A/N: Emu: I own my OC's and their families. I don't own Young Justice, DC, iPods (Apple), or any of the music mentioned. Enjoy!

"Well that's one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready now go cat go!"

The iPod started blasting a new song and Autumn jumped again, grabbing the iPod to see which song this was.

"Elvis Presley

Blue Suede Shoes,

Elvis Presley (1999 US Bonus Tracks)"

Autumn smirked. She sometimes heard Thanagarians making fun of Elvis Presley, but she couldn't see why. In fact, she liked this song so much that she got up and started dancing.

Rima and Alon laughed and joined in.

Two minutes later, the song ended and another started up.

It was a much calmer song this time, but still rather upbeat.

"Look at what's happened to me, I can't believe in myself. Suddenly I'm up on top of the world, it should've been somebody else!"

Autumn looked at the iPod again and read the banner.

"Joey Scarbury

Theme from 'Greatest American Hero' (Believe it or Not)

America's Greatest Hero"

Autumn grinned at her parents. "I like this thing," she stated simply, and her parents laughed.

Then Rima saw the clock. It was almost 11:30 PM.

"Well, you'll have to play with it more tomorrow, it's time for bed."

"Awwww..."

Alon got up and tickled Autumn, who squirmed and squealed in laughter. "Fine fine fine! I'll go! Just... s-stop!" She gasped between laughter.

Alon did stop, but only to scoop the girl off the ground and run her to her room. He dropped her gently onto her bed, where she rolled onto her stomach, still laughing, before shooing her dad out of the room so she could change into her pajamas.

She opened the door again and was faced with her parents, both grinning, her mom with the cardboard box of stuff in her hands, her dad teetering under the Precariously Leaning Tower of Books.

Autumn took the books and put them besides the overflowing white bookshelf by her bed to be read later, then grabbed The Capture from the top and put it in the box her mom was still holding, placing it by her bed.

She pretended to be getting into bed, only to attack-hug her parents when they got close enough.

"Thank you," she whispered in their ears with an underlying happy trill, and they smiled.

"So, I'm guessing you enjoyed today, then?" Alon asked, and Autumn nodded vigorously after pulling away.

"You bet I did!"

"Well, lucky for you, you don't have school tomorrow either, so get some sleep now so you can be all hyper tomorrow," her mom joked, kissing her on the forehead.

Alon followed suit and Autumn burrowed beneath her blankets so only her eyes and higher was showing, pretending to be a ninja.

Her parents laughed at her antics and walked back to the door. "Opened or closed?" Rima asked.

"Open, please," Autumn said.

"Ok, goodnight sweetie," her dad replied and turned off the light.

"Goodnight," Autumn whispered back.

As soon as her parents left, Autumn took the iPod back out and plugged in the earphones, putting it on shuffle again.

She got through six more songs including Superman by Five for Fighting, Kryptonite and When I'm Gone by Three Doors Down before she fell asleep, right when the battery ran out.

Her parents, meanwhile, were talking about Gavina.

Alon sighed. "I can't believe she saved up enough money for that oboe. Autumn is going to love it. And that iPod," he continued, the word foreign on his tongue. "She will listen to that thing until she's memorized every single song on there. It was real sweet how Gavina found that and gave it to Autumn instead of just keeping it."

"That was really nice of Gavina, wasn't it?" Rima said, nearly crying. "Why can't more kids be like that?"

Alon pulled his wife into a hug. "I don't know dear. The world is cruel to those who are different. We can only hope and try to make it better."

"Yes, you're right Alon." Rima looked at the clock again. "We should probably go to bed."

Alon nodded. "I'll be right there. I'm going to check on Autumn really quick."

And he did just that. He found his daughter conked out with her earphones still in and chuckled, walking over to Autumn and gently pulling out the earphones.

Seeing the rather primitive device was out of battery, Alon grabbed the charger from the box it was in and plugged it into the wall.

Autumn woke up at 10:00 AM the next morning, thoroughly glad her parents had let her sleep in. She had slept better than normal, but not by much.

Dang owl genes, have to make me an insomniac apparently... 'Night Owl' is quite literal in my case, Autumn thought with a miniscule smile on her face as she stretched, not getting up just yet.

Wait... didn't I have my earphones in? The thought sent Autumn's gaze whipping around until it settled on the wall where her dad had put them. "Oh... I was caught, I guess," she thought aloud, rubbing her neck with a sheepish smile.

She stood up and stretched some more, looking around her room.

Her eyes lighted upon her notebook, which had a metallic wave painting as a cover and a magnetic strip keeping it closed. She grinned and scooped it up, putting it on her bed with The Capture before changing into a green and black long sleeve t-shirt and blue jeans, throwing a black hoodie over it all.

She picked up her notebook, The Capture, a pencil, her iPod and earphones and left the room, shoving most of it in her hoodie pocket as she went. As per usual, she wasn't that hungry, but knew she should probably eat something.

Her mom grinned at her as she walked into the room. "How does it feel to be nine?"

"The same, as always," Autumn shrugged and grabbed a piece of toast and a few pieces of roasted mouse, folding the toast over the meat. Combination of Thanagar and Earth breakfasts!

Quickly eating the sandwich, Autumn briefly contemplated on the possibility that her odd interest in Earth may or may not contribute to the way she was treated and decided that no, it made no difference so why not do whatever the heck she wanted?

She snapped out of her thoughts when she nearly chomped on her fingers, not noticing that she had finished the sandwich.

Turning to Rima, she asked, "Hey, mom, is it ok if I go out for a bit?"

Rima looked outside at the snow covered ground. "I don't know, isn't it a little cold?"

Autumn shrugged. "You know cold doesn't bug me much, and I was considering going to the library or something to fool around with my iPod."

Her mom considered it for a few more seconds before she reminded herself of her daughter's fighting capabilities, her staff and her sneak tactics. "Ok, but be careful," she told her at last.

Autumn beamed and ran forwards to hug her mom. "Thank you!" Then she ran to the coat rack and pulled on her brown winter coat, grabbing her retractable staff and putting it in the special pocket she had made.

As Autumn stepped out into the crisp winter air, she took a deep breath and smiled. It wasn't fall- fittingly, her favorite season- but it wasn't freezing cold or snowing or anything. (God, she hated snow. It froze up her wings.) Besides, cold weather is good for flying.

With a smile, Autumn took to the air, heading for the roof of the library. She hadn't been lying completely to her mom when she said she was going to the library; she just hadn't mentioned how she wasn't actually going to go in.

She settled in the corner of the roof where heat leaked up out of a crack and grinned as she placed down a small machine she had found and tinkered with that gave her a sort of mini atmosphere, trapping the heat and giving her a warm little half dome.

Leaning against the place where two walls of the building came together, Autumn took out her iPod and earbuds, putting it on shuffle again and tilting her chin up slightly as the intro came on.

"If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do, is to save every day 'till eternity passes away, just to spend them with you..."

Autumn knew already that she'd like this song. She checked the banner.

"Jim Croce

Time in a Bottle

Time in a Bottle/Greatest Love Songs."

"I've looked around enough to know that you're the one I want to go through time with..."

As the song continued, she sighed somewhat sadly. She wished almost more than anything that this song was directed towards her. It was so beautiful.

She sat back listening until the song ended and it switched again, but she stopped paying attention and used the music as ambience. Autumn clicked "menu" and then scrolled up to "Photos," remembering what the mysterious note-writer/gift-giver had said about pictures.

Before clicking, though, she let her mind wander to the girl who had written it. Yes, obviously it was a girl based off the handwriting, but that narrowed the possibilities to maybe half the population of Thanagar. The neat loops were overly deliberate, so she- whoever "she" was- wanted to remain anonymous.

Snapping back to her task, she hit the center button and studied the previous human owner.

There were only about ten pictures, but they were of the same people, for the most part. One or two had a little, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy. One had a man with black hair and blue eyes who obviously hadn't approved of them taking a picture as his hand was out, trying to cover the lense.

But nearly all of them were of two kids that looked about ten Earth-years old, one a boy and the other a girl.

The boy had black hair and blue eyes, and the girl had red hair and bright green eyes. They both had goofy smiles in most of the pictures, or were trying to cover their face from a surprise photo, grinning all the while anyways.

The nicest one had their arms slung over the other's shoulder, grinning. It was taken by someone else, presumably the man in the other picture, going by the angle.

Autumn grinned. They were some nice pictures. She sort of wished she could get the iPod back to them but, at the same time, was sort of happy that wasn't an option. She liked the songs on this thing.

She spent most of the day up on that roof, doodling or writing in her notebook, going through a few more chapters of her Guardians of Ga'Hoole book and listening to more of the songs on the iPod. The genre of songs seemed to fluctuate between rock and country and something in between but Autumn liked most of them.

Half an hour before the sun set, Autumn picked up her device, cleaned up her stuff and headed for home, where she took out her oboe and instantly figured out how to play Kryptonite.

Later that night, when it was dark and everyone else was asleep, Autumn remained wide awake. Staring at her ceiling, she sighed in boredom and turned towards her bookshelf, where her grandfather's journal caught her eye. She smirked and scooched to the end of her bed to grab it.

She carefully opened to the first page and, using her night vision, began to read.

August 12, 1940

Well, this is sort of odd to be doing, and I know if anyone found out I was writing a journal, I would be teased even more, but I have to do something.

(To make this less awkward for me, I'm going to pretend that I'm addressing someone real. Perhaps this can be passed down to others of my sort.)

Edwin 101: I'm a fourteen year old owl Thanagarian. On this world, the one word "owl" as a description of you is a ticket to bullying. I've never had a friend that didn't leave me for some reason, and no one really cares when they see me being cornered (excluding my parents, who've never been with me when it happens). I've been working on ways to avoid them, but nothing works except for frightening them.

Now, when you're about four and a half feet tall and going up against hawks five to six feet tall, that's hard to do.

Tip: knowledge and stealth scare them. They're typically used to being attacked outright and powerfully. If they don't know what will come next, they'll get nervous, especially if you know a bit about their families and themselves. Not hard to dig up, believe me. Sneak attacks will make them uneasy of you, and it may help to learn the schematics of wherever they like ganging up on you. If you know the placement of access ports, air vents and employee doors, you can hide when you pick up their footsteps coming towards you. (Subtip: utalize that owl hearing.) However, these potentially essential escapes have an annoying tendency of being locked. It wouldn't be a bad idea to learn some basic automatic locking systems and how to hack them. Keep updated on new systems- you never know when neglecting your research will come back to clip you in the wing. Trust me, I speak from experience.

Another important thing is to keep your spirits up. When you have no one your age to talk to and your parents still have to work, you can get lonely. Add bullying to the mix, and you're practically inviting depression to take over. It won't do anyone any good to do so. A good way to avoid this is to do stuff that you like (keep it legal, please). Read, draw, take pictures, pummel punching bags, make and fly airborne obstacle courses if you want. Just do what makes you happy. I myself have been working on a server for owl Thanagarians only. I just need to work on a foolproof way of keeping out the hawks and spreading the message from there.

This is an odd place to cut off, but I have prison sentence (I mean school) tomorrow, so this, dear reader-from-the-future, is where I leave you for now.

-Edwin J. Pines

Autumn smiled as she finished reading entry one. She would've liked to meet this guy. Wonder where he is now? She thought. I could suggest that the site could scan the user's eye through their webcam.

She began to turn the page, but remembered that her reading had to end there for the same reason her grandpa's writing had to end. She sighed and closed the book, putting it aside, and continued her attempts at sleep.