Author's Comment: This is more or less my small tribute to second generation superheroes. Although Ann Queen is of my own invention (I hope. lol) if you have the time, you may get a kick out of looking up the names of some of her friends. You might even recognize some of them if you're really amazing.

Just as a small warning to those who read the first story, this one is a little bit less light hearted. Not too bad though, I don't think.

BlueSuedeShoes

"You're gonna get it," came the sing-song voice of Ann's younger brother, Connor as she walked off the lift.

She rolled her eyes. "What now, twerp?" she asked, ruffling his hair affectionately as she passed him by, tossing her green leather jacket defeatedly to the floor. She and Connor actually got along fairly well on the average basis, considering they teased each other so much.

"Dad knows," he said ominously.

Her head whipped around and she stopped at the bottom of the stairs. "Knows what?"

Connor raised his eyebrows at her. "You took his bike, didn't you?"

Her eyes widened. "Oh god! He knows?"

Connor nodded, apparently making a valiant attempt not to be excited that she was in trouble.

Ann looked over her shoulder. "Where is he?"

"Kitchen."

"He know I'm home?"

Connor shook his head.

"Good. Don't tell him," she warned, turning around to grab her jacket and heading back for the door.

"ANN!"

Ann clutched her heart, eyes closing at the sound of her father's voice. She'd been so close, her hand just resting on the down button on the lift. With a defeated sigh, her arm dropped.

"Yes?" she called back innocently.

"Kitchen. Now."

She walked in to find her father fuming and her mother sitting down at the kitchen table, looking weary but slightly amused.

"Hi, daddy," Oliver's seventeen-year-old daughter said sweetly. She looked windswept and tired. He could only imagine where she'd been.

He glared at her stonily and Chloe rolled her eyes, making a tsking sound.

"You're grounded until you're my age," Oliver said simply.

Ann opened her mouth to argue, then stopped herself, evidently rethinking it. She nodded. "Okay," she said simply, turning to leave.

Chloe sighed. "Would you like to offer an explanation?" she asked, motioning for Ann to sit down.

Ann tucked her blonde hair behind her ear and nervously pulled out a chair.

"Well?" Chloe asked, Oliver too busy fuming to deal with his daughter calmly.

"I...sort of borrowed Dad's bike."

"Really?" Oliver asked sarcastically. "We hadn't noticed."

Ann just sighed. "I was careful. You've taken me riding lots of times, Dad, and I wore the helmet."

"You've never driven before!" Oliver pointed out irritably. What had she been thinking?

Ann turned a deep shade of scarlet. "Actually..."

"Don't tell me you've done this before!" Chloe exclaimed, startled.

"No!" Ann said hurriedly. "I've never taken Dad's bike before tonight, but Jason's been teaching me how to ride his."

"Who the hell is Jason?" Oliver demanded.

"Ollie," Chloe admonished him for swearing in front of Ann.

"Dad," Ann said, her voice taking on a slight tone of frustration. "I dated Jason Todd the entirety of second semester."

"Jason? Jason? Doesn't ring a bell," Oliver said stubbornly, and Chloe had to repress a chuckle. Oliver hadn't really come to terms with the whole 'boyfriend' thing yet.

"What happened to Roy?" Oliver asked suddenly. "Roy Harper, wasn't it? He was a good kid," he sighed wistfully.

"Dad, you hated Roy," she reminded him with an eyebrow up, trying to maintain her respectful somberness.

Chloe looked humorously at Oliver. It was true.

"That was just because he was dating my daughter. I liked Roy. Besides, Roy never had a motorcycle," Oliver retorted.

"Yeah, he just got addicted to heroin, that's all," Ann remarked sarcastically with a sigh.

Oliver and Chloe stared at their daughter.

She looked from her mother to her father. "Did I not mention that?" she asked sheepishly. "That's why I broke up with him. He joined a band and a while later Donna found out that he was on heroin. I confronted him about it and he wouldn't listen, so I told him I couldn't see him anymore."

"Who's Donna again?" Oliver asked with a defeated sigh, sitting down beside his wife and trying very hard not to sound too proud of her for apparently making at least one good decision. She was supposed to be in trouble.

"Donna Troy is one of my best friends, Dad," she answered patiently. "She goes to school with me."

"Right," he grumbled. School. "Where did you meet this Jason-kid again?"

"He goes to Excelsior, too," she explained.

"I thought you liked that Tim Drake boy. He seemed nice," Oliver said fondly.

Ann fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Tim's sweet, Daddy, but he's really..." she searched for the correct word.

"Safe?" Chloe supplied with a smirk, knowing her daughter a little too well.

Ann smiled helplessly and nodded. Oliver, fortunately, was rubbing his forehead in weariness, and missed the concession.

"Tim's just a friend," Ann said aloud. "He's really nice and sweet, but we don't think of each other that way," she told them honestly.

Chloe studied her daughter, unable to repress memories of herself and Clark Kent when they were in high school. "Where exactly did you take your father's bike this evening?" Chloe asked, returning to the more pressing subject.

"Please don't say a joy ride. Please don't say a joy ride. Please don't say a joy ride," Oliver chanted under his breath. Chloe had been right. Ann had inherited a lot of personality traits from him. A joy ride was all too likely.

Ann swallowed and her eyes darted away evasively. Chloe didn't miss it, and she frowned. That was not the look of a guilty teenager. That was the look of a scared teenager.

"What happened?" she asked.

Ann didn't look at them. "One of my friends...needed me."

Oliver looked up at her.

"Needed you how?" Chloe asked. "And who? Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine, Mom," Ann assured her quickly. "It was just...well, actually, it was Jason."

"What? I thought you said someone needed you? Not that you were going to see your--" he stopped refusing to acknowledge the term 'boyfriend.' "Some boy," he finished.

Ann shook her head. "No, I know. Jason's the one who's in some sort of trouble. He hasn't called me at all since school got out a week ago and tonight Babs called me--"

"Who's 'Babs?' " Oliver asked in exhaustion, officially unable to keep up with all of his daughter's friends.

"You remember Barbara Gordon, Daddy. Commissioner Gordon's daughter? I met her when you went to visit Mr. Wayne and you brought me along?" she attempted to jog his memory. "You said you thought she was a very sweet girl," she added hopefully. Oliver just stared at the girl blankly. "Anyway she's really good friends with Tim and Jason, so I've run into her a couple more times since then and we've gotten to be really good friends and Babs called me earlier totally frantic because Jason got in a fight with Mr. Wayne--who's like his..." she cleared her throat, and Chloe narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Mentor?" she suggested shrewdly. She knew all too well about Bruce Wayne's night life as Batman, and she'd long since investigated his relationships with certain younger generation superheroes.

"Yeah," Ann admitted cautiously. "Mentor. Anyway, Jason and Mr. Wayne had a big blow out and Babs said Jason just took off. Ran away. She said things have been getting really tense for him and Jason just snapped. We didn't know where he'd gone."

She looked very distraught, and Oliver, who could never stay angry at his daughter for long, was starting to feel guilty about giving her a hard time.

"So you took your father's bike?" Chloe questioned. "Why, if you didn't know where to find him?"

Ann fidgeted uncomfortably. "He called me."

"What?" Chloe asked, surprised.

She hesitated. "He, um, wanted..." she trailed off nervously.

Oliver stood up. "I'm going to kill him," he growled.

"No, Daddy!" Ann panicked, rising as well. "It's not like that! He didn't do anything like that. He--he wanted me to run away with him."

Chloe and Oliver stared at her, stunned. Oliver dropped back into his seat in surprise.

"What?" he asked, voice choking.

"He's leaving, and he says he's not coming back to school," she said, starting to get very upset but not crying. Chloe knew her daughter well enough to know she would never cry in front of them. She might shed her tears later in the confines of her bedroom, but she was a strong, determined person, not unlike her father, and she would hold out as long as she could. "He, um, he said that he didn't know if he'd see me for a while. Something about finding himself," she said, words coming out in a bit of a jumble now as she confessed everything. "He wanted me to come with him," she repeated.

"But?" Chloe pursued. Obviously Ann had decided not to go.

"I was never going to go," Ann explained. "I just asked him where I could meet him because I wanted to say goodbye." She paused a moment. "And I wanted to make sure he was all right. I knew he wouldn't stick around when I told him I wasn't going to just run off with him, so I got him to tell me where he was and I--" she stopped again.

"You chased after him," Chloe nodded, smiling slightly. If it wasn't her daughter, it would make for a romantic story.

"Mom, I'm worried about him!" Ann admitted suddenly. "He was acting so strange. Something was different about him."

Chloe frowned. "What do you mean?"

Ann appeared to be choosing her words carefully. "He...well, he was always a bit of a rebellious type," she suggested meekly. Oliver gave her a rueful look. "But it wasn't anything serious. He was just a little arrogant and had a bit of an attitude. He was a really good person."

"Was?" Chloe questioned before Oliver could jump in.

Ann nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear again, a nervous habit of hers. "Something seemed really different tonight. He's always had this sort of...noble side...do you know what I mean?"

Chloe smiled, eyes darting to her husband. "Uh huh."

"It was like it was gone, tonight. I don't know. He just seemed really cold and...empty."

Chloe looked at her sympathetically. "I'm sure he'll be all right. He just sounds like a troubled young man." It was something she and her daughter apparently had in common: they attracted troubled souls.

Chloe and Oliver exchanged looks. Oliver shook his head but Chloe spoke up anyway. "Sweetie, here's the way I see it, and Oliver, if you don't like it, you can put in your opinion in a moment. You shouldn't under any circumstances have stolen your father's bike," Chloe said sternly. "But you also had a good reason, and you were trying to look after someone you care about a lot. In the future, I want you to come to us first. You can't just run off rashly. You might have gotten seriously injured or put yourself into some kind of trouble."

Oliver nodded in agreement.

"So the way I see it, you're grounded for a week for sneaking out, instead of until you're as old as your father," she finished, the corner of her mouth twitching.

Ann and Chloe looked to Oliver for final judgment. He looked back and forth between the two of them and sighed. "Fine. Good. Go to your room."

Ann nodded and pushed away from the table, heading out of the room and back upstairs.

"You can quit hiding behind the door now, twerp," they heard her address their son as she swept past where he was apparently eavesdropping.

"Go to bed, Connor," Chloe called after him. When she was sure both children were out of earshot, she turned to Oliver, her brow arched.

"You raised them," he grumbled.

Chloe rolled her eyes, chuckling. "Yes, and I wonder where she got the urge to ride motorcycles from."

Oliver heaved a sigh. "Aren't teenagers supposed to have easier problems to deal with? Like...I don't know...bad grades or something?"

"Or meteor-infected-homicidal-maniacs?" Chloe retorted with a laugh, recalling that her time in high school had been anything but easy. She looked at Oliver's expression of consternation and sighed, rubbing his shoulder. "You know, she's growing up all right. She's just got a lot of you in her."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "That's what worries me."

"And we all should have just expected that she'd be drawn to types like Jason Todd and Tim Drake and those others she's friends with."

Oliver frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Ollie, she sort of has her father on a pedestal," she teased, "particularly since she turned thirteen and found out he's the Green Arrow. Isn't it strange that she dates boys with rebellious natures and heroic tendencies?" she mocked.

"I seem to recall telling her to stay away from boys like me," Oliver moaned.

Chloe chuckled. "Right. And that was so effective."

"What do you know about these kids she hangs out with anyway?" he asked her.

Chloe gave him an amused smile. "Are you asking Chloe or Watchtower?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Does the answer change?"

She nodded.

"Chloe, then Watchtower."

"As Chloe, I say that Ann has made some exceptional friends, all of whom have truly good natures and strong senses of justice. As Watchtower, I feel the need to point out that Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon are both involved with Batman," she said bluntly. "The other kids have similar backgrounds."

Oliver gaped. "My daughter is dating the flippin' boy wonder?"

Chloe nodded, trying to repress a smirk. She hadn't told Oliver until then for a reason.

"Does Ann know that?"

Chloe shrugged. "I don't think she knows about all of them, but I suspect she knows about our young friend Mr. Todd."

Oliver looked toward the chair his daughter had occupied moments ago. "I told her to stay away from boys like me," he groaned emphatically.

Chloe laughed and rubbed his back. "You know you have to go talk to her, don't you?" she asked him.

"Do I have to?" he whined. "Why don't you do it?"

She grinned. "Because I have a feeling you will have better insight into what to tell her after her boyfriend runs away and potentially throws himself into a downward spiral."

Oliver's brow went up contritely. "Ah. Right. On it," he said, getting up to go talk to his daughter. "By the way," he said on his way out, "I blame you for the fact that she's attracted to hero-types. Not my fault."

Chloe laughed at him, shaking her head as she sat down again, her laughter drifting into a sigh. Ann was going to be all right, she knew, but the first love always stung. She wondered where the young Mr. Todd was now, and whether they'd heard the last of him. She hoped he turned out all right. Ann liked to save people too much, and she had too much faith in people. It would break her heart if the boy lost the hero in him.

It was something else she'd inherited from her parents, Chloe thought dreamily, her eyes drifting upward to the ceiling, above which a father-daughter chat was in the beginning stages.