Chapter 12

The three girl made their way down to Ms. Gordon's English class room, where the redhead was known to have her lunch everyday. During the Zippergirl term, Dinah spent almost two weeks eating lunch with Barbara until Gabby started speaking to her and told her to meet her for lunch one day. As usual, Barbara sat at her desk with an apple and a Subway sandwich. When she saw them, she put her sandwich back in its wrapping and wiped her mouth with the napkin. "Ladies, what can I do for you?"

"Hey Barbara,"

"Hey Ms. Gordon," Gabby said.

"Hey Ms. Gordon," Kelly echoed. Barbara nodded, then looked at the three as she waited for an answer.

"Uh, Barbara, this morning before school, Kelly could smell the two people who were there last night when she was shot."

"Did you get the feeling of which one actually pulled the trigger?" the redhead asked.

"One of them was close to me because they touched me, but the other one was farther away. I'm pretty sure the one who was far away was the one who shot me."

"Okay," Barbara said, going to her computer.

"Ms. Gordon?" Gabby asked tentatively, looking around the room, then avoided eye contact with her ex English teacher, who made her nervous since the night before at dinner.

"Yes, Gabby?"

"Do you think that... they're two meta... humans? One with invisible powers and one who could teleport, like that blue guy in X-Men?"

"Invisible, yes," Dinah responded, "but the person who had the ability to teleport is dead."

"How do you know?"

"It was... Nathaniel Fairbanks who had that power," Barbara said.

"Mandy's brother?" Kelly asked. She had heard Mandy once or twice mention a brother, but she didn't know he too had certain powers, or if he had, she thought they would have been like hers. Barbara and Dinah both nodded.

"Wow, okay. Um..." Gabby was silent for a moment, then she looked up again. "Wait," she said, then looked around again to make sure no one was in range to hear her. "You said that this... power to be metahuman was in the blood."

"Sure," Dinah agreed, wondering but somewhat knowing where her friend may have been going with this.

"When your adopted sister's mother died, didn't she get those powers? And you, you said your telekinetic blasts were liked a bit of your mother's Canary Cry mixed with your own telekinesis. And Kelly, you had Mandy's exact blood in you, so you get her exact power. I'll bet is Mandy had never died, she would've kept the shift and you would've been a little more like Helena- human with that animalistic personality, but since she did die, you got the shift, almost like next of kin. So, couldn't someone else in the Fairbanks bloodline, even a cousin or something have gotten Nathan's power, just as Kelly got Mandy's?"

"It is definitely possible," Barbara said, looking at Gabby in amazement.

"She's been doing that all week," Dinah told the redhead.

"Doing what?" Gabby asked, which made Kelly giggle. "What?" the curly blonde repeated, looking around the room in slight bewilderment.

"Alright. I'll look through the Metahuman Databases, but I must warn you that I only know about their powers if they've been used before in public, mostly in aid of a crime, and if they are students here, I don't know if I'll find them."

"Okay. Well, at least now we'll know kind of what we're looking for. Definitely worth looking over Mandy's family tree again," Dinah said, and Barbara nodded. There was silence until a student came in five minutes early for their junior class required English.

"Anything else?" Barbara asked, looking pointedly at Dinah.

"Can I go over to Gabby's tomorrow?"

"I forgot about that," Gabby said, referring to the housework she had to do that weekend, and explained it to the redhead.

"Well, if that's the case... yes. You'll just spend Sunday doing homework." Dinah nodded, and Barbara looked at Kelly. "You going home after school?" Kelly took in a deep breath and let it out.

"I should. My parents..." she hesitated before she started speaking in a low tone so the other student in the room didn't hear her. "My parents may fear me, but I am still their daughter. They might get worried if I stay gone too long from the house."

"Alright," Barbara said again. "I'll see you after school Dinah." the blonde metahuman looked skeptical for a moment, which caused Barbara to add, "I mean it." Dinah shrugged, and the three teen girls made their way through the halls towards Kelly's social studies class, then Dinah and Gabby hurried to their art class.

Both blondes loved art class on Fridays, as Mrs. Thome allowed them to do whatever they wanted (within reason) as long as it got done by the end of that period. Gabby and Dinah often chose to draw, or on the rare occasion, make a collage. As Gabby got out two pieces of big, thick drawing paper, Dinah got two of the charcoal pencils, and they got to work immediately. At least, Gabby got to work immediately. Dinah drew a blank (pun intended) as soon as she sat down. Gabby, on the other hand, focused on her work as if lost in a trance. She always got this way when she drew, and Dinah knew better than to speak to her. The week before, she drew a fairy dancing on a stump, which symbolized her playful mood (Gabby always drew fairies when she was happy or excited). She had been eager for their weekend at the time, as they had just gotten through talking about it before she had drawn then. The point of the Friday Free Reign was to create in that moment an image to reflect how you feel. Dinah had drawn a Jack O' Lantern with a question mark for a face the week before, but now she felt so much, she didn't even know which to put to paper. Then, she started to doodle, making boxes mostly, until slowly a hairy something beast was drawn coming out of one of the boxes. Hearts, birds, question marks, the number seventeen, lips and a ghostly shadow followed. Ten minutes later, Dinah looked over to see what Gabby had been focused on and saw a crying girl under a full moon. The moon was complete, the girl was just about done, and Gabby was at the moment drawing threes around the unfinished girl, making it look like she was in a forest clearing.

Suddenly Gabby stopped drawing, stared at the page, then started to erase some of the girl's face in order to change the angle of her nose. She started to draw the girl's lips, which were curled in an 'o' shape. Above it, she wrote out broken letters indicating the howls. Looking hard at the girl in the picture, Dinah saw that the girl was wearing one of Helena's favorite shirts (and Dinah's favorite to borrow), and Dinah cold see that the girl Gabby drew was her.