A week later, the Flash's happiness at having an opportunity to help his teammate had dissolved into a sort of muted horror. He had expected Wonder Woman to deal with her feelings and get over them. Instead, she was prolonging--no, REVELING--in her anger towards her mother and her homeland. She talked about Hippolyta and the Amazons and Themiscyra to the exclusion of all else. She ranted and raved with delicious satisfaction to anyone who would listen, as well as people who were trying not to listen.
Hawkgirl was getting the worst of it since Diana apparently saw her as a kindred spirit, being the only other female on the team, and the Thanagarian found that unless she wanted to hear every injustice heaped upon someone who simply WOULD NOT take a hint, no matter how many times she growled and threateningly hefted her mace, she was effectively confined to quarters. But she wasn't the only one. There wasn't one member of the Justice League who hadn't endured a litany of Hippolyta's faults at least five times over.
J'onn usually sat through Diana's tirades in profound silence, nodding here and there to show that he was listening, or at least pretending to. Batman was silent too, never looking up from whatever task or experiment he was working on. Wonder Woman didn't seem to mind, though, and continued aiming her speeches in his direction.
She also cornered Superman more than once; the first time he occassionally tried to break in with sentences starting "You've got to understand" and "Well, I think", but he soon gave up and, like J'onn, resorted to simply nodding . . . although his nods had a somewhat more helpless quality to them.
As for John Stewart, he suddenly discovered a mass of intergalatic problems that the Green Lantern Corps absolutely could not handle without him. It was worth noting that all of these problems came to light immediately after the day he had been sitting in the common area of the Watchtower, reading a newspaper, when Diana had walked up, pushed the paper down to get a clearer view of Lantern, and asked, "Did I ever tell you that my mother wouldn't let me have a kitten?"
The Flash, ironically, was the only one who managed to get away from Diana at all, mostly by darting around the Watchtower at full speed and shouting, "Cn't tlk, onna mssion!" if he absolutely had to set a course that approached the Amazon princess. He found it exhausting, more emotionally than physically, and wondered where it would all end.
When his Justice League pager went off one day, he began to get an inkling.
The first thing he noticed was the instead of the usual "MEETING--CNFR" message, which would have prompted him to run to the conference room, this message said "MEETING--SB5, RM 28". Wally raised an eyebrow. He was being summoned to the sub-basement? Well, his not to reason why. He shrugged and sped towards the stairwell. It was faster than the elevator. For him, anyway.
Within seconds, he was in the lower levels of the Watchtower, slowing as he wandered through dark corridors illuminated only by the tiny emergency lights strung through the halls. The whole situation was weird and--even though Lex Loser and his buddies could only really break in by stealing a space shuttle--the Flash found himself wondering if it was some kind of trap. Either that or the prelude to some sort of carefully plotted vengeance. Man, no one held a grudge like Green Lantern. Like it was Flash's fault that tossing his suit in the laundry with that one load had turned all GL's underwear pink.
As he poked around from one empty room to another, he found himself wondering how anything floating in space could have a "basement" anyway. But it was better not to bring such things up. Batman was sensitive about his pet projects.
As if on cue, a dark voice behind him grated "So THERE you are."
The Flash bit back a yelp as he turned around. "Bats! Man, don't do that, okay?"
Batman gave him a look.
"Well . . . maybe you can at least restrain yourself on even-numbered days or something, huh? So what's up?"
"Everyone else is here already. Follow me." He swirled, his scalloped cape catching at the shadows as he stalked down the hall.
The Flash trotted after him. "Okaaaay . . . Brooding and uninformative. That's totally in character . . ."
A few seconds later, Batman pushed open a plain metal side door with "28" visible under a layer of dust. A rectangle of light spilled into the hallway and Wally found himself staring at the rest of the Justice League. Hawkgirl was perched on a large wooden box looking bored and idly trying to balance her mace on the tip of one finger. Superman was also sitting atop a box and unlike Hawkgirl he somehow made it look comfortable. (Maybe it was the cape.) J'onn J'onzz simply floated in mid-air in the lotus position. Green Lantern was floating too, and when he saw the Flash he turned and said, "About time! If you're really the fastest man alive how come you're always late?"
"Hey, I didn't look at my pager until just now," the Flash protested. "What's up? Why are we all here in this smelly ol' sub-basement?" Then he suddenly noticed someone wasn't there in the smelly ol' sub-basement. Wonder Woman.
