It was warm. That's all I cared to notice. It was warm and I was happy. Mom and Dad were there, and Meg, Ben, Jack, Maddie, Jazz, Dick and Bruce... Everyone that I cared about in one convenient place: the edge of the world. On that cliff, we could see everything; Amity, Gotham, home. Everyone was happy, no fighting, no buried resentment, just mutual friends and family meeting on good terms.
"It feels like a dream," I said with a smile, curling up against my mom's side.
"That's because it is one," Meg said as a flash of lightning cracked overhead, followed by the continuous thumping of a heart.
"Meg, why does it always have to be you that spoils my moments of happiness?" I said with a sigh.
"Because you always told me you didn't want to be happy if it wasn't real. Do you still believe in that?" she asked, sitting down cross legged in front of me as the sky grew darker.
"I don't know, I guess."
"Then you won't mind waiting until this all becomes a reality. It won't be that long; over before you know it. Then you can sit in the sun with me and all of them."
"You always were smarter than you looked," I joked. "Well, I guess since this is a dream, it's me who's smarter."
"Don't you go thinkin' that on me. We both know I'm the brains of this operation, even if right now I'm just you in disguise," she said.
"I hate you."
"I love you."
"Not much difference, is there?"
"Do you know you talk in your sleep?"
Reintroduced to cold reality, my eyes flickered open to see Barry looking down at me. "I've been told. What was I saying?"
"Something about a fun spoiler, and that you hated someone," he said, gently pushing me off so he could stand up.
"Don't worry, it was a good hate," I said groggily, sitting up and leaning forward.
"A friend?"
"You can say that," I said with a grin.
"How hot is he?" he asked, walking towards the secret elevator.
"She. She is very, very hot," I corrected, standing up.
"Blonde?" he asked as the doors slid open.
"Brunette," I answered, walking towards the other end of the room.
"Nice," he said, going in the elevator as the doors shut.
I let out a light laugh as he disappeared. Barry Allen was growing on me. "Hey Alfred, any pleasant news this morning?" I called as I went into the main entrance area. A foyer. Alfred said it was a foyer.
"If you're looking for something to smile about, then there is one thing, though it wasn't much fun for Master Dick," he said, coming out from a corner holding a duster.
"Ghostly mishap?" I guessed.
"He ended up falling through his bed and into the kitchen sink, where I was washing dishes," he said with a light smile.
I tried to cover my laugh with a cough, but it wasn't working. "Not as bad as last Christmas. I was sleeping quite comfortably in my room when I started phasing through the floor, into the kitchen, and down into the Fenton's lab, where they just so happened to have implemented so many nasty anti-ghost defence systems I had to hide in the Ghost Zone for four hours before Danny woke up and I could get him to go shut the stupid thing off."
"Suddenly, dishwater doesn't seem so bad anymore," Dick said, trotting down the stairs.
"Yeah, if you're going to have those powers for much longer, I would suggest avoiding DALV Industries, Poison Ivy, and any ghost ever if you don't like getting pounded," I said, running to the kitchen and back in a flash of light, now holding half a dozen apples in my arms.
"Really?" Dick complained.
"What? I have the Flash's powers and I'm hungry. The logical course of action is to super-speed to the kitchen and get food," I said, tossing an apple in the air and catching it before taking a bite.
"Wonderful for you," Danny muttered, slinking down the stairs.
"Hey, I told you we'd get this all sorted out in a few days. Cheer up. You always said you hated being a freak," I said.
"I know, but-"
"You'll adjust, and then you'll have to readjust to spontaneously freezing your nose," I said with a laugh.
"Yeah, great," he said. "Alfred, can I help you make breakfast?"
"Of course. Have you done much cooking before?" Alfred asked as they walked towards the kitchen.
"Better than his mom's irradiated hotdogs," I muttered as I continued to feast on apples.
"I heard that! And quit shovelling apples. You're going to make yourself sick," Danny argued as they left the room.
"Sorry, I'm trying to be a shinigami!" I called after him.
"What's a shinigami?" Dick asked.
"You would have to be a nerd to understand," I said, waving him off. "I'm gonna go see how Barry's doing."
"Alright, I'll call you guys up when Alfred and Danny are done with breakfast."
"Thanks Dick," I said with a nod before zipping off to the elevator.
After the quick ride down, I found Barry messing with the computer, looking frustrated. "Hey Allen, how's the blood testing going?" I asked.
"Ugh, it would be going faster if I could get this stupid computer to work!" he shouted, slamming down his fist.
"Hey, cool it. Bruce will kill us if you hurt his baby," I said. "What seems to be the problem?"
After sighing, he said, "Bats has all of your past medical information on lockdown."
"That's weird," I remarked, going over to take a look. "Have you tried his parents' names? That's what he usually uses."
"Let me try," he said, quickly typing in one, hitting enter, and then repeating it for the other. "No, that's not it."
"How about Thomas 6-2-6?" I suggested.
He entered that one and it seemed to work. "What are the numbers for?"
"6-26, as in June 26th, the night his parents… you know," I said, sitting down on the chair and swiveling around.
"Poor Bats," he muttered, checking through some files on my blood results pre-Trickster wreckage. "Poor you. Do you know how many chemical compounds you have in your blood that should be killing you?"
"I did kind of get blasted into a vat of unidentified anti-psychotics that burned out my skin pigmentation, so yeah, I have an idea," I said.
"Why is it your ghost powers got transferred but not your… um…"
"Clownification?" I supplied. "Maybe it's because ghost powers and the speed force are energy based, unlike that, which is chemically based."
"Do your ghost powers affect your DNA sequencing?" he asked.
"Yeah, I think so. It's like an ectoplasmic coating on DNA and cells, that's why me and Danny's blood is only partially green most of the time," I explained.
"And it still looks partially green now," he remarked.
"It looks the same?"
"Yeah, in nearly the exact ratio of colour to. So-"
"So maybe the energy got transferred but not the cellular changes!" I exclaimed, giving him a high-five. "Science is made so much easier when all the deformities of your blood are visible."
"I'm still going to have to run some tests on it. I just want to know how our cells are sustaining foreign energies without the base genetic coding," he mused, put a small sample into an analyzer for testing and observation.
"I would say maybe because they're adapting from an old form of energy to a new one, but that doesn't explain Dick," I said, thinking it over.
"Whatever it is, we should have some answers by tonight," he assured.
"Well, if the nerd squad is done for now, breakfast is ready," Dick called from far overhead. I looked up just in time to see his head going back through the ceiling.
"I think he kinda likes doing that," I commented.
"And he does it well," Barry remarked as we headed back to the elevator.
"Well, I did try to teach him once," I muttered, watching my shoes as we stepped in.
"How did you do that?" he asked with confusion.
"Partial overshadowing," I explained. "I had a duplicate take over his body. Well, more like he took over its. Anyway, turns out it was a lot more dangerous than I thought. That's what made Light."
"The ghost version of Reverse Flash?"
"Yeah, a deadly bitch if ever I knew one," I muttered as we went through the living area and towards the dining room.
"Watch your language Miss Blake; you're talking to us, not criminals," Alfred reprimanded as we went to sit down.
"Sorry Alfred," I murmered.
"Dang," Barry whispered as Alfred went back to the kitchen to get something, "he's really on you."
"He used my last name. For Alfred, that's like when Momma uses my middle name, " I said. "Doesn't help Bruce lets me do what. Drives Alfred nuts."
"Somehow, I just can't see that out of Bruce," he said.
"Probably realized that telling me what to do doesn't help. But Alfred's scary when he's mad."
"Scarier than the Batman?" he laughed.
"Trust me, Al's got years of experience intimidating the man that would be bat."
"She's right, you know," Alfred remarked as he came into the room with a platter of pancakes. "I expect you to share Kira."
"Yes sir," I said, giving him a mock salute before sitting down.
"So, you two find anything?" Danny asked hopefully.
"It's looking promising, but there won't be any definite results until tonight," Barry assured as he started grabbing food.
"How promising?" he continued.
"Believe me Danny, they were talking some serious geek down there," Dick warned.
"No, I want to know," Danny insisted. "My parents are scientists. I think I can handle it."
"Let me do the talking Barry. I think I can make it easier to understand," I said, waiting for him to give me a nod. When he did, I proceeded. "Basically, you and I's cells are still ghost, Dick's are human, and Barry's are predisposed to the speed force, his energy. We think for some reason the energies got switched around by that blaster. We're having the computer analyze our blood samples to try to figure out how our bodies are sustaining the energy, but that's all we know for now."
"So it's like draining a battery's energy into another battery?" he asked.
"Well, if one battery was made in Taiwan and the other in Mexico completely independent of one another," Barry answered.
"So, kind of but nothing like it," I supplied.
"O-kay?" Danny drawled before taking his first bite of food.
"Man, Bruce picked a really bad weekend to be busy," Dick sighed.
"Well, he made true on his worries. Batman's been gone one night and we're already falling apart," Danny complained.
"Well, we've still got time to fix this before he comes back. Let's just make the most of it," Barry said, voicing the only positive he could think of.
"At least now we know, even if Gotham stops needing the Batman," I started.
"We always will," Dick finished with a smile.