Disclaimer: I'm too busy ruling the world to own YJ, so... I don't.
Yeah, so this is a bit of an inside joke. My best friend is Nicko, and I am Scarlett. It all started when we got Batman capes from an amusement park...(flashback). Mhmm, so, here it is!
The shooting from three months ago is still all over the news. I can't even turn on the TV without seeing the pictures of the dead plastered to the screen.
I quickly change the channel, but my mother's smiling face has been etched into my mind already. My eyes threaten to pore over with tears again, but I blink them away and focus on the television once more. It's another news station and they're talking about yet another unsuccessful heist at a major Gotham bank. "The amazing Batman and the Boy Wonder have done it again, and life is normal once again," the announcer says in his annoying, nasally voice.
I resist the urge to throw the remote at the screen, scowling. Life is not normal, and it never will be. I'm so sick of hearing about the stupid Justice League, and their stupid victories over the baddies, and how they don't seem to have a stupid flaw in them. They're just so stupidly perfect.
At least, until something bad happens and they can do nothing to stop it. Then they aren't so perfect anymore. Last month, said something bad actually happened. And said perfection was ruined.
It is an amazing, beautiful Friday evening with a darkening blue sky and everything. Mom and I had just finished school shopping and are walking back home when the roar of a way-over-the-speed-limit-kind-of-speeding car whizzed past us, echoing out bangs every few seconds. I turn to Mom to gauge her reaction to it, but I don't see her – until I look down.
She's covered with a dark scarlet liquid that's pouring from her body. Scarlet blood. I never hated my name as much as I did then, because it was all over my mom, draining away her life.
I scream, dropping our bags full of treasure on the now-bloodied ground. I don't even hear the sirens over my fear and my sobs. I'm dragged away, fighting, from my mother's lifeless body, being told by a stranger in a blue uniform that it was too late. They wouldn't have to do surgery or give her medical attention.
When I look up to the roofs, as if my mother was up there instead of under a sheet, alive and well, who I see instead changes my view on everything completely.
The silhouettes of the Dark Night and his pet bird, watching the scene unfold, are plainly visible in the still darkening skyline.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't always hate the JL. In fact, I loved them. I looked up to them. They were invincible to me.
Until they watched my mother be murdered and did nothing to stop it.
"Scarlett!"
The voice of a certain short brunette girl jars me out of my memories. I glance at the screen before turning to my best friend. "I was just seeing how our…economy was doing… before heading to school, Nicko," I lie, extremely unconvincingly at that.
She gives me a doubtful look. "Yeah, right; I know that politics and economy bore you to death, you little liar." She throws me my bag, but it's a poor toss and it goes too far to my right, heading straight for the Home's display case of trophies and other fairly breakable things.
Time slows down, but so does my lethally-heavy backpack of doom, until it's literally floating in midair. I breathe a sigh of relief and my hand falls from my temple. I snatch my seemingly magical bag like it was a normal thing to do.
That's right. I have telekinesis. It's pretty beast. I think that I've always had it, but I just realized that I was the only one I knew that could do it. I've only told two people: Nicko and Mom. But, seeing as just one of them is breathing…
"Nice!" my friend exclaims, racing down the stairs and high-fiving me. After checking to make sure that no one was around to have seen the scene (A/N Heh, see what I did there?), we sprint down the hallway and out of the door.
The walk to the high school is short, only a few blocks away from the Home. This year, we're freshmen in the prestigious Gotham Academy, even though we're orphans. Let's just say that Mr. Bruce Wayne is very sympathetic to the Home for some reason, especially if they have two fourteen-year-old girls with exceptional skills – Nicko has martial arts and any type of science, while I have algebra and archery. The odd thing was, we never signed up for the scholarship, but Mrs. Thomson, our care taker, had said that it was a wonderful opportunity to make a new start. I wanted to tell her to go jump in a well, but of course I couldn't.
Within ten minutes, we were at the gates of the school. We had both been going to the normal high school of North Gotham for about two weeks until we got the notice that weekend, so today was our first day in the school for preps.
I tug on the hem of my skirt. It was way to short for my liking, but Mrs. Thomason told me not to object. I roll my eyes and let go of it, turning to Nicko. To simply describe how she looked, she was amazed. "Close your mouth," I whisper as an older girl, maybe a sophomore or a junior, walks up to us.
"Hi!" she greets, "I'm Bette Cane." She points to Nicko and says cheerfully, "and you must be Scarlett," she points to me, "and you're Nicko."
Nicko laughs a little, and I correct Bette. She looks a little sheepish, but gets over it and tells us to follow her. She leads us to a small group of teenagers, just four in all counting her. The only one that looked our age was a short boy with messy black hair and captivating blue eyes. "This is Dick. He's in your grade, so he'll be showing you around to your classes." We shake hands with the scrawny boy, who then hands us our schedules after glancing at them.
"Advanced algebra, huh?" he asks, looking impressed. "And at the same time as me, too." We both smile, but then he turns to one of the girls. She had golden hair as well as grey, Asian eyes. She was pretty tall and looked fit. "Artie will have to show you to the archery range and Nicko to the mats, though. I can't say that I go there often." Not unbelievable – he didn't exactly seem the type to work out or fight at all.
The older girl sticks out her hand. "Artemis."
We shake, and so does Nicko. She looks pretty overwhelmed with all of this, but before we can ask any questions, the bell rings. "Come on, then," Dick calls, walking towards the East entrance of the building. "I'll show Nicko to her classroom, and then we'll go to algebra, alright?"
Nicko and I nod and say in unison, "Sounds like a plan." Dick looks back, amused. My friend and I glance at each other and grin, but we both turn our attentions back to him as we stop at a large wooden door. "Well, here you go!" he announces gesturing to the classroom in front of us. We peer inside, awestruck.
Rows and rows of lab tables, chemicals, Benson Burners, and everything else that a science geek would love lined the walls. Plenty of kids walk around with aprons and safety goggles on, waiting for the bell to ring again so they could start class. I turn to Nicko, and so does Dick. "She looks like she's feeling the aster," he comments, but at our blank stares he only chuckles.
Nicko walks in, awe in her eyes, but before I can see anything else Dick grabs my wrist and drags me away. People stop and stare at us as we go by, whispering. I'm suddenly very self-conscious and I snatch my hand away from him. He looks back, frowning, but says nothing and we keep going.
In all, the trip from Nicko's classroom to ours takes a minute, maybe two, but it feels like twenty the way we kept getting weird looks. I wince as a group of what looks to be snotty rich girls burst out laughing, much louder than needed, casting me filthy sneers.
Dick notices my unease and tells me not to worry about them. "They're just mean girls with rich daddies under all of that makeup. They'll get what's coming to them sooner or later." He flashes me a knowing grin that leaves me confused, but before I can ask he stops in front of me abruptly and I almost run into his back. Dick glances at me, as if checking to see my reaction. "Are you going to be OK?" he asks, searching my eyes.
I furrow my brow. Why would he ask me that? Unless… I gaze past him, finally noticing that we made it to the classroom. I feel the blood drain from my face and my brain begins to have second thoughts. What if this was all a joke – a horrible, terrible joke on two girls with nothing left to loose but their dignity? We didn't apply for the scholarship. Who's to say that it wasn't a big mistake? That it was meant to go to different kids, kids more deserving than us? What if nobody likes me here, even less than anyone from before the accident?
"Scarlett? Are you alright? Should we just go in?" Dick's voice drags me out of my worries. His amazing blue eyes capture me and he waves his and in front of my face. I give him a weak smile and a poor, "I'm fine," of which he doesn't buy but doesn't argue.
He leads me into the large room, filled with normal school desks – yet they still somehow find a way to make them look a little more expensive. Maybe it was the way that the kids sitting at/on them were rich and looked the part, even in uniforms. The walls of the classroom are littered with random, occasionally funny posters. A giant white board fills almost a whole side, while another has three windows with amazing views of the courtyard.
The teacher, a short young woman in a blue skirt and a white blouse with light brown hair and kind eyes, glances over to us, then back to the class. Then, quite like a Saturday-morning cartoon, she does a double-take, smiling softly as the bell rings. "Mr. Grayson, please have a seat." Dick gives me one last wink and sits down in one of the middle row desks. "You must be Miss Johansson. I'm Mrs. Woodland, and welcome to Gotham Academy."
I give her a polite little wave and a smile, my face burning. Everyone was staring at me. "Please have a seat by…" Mrs. Woodland trails off, searching for an open seat. "Chris. Chris, raise your hand." A kid with dark blond hair and dark eyes holds up his hand in the third-to-the-last row, just a desk behind Grayson. Not unlike most of the other students in the class, he's older than me by at least two years, but he's short and nerdy with big glasses. I sit next to Chris with a quirk of the corners of my mouth
Class starts, and already I'm excelling. I'd always been great at algebra, but I never thought of it, really. It just came easily to me, just like science did for Nicko. Speaking of Nicko, I wonder how she's coping with the prestigious science class.
The back of my head burns. Someone's staring at me. Again. I glance up from my almost-completed worksheet to find that it's some older girl, probably a senior, who sits to my left. I cock my eyebrow. "Can I help you?" I ask softly, afraid to hear her answer.
She never replies, just goes back to her work and so do I. But I can tell that she goes back to looking at me every once in a while, and though her gaze never stays for long, it bothers me nonetheless.
Not long after the staring incident, I finish my algebra. Setting down my dulled pencil, I get up to turn it in. Mrs. Woodland looks up in surprise, but takes my paper. I seem to be the only one done. Even Dick has just started on his last question, entirely absorbed into it.
I glance at the clock. I still have a hearty ten minutes left – good thing that I brought The Hunger Games to read.
I stare absently into the slide show playing on the screen. I had already learned this from the internet. In fact, I had watched the exact same slide show on the web. Don't get me wrong, I adore science, but you know how it is when you have to "re-learn" something that you already know.
The girls behind me chatter softly about "The Avengers." I'd already seen it with Scarlett. Though, it seems that I saw it for a different reason than these girls, as they talk about who's the hottest and the most likely to end up with a ruined career and how they saw it six times just to watch so-and-so.
I roll my eyes and sigh as the side show ends and the lights flicker back on. My teacher, a nice man named Mr. Robertson, hands out a packet to everybody. "This is your major project for these nine weeks. You and a partner are to design a small ecosystem consisting of a producer, two primary consumer, at least one secondary consumer, a decomposer, and two abiotic factors. Get with a partner now to decide what type of biome you shall create." Everyone scrambles to get with their friends, but I just sit there, suddenly lonely. Oh, how I wish that Scarlett were here. Though, she probably wouldn't have gotten through Mr. Robertson's second sentence without having her brain collapse. She's pretty useless when it comes to science projects, and she knows it, just like I couldn't use algebra to save my life. Or archery, for that matter.
Looking around, I realize that I'm not the only one without a partner. A guy, probably around my age (most of the kids in Advanced Science are at least two years older than I am) was looking around for someone, but seemed defeated. I wonder if he always ends up alone…
Without realizing it, I'd approached him. So, after deciding that not much in this scenario could end horrible, I plop myself down in the desk in front of his. He seems pretty shocked that I would even come near him, but doesn't question it. I hold out my palm to him. "Nicko."
He looks at it carefully, as if expecting a trick of some sort. But, in the end, he takes it and shakes, smiling. "Jason Todd, at your service."
We get to work, planning out our project while chattering away about random subjects. Turns out, we work pretty well together, and he's not that bad of a dude.
"So, how do you feel about the Justice League?" he quizzes, looking at the packet.
I grin, showing off my teeth. "They're great, I mean, what's not to like?"
Yep! They - we - have met Dick and Jason. I wonder how many of you actually know who Jason is...if not, watch Batman: Under the Red Hood. Its pretty sad.
Yeah, this chapter shows how different their - our - views on the JL are. In real life, I actually adore them, but hey - let's have some fun with this, no?
Until the next chapter - ciao!
~Nya!