The Reflection
HQ
Looking at this statue always changes her feelings about herself. Heroic, uncomfortable, attractive, lauded, acknowledged and a range of other things change her mind each time. She looks up to herself, a bronzed statue in a near perfect replica of her posing at a 45 degree angle down a paved pathway, as if she was taking a step forward. It's a place she knows of, but doesn't come here often. Now she is here to look at herself and figure out what to feel next. She hears something in the distance, the sound of a jetpack too far away to even see. Ace has probably sent for someone to come for her; but she wants to be the opposite, alone. She runs away from the statue and towards the locked doors of the university. The doors, for all their security, can't hold her back. She knocks them down with a powerful kick that rips the locked metal doors off their hinges before running inside past the wreckage. She's looking for the place that the Traveller was talking about. Her eyes aren't leading the way; her ears are echolocating the correct place because sounds have become more prominent in her memory as her own hearing has significantly improved. To some extent, she could find the place blindfolded.
Eventually, she reaches the place she thinks he's talking about. A long line of lockers that lead to a set of double doors to the hall where cheerleading tryouts were being performed just before the meteor hit. She walks slowly to where she suspects it might have been, right near the men's changing rooms. She can't remember where everyone was standing, or if she recognises in her memory a face that matches the once she saw earlier. However, she can pinpoint an area where he must have seen her. She walks to the very start of this predicted area, the furthest point from the hall, and walks towards it slowly in the near flawless silence imagining what it might have been like. She gets near to the end of her walk, but the silence is disturbed by someone quacking in.
"Lexi, thank goodness you're here!" Duck exclaims with his jetpack retracting to the size of a backpack.
"Ace sent you, didn't he, thanks for the concern." Lexi replies. "But I want to be alone for now."
"You don't want to be alone." Duck says. "You want to talk."
"You don't know what I'm thinking of, I want to be alone!" Lexi says, her eyes glowing pink, ready to strike Duck for the umpteenth time.
"No! No! Wait!" Duck says before quacking away. Lexi stops her attack, waiting for Duck to reappear. He reappears behind her. "It's love."
"Love?" Lexi asks, more to herself and to how duck knows that she knows.
"Don't act so superior." Duck explains with his arms folded in front of him. "It's all over you. I've seen you act so uncomfortably in your life."
"What do you know about love?" Lexi asks as she leans back against a set of lockers.
"Well, I may not be able to solve that equation that Tech gave me, but I do know about love." Duck answers. "Because I love money."
"But money can't tell you how much it loves you." Lexi explains.
"Oh yes it does!" Duck answers. "I hear it calling my name all the time."
"That's stupid, if it could then I would hear it." Lexi answers. She does have a point, but Duck is still incensed.
"Just because money can't talk back to me in a way even you can't hear it, which I might add is a good thing, doesn't mean I don't love it." Duck explains. However, Lexi is making him feel like that what example he can give, it will never be an adequate comparison to what she has felt.
"I need to be alone." Lexi repeats.
"Well okay then, but only 5 minutes, then I'm getting you out of here." Duck says, walking away from the scene. Lexi repeats the same thing she tried before, walking slowly and going back to when life for her was actually more complicated and more difficult than what it is for now. Before it was a whole multitude of personal and internal issues in the quagmire of social interaction that happens at university. Now it's clearly defined; she is a superhero with no other concerns than saving the world. However, she's slowly returned to that emotionally cloudy state she's yet to visit in a long while, where the prime motivation is conscious concerted thought and not an impending threat.
The emotion takes a toll on her, unable to focus clearly on what she has to do next. It's to take those feelings and bury them deep where nothing can make them erupt. Distractions would take her away from what her duty is; no doubt it would cause Ace to straighten her out. She leans back on a set of lockers and slides down until she's sitting on the cold hard ground, staring directly across the hall. She takes the glove off of her left hand to compare the pale blond coloured hand against the pink glove covered right. If there is one thing she realises from doing this, it is this: that her powers will be with her, regardless of whether or not her outfit is on or anything else she chooses. This is who she is now, and she does not want to change it. The past is in the past, no one would dare displace time by a magnitude of one and a half years, and no matter how great a display of affection she has been shown, it won't change who she now is.
She picks herself up from the floor simply by standing up, not with some energetic flip or otherwise. Lexi slowly walks forward to the exit, increasing in pace the more she tries to forget about what happened. As soon as she reaches the exit, she can hear the distinct whooshing sound Rev makes whenever he is at top speed, perhaps the only brief warning anyone gets before he arrives. The roadrunner stops right in front of Lexi.
"Lexi, thank goodness you're okay or didn't do anything stupid because perhaps your brain was all over the place." Rev explains.
"I'm fine, really, I am." Lexi answers.
"Because I know that I wouldn't be able to take it if someone said anything that nice to me on a personal level which of course no one ever has I've never experienced anywhere that close." Rev says before getting on his knees to beg at Lexi, holding her around the waist. "Why does no one ever love as much as you, why?!"
Rev starts sobbing at a rapid pace. Lexi, meanwhile, is completely confused at Rev's actions. He completely stops and stands up as if nothing happened, like there is a predator about to eat him.
"Please don't tell anyone that I said that." Rev says, ashamed of how his inhibitions have lowered to rock bottom, allowing his deepest feelings to be released before it's too late to self censor them; which is indeed a very short time. They both look up to see Ace and Tech flying in on their jetpacks. They both land and walk up to Lexi, aware that they will have to be sensitive with their words.
"Let's get back to HQ and, well… we'll sort all this out." Ace instructs, more quietly than usual.
"Yeah." Lexi replies. "Let's go."
It's one of the reasons why she and indeed everyone respects Ace, because he is such a great leader. Like he said, 'with great power come great responsibility', and he's certainly embraced the responsibility side of that equation. Definitely more than the one who has just quacked in a little too late. Duck arrives on the scene only to see the other Loonatics leaving the area.
"Hey guys, wait for me!" Duck says before flying off with his jetpack.