8:38 AM MDT, Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Challenger Mountain
"What is it with you and finding traumatized kids?" Robin asks with a smirk as he and Cass step out of the Zeta tube. Greta shrinks back, trying to hide herself behind me. Odd. She'd been very happy to meet Morah and Fate, and hadn't even flinched at First.
I shrug and smile. "Big brother instinct, I guess. Welcome to Challenger Mountain."
"What, couldn't get it renamed to Mount Legion?" Robin asks, as Cass leans over, trying to get a clear view of Greta. After a moment, her ears shift into their batlike form, and she stops, nodding to herself decisively.
"I don't have that much of an ego, you know," I retort. "But how about a tour?"
"You can start by introducing your miniature female version," Robin says.
Oh. Right.
"So, Greta, meet Robin and Cassandra Cain. They don't bite. I think. You guys, meet Greta...Hayes…"
I sigh at the expressions on Robin and Cass's faces. "She's already gone, isn't she?"
"Yes," Cass says.
"Okay, not sure why she's doing that, but you still want to take a look around?"
Robin nods, but Cass steps forwards. "I want to go talk to her," her voice whispers, without her mouth moving.
I check for a moment, borrowing the eyes of a few Drones that are wandering about, and shake my head. "I'll handle that. As for you guys…" A brief command, and a Hunter strides forwards. "Just follow this little guy down to the labs. First can show you around until I get back."
"Your giant insect-buddy. Okay, cool," Robin says. "Now go catch your mini-me."
It takes but a moment to find Greta again, sitting in a corner of the common room with her knees drawn up, easily seen through the eyes of a few nearly-invisible insects I've bred to act as an organic camera network. I flicker through the Red to just outside the entrance, walking in quietly. She doesn't look up, but I know she can tell I'm there.
"Hey." I keep my voice quiet. "Mind telling me what that was about?"
She shrinks down.
"I'm not mad. Just worried. Are they scary to you?"
She nods minutely.
"Okay. They're good people, you know that?"
Another nod.
"You want to tell me what scared you?"
She pauses, then shakes her head slightly. Okay.
I sit down across from her. "You think you'll be alright?"
Nod.
"Okay. I'm going to go talk to them some more. If you need anything, one of the Hunters will lead you to me, alright?"
Another nod, and I hold out a hand. After a moment, she leans forward to grasp it, fingers tiny in comparison to mine.
"...thanks," she says, near-inaudibly.
"Any time," I half-whisper back. "You sure you'll be okay?"
"Yes. Just don't want to see them."
I hug her close for a moment, before standing, and flickering away to join my guests.
7:04 PM EDT
Metahuman Solutions Incorporated, Bethesda, Maryland
"Heya, Victor."
The big guy's entire body twitches, and I mean that literally- his body spikes up like a surprised anime character for half a second, before he turns around. "Legion."
I smile. "Yup. Got to talk to your boss. Got a problem?"
He blinks. "No, actually. Go right on in. And, uh...thanks. Didn't get in touch with you after last time, but...I owe you one."
"Stop by my labs sometime and we'll call it even," I say. "What'd you end up doing?"
"Got to walk and talk, but I'll fill you in on the way. Got a bit of time. You know the way to her office?"
"I don't, but your fruit fly infestation has already figured it out." I start walking. "So, spill. What's someone with your crazy biology doing?"
"Right now? Look." He rolls back the sleeve of his button-down shirt, exposing a dozen different patches of skin, each with a number written on them and their borders outlined by paler lines of flesh. "Medical trials and drug testing are really easy to handle, for me. I just tell parts of my body to react like a normal human's would, and it does, and I can even separate them out."
"Huh." Not revolutionary in and of itself, but it probably removes a lot of liability problems, especially for the more dangerous drugs. "Seems pretty impressive. Anything particularly special?"
"You know how a lot of the FDA really doesn't like any sort of drug that's come from a mad scientist type?"
"O-kay…"
"Right, so since I can't actually be hurt by anything that it might do, I've been working on the more weird stuff."
"Like?"
"Oh, nothing much," he says with a smile. "Just AIDS treatment and a cure for most forms of lung cancer, at the moment."
Are you fucking kidding me? "There's someone who's working on-"
"Was. And the someone was Dr. Sivana, with the lab guys basically copying his notes."
"Oh. Okay, now I see why people aren't exactly lining up. Angry bald men vowing to show them all isn't exactly a reassuring medical presence."
"Yeah, it works pretty well. And we're here."
Huh. That was fast.
"So we are." I shake the man's hand, ignoring the noise of internal screaming as the Red has a conniption fit over his shard-based biology. "Good luck with the medical stuff, and I still expect you to show up. I think I've found someone with similar powers to yours and I want to see what happens if I get the two of you in the same room."
"I'll see what I can do. And good luck with the boss."
"Might need it."
He walks away, and I take a moment to compose myself. Then I knock on the door.
"Come in."
It's been a while, since we've talked face-to-face. I decide on the dramatic entrance, reducing myself into a swarm of insects, creeping under the door, and reassembling in a whirling tornado of chitin.
LaTonya Charles gives me an unimpressed stare. "You done?"
I smile sheepishly. "Yeah. So, what's the reason you called me up? You didn't say."
"Denver finally got back to us."
"And?"
"There's a lot of paperwork, mostly liability things, but they're offering a multi-million dollar deal, with some interesting bonuses if you can make the effects permanent." She pulls out an inch-thick document, thumping it down onto the desk. "Here. These are all the details. Read over it, then get back to me. And don't do anything crazy like Bialya, the Denver city council is still being a bit neurotic over you being there, and I don't want them pulling out at the last second over PR."
I take it, hefting it in my hands. "Alright. Let's-"
The floor trembles.
"What the hell?" LaTonya mutters, as I put the files down and walk to the window.
Another tremor, and another, and at street level the pavement cracks and a green vine begins to grow, pushing upwards at an absurd rate.
What the hell?
It swings around, smashing into the side of a building, and I don't think. Just order.
Insects pour from sewer grates and concrete cracks and backyards, converging on the tendril, but I can feel more forcing their way to the surface, and even the efforts of all of them aren't enough.
This isn't random. Something like this...I'd call it Poison Ivy's work, she's still on the run, but she's always stayed near Gotham. This sort of control takes planning.
I'm guiding people away with barriers of chitin and fireflies and swarm clones, whatever I have available, and across the city I feel people begin to awake to the danger.
But I can't stop this. I'm not of the Green.
But I know someone who is.
"Rain check?" I ask LaTonya with a smile, as if people aren't dying below as the plants thrash and cars are enveloped in accidents caused by inattention or rubbernecking.
"Go."
A step forward, and I'm in a different place entirely, among the greenhouse where a fruit that is both anathema to and in the end the wellspring of my power grows from a single tree.
Time to get to work.
