Tempest: Chapter Four: A Successful Mission
Fire needs oxygen to burn, Amara had just learned this in science class (so to speak). Without it, the fire would snuff itself out. Unfortunately human beings needed air to breathe, which put them at a disadvantage, but they would have to manage without for a brief period of time.
She spun her hands quickly in front of her as everything exploded around her and the air was forced back so suddenly that she could hear the strangling sounds of Black Canary, Green Arrow, and Speedy struggling to take in air when there was none.
The fire spun around the domed vacuum, hot and fierce. Amara could feel its burn as she kept her hands outstretched and her lungs were beginning to ache. She had a higher tolerance for a lower amount of oxygen than an ordinary human, according to the extensive tests that S.T.A.R. Labs, but even she needed air to breathe.
The fiery orange slowly died down slowly, but enough for Amara to release her shield, breathing in a lungful of smoke along with her companions. Speedy was on all fours rasping and choking, but Green Arrow and Black Canary had recovered quick enough to race off in the direction that Cupid had disappeared in.
"What-the-hell?" Speedy demanded in a strained voice once he'd recovered enough of his breath to speak, though doing so made his throat burn.
Amara pointed at the flames that were beginning to grow once more, now having fuel to burn. "Fire needs air to burn."
She couldn't see his eyes, but she imagined that he was looking at her like he'd never seen anything like her, which was pretty accurate, but she didn't have time to worry about Speedy thinking how utterly insane it was for her to force the air around them back so there would be nothing to burn and consequently nothing to breathe, the growing fire was a more pressing issue.
Speedy was still coughing when Amara pulled one of his arms over her shoulders. He was larger and heavier than her, but Amara could still drag him out through the doors of the warehouse which had been blasted open by the explosion.
"Where're Green Arrow and Black Canary?" Speedy rasped, massaging his throat as he stumbled along side of her.
"They went after Cupid and Everyman," Amara responded in a similarly raw voice. "Do you think this is a weird place for a warehouse?"
Speedy could see what she meant. The warehouse was on the outskirts of town located close to a cliff-face that overlooked Star City's main river.
"I guess," he said, blinking hazily before he jerked Amara to the side suddenly; the arrow that had been aimed at her head flew harmlessly over her shoulder. "Looks like Everyman didn't go with Cupid."
"Lucky us," Storm Chaser said as she released her grip on his arm, permitting him to grab his bow and notch an arrow, firing it with ease. His aim was precise and the arrow created a small explosion.
"Speedy!"
Her scream jarred him and he followed her gaze to where the ground was crumbling under their feet and Roy nearly swore as the earth gave way just as Storm Chaser reached his side, grasping his arm as they went tumbling downwards only to be tugged to a sudden stop by a grappler Amara had lodged in the side of the cliff-face that nearly resulted in him losing his grip on his bow.
Storm Chaser grunted, her hand tightening over his arm and his over hers as her feet pressed against the side of the cliff. Speedy was heavier than he looked, but the only thing she could think about was Wally saying something ridiculously punny like "How's it hanging?"
But she didn't really have time to think about that right now.
"If I can condense the air under your feet and send you up on a cloud, can you shoot him?"
She was sure his eyes were glowering behind his domino mask at the slight of his abilities that he would miss his target (he sure had a bit of arrogance for a fourteen year old that had only been training from a few months to a year).
"Is it going to drop me on my ass?" he shot back.
"Maybe it will! But you'll get the bad guy won't you?"
Her eyes were glowing with electricity and Roy couldn't help but find it more than a bit unnerving.
"Yeah," Speedy said with certainty, "I'll get him."
"Good," Amara hissed from behind clenched teeth as she focused on the wind blowing around them, thickening it around Roy's feet.
It was strange, like standing on ground that kept shifting underneath him. Speedy preferred to actually have stable ground to stand on, but this would have to do.
Storm Chaser let go of his arm and for a startled moment he thought he was going to going to plummet straight down, that the cloud wasn't going to hold him (because clouds didn't just hold people up), but he steadied his legs, breathing out slowly as he hovered in the air.
Amara raised her arm and he rocketed upwards in time to leap onto the cliff, notch an arrow and fire two off in quick succession. The first released a bright light that temporarily blinded the man using his mentor's face as his own, the second bound him tightly in a lasso (the newest of the trick arrows Oliver had given him).
"Well done," Oliver said once his look-alike had fallen to the ground with a roar of anger, struggling against his bindings and Roy struggled not to look too pleased by his mentor's words.
"Where's Storm Chaser?" Black Canary asked, hauling Cupid forward and dropping her into the dirt beside her accomplice with handcuffs keeping her hands behind her back and a gag over her mouth to keep her from speaking as she glowered at the blonde-haired woman.
"She—"
"Here," the girl said helpfully from the cliff and Speedy noticed she'd climbed the grapple line up to the edge to grasp the earth, her legs dangling in the free air.
"Can I get a hand?" Amara gasped before Black Canary reached down to hoist her up. "How'd I do?"
Dinah's eyes glittered. "You did alright, kid."
And the beaming smile across her face made her exhaustion not quite so obvious.
"Amy, time to get up!"
Amara groaned loudly as her blinds were lifted, allowing sunlight to filter in through her windows, painting bright light across her face. She buried her face under her pillow.
"Superheroes need sleep!" was declared from under the pillow.
"Metahuman ten-year-olds who just don't want to get out of bed after they've had enough sleep are a different story," Barry commented with a tone of amusement as he lifted the pillow off of his adoptive daughter's head.
Her green eyes squinted up at him and she shaded them with a hand so she wouldn't be blinded. "It's a Saturday, Barry. Don't people sleep in on Saturdays?"
"It's almost ten in morning, Amy," Barry said dryly, nodding towards the digital clock that lay beside Amara's bed on a short table. "You've slept enough and we're going out so take a shower and get dressed."
"Where're we going?" she grumbled as she threw off the covers of her bed and searched her closest for something to wear.
Barry gave her a sheepish look and Amara's face fell. "Not again!" she bemoaned before rushing into the bathroom to drown out his apology with the water.
Not ten minutes later she was dressed in her usual dark colors, wearing loose grey cargo pants that hid her bandaged thigh and a black shirt with the Flash logo in red that hid the bruises over her ribs.
Amara had made it back to Central City with no problem and had climbed the side of Wally's house to his room, where her slightly older cousin had stayed up waiting for her to come back so that he could get the details about the mission. He'd been a bit annoyed that she was the first one to get a mentor, but he couldn't help but be excited to hear how her first mission had gone.
She had been halfway home when the adrenaline had finally worn off, and her injuries had hit her like a car colliding with her abdomen. Her bruises couldn't have been helped, but luckily Black Canary had dumped a number of first aid supplies on her and had spent almost two weeks explaining to her what how each should be used, so Amara had supplies to treat her leg, though, truth be told, it wasn't too terrible.
It hurt to move it too much and Amara couldn't keep a wince off her face when she'd looked at it in the bathroom before redressing it. But she had to admit it looked better than it had when she'd gone to bed.
"Are you alright?" Barry asked her as he pulled out of the garage to back up onto the street (Amara wondered how annoying it was to go at a normal pace rather than super-speed through everything).
"You mean Black Canary didn't tell you how the mission went?" Amara asked, giving him a strange look. It seemed like something he would be dying to know. He'd been very reluctant from the start about letting her into the field to start with; Amara had to beg him for a solid week before he'd said yes.
"What happens on a mission that I'm not involved with generally means I don't get many details about it," Barry told her with a smirk, glancing out of the corner of his eye towards her.
"We were in a warehouse that blew up," Amara offered helpfully and the car swerved dangerously; in retrospect, it probably wasn't as good of an idea for her to admit this fact to her father (and she had been slipping up and calling Barry and Iris 'Dad' and 'Mom' and neither mentioned how pleased it made them) when he was driving.
"W-What?" Barry spluttered, righting the car as the one behind them honked their horn at them.
"And then Speedy and I fell off a cliff," Amara added, blazing through in the hope that if she told him in a rush it wouldn't hit him quite so hard.
This hope was stamped out quite effortlessly as his mouth fell open and he gaped straight ahead (probably too worried that if he gaped at her he'd crash the car).
"Alright, then," he said, his voice a bit strangled and Amara grinned as they pulled into the parking lot at S.T.A.R. Labs. The sight of it was becoming something very familiar to her.
The last time she had come, they had run tests on her for almost four hours, and that had been six months ago. She didn't understand the point of it all; she seemed relatively healthy and fit and had her atmokinesis under control for the most part.
But the worry in Barry's eyes was genuine, like he was expecting her results to be the opposite of what they were and was then increasingly relieved when there was no change in her results from the day versus the ones she'd had half a year ago.
But that was what worried Amara.
What had he been expecting to show up in her results?
She massaged the spot on her arm where the needle had been pressed to remove a vial of blood for analysis, scowling at the spot.
"I'm fine," she said, when Barry asked her if the needle had bothered her once everything had been finished. "Why do you keep bringing me here? I'm not sick."
Her eyes were intent on his and the speedster sighed. "I'll tell you when you're older," he said and Amara slouched in her seat in annoyance.
But what none were aware of was that during the tests, a wilting flower that one of the scientists had on their desk had returned to full bloom.
The doorbell rang loudly and Amara looked up from chewing on her pencil, glaring at the math problem blaring on her computer screen.
"I've got it!" she yelled, racing towards the door before Iris could utter a reply, dropping the pencil from her mouth to race to the door and yank it open.
Beyond was Wally looking appropriately miserable. He had a bag on his back and a pillow squashed to his chest and he was completely soaked by the rain.
Amara blinked, looking him up and down in surprise. "Did you run all the way here, Wally?" she asked her cousin, her eyes drifting to his feet which were clad in obnoxious red and yellow shoes that had been made to withstand Wally's new and impressive speed.
His silence was his answer.
"Can…can I come in?" Wally asked and Amara was thrown by how small his voice was.
"Yeah, sure." Amara threw open the door further and called inside. "Mom! Wally's here!"
"Wally?" Iris peeked her head around the corner that led into the kitchen, concern in the green eyes that she shared with her nephew and daughter. "Sweetie, what's wrong?"
Wally squeezed his pillow tighter against his chest, looking at his feet as Iris came out to take in her nephew's appearance.
"Wally…"
"Mom and Dad are fighting again," the young speedster mumbled. "Can I stay here for the night?"
Iris' eyes softened and she brushed his dampened hair away from his face. "Of course you can, sweetie, you're always welcome here, you know that."
"I'll grab some extra blankets," Amara volunteered, lurching towards the stairs and scrambling up them to the closet where the extra blankets were kept folded up.
"Amy, we're having pizza instead," Iris called up the stairs as Amara collected a large pile in her arms. "Do you want to usual?"
"Yes, please!" Amara muffled into the blankets as she tripped down the stairs to throw them onto the couch in front of the television as Iris steered Wally upstairs to change into some of Barry's old clothes, which hung off him but at least were dry.
Barry was working late at the CCPD, so he wouldn't be back for awhile, so it was just going to be Amara, Wally, and Iris.
When Iris had left to pick up the pizza, Amara dug out one of the games Wally had left over at her place from the last time he'd slept over, which had been about two weeks previously.
Amara fiddled with her game controller while Wally clashed with what appeared to be a goblin.
"Why're your mom and dad fighting?" Amara asked suddenly, wincing as her character was killed by a sudden onslaught of attacks and her half of the screen went black temporarily as she waited to be revived at a checkpoint.
"Because of me," Wally said a bit mutinously. "Dad doesn't want me to use my super-speed and Mom thinks it should be my choice."
"Oh," Amara couldn't help but be surprised by that. "Is that because it put you in the hospital when you did that experiment to get your super-speed?"
Wally grimaced at the memory. It had been before Amara was adopted by the Allens, but she had heard an awful lot about it, though, thankfully, Iris didn't have to worry about Amara replicating the experiment that gave both Barry and Wally super-speed (personally Amara thought Barry couldn't really judge, seeing as he did the exact same thing in order to become like Jay Garrick).
"I think some of it is," he had to concede, "but I'm going to be thirteen in a few months, and that's when Uncle B said he'd take me out as his sidekick."
"And Aunt Mary and Uncle Rudy don't like the idea of their thirteen year old son off fighting crime?"
"I guess," Wally said, his character in the game leaping over a small ravine.
"I almost died on my last mission," Amara confided and he paused the screen to look at her.
"Really?" Wally asked, his eyes wide. "Do Uncle B and Aunt I know?"
"I glossed over the main bits," Amara wheedled.
"Nice!" He grinned, bumping his fist with hers. "So, how bad was it?"
"We were in this factory and the guy we were after tripped a wire and these gears went flying everywhere, one almost took off my head before Speedy slammed me to the ground."
"Intense," Wally said.
"What I mean is bad stuff sometimes happens," Amara said with a careless shrug, "your parents should take into account who you're with."
Wally arched an eyebrow and smirked. "Did Black Canary tell you that?" It sounded like something she was repeating rather than speaking from experience.
"Yes," Amara scowled as he sniggered, "but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about."
"It kinda does."
"I hate you."
"No, you don't," Wally laughed, grinning widely. "Any other secrets to share tonight?"
Amara eyed him in contemplation. "I'm a test tube baby. How's that for a secret?"
Wally stared at her in silence for the longest time. "You're…what?"
"I was grown in an artificial womb in a lab," Amara said, her eye twitching.
Honestly, she'd only been half-surprised by the information when her most recent tests at S.T.A.R. Labs came back (or maybe he had known since the first time he'd taken her and just hadn't told her; the idea of that being the truth annoyed her immensely).
"Well…that's…different," Wally said carefully. "Why?"
Amara threw her hands into the air. "I dunno, science or some other reason. Geneticists trying to play God…maybe…it explains a lot about my biological father's attitude towards me."
The sound of the door opening and the warm smell of the pizzas that Iris was ladened down had both sidekicks (technically, one potential sidekick) running for the door.
Their game was forgotten with Wally's troubles with his parents and Amara's struggles with how she had come into being.
"Admit it, you like me."
Eyes glared at her beyond the domino mask that hid them from view. "You grate on my nerves."
But Amara was grinning too widely at Speedy for it to work properly on her. She poked his side and he had a grimace at the move which had pulled at the three bruised ribs that Oliver had taped up.
She grinned widely as she shrugged one shoulder. "It's a sign of love and affection, Arrowhead."
"Maybe if I shove an arrow through you, you won't be so damn grating," Roy said, giving the impression that he was seriously considering it, even if he wasn't.
That would just be cruel and unusual punishment. Amara had a bandage over her right arm and leg from trying to block an electric burst that would have electrocuted Speedy, and try as he might, he was starting to refer to her as Storm Warning with a fond note.
Storm Chaser had her left arm hooked around his neck and Roy was keeping a steady hand on hers and a gentle one on her side, wary of her burns.
"You sure you're alright?" he asked her as she winced again.
"Fine," she said, "I'll heal up quick, no worries, I mean, not like Dad, obviously, but I am a metahuman so—"
"You know you ramble when you're ignoring your injuries?" Speedy felt the need to point out.
"And you're too stiff, but I don't mention it!"
"You do mention it," Roy said dryly, rolling his eyes behind his mask, "every time Green Arrow and Black Canary stick us together."
Being the mature one, Amara stuck her tongue out at him. "'Nothing wrong with telling the truth."
"So they say," he grunted, pulling her into the alley that held an out of order blue phone box that was in actuality a concealed zeta-tube. "Didn't you say that you had something to tell me?"
Amara leaned against the phone box before raising her hands to her mask, lifting it so that Roy so her face completely for the first time since their paths had originally crossed.
There was a bruise close to her eye that spread across her cheek and it had looked far better when her mask had covered most of it, but the green of her eyes and the grey of her hair was as clear as they had been before.
"My name is Amara Allen, but everyone calls me Amy," she said, extending her good hand towards him.
Roy's eyebrows rose at the declaration. Secret identities weren't just handed out, though it had always been clear that Green Arrow and Black Canary had known who Storm Chaser really was. It showed him that she held a certain level of trust in him, so he peeled the domino mask to expose his own blue eyes before taking her hand. "Roy Harper."
"Roy…" A smirk twisted Amara's lips faintly. "I still like Arrowhead."
"Well, you're still a Storm Warning," he shot back, replacing the mask over his eyes as she did the same.
"Green Arrow said you're going on an extended mission with Green Arrow investigating LexCorps' dealings in North Rhelasia," Amara added. "Let me know when you're back in town so I can whip your butt in a spar."
"Keep dreaming, Storm Warning," Roy said, adjusting his hat and she grinned so wide it threatened to split her face as she opened the doors and stepped inside.
"Recognize: Storm Chaser –B00" was stated clearly, quickly followed by a blinding light that enveloped her, taking her back to Central City and leaving Speedy in the silence of the night.
Amara's comm.-link was making a strange beeping noise when she finally roused herself after a late patrol with Black Canary (which was practically nightly since Green Arrow and Speedy were still investigating LexCorps).
She grumbled under her breath, contemplating whether or not to bury herself further under her blankets before grabbing it and shoving it in her ear and pressing the button that allowed the end sending the signal to receive her.
"What is it?" she asked, yawning widely and stretching out her nearly healed arm and leg as she stood and scowled at her alarm clock, but it wasn't like it was early…
"You need to get to Star City, now."
Amara froze, sensing the urgency in Dinah's voice. "Black Canary, what's going on?"
There was a brief, tense silence. "Speedy's gone missing and we need all hands on deck."
It felt as though a cup of ice water had been dunked down Amara's back and she froze. "W-What?"
"Star City, Storm Chaser, now," Black Canary barked before cancelling the transmission and leaving Amara with a white-hot fear bubbling in her veins.
What had happened to Roy?
