Surprise Visit

Luc Ranzz stood in the middle of his field and surveyed the harvesting-drones.

He squinted in the sunlight and saw one of the drones lurch and fall to the ground.

He pushed his way through the rows, but his wife, Perla, got there first.

"This one's shot, Luc," she said, gathering up a handful of exposed wiring. "We'll have to reprogram one of the other ones."

Luc sighed. "We've got other things to do today, and that's the second drone to conk out this morning! Time was we could have the kids out here watching the fields-"

He cut himself off and looked guiltily at his wife.

She had sat back on her heels, arms crossed across her stomach.

"Yes. The children."

Luc sighed to himself and looked up over the fields towards the rounded farmhouse in the distance.

Then he did a double take.

"Perla!" he said urgently.

She looked up at him and stood quickly, staring off towards the house.

"Oh-!"

They both set out at a run.

The Legion Cruiser was parked in the front yard- the Legion of Superheroes, the group of young people working to keep galactic peace and enforce the law.

The group that their youngest son Garth had co-founded, somewhat on accident.

As they raced towards the house each of them had only one thing on their minds.

What had gone so wrong that the Legion had taken the cruiser all the way out here in the middle of a war?

Perla reached the yard first, glanced at the cruiser as she ran by, and yanked the door open.

The first thing she saw was her son, sitting at the table.

He stood, turning, when she came in; arms open slightly in greeting, a warm, reassuring smile on his face.

"Mom!"

She stopped short.

His left arm was open in greeting. The other was gone.

Some sort of shining metal prosthesis was in its place.

"Oh, Garth!" she cried, and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him fiercely, eyes shut tight to try and fend off the impending tears. "What happened to you, baby?"

"I'm okay, Mom, really," Garth tried to assure her just as his father burst into the room.

"Garth!" he exclaimed in shock, seeing his arm.

"Look, everything's all right," his son said, holding out his new hand in what was probably supposed to be a calming gesture. "Everything's better than all right-"

"Your arm is gone!" his mother protested.

"Yeah, well, besides that-"

"Mom?"

Luc and Perla froze. They knew that voice.

That voice belonged to a dead girl.

Garth smiled widely and stepped back, leaving the table itself clearly visible.

Garth's long-dead twin sister, Ayla, jumped down from one of the chairs and ran towards her mother.

Perla caught her in a daze, moving on force of habit. She dropped to her knees and examined Ayla's face wondrously.

"You're dead," she said softly. "Ayla died."

"I'm right here, Mom," Ayla said, throwing her arms around her neck.

Perla froze again for a moment.

This could not be happening. Ayla was dead- she knew it, Luc knew it, Garth knew it most of all. He had been there, him and his older brother. They had been there when Ayla died.

But her little baby girl was holding her tightly, had spoken to her, had smiled, had run towards her- was now waiting, a little apprehensively, for her response.

Perla sobbed once and threw her arms around her daughter; tears coming, completely out of control.

Luc glanced once incredulously at his son and then dropped to his knees next to his wife and daughter, embracing them both.

He held them for one long moment, then looked up at his son and stood.

"How did this happen?"

"It gets better," Garth said excitedly. "Mekt swore off crime. For good. And he really means it. He even turned himself in!"

Perla stood, holding Ayla protectively to her legs.

"Garth, answer the question," she ordered, looking him sternly in the eyes.

He talked fast, still clearly excited.

"Okay, so, you know that warlord guy who's been making all the trouble recently? He got his hands on a tachyon cannon and hired Mekt to help him out. So we show up, and he's draining this space-traveling lightning storm, and we go out to fight him, like usual. Mekt comes out and I fight him and my arm gets blown off-"

"Your brother blew your arm off?" his mother asked, horrified.

Garth shook his head vehemently.

"No, no, it was that warlord guy. Anyway, Brainy- Brainiac 5 and Shrinking Violet made me this new one. I can change it into a lightning cannon. It's cool. Anyway, like I was saying. So the storm starts getting drained for the energy, and there's all this technical interference muck happening on the computers, so Brainy and Violet take a look at it and guess what?"

"It was me," Ayla piped up, arms still wrapped around her mother.

Perla looked down at her daughter.

"You've been running around the universe as a space storm?"

"How is that even possible?" Luc asked.

Garth held up his hands.

"Dunno. But I work with a heap of sentient rock and a guy who used to have a body and walks around as a cloud of energy. I'm not gonna wonder about it too much. Anyway, Mekt and I did a reversal of the whole stranded-on-Korbal-get-blasted-by-lightning-beasts thing, and boom!"

He ruffled Ayla's hair fondly.

"I've got my sister back."

His parents tried to wrap their minds around this concept and failed.

"That's too simple to be true," his father said firmly.

"Well, yeah, there's a bunch of technical stuff that Brainy and Violet tried to explain-"

There was a slight electronic crackle and a voice cut in from nowhere.

"I did explain it to you, Lightning Lad. Quite sufficiently. You simply failed to pay an adequate degree of attention."

Garth scowled, good mood gone for the moment, and raised his Legion flight ring closer to his face.

"Will you quit listening to me?"

"I assure you, it is something I do very rarely."

His scowl got deeper and he glanced apologetically at his parents.

"Sorry. He's like this all the time. He's been talking the whole way here from getting Ayla back."

Perla found stable mental ground.

"You mean your friends are sitting out there in the cruiser?"

"Uh-" His expression was suddenly hunted. "Yeah?"

"Garth, I expect better of you!"

"Yes, this is quite rude of you. You should invite us inside immediately."

"Shut up," Garth said quietly, teeth clenched.

"Garth," his mother reprimanded.

"I heard that."

Some faint scuffling noises emitted from the ring.

Ayla looked up at her brother.

"Your friends are funny," she confided.

"Not really."

"You'd better not let Cham hear you say that," Bouncy said. "Are you going to invite us in or not? If you aren't I'll find something for Brainy to do. He's just bored sitting out here."

"Come in!" Perla called. "All of you!"

There were a few more scuffling noises and the ring clicked off.

"Garth, you know where the glasses and things are," his mother told him, settling Ayla carefully in a chair. "Go get them and set the table for your friends. It's just about lunchtime, and I'm sure you all could use some food."

Fifteen minutes later, mostly everyone who had eaten had finished their lunch.

Bouncy was busy devouring the rest of the pie Perla had brought out for dessert, watched with a slight astonishment by Kell; who'd never seen him around pie before.

On one of the couches, Brainy was awkwardly attempting to have a social conversation with Violet, and was failing- if not miserably, then admirably, given the fact that he was making the effort.

On the other couch, Perla sat with one arm around her son's shoulders, Ayla sitting between them on her brother's knee.

She smiled knowingly as Violet steered the conversation back to the comfortable topic of science and the discussion stopped being stilted and took on a genuine enthusiasm.

The three of them sat in comfortable silence for a little while, happy to be together.

"What's that?" Perla asked her daughter eventually.

Ayla held up the oblong red disk she was holding.

"Mekt sent it," she said, pressing a button. "It was waiting for us on the table when we got in."

Perla gazed at the picture of her three children- a picture she remembered from happier, simpler times.

"But Garth said the Legion took him to Takron-Galtos," she said. "How did it get here so fast?"

Garth shrugged with some difficulty, as he was currently leaning into the couch cushions.

"No idea. He knows people, I guess."

"Well, I don't want to know them," Luc said from behind the couch. He'd walked in from the kitchen and hugged his wife and son, hands still a bit damp from the after-lunch clean-up he'd been busy with.

He looked fondly down at his daughter and son.

"What do you say, kids? You want to watch the fields for the afternoon, let your parents get some real work done?"

Ayla nodded enthusiastically.

Garth held her tightly, reluctance written all through his body language.

"I'd like that, but- I- I think I have to go."

"That," Bouncy said from the table, pointing his fork at him over the crumbs of the finished pie. "Is ridiculous. Stay here for a day or two, then catch up. We'll explain to Cos. He'll understand."

"We'll make him understand," Brainy promised, tone a little dark.

Garth's mouth twitched for a moment, and then he broke out in a wide grin.

"C'mon, then!" he said, standing and swinging Ayla up along with him. "I'll race you to the fields!"

"That's not fair!" Ayla complained. "You're bigger than me now! And you can fly! You'll win!"

"Bet I won't!"

"Bet you will!"

"Bet you my share of the frozen-syrup candies tonight, I won't!"

Ayla's eyes lit up and she dashed for the door, laughing.

Garth, happiness bursting from every line his body, ran after her; out into the bright afternoon and the wide fields he remembered so well.