"I love flying," John said, floating high above Gotham, watching the city and wondering where to go next.
"It is pretty awesome," a female voice said from just above him.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't just scare six months off my life right there," John said, his heart beating loudly in his ears as he flipped over.
"Don't you Lanterns have your rings keep track of nearby objects when you're in the air so you don't run into anything?" Supergirl asked, surprised that his ring hadn't let him know she was approaching.
"That is a good idea," John said. "Jeeves, be sure to do that."
"I'll add it to my list of duties, sir," his ring said.
"Most Lantern rings don't talk," Supergirl said, a note of curiosity in her voice.
"Most Lanterns leave theirs set to silent mode so they communicate telepathically," John replied. "Jeeves uses whatever communication method he deems best as I trust his judgment."
"So, they could be talking to their rings all the time and we'd never know," she said.
"And they probably do," he agreed, flipping back over to scan the city.
"Patrolling?" she asked awkwardly.
"Just enjoying the view for the moment," he replied, "I'm actually planning on seeing if I can do something about the water quality in the city rather than concentrating on crime today."
"And how do you plan on doing that?"
"Check the water treatment plant, repair or replace equipment as needed, possibly see about cleaning the bay so they have cleaner water to start with," he said thoughtfully. "Yeah, cleaning the bay should probably come first."
"Good luck with that, the bay is filled with so many chemicals I'm not sure it can be called water," Supergirl said. "Batgirl has mentioned it catching fire a time or two. Not sure how they put it out, I doubt spraying water on it would help."
"They smother fires of that type with soap, it forms a layer on top of the water that denies it oxygen," John told her as he drifted towards the docks.
"That would work," Supergirl said thoughtfully. "So, how do you plan on cleaning it?"
"Molecular sieve," he replied, "anything that isn't water gets shunted into a subspace pocket for later disposal."
"You can do that?!"
"Lantern rings can do just about anything you can imagine," John said, "and I have a very good imagination."
As they floated out over the bay a beam of bright green light, visible even in the sunlight, struck the water and began to spread.
"There are a lot of corpses," Supergirl noted with a shudder as she used her X-ray vision to examine the water beneath them.
"I'm not surprised," John said, having Jeeves make a note of where all the bodies are as he continues cleaning the water, finding a number of places where barrels of chemicals were dumped in the past and collecting them as well, "the mob has always been fond of dumping bodies in the water when they can."
"And no one's had the technology and manpower to dredge the bay and find them all," she said, shaking her head as the emerald glow spread to the shore.
"And done," John said, the beam from his ring cutting off. "Only took my forty percent of a charge, I'm getting better at this. Now to call the police and clean up a number of missing person cases."
"Do you want some help?" she reluctantly offered, really not wanting to dredge of decades old corpses from the bottom of the bay.
"I'd appreciate it," he said, holding a green ring out for her to take.
"What?" she asked, confused.
"If we use rings, we can move the corpses and their possessions without damaging them and provide three dimensional pictures of their surroundings," he explained. "Doing it by hand could destroy evidence and… would probably cause us to need therapy or at least a two-week vacation afterwards."
"I've never used a power ring before," Kara said as she slipped it on and a wave of green light rolled over her costume, turning it black and green and changing the symbol on her chest from the House of El to the Green Lantern Corps' familiar sigil.
"They are really user friendly," he assured her. "Just ask the ring for the training videos and you can go over them while I talk to Detective Bullock."
"Oh," Kara said, her eyes glowing green as she accessed the ring's database.
"Hello, Gotham PD?" John asked. "Is Detective Bullock available?"
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
The two floated down to the patrol car that had driven to the end of the dock.
"Hey kid," Bullock greeted as he got out of the car, "you said you found some bodies?"
"One hundred and seventy-three," John replied.
Bullock turned to look into the water expecting to see a bus had crashed and was filled with bodies or a ship had sunk. "What the fuck happened?! I can see through it!"
"I decided to clean up the water, that's how we discovered all the bodies that have been dumped in the bay over the last couple of decades," John explained.
"Huh," Bullock said, speechless for a moment. "When most people talk about cleaning up the city, they don't do a whole lot of cleaning."
"I figure if I make Gotham more… habitable, people might shoot each other less," John explained.
"Worth a shot," Bullock said thoughtfully. "I'll have to call in every coroner in the city to handle that many corpses. Any idea who they all are?"
"We can cross reference police files and the age of the corpses to identify most of them," John said. "We can also reconstruct how they look from DNA profiles. Between being buried in mud and the chemicals that were in the water some are almost as good as embalmed."
"Keep this up and you're going to spoil me," Bullock said with a chuckle. "Let me grab my laptop. We are looking at hours of paperwork here."
Five hours later
"And that's the last of them," Bullock said with a sigh. "That's a lot of cases closed. Wish the rest of the spandex set was this thorough, most of them just add to my workload."
"Usually we're too busy running around putting out fires to do more than file after action reports with the League," Supergirl said. Her stomach growled loudly.
"And on that note, I think it's time for lunch," John said. "What kind of food do you like?"
"I wouldn't say no to some Mexican food," Supergirl said brightly.
"Race you to Mexico," John said before shooting off into the air leaving a trail of Green light behind him.
"I wasn't ready!" Supergirl complained before vanishing in a blur of speed.
"Fuckin' heroes," Bullock said with a laugh. "Though Mexican food does sound good… I wonder if that place on seventh is still open."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Wait, where are we going?" Supergirl asked as she caught up with him.
"Mexico City," he replied as the ground blurred by beneath them.
"Have you been there before?"
"Nope, just ask the ring for a map," he replied.
"Woah!" she said as a mental map appeared in her mind. "Man, these rings are useful."
"I never leave home without at least three of them," he replied.
"What is up with that?" she asked. "Most Lanterns only carry one."
"I'm not the most efficient ring user so everything I do requires more power," he explained, "and I like to be prepared for anything, so I over prepare if possible."
"I'm surprised the other Lanterns don't do something similar."
"They don't have authorization to make permanent copies of their rings and their Lanterns will only charge a ring twice per day," he said, landing on top of a hospital.
"And you're authorized?" Supergirl guessed, following him in through the roof entrance next to the helipad.
"No, I'm not part of the Green Lantern Corps so I'm not bound by their rules," he replied as his ring directed him to the children's ward.
"I thought you'd rejoined them," she said with a frown.
"No, I prefer being independent," he hit the button for the fourth floor as they entered the elevator.
"When you suggested Mexican food for lunch I didn't think you meant hospital food, which I've been told is universally bad."
John just grinned.
Ten Minutes Later
"That was…" Supergirl couldn't think of the words to describe what she'd just seen as they exited the hospital.
"I know," John said. "Green rings are impressive, but it's hard to top a blue ring for helping people."
"Green rings can't heal like that?" she asked, looking down at the Lantern ring she was wearing.
"Green rings can be used to heal people, but not to the degree blue can. If I used a Green ring I could remove the cancerous cells and regenerate the missing flesh, but it's harder on the body and takes a lot more effort," he said as he considered it. "Then again, I could change the cancerous tissue back into normal tissue by altering the cells…" He nodded thoughtfully as he consulted with his ring. "Yeah, I could use a Green ring to heal and have a similar effect, but then the children would have to spend time recovering as if the cancer had simply gone into remission. With a blue ring not only does it automatically convert cancer cells into normal cells it also rejuvenates them as if they'd never been sick."
"I've never heard of any other Lanterns visiting hospitals to heal people," she said as they crossed the street, the crowd giving them a little space, surprised to see a pair of people in Lantern costumes in their midst.
"They probably don't know they can," John replied, "most of their training is in police work, not the medical field."
"That… That is so short sighted," she said with a sigh.
"We're all only human at the end of the day," John said with a shrug.
"Ahem," Supergirl said pointedly.
"It's a phrase that points out that none of us is perfect, though since you are from an advanced alien race who was bio-engineered to be perfect, feel free to angst over not doing more when you are all but divinity," John teased, trying not to grin.
Supergirl rolled her eyes. "I was actually objecting to being called human, I am Kryptonian after all."
John shrugged. "Humanity is more a state of mind than anything else, Kal El is more human than a lot of the native-born Earthlings when you get right down to it."
"That's a really… Earth-centric viewpoint."
"With a few exceptions our species are homebodies, we don't get out much and we adopt any sentients we meet into the club," John said before sniffing the air and looking around. "I spy with my little eye… a taco truck."
"Is that a dick joke?" Supergirl asked, causing him to stop in his tracks with a confused look on his face.
"You've lost me," John said.
"You said 'I spy with my little eye' as in singular and I've heard men like to refer to their penis by various terms involving one eye," she explained, and if it had an eye it would be smaller than the ones on your face."
"Oh," he said with a nod as he started walking again. "I can follow your thought process on that and I'll probably end up using it in a penis joke in the future, but it's actually a reference to a game played by kids called 'I spy' where they say 'I spy with my little eye something beginning with the letter' A through Z and then you have to guess what it is."
"Oh, I'm not that knowledgeable about human children's games," she admitted.
"It's actually an interesting subject to study," John said as they get in line.
"Really?" she asked doubtfully.
"Definitely," he told her. "Children pass down games to younger children and so on without adults being involved at all, so you run across things like chants about the black plague that swept Europe centuries ago and exercises designed to help children survive in a nomadic culture virtually unchanged through the centuries."
"That is interesting," she admitted, thinking she'd have to talk to Barbara and see what she knew about the subject. "I'm surprised we aren't being mobbed by fans, that tends to happen when I go out."
"My Green Lantern outfit has the symbol the original Green Lantern wore and you are dressed in a Green Lantern outfit version of your usual costume. Basically we look like cosplayers right now."
"I'd forgotten about that," she admitted, examining herself.
John stepped up to the window. "Fifty tacos please," he said and laid two hundred-dollar bills on the counter, hoping they took American currency.
The cashier grinned. "I'll call out Green Lantern when it's ready."
"Thanks," he said and stepped aside so others could order.
"Fifty?" Supergirl asked.
"Any we don't eat I'll stick in my subspace pocket and pass on to the kids in the next hospital I hit," he explained. "They are always hungry after healing."
"I really want a blue ring," Supergirl said, smiling as she remembered all the smiles and laughing children.
"If I manage to make a duplicate I'll share my charger with you," John offered, "but you may want to check with Kal and see if his Fortress can make one, it is a Kryptonian design after all."
"I'll have to do that," Supergirl said, bouncing on her heels, only her hunger keeping her from going to the Fortress to check right then.
"Order up for the Green Lantern," the guy behind the counter called out, laying out a row of five bags on the counter in front of them.
"I think that's me," John said, walking over to pick up one bag and subspacing the other four, making the man's jaw drop.
Typing By: Abyssal Angel
TN: `sigh` I hate that it's so normal for people to mistake sapient for sentient that I can't even correct it in dialogue because it makes sense for characters to actually make that mistake despite it being a pet peeve of mine…