight into my iron-mind again, and leapt. Decreased weight didn't make the impact less jarring, but it did make it quieter; I landed on a dead branch that bent but didn't break under my lessened weight. I stood and waited for my night-vision and hearing to adapt naturally before I tapped tin to improve it, because that wouldn't happen if I tapped it first.

I had figured that out on one horrific night when I ran out of tin-mind night vision at a time that might have gotten me hurt, but thankfully didn't. Still, it was not a mistake people make more than once or twice if they wanted to live.

I held up my index finger to my nose, which is the sign for quiet here instead your thumb by your cheek. Miss Martian nodded as she floated down to touch the ground silently. I mentally counted off to thirty before I nodded to her, and with a gesture we began sneaking toward Santa Prisca jail, where dwelt drug dealers who had suddenly and suspiciously stopped selling not so long ago.

'Personally, I hope the slime balls died in a chemistry accident when they mixed up the wrong dosages, but I doubt we will be that lucky. Still, I might get the chance to rectify that if we end up in a fight; at the very least, anyone we arrest will probably end up on the headsman's block for all the lives they've rui- wrecked. For all the lives they have destroyed and wrecked.'

Miss Martian dropped back a few steps and said, "Team B is on the ground." I flinched at the sound.

"Please talk more soft," I whispered back.

"What?"

I stepped forward to touch her shoulder and lean onto her side.

"Please talk more soft. Talk like me," I breathed into her ear.

"Then how do we hear each other?" she whispered back.

"I have spell for better ears hear. You… Can you make your ears bigger? Or move like cats'?" I thought she should be able to. MeLaan was a seventh-generation kandra only above average at body shifts, and she had demonstrated that ability to me when we spied on that Koloss settlement eight months before my transferal to here.

The Mists knew that M'gann was much better than nine-tenths of the kandra at shape shifting, and I knew that I could not imagine what tricks and techniques her fully grown and trained uncle was capable of.

I'd have said it was depressing to go from a larger fish in the lake to average in the ocean, but honestly?

It was a little exhilarating, too.

"Bigger ears? Cat ears? Humans don't… I can try," she decided.

"Still much loud," I breathed as we continued forward.

"Aqualad is out of the ocean and heading our way," Miss Martian said at lower volume. Her ears shifted and twitched.

"Hear more?" I breathed from several paces away.

"Yes!" We both froze. I gave her an unimpressed look as she smacked her face, which was also a loud sound. "Hello Megan. Be quiet," she muttered at increasingly lower volume. Her ears twitched as I caught voices.

'Well, at least it happens early in our careers and in the mission. Getting these mistakes out of the way is what our practice sessions and these starting missions are all for.'

"People." I grabbed her shoulders and kept storing away weight. "Float us there?" I suggested, pointing at the shadowy canopy of a particularly large and tall tree twenty paces away. Her mind lifted us both into its shadows as we heard the guards come closer. I didn't ask her for input or advice, I just let us both perch in our places.

My skin and rough, black clothing (the pants and jacket made of a material called denim, apparently) should've been enough camouflage, and Miss Martian could shape shift her colors. I wanted to advise her to change into an animal or grow some leaves and branches, but 1) I did not want to speak up aloud or open up my mind, and 2) I wasn't certain if she had the abilities to do so.

'This still should be enough,' I thought.

The guards did not stop their patrol, and within two minutes they were out of my extended hearing range. If they had spoken I might have tapped connection to understand the language, but the men had been silent.

I judged it would probably be insulting to ask if M'gann- if Miss Martian had alerted the others about the guards, when they'd had minutes of motionless silence in which to do nothing but upkeep the telepathic link, so I let the question die.

"Down?" she breathed.

"Yes, and good quiet," I breathed back. I didn't need to know where Aqualad or Team 2 were unless Miss Martian said so, which was a fair compromise in exchange for the telepathy thing, so we continued on in near silence.

The only downside was that Miss Martian wasn't nearly as experienced at stepping softly.

'Actually, she can fly. Why is she stepping at all?' She paused when I touched her elbow and we leaned together.

"Float this much? Loud steps," I suggested. She looked at her feet and they lifted three inches off the ground. "Yes."

"You too?" she asked. I grimaced at the thought of being helpless for that long.

'Do I say no and spurn her powers and help again, or do I say yes and be left as a big target if we meet people? Rusts, why is the right thing always so rotting unpleasant?'

"Please," I answered, and lifted off the ground. It felt a little like floating in water, and she made us glide forward silently as I kept my ears open. To be safe, I also began tapping into my stores of acuity and wakefulness as well. They would speed my reactions if we did run into trouble.

Within sight of the walls, we floated up to a sturdy tree branch and peered down. The lights in the prison complex hurt my eyes' night vision, but I squinted through it and listened to the susurrus of boots and low voices. I tapped my duralumin-mind for connection to the locale but I still couldn't understand the language.

"Not speaking Spanish," I hissed to Miss Martian, proud that I had remembered the name of the expected language. We waited.

"Aqualad ran into guards. He's safe now," Miss Martian murmured soon after. "Robin says the bits I sent him sounded like they were speaking Hindi." I had no idea what that was, but nodded. It was all the same, in the end. "Team two took out a few guards quietly, but they say more people are sneaking about." A few minutes later, "The ones in red robes are Kobra cultists, and the others work for Bane."

I'd been briefed on Bane before we came here: he was large, strong, brutal, and cunning, as well as having drugs that made him stronger and tougher. It was also mentioned that pulling out the tubes on his back, like with Mister Twister, would be a good way to disarm him. He would still be dangerous, but a dangerous man.

I felt I could take him if I fought fast, but the more it dragged on the lower my chances would be, one-on-one.

'…Which is basically the same deal as with every other fight I will ever have. Find a weak point and hammer it before you exhaust your Feruchemical stores. Same old, same old. Well. This time I'm not alone, after all.' That knowledge was a very nice feeling.

Three things happened in short order.

First, footsteps on the edge of hearing came closer, and I turned around to confirm that Aqualad had caught up with us. He climbed up the tree and Miss Martian and I moved to the side to make space.

Second, a whirring roar entered the edge of my hearing. Miss Martian whispered, "Helicopter," as some new flying machine came closer and closer.

Third, a brief series of explosive impacts caught the attention of everyone not partially deafened by the 'helicopter'.

Miss Martian dropped beside Aqualad and I followed. They exchanged a silent look – probably a big telepathy talk that I was well out of – and I followed with a nod as they moved towards the other team's location.

__________________________________________________________________________________________​

* July 22 [M'gann PoV]
'For all that she doesn't like telepathy, Ferrous seems to have a thing for my shape shifting,' I thought idly as Aqualad came closer. 'That's really the opposite of what I came to Earth expecting.'

[How so?] he asked. If I were a real human, I would have blushed.

'Hello, Megan! You've got to be more careful with what you broadcast! Do you want to send something awkward and have them all hate you?'

[I heard that as well.] I wanted to curl up into a ball and die, just like Megan said she wanted to after Jacob read her diary in episode 5. [You are too hard on yourself, please, Miss Martian. While it was uncomfortable at first, I find myself enjoying the connection this link brings, and the ease of communication and meaning. It seems freer and more honest, and I now wish Ferrous and Superboy would relent in their distaste for it. If there are no other matters of note I would be happy to discuss this conundrum briefly.]

[Robin, Kid Flash, are there any issues with you?] I asked.

[Just a bunch of goons we need to spy on. It looks like they want to attack Santa Prisca before the shipment goes out.]

[Either they're turncoats against Bane, or Bane for some reason wants to attack and take back his own operation,] Robin added. [We'll just keep watching and listening to get a better sense.]

[Keep us posted,] Aqualad sent. [Now, you mentioned your shape shifting and Ferrous's reaction? I had not thought that she disliked that as well.]

[She doesn't. She likes my shape shifting a lot. A few times she's just asked if she can watch me shift a little, and she always gets this odd feeling when she does. NotthatI'mgoingintohermind! I mean, I haven't violated her privacy, but you don't need to break into a house to see from across the street if the lights in a room are on.]

[So we naturally broadcast certain signals to you. But we do that as well through facial expression and body language, so I do not consider it a breech either,] Aqualad sent. [But, your shape shifting?]

[Right. I thought the ability to make myself look creepy… Uncle J'onn chooses to look very alien and intimidating, but males can get away with that. Guys can be scary, but popular girls have to be pretty or they get really, really picked on a lot.] Hello Megan had been very clear in showing me that part of social interaction. [Ferrous says I remind her of her religion's angels back home, and telepathy is something that's been used on her for bad things, so she's really the opposite. And when I fought villains and did missions, I thought I would be using telekinesis and going into their minds a lot, but Ferrous just came up with some suggestions for useful shape changes that never occurred to me.]

[Oh?]

[Um, do you know what cat-girls are?]

[Yeeeesssss… Ferrous helped you by suggesting that you imitate a mild se- ahem. A mild 'kink'?]

[Nononono! Cat's ears are bigger and can turn, so I can listen for guards or her whispers much better. And… there's a whirring sound coming closer that I wouldn't have heard yet without the ears. Wait, whirring? Hello, Megan! That's something important I should report. Aqualad, there's-]

[A whirring yes. Some machinery, perhaps? Try to see what it is,] he instructed. I noticed that both Ferrous and I were tilting our heads toward the noise. My not-misshapen-just-different cat's ears twitched more. Footsteps came into hearing range behind me, and I hoped the tread of the single walker was who I thought it was. I sent Aqualad a feeling of confusion and an image of the walls, which in hindsight might have been a bit complex, but too late. [Yes, I have come within sight of the prison walls. Where are you?] Since it worked just fine, I forwarded my memory of us finding the wall and climbing up the tree, as well as the placement of Aqualad's footsteps in reference to where we were.

The source of the growing whir came into view.

[The sound is a helicopter, and it's coming in to land,] I alerted Aqualad. I could feel his presence now, and Ferrous obligingly moved to the side when he climbed the tree to join us.

At which point, a series of sharp cracklings sounded from where I last felt Robin and Kid Flash's minds.

[Robin! Kid Flash! Was that gunfire, because it caught some of the Kobra cultists' attention!]

[Robin, Kid Flash, please report on your situation,] Aqualad sent. He and I turned to each other as our minds whirred to full speed.

[This could be really bad, do you think they got hurt fighting some guards?]

[It is not impossible. I would be surprised if Robin was noticed, but Kid Flash still has occasional moments of carelessness and Superboy is both inexperienced and largely invulnerable, which is a bad combination.]

This rankled me. [There's no way Superboy would let his teammates get hurt. He's far too nice and strong and perfect and-] it's not his fault that I'm a mentally clumsy moron (monster) who dragged up memories of his worst experiences.

[While Superboy has had telepathic training, his live-combat experience is roughly equal to yours, Miss Martian, and knowing how to sneak and strategize does not equate to being skilled or experienced in it. Also, he may simply have overestimated his teammates' skills in avoiding harm, instead of erring on the side of caution.]

[Guys, guys,] Kid Flash's sending interrupted. [I'm glad you're just worried and not immediately blaming me for some things which are totally not my fault, but this is all really nothing to worry about. We just think Kobra Cult kicked Bane mostly out of control of his lair with some new super meta-human member.]

[We captured the thugs he left on this side, because his plan seems like a simultaneous inside-outside assault while he's ostensibly in there to negotiate and clean up after the shipment, but the fact that they're running around with enough venom to keep every junkie in the country pumped for a year is bad news. This isn't Kobra's usual M.O., and the cultists definitely aren't using it, so we're not leaving until I know what's going on!]

[Robin, that was not our mission,] Aqualad scolded. [We should fall back and contact The Batman.]

[But it is our mission, and we can't exactly say, 'oh they had something nefarious planned for a huge shipment of drugs, but we couldn't do the common sense thing of stopping them without running back to your apron strings to beg permission'. Just try to stay whelmed and actually use your head, Aqualad. I'm the guy with the most experience against Bane, remember?]

The next few minutes were not comfortable, listening to Kid Flash and Robin shift from a mental fight to probably actual sound yelling about which of them was going to be the leader on this mission. I saw two cultists had headed purposefully into the woods in the direction the boys were. I knew Superboy would take care of them easily, but….

[Robin, Kid Flash, the noise sent a few cultists your way!] I sent hurriedly, uncomfortable with the argument. [Aqualad, what should we do?]

[I am uncomfortable with this turn of events, but our best option is to join them and further examine the situation,] he decided. [Let us go.] He dropped to the ground and I floated down, and both of us paused when Ferrous followed.

'She doesn't know any of what just happened,' I realized.

I almost opened my mouth to explain the situation, but Ferrous just offered her usual calm smile and nod again, and I didn't get any willies that time.

[She trusts me, she really trusts me!] I rejoiced.

[Who? I mean, I trust you a lot too Miss Martian!]

[You mean Ferrous?]

[I assume you mean Ferrous. Did you telepathically update her on the situation?] I would have blushed again if anyone had been watching. I really hadn't meant to send that.

[I haven't briefed Ferrous on the situation because she's following us just fine without it, Aqualad. That's why I knew she trusted us to make the right decisions without her input,] I answered as the three of us neared the others' position. [I'm just… happy, you know? Given how badly she took it when I tried telepathy on her I thought it would be months before she ever forgave me, but she said I was forgiven and I think she really meant it, because she's been going out of her way to show that she's still willing to work beside me and trust me with other important things.] Just not with touching her mind, although she had said that in emergencies….

No, no, and I should never have hoped for that to happen.

[Her history and nature are unique, even among the many more surface-worlders and Atlantians I have met. Despite the shadows in her past… well, I am not certain how this fits into her origins in another dimension, but were it not for that I would have guessed Ferrous was a villain who wished to reform. As it is, I remember that she mentioned the fall of a thousand-year-old empire, and such things do not occur peacefully. She was probably caught in a civil war when she was our age, and her odd instincts and reactions are a result of War Dreams. That is, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,] Aqualad explained.

[I'm not going to say I totally trust her, but yeah, PTSD does sound more likely than a literally no-name villainess managing to successfully infiltrate the League so completely,] Robin grudgingly allowed. [The main thing that bothers… never mind. Hey, one of the thugs just spilled to us about a tunnel into the jail underground. We've knocked out both of the Kobra Cultists that came to investigate, and Superboy might be a little bruised from the bullets but nothing major.] That was a relief to me. Not that I needed to worry, because he was way too incredible to get hurt of course, but it still could be nice to know for sure.

[Hey, Aqualad, idea!] Kid Flash sent. [You and I could imitate these two cultists pretty good for a few minutes, and then we could do a three-pronged assault from the sides, the tunnel, and inside the compound!]

[Don't be ridiculous,] Robin scoffed. [Kaldur could pass for mister muscles, but this one is a girl, and a full head shorter than Ferrous, so there's no way it'll hold up.]

'Except I've transformed into Renka- into Ferrous before, and she thought it was cool. I can totally do it!'

[If the idea will not hold for the few minutes we need to get into position, then it is infeasible and we will not risk it without much greater motivation. The tunnel alone, or even splitting into two groups again, will be quite sufficient,] Aqualad judged.

[I can do it!] I volunteered. I felt them all wince at the mental force. Volume. Whichever applies when you talk about it in human language. [Oops, sorry! Sorry, guys. But I could do it. I can shape shift into the Kobra woman with Aqualad! And I know I'm not supposed to use my mind powers, but if we could make an exception I can try to just make anyone who asks think we gave the right passwords and things, and keep aware of anyone who starts getting suspicious so we'll know if we're caught or not.]

[Don't worry about using your mental stuff on the bad guys. It's okay then,] Robin assured me. [Your uncle does it all the time – it's pretty much his big thing in the League, getting information and plans out of people's minds – as long as it's just on bad guys when we don't agree to it first.]

[R-right! I'll remember that and do it and, and, Hello Megan, I should stop babbling.]

"Especially as we have arrived," Aqualad murmured. We rounded a tree and slipped down a slope to end up beside Kid Flash, Robin, and Aqualad.

"-and I guess we can just tell you the rest now," Kid Flash finished saying to Superboy.

"Ferrous, Superboy," Aqualad began, "our plan is to divide into three groups for the infiltration. Miss Martian and I will impersonate the captured Kobra cultists," I took that as the prompt to figure out which one she was, and I started shifting, "while Robin and Ferrous enter through the indicated tunnel to infiltrate. Superboy and Kid Flash will remain at this location to begin a direct assault when the signal is given."

"Why do I have to wait on the sidelines?" Superboy grumbled, which was fair since he would be the safest getting in the middle of the danger. "Can't I go into the camp for the fighting?"

"Cost of no telepathy," Ferrous consoled him. Which, probably, was because she didn't quite understand what he was saying. Or maybe she did, and I didn't understand, and I didn't know; Renka may be different, but she was still human and still got things and norms that didn't quite make sense to me.

"You will go into the camp if there is fight," Aqualad reassured him. "When it all begins, you will able to see where you are needed most and intervene in that place. Robin is the best to infiltrate unknown territory, and because you and Ferrous should remain with a linked-up teammate, her better stealth and flexible power-set makes Ferrous the choice to be teamed with Robin."

"…Fine."

"We have three targets to remain aware of: the drug shipment, Bane, and the unknown meta-human."

"Four," Robin said, "I'm pretty sure that guy standing around out of Bane's arms' reach is Jeffrey Burr, better known as Kobra himself. He's a high-priority target and it will be big if we manage to bring him in on our first official mission."

"If it is safe. Four targets: the drugs, the unknown, Bane, and Kobra."

"Actually, five," Robin corrected again. "That guy who just got off the helicopter is Sportsmaster, a mercenary for hire, and he's probably the intermediary for the ultimate buyer here."

"Who?" Ferrous asked, which is what I'd wanted to know too.

"What powers does he have?" I added.

"He's a normal human but well trained, good with weapons, and a sports equipment theme like exploding hockey stick javelins and that kind of stuff," Kid Flash rattled off.

"Normal human?" Ferrous repeated.

"Normal like Robin or the Batman, except older and willing to kill. Do not underestimate him," Aqualad warned.

"I can handle him," Superboy said, which was both really cool and absolutely true and, 'Oh wow, pointing his thumb at his chest is just an awesome pose to do'.

"I can too. I might not handle unknown," Ferrous pointed out. "Too big, too strong, no tubes to break."

"Whoa, can you really see that all the way from here?" Kid Flash asked.

"Everyone," Aqualad attempted.

"Back on task please?" Robin groaned. "Look, plan: Ferrous and I go in and I blow up the helicopter. Ferrous can take Sportsmaster if she wants, and I'll go after Kobra. Kid Flash, when the helicopter goes, try to get all the guns before people start shooting us. Superboy, you can go after Bane or the bigger guy. Aqualad, Miss Martian, you'll be in the thick of things so try to cause some extra chaos and go after any targets you like."

"Whoever Superboy does not target, or who is closer to us," Aqualad instructed me.

"I can do that," I agreed.

"Good. Robin, what signal can you give if you cannot- Robin?" He was gone, but I could feel his mind still in the area.

"He's already going to the tunnel. I can still feel his link," I mentioned.

Aqualad groaned. "Miss Martian, please give Ferrous instructions so she can follow… Ferrous has disappeared too."

"Yeah. I saw her go, and I was going to say something, but then I realized Robin was gone too. She's not as good at that as him, but it's still cool that she noticed before we did," Kid Flash told us.

"So it goes," Aqualad groaned. "Miss Martian, let me pull on this robe and we will proceed with our aspect of the mission. Please keep contact with Robin and Kid Flash."

"I will. I mean, Robin isn't really paying attention right now, but Hello Megan, I can still call him if I need to."