Kaldur's POV
I was surprised when a few league members entered the cave. Superman and Batman were among them. They had with them a girl of our age. The league members were speaking in hushed, yet aggressive, tones. They were in fierce disagreement. The girl was obviously making demands; that the league weren't keen to allow. She spoke often, and with a confrontational tone. She had an unusual accent. She placed the stresses in words on entirely different vowels, when she did bother to let them be heard. The words were shortened in a very foreign way. Instead of 'Where did you get that?' you would hear 'Weirdyagetthat?' It struck me as odd that she had a very good grasp of English, even though she clearly wasn't American or English. The voice didn't coincide with any land, or ocean, accents I had heard. While she was speaking with league members, we'd only been told who she was. We were told nothing else. Batman left the group. He approached the team, with the girl in tow.
"She'll only speak to you." Batman said. "Keep an eye on her." He left without saying anything more.
"Nice to meet you." She said. Kid flash was the first to meet her.
"Sooooo...where are you from?" Kid flash asked.
"Hamilton." She answered briefly. "Got any fizzy?" She walked past us to the kitchen.
"Fizzy?" I was confused. M'gann seemed not to understand either. The foreign girl slapped a hand to her forehead; she let the hand fall slowly down her face. She had realised something.
"Soda?"She said. Her voice was full of exasperation. Robin was the quickest to offer an answer.
"Top left cupboard. Hamilton? There are a few of those. You'll have to be more specific." He said shrewdly. He probably already knew which Hamilton she meant.
"Mighty Waikato...Melville area." She answered without turning.
"For my friends who aren't so geographically inclined you might have to specify the country." Robin was correct. Many of us still didn't understand where exactly this girl was from.
"I'm kiwi...from NZ." Instead of saying 'Zee' she pronounced it 'Zed'. She grabbed a soda from the cupboard.
"NZ?"Wally asked. He copied the way she had said 'Zed'.
"New Zealand, Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud. North Island." She opened the soda.
"Island?"Wally had a confused look on his face.
"Yeah. Pass me a globe...or something." She put the soda down on the bench.
"Wally, there's a globe in my stuff. Can you get it?" Robin asked.
"Sure." He was back in a couple of seconds. He tossed the girl the globe. She turned it around in her hands.
"Just there." She pointed to a group of small green shapes. The girl passed the globe to Wally, still pointing out the shapes.
"Tiny." Wally muttered.
"Not really." The girl replied. She leaned her body against the kitchen counter. "You guys might not know all that much about me but I'm pretty confused about you too. For one, you haven't even asked my name. For another, I don't even know what to call you guys."
"We'll introduce ourselves later. We already know your name. You were known as Glacier when you first got your powers. You're a Fantail now and known as Meltwater, you're real name is Jessie. We'd like to know more about you and the Fantails." Robin said.
"Dude...that is a little stalker-ish." The girl Meltwater said.
"Rob in a nutshell." Wally laughed.
"I'm surprised you know so much about us Fantails, and about me. We tend to keep to ourselves." She still seemed very confident.
"The information I've got is sketchy. You've been described as a group of dangerous vigilantes or a meta-gang. I'm not sure that's true." Robin revealed.
"Admittedly, we're not conventional law enforcement. We just help where we can. People tend not to react so well to our powers. The superhero concept is pretty new to New Zealand. Consequently, we keep a low profile." Meltwater said.
"For a group keeping a low profile, you certainly get a lot of negative press." Wally looked shocked by the information.
"Wally!" Artemis shoved Wally in the ribs.
"Ow." He groaned.
"Yeah, I suppose we do." She scratched her head, thinking. "I guess we just...refuse to play by the rules. We won't hide who we are just to please others."
"I wish we could function with that much nonchalance." Wally whined.
"We're covert Wally. It would never work. Besides, the league wouldn't hear of it." Robin said.
"They did seem pretty staunch." The girl admitted. She shrugged.
"I'm surprised you didn't cave and just cooperate with them." Wally said.
"They're too acclimatised to the big time, too detached from us small time supers, to be of much help. They'll have little thought for our ways of doing things...plus, I'm stubborn." She picked up her soda again. "So...tell me about yourselves. Then, and only then, will I tell you why I'm here." She blew an icy breath down the neck of the bottle. The glass was coated in a thin layer of frost. Robin raised an eyebrow while Wally gawped. "I like my drinks cold." She explained as if it was as simple as that. The team remained silent; we were weary of the stranger. Wally shook himself out of his stunned state.
"Come on Aqualad, introduce the team." He said to me. I looked to the others, no one offered any objections.
"Okay." I gestured to our youngest member first. "That's Robin."
"Ah, the boy wonder, I figured as much. No one else would dress like that. Mostly because of the fear of being sued. The red robin name is more closely guarded by your mentor than you'd think." She shook Robin's hand vigorously while she laughed. Robin chuckled as well.
"True." Robin said. "Batman is a staunch one." I gestured to Wally.
"This is Kid Flash."
"Hey. I'm Wally." Meltwater looked him up and down. Her eyes came to rest at his head.
"Nice hair. Snap." She tugged at her own short orange hair. "Mine's dyed." She revealed.
"It suits you perfectly." Wally said.
"Over there, is Superboy." I interrupted. The clone just nodded. "That is Miss Martian."
"It's nice to meet you." The Martian girl said chirpily.
"The archer is Artemis... I am Aqualad..." I gestured to myself. "And welcome to the cave."