"No, sweetie," she corrected, swallowing the obvious frustration in her voice. "Like this . . ."

Shayera Hol was helping her son practice his handwriting for school.

"Rex, pay attention. Watch what I'm doing."

She much rather would have preferred tending to the invasion of the giant, three-eyed cephalopods occurring in the Gulf of Mexico right now. Or running a cheese grater over her face. Whichever.

"Pick your pencil back up, Rex." She picked the pencil up herself and placed it in his hand.

"But Moooommyyyyy . . ." the little boy whined. "This is boring."

Shayera pushed back the loose hair in her eyes and sighed. "You're tellin' me."

John was lucky enough to get field duty this week, which meant he was out beating the crap out of slobbering monsters while Shayera was stuck in the Metrotower monitor room trying not to break their kid. More recently, she was trying to figure out why her five-year-old had so much trouble writing the letter "R." It was, after all, only the first letter of his name.

"Could you at least hold your pencil correctly?"

The little boy sighed, pouting dramatically as he gripped his pencil. "Where's Daddy?" he asked, drawing spirals down the side of his manuscript paper.

"Daddy's fighting giant squids right now, sweetheart," Shayera answered bluntly, taking his hand to move his pencil back to where they had left off.

Even she was alarmed by how casual that sounded.

"Could we stay focused for one minute?" she continued, clearly at the end of her rope. She pointed at the letter "R" made up of hashmarks and tiny arrows at the start of the line. "Watch me, okay?"

She had to snap her fingers at him when she caught him staring at the blinking lights on the console, but once she had his attention, she picked up her own pencil and traced the letter in front of him.

"Now, get your pencil out of your ear and trace what I just did," she instructed.

The pout never left the boy's face, but he still did as he was told.

Shayera then filled the rest of the line with her own hashmarked "R's." She was just finishing the last one when a beep sounded and a monitor screen flashed on.

"Metrotower." Mr. Terrific face appeared on the screen.

"Now trace these ones for me," she told Rex before swiveling her chair in the other direction. She held down a button on the keyboard when she spoke. "Go."

"The situation in the Gulf has been taken care of," he explained. "Another genetic experiment gone wrong."

"Big surprise," Shayera sighed. "They got it all cleaned up?"

"Pretty much. Our first team is on their way back."

"Does that mean the Javelin is still intact?"

Mr. Terrific paused, looking perplexed himself. "Yes, actually."

"Wow. That just might call for a celebration."

"You're welcome to have a ball," Terrific answered. "Javelin 15 should reach Metropolis in about 30 minutes, and Static should be there in less than five to relieve you."

"That's what I like to hear." She entered a few codes, then pushed one last button. "Shayera out." The monitor went black.

Shayera turned back to Rex. "Alright, sweetie, let's see what you -" The end of her sentence frayed into a series of stifled Thanagarian curses when she caught sight of the manuscript paper defiled in a kindergartner's most imaginative and vivid work of art.

"What the hell is this?" she couldn't help spitting out as she swiped the paper up from the console.

Little Rex was unfazed. "It's Daddy fighting giant squids," he said. "Duh."

Mommy dropped the drawing, then her face fell into her hands. She muttered a few more of those words Daddy kept telling her she shouldn't say before finally taking a deep breath.

"You know what?" she said, smoothing out the drawing in front of him and pointing to the end of the word Daddy scrawled in the corner. "That, is a beautiful letter 'y.' Let's call it a night. Pack up. Daddy will be back soon."

She felt a twinge by her temple as Rex cheered, happily stuffing his pencil box.