There seemed to be about four different alarms going off at once when Stargirl threw open the doors to Static's cell.

"What's the score?" He called out over the wailing as he stepped out of his cell, energy blasts ready. The down time had actually given him a chance to recharge and he was itching to get back in the fight.

"Found a group of civilians in the hanger and they're causing a distraction." Stargirl barked out, "Now help me with this." She headed for the next door in line, gripping the bars and planting her feet. Static looked to the keypad instead. It was electric and that was good enough for him.

He sent a jolt of power through the system, and the safeguards kicked on, throwing the doors open. The Ray, stumbled from the cell, shaking his head and blinking to reorient himself. He opened his mouth to ask a question, and Static let Stargirl answer it, moving down the line again. Shining knight was in the next cell. Vixen was in the one after that, but before he could get the door fully open the guards were coming down on them.

Shining knight let out a battle cry in some archaic language and launched himself forward despite not having his sword. Vixen was snarling and Static yanked on her door again. Then she was free and whoever had seen fit to take their weapons had neglected her totem because she shouted "Lion!" and lept on their captors.

Then Supergirl was beside him, still unsteady on her feet from the red sun lamps but furious as hell. "Ray, Static, can you mess up their communications?" She asked.

"Don't really have to," Ray shrugged. "They're already in a panic, everything's scrambled, but I could shut it down entirely if you want me to.

"Do it." Supergirl snarled.

"No wait." Static held up a hand, "Can you create an uplink to earth?"

"Sure, I can use their carrier signal."

"Cool, Open a connection to STAR labs in Decota. There's someone there I've been working with, if he can get inside their systems we won't even need to fight. He could turn their own ship against them."

Ray glanced as Supergirl then, at her nod, went to work.

With the last of the cells open, the heroes formed up, barreling into the corridors, and taking down any hawk who dared to cross their path.


"Just a big bubble, make sure we're all inside it and take us up. It should be just like flying." Flash said, resting one hand on Green Lanterns shoulder.

They were all standing on the wide windy expanse of the warehouse roof. Flash, Red Arrow, Zatanna, and Nightwing, all huddled and waiting for him to do something. GL knew the type of bubble that Flash meant. He'd watched John Stuart on the news often enough, but the more he thought about it the less he was convinced it would work. Willing a bubble into existence would be easy but he kept picturing the bubble popping as soon as they got high enough. Alien science or not he didn't think the construct would hold if he started doubting himself. No, he needed something more solid, something he could actually picture taking them all into space.

Kyle held out his hand palm down, and a green platform spread out under their feet. After it had grown large enough to support them all it started curling up, dividing into segments and bending, coming back together over their heads to meld seamlessly together. The green structure continues to shift. Different objects emerging from the walls and they are definitely walls now, no one could mistake this for a bubble.

Green Lantern slowly turned in place adding details with a thought here or simplifying other elements where they're growing too complex. There's a small smile on his face as he works, a quiet thrill at the new way he's been given to create.

"Is this the Enterprise?" Flash asked when Green Lantern finally made a noise of satisfaction.

"Kind of, I mean I had to adapt it and obviously it's not full size since that would be as big as the city and since my ring is powering it we don't actually need the engines and things, but yeah." Green Lantern's smile was sheepish.

Flash turned to Nightwing. "I think I like him." Nightwing nodded in agreement.

Green Lantern smiled then slid into the pilot's chair. There was a brief struggle over who would take the captains chair, with Flash winning simply because he managed to get there first. Nightwing shrugged, settling into the first officer's position while Red Arrow Crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame glaring at everyone. Zatanna rolled her eyes settling into a seat near the back.

Green Lantern's grin had been upgraded to a full on maniac level smile as he tapped at the controls in front of him and sent them shooting up. The sky went from white and blue to black in a matter of minutes, Stars blinking into existence like showers of sparks.

With a thought and a gesture Green Lantern dulled the glow of the outer hull, and shifted into an orbital trajectory.

"The watchtower in in geosynchronous orbit over Washington." Nightwing announced into the awed silence. Green Lantern shifted course acting as if he did this every day rather than this being the first time. It felt easy, automatic, natural. The ring felt like a tool he'd been using all his life.

The Watchtower came into view a few minutes later, a grey shape that was strangely clear with the lack of atmosphere. It sat at the lower edge of the Thanagarian fleet. The blocky carrier ships acting as armed guard to her sleek deadly power.

"Shields up." Flash muttered from the captain's chair and the group tensed waiting to be noticed. The enemy ships drifted along their flight paths, their routs hurried but deliberate as the strike team approached. Then with a soundless explosion a wall of one of the largest thanagarian ships exploded outward. A figure in classic red and blue shot from the middle of the debris seemingly unaware of the lack of oxygen. It was followed a moment later by a figure of living light, and together they drew the attention of the enemy guard.

Red Arrow was suddenly leaning over the front console next to Kyle. "Is that Superman?"

"Later." Flash pointed at the watchtower. "Take us in."

Kyle was already following the order as Red Arrow turned around. "If that's Superman-"

"And if it's not then what? I'm not going to waste the one good distraction we're likely to get."

"Everyone hold on." Kyle called over Flash's words and the construct around them began to change, shrinking down until they were all standing within arms reach. The glow of the construct faded until it was only the faintest glimmer between them and the vacuum of space. Red Arrow shivered slightly, but a moment later they were curving into the landing bay of the Watchtower with the air locks triggering as they recognized the energy of the Green Lantern.

Flash stepped forward placing a hand on Kyle's shoulder, signaling him to wait. "I'm on point." he said to the group. "I'll try to clear a path through to the command center. There should be a secondary command center not to far away, that's the backup goal."

"What about those guys outside?" Green Lantern asked.

"For now, if they're fighting the Hawks, help em." Flash looked around, meeting the eyes of the group. He sank into a crouch, buzzing in place while the others readied weapons. Green Lantern let his field drop with a gesture. Flash was immediately gone in a blur of red and seconds later alarms were sounding all around them.

Zatanna started up a chant, striding forward with her hands waving through the air. Nightwing was beside her swinging some kind of baton and rolling his shoulders. Red Arrow took a moment to check his bow, turning to make sure their backs were covered.

Kyle hesitated. While the ring seemed like an extension of his hand, his imagination, he had never really been in a fight before. Everyone else seemed so sure of where they should be and what they should be doing. Even Red Arrow was acting professional despite the fact that he was still shooting Nightwing evil looks every now and again.

Green Lantern shook his head. He'd played enough video games as a kid, read plenty of comic books. He'd have to just fake it until he learned what to do.

That was when the hull behind them exploded.


The Ray had managed to get an uplink working for just under five minutes before someone on the other side realized what they were doing, and shut down the network. It was long enough for Gear to establish a connection and turn the Prison ship into a floating rock. Life support and enough propulsion to stay in orbit was all he had left them. Unfortunately he couldn't affect the manual weapons or block the raw strength and skill of the invaders.

With that the battle had turned into a series of skirmishes in corridors and airlocks. They'd gotten split up, each following their own style of combat and quickly divided by the military unity of the Hawks. It wasn't the advantage the Hawks had thought it would be. While many of them had trained together, all of the lieutenants were used to fighting on their own, and against odds that should have been daunting.

Somehow Static ended up beside stargirl again. They were tucked into an alcove in some corridor while Hawks fired on them from the other end.

"Can you deflect the shots or anything?" He asked, trying to peer around the corner without getting a laser bolt between the eyes.

"Not without my staff." Stargirl still hadn't located the weapons locker. "You?"

"Bullets maybe, lasers, not so much."

They were both thrown sideways into the corridor when an explosion rocked the vessel. Luckily their opponents were dealing with the same issue. Static pushed off the floor with one hand, firing off bolts of energy before the thanagarians could sort themselves out. Stargirl was a step behind him, slamming one of them back to the floor with a solid dropkick when he tried to rise.

The two heroes had stumbled on the command center. A hawk with a tricked out helmet was shouting orders at several others who seemed to be technicians. A large symbol of a steampunk style gear flickered on and off on the main screen as the digital fight raged beside the real one.

Static took it all in, in between knocking out the door guard and then ducking back into the corridor as someone noticed and started shooting at him. Stargirl had snatched up a spear from one of their fallen foes and she somehow managed to get it to shoot things. Everyone in the command center started ducking down behind their chairs, and the guy in charge started shouting out orders in Thanagarian.

The standoff lasted for about thirty brief seconds before the command center went dark.

"Take that Asshats." Came a modulated voice from the speakers that Static never the less recognized. Then the fire suppression system kicked in and covered the room in white foam that hardened into a shell over the thanagarians.

"Gear? That you?" Static called into the dark.

The lights came back up. the gear on the main screen had been replaced by a young man in a green mask with a shock of blond hair. "Static! Reading you loud and clear man. Thanks for the distraction their techs were actually half competent. Oh, hang on." Gear looked down and the sound of furious typing came from off-screen. A moment later some kind of PA system crackled to life. "Heroes of Earth," Gear said in a very dramatic voice. "Rejoice for the Ship is ours." Another burst of typing and Gear switched to the polite tones of a flight attendant. "If all parties could meet their leader at the bridge, Gear Systems will be happy to handle any baggage you are attending to. Simply deposit winged packages in a spare room and we will see that they are not disturbed for the foreseeable future. Thank you and have a nice day."

Gear turned off the PA system and smiled at the eyebrow Static raised in his direction.

"So who's your friend?"

"Stargirl this is my friend Gear, Gear, Stargirl."

"Is he always like that?" Stargirl asked pointing up at the screen as if it wasn't obvious that the giant head could both see and hear them.

Static Shrugged. "Sometimes he's asleep."

Static took a few steps forward to where the Thanagarian leader was frozen to his chair. A quick zap to the guy's forehead made sure he was out for the count, then he shoved the Hawk to the floor and took a seat, looking over the various displays.

"So what's the score? Do we need to retake the earth?"

Gear scrunched up his mouth onto one side of his face. "Kind of hard to tell. People are moving all over the place. The space invaders have taken several cities, but Green Lantern took out their mothership before he went down so their forces are kind of scattered. I think they're just working off their last orders, no centralized command."

"Umm, guys?" Stargirl hesitantly interrupted. "What's that?"

She was pointing at a round platform on the floor just large enough for three people to stand on. Several of the hawks had apparently been waiting next to it, before they'd been immobilized. The platform was sending blue light up into the air in pulsing waves.

"Frag!" Gear started typing furiously. "It's a teleporter. looks like they were opening a channel to another ship, no wait, the watchtower, thats an earth designation."

"Well, shut it down." Static snapped. "We really don't need to get swamped by reinforcements."

"I can't! It's a safety feature. Until something's sent through it'll stay on in case someone's about to step on. See this is why My teleporter floors this thing, not to mention the size, and portability. How many people do you think can fit on that platform? Three? Probably only two with the wings."

"Preaching to the choir here. Can you, I don't know, redirect it?" Static was up and moved to stand ready at the edge of the field, Stargirl beside him.

"I don't know, maybe if I timed the cycles right…"

Stargirl clutched at her stolen weapon. "You said the watchtower's on the other side right?"

"Yeah, that's definitely where they were going. Not sure why, but that's where they were going."

Static looked at Stargirl as she squared her shoulders. He realized what she was doing about four seconds before she stepped forward onto the platform. Instinct took him forward with her into the unknown.


Green Lantern threw out a shield the moment he felt the explosion, or hell, it might have been the ring acting on some kind of safety protocol. The atmosphere was venting out into space and blast doors slammed to prevent decompression. He thought he saw a door slam between himself and the others before suddenly he was back in the vacuum and bolts of energy were lancing in flashes all around him.

A matte-chrome shape the approximate size of a whale blasted past him way too close for comfort. Green Lantern lashed out, his will forming a raw blast of green energy that vaporized a circular hole in the cruiser. the force pushed it away enough to see the figure it had been chasing turn at a sharp angle and come rushing back in his direction.

Shields, Green Lantern thought desperately, and around him medieval style battlements sprang up. But the figure wasn't aiming at him. Green Lantern finally got a good look at the red and blue uniform when Supergirl barreled into the ship he'd scuttled and sent it careening into a group of it's fellows.

"Thanks for the assist." She turned to him, and a part of him knew she shouldn't be able to speak in space but the ring was kind of vibrating and he decided to just go with it. "I didn't think the Guardians would send another lantern so fast. What sector are you from?" She floated closer and looked him up and down.

"Umm, this one? The ring chose me like, six hours ago, and then Flash showed up, and now I'm here."

"Seriously?" she looked like she didn't want to believe him but couldn't come up with anything else that fit.

"Yeah, umm, should we be talking like this? Not that I don't want to talk but weren't they shooting at you a second ago?" He gestured at the remaining thanagarian ships.

Supergirl rolled her eyes. "As if their targeting computers could factor hitting anything smaller than a tank."

As if purely to contradict her words three thanagarian fighters barreled down on them. The lead ship sent off a dozen shots. Green Lantern, facing them, had a second of warning to bring up his shields. Supergirl wasn't so lucky. The blast knocked her into Green Lantern's shields, shattering the construct and sending them both spinning end over end past where the watchtower floated.

"You Asshat." Supergirl shouted when they finally managed to orient themselves. "That was my favorite cape!" The cape in question was now chared and floating away in ragged strips. Her eyes flashed red, then she launched herself back into the fight.

Green Lantern rolled his shoulders, adjusted the ring on his finger, then followed her lead.


Flash had once known the curving corridors of the watchtower, but that had been a long time ago. Things had changed. He found three wrong turns before he oriented himself and found the pattern in the new layout.

The others were behind him somewhere. He had caught glimpses of them when he'd doubled back. There were Thanagarians everywhere but most of them seemed to have been caught unawares. They were arming up, preparing battlestations. Flash breezed past them. He didn't worry about taking them all out. Instead he crippled machinery, damaged weapons and delivered quick one-two punches that left his targets stunned long enough for Red Arrow, Zatanna and Nightwing to swoop down on them.

As Fast as he was though, he couldn't reach the command center before they could lock everything down. He saw the blast doors lowering and put on an extra burst of speed sliding through in a baseball crouch. When he looked up it was into the barrels of two dozen Thanagarian rifles. His mind was still running fast and it came up with scenario after scenario where he disarmed a few only to be taken down by shear numbers.

Flash had dumped his momentum, and the few seconds it would take to get back up to high gear would be long enough to get him shot.

Then the light shifted, as the teleport station behind him came on line. Flash settled in. With reinforcements there was no way he would be leaving or even be able to hold out for reinforcements of his own. He was a hero though, and fighting for his planet, he would keep going as long as he could.

Two figures slowly solidified out of golden light.

Static raised a fist, sheathed in crackling energy, as Stargirl brought her weapon to bear on the leader.

In the moment of surprise Flash moved. He circled the room in a red blur and by the time Red Arrow and the others arrived, the station was theirs.


74%

89%

100%

"I have regained full control of all watchtower systems." Oracle reported. "Gear, do you read me? Static reports you have control of the Thanagarian prison vessel?"

"Umm, Yes?" Gear's masked face appeared next to Oracle's on the Watchtower's main screen. "Network established. Umm, are you really Oracle? The Oracle? Because I've been following your work in data mapping and hidden pattern recognition, and just Wow. You're like, brilliant. I'm a huge fan. I mean, every time I find your colsign on the boards or the way you always link back to news agencies when you hide your trail, amazing, like jaw dropping, every time. and I totally called it with Mayers. That you're a single hacker, because this is obviously coming from a single IP. He's convinced you're a group based out of Turkey. But I told him that a hacker of your caliber… Do you mind the term hacker? Because I know some people who don't like it. I won't tell anyone by the way, about the IP."

"Gear, chil man." Static broke in.

Gear went red-faced. "Yeah, sorry, babbling, Just I never thought I'd get to work with you and Wow, and… Yeah shutting up now."

"That's perfectly alright. Can you send me the last known locations of all ships in the Thanagarian fleet?"

"Right, Yes. Uploading now."


In the few minutes Gear and Oracle were processing things Flash looked around at the ragtag team that had found it's way to the Watchtower.

Zatanna was leaning against the doors, twirling her hat with one hand. Nightwing had silently moved to strip all the weapons from the downed Thanagarians. Stargirl had moved to help him when he'd started dragging them to the teleporter and zapping them into the same holding cells she'd been held in earlier. Green Lantern hovered outside the large optical windows, playing shield and turet whenever another ship got too close. Static had taken a spot in front of the console and was bantering with Gear whenever the latter wasn't fangirling over Oracle. Red Arrow had crossed his arms and stationed himself by the door, his glare switching back and forth between Nightwing and Static.

It was a rather random group. Hand-to-hand, ranged, mystical, and mundane, they spanned the full range as far as combat went, but it was more than that. Here they were. The unnamed leader of the resistance, teaming up with Lord lieutenants. New heros fighting beside legacies.

This was what it used to be about. Those who could make a difference, coming together. Sure this team was a little more haphazard than some. Green Lantern was doing well all things considered, but he was still brand new to the game and Stargirl wasn't much better. Tensions would probably start flying between Red Arrow and the others again as soon as everything settled down. On the whole though, he had a good feeling.

It wasn't anything as solid as a premonition, but Flash thought that with a little work, this team could become something real. Something people could believe in.

Oracle interrupted his musings. "We have coordinates for all currently active, hot zones. Their Commander was not aboard their command ship when John Stuart took it down. I'm Making locating him and Lord Hawkgirl top priority. In the mean time, Gear, would you and Red Arrow assist with deploying the heroes at our disposal.


Notes:

So... sorry this chapter jumps around so much. I didn't mean for that to happen but everything was going on at once.

we actually had a decent number of reviews for last chapter. Thank you to Ally Marton, potterinu, Microraptor Glider, Kyer, and Melancholy's Sunshine

actually I don't have much else to say except that this chapter is being posted with a beta so sorry for any errors on my part.

:)