Tempest: Chapter Thirty-Two: Without a Trace
"We could've totally used some storm-conjuring meta-humans, is all I'm saying," Wally was saying mildly while his aunt and cousin danced around the kitchen, cooking up some pies for a party at Iris' work that she had completely forgotten about and had conscripted her daughter into helping when she'd arrived back from her shift at the flower shop, and Wally had arrived soon after they'd started with eyes bright and a wide grin, saying "Guess what happened today?!"
The story came out rather quickly and Iris had to slow her nephew when his words blurred with super-speed, and Amara couldn't help but be surprised at the story he told, of how the robotic suit Mister Twister had attacked and how he, Robin, Miss Martian, Superboy, and Aqualad had managed to outsmart him by playing the part of Red Tornado.
"Wally," Amara snorted, stirring the sugar and the butter together in her bowl, "I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm not strong enough to do much less than stall storms, I can't conjure them." The yet went unsaid. Dinah was of the mind that Amara a core of untapped power inside her and that she was just limiting herself to basic atmo-kinetic abilities, such as her flying via storm cloud under her feet and lightning bolts out of her hands and eyes; Amara thought limiting was a poor choice of words.
Mark Mardon was the one that called storms, not her. There was a reason why her sidekick name was Storm Chaser, after all.
"What about that time you almost flooded Keystone?" Wally asked, licking the spoon Iris gave him while Amara dumped a can of cherries into the bottom of a dish before spreading her finished dough over the top to make what would soon be cherry cobbler.
Amara paused. "When was that?" Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember.
"Um, a while ago?" Wally scratched his head, his eyes squinting as he tried to remember. "You were spending the day at the Garricks, I think…you had a nightmare or something when you were konked out on Jay's couch and the next thing I knew, we were getting severe weather warnings."
Amara's face enflamed, the memory returning to her. That was during the time when she wasn't sleeping well. She and Barry were going to go to a zoo with Jay and Joan but he'd been called back to work and Amara had looked so tired that Joan had suggested she get some sleep in the guest room. The next thing Amara remembered was waking up in the medical ward at the Hall of Justice with Barry's concerned face looming over her.
"That doesn't count," Amara decided dismissively. "I have to be fully conscious for it to count."
"Who came up with these rules?" her mother asked with a laugh as Wally snorted around his swallow of batter.
"Me, obviously," Amara said, her nose in the air, but the look was ruined by her laugh. "Seriously, though, I've never really tried to make a storm before."
"Why not?" Wally asked curiously and she wrinkled her nose at him.
It was easy for Wally to train, his skills were in speed and incorporating gymnastics into his speed and it was easy for him to practice both of those skills. But for Amara, if she wanted to try her hand at creating a storm, she'd have to remove herself very far from society just so she wouldn't cause damage, because storms were volatile and unruly and very difficult to control.
"Making storms isn't as easy as making a mini-tornado from running fast in a circle," Amara said in annoyance as she slid the container into the over next to the apple pie her mother had mixed together. "It takes a lot of effort and I don't have a wand like Weather Wizard to conduct my atmo-kinesis, I just have my body for that."
Amara sighed, moving to wash her hands in the sink as Iris shot a befuddled look towards Wally behind her back that Amara pretended not to see in the reflection of the kitchen's window.
Of course, her body was excellent for conducting electricity, or she wouldn't have been able to do all of those electrical attacks that she was famous for.
Amara rubbed her chest where the fractal scarring was hidden under the fabric of her shirt, only to jump at the sudden sound of her phone buzzing in her pocket.
She pulled it out quickly, arching an eyebrow at the caller ID before hitting the accept button and holding it to her ear. "Ollie? Did something come up about patrol later?"
"No, no," came Oliver's easy tone over the phone, but there was clearly a subtle vexation present, "I was just, it's that—"
"Something to do with Roy?" Amara presumed, resting a hand on her hip as she turned around to spot Wally making good use of the leftover batter. She swatted him along the side of his head, but that didn't really serve as a great way to stop him. He gave her a grin and she rolled her eyes. "Is he still not talking to you, because that's not really all that surprising."
She could imagine him grimacing on the other end. "No, he's not," he grumbled, "but his clothes are gone from his room, so I was wondering if you would swing by your safe house before patrol and just check on him for me?"
Amara frowned. She didn't like playing the go-between, and neither did Dinah, but Oliver and Roy sorely needed a mediator.
"Sure, Ollie, I'll check on him," she said, "but if he gets mad at me, I'm blaming you."
There was a rusty chuckle on the other end before she cut off the connection.
"It looks like I'm dropping by my safe house before patrol," she sighed, "Ollie's worried about Roy."
Wally snorted while Iris gave a bemused smile. "Ollie's always worried about Roy," Wally said, waving a hand carelessly. "Just you wait, you'll show up and he'll be sharpening his arrows and the next thing you know, there's an arrow in the wall."
Amara arched an eyebrow. "You'd've thought you'd learned to duck by now."
Wally glared in outrage and his aunt laughed at the antics of the two meta-humans.
Popping over to Sea Isle City was rather simple business, especially with how much better Amara had gotten at flying since her first time over to the safe house.
She made her way up the stairs that led to the deck, calling Roy's name only to stop short when she caught sight of the potted plant on the porch that had definitely not been there the last time she was.
She was familiar with the flower, of course, having been working in a flower shop for awhile now. Amaryllis belladonna was a bit rarer, though, and slightly poisonous, and Sandra didn't make a habit of keeping one in the shop unless a customer made a request.
Amara touched the pink petals lightly, a frown twisting her lips downwards. It definitely wasn't the sort of gift Roy would have left her with, he'd always found the idea of her working in a flower shop to be amusing. But the pot in the crate was a light shade of green…like jade. And it would've been the thing that Jade would've done, Amaryllis belladonna, after all, was similar in name to Amara, and Jade would've found that hilarious.
Amara's frown deepened when she caught sight of a folder hidden in the crevice between the crate and the pot. She bent swiftly to remove it, eyeing the post it pasted carefully onto the folder that read: For getting you cornered by Ra's.
The atmo-kinetic meta-human was still annoyed about that.
But she flipped the folder open with interest. The papers within were old and worn down, the ink faded in some places, and it wasn't in English, which didn't help things. Amara spoke better Russian than she did reading it, but the drawing helped, images of lightning storms and clouds. Amara was momentarily distracted from her problem with Roy by the folder and she took a few minutes trying to decipher the words before tucking it under her arm and pulling out her key.
"Roy?" she called again as she opened the door, but the safe house was dark and empty. "Roy, are you here?"
She shut the door behind her, placing the keys and the folder on the small table by the door as she flicked the lights on. "Ollie asked me to drop by," she said cautiously, looking around for any indication of his presence, but finding nothing. "Roy?"
She moved the almost the length of the house to find the door to the guest room open and wide for her to see that there wasn't a single thing out of place. The bag he'd brought was gone and the bed was made. All that remained in the room that hadn't been there to begin with was a picture so worn down that Amara was sure it had been in Roy's wallet since it was taken. It was taken from the time Oliver and Dinah had taken them out to this archery range. Roy was grinning widely, holding a bow nowhere near as equipped as the one he used as Speedy and Amara was leaning against his side, hefting a crossbow in one hand as using a bow had never been something she'd been particularly skilled at.
Amara picked up the picture, a feeling of unease washing over her.
She took the few steps up to the smaller floor above the first, pulling her spare laptop out from under her bed, ignoring the chaos around her as she'd had to take everything out of what Roy called her 'Lair' while it was being expanded.
Security cameras were a must for Amara, which might have mostly been her paranoia talking, but she was in Central City or Star City most days and Sea Isle City was a bit farther away, so she liked to know that nothing out of the ordinary was happening at her safe house while she was away.
The cameras were well hidden and still transmitting, so all that Amara had to do was back it up to the time from the previous day until she found when Roy last appeared with Jade making an appearance when she'd left the plant on her porch.
Amara pulled out her phone and hit Roy's speed dial before shoving the laptop back under the bed, but it went straight to voicemail.
"Roy, it's me," Amara said, knotting her fingers in her hair. "Ollie asked me to drop by the safe house to check up on you, but you're already gone…I'm getting worried. Can you call me back?"
By the time patrol started Amara still hadn't gotten a call back and she was jittery on a stakeout with Dinah.
"I'm sure he's fine," Black Canary said, even after Green Arrow missed his target, so distracted by their current state of affairs.
"He didn't say goodbye," Amara said in annoyance, her fingers sparking with electricity. "He's been in a bad mood lately, but I didn't think he'd actually leave."
He would have at least told her what he was doing rather than just up and disappearing…wouldn't he?
Amara took off running and leapt from one roof to the next, spinning the air around her, flying off on a cloud, joining Green Arrow and leaving her mentor to sigh and follow after her.
It was two days later when Amara was in the midst of her lesson on the Russian language, as she needed another year in a foreign language to hit the three year requirement for her internet home school requirement that her school program required of her.
The folder Jade had left her with was open on the bed, the words on the first page barely half translated, but she'd been sidetracked by trying to get her schoolwork done. Of course, it wasn't like her schoolwork was done immediately, and she hadn't fallen too behind during her time away from Central City, but she did like to get things done when she had the time to.
The Russian on the pages was old and difficult to read in some places, but from what Amara could tell, it was a sort of guide to people who had certain skills in controlling the weather. There was a reference to a group called the Priests of Perun that Amara didn't understand, apart from knowing through an internet search that Perun was the Slavic god of storms.
Amara was tripping through a spelling quiz when her phone buzzed and she grabbed it up. A day ago she might have been excited about the possibility of Roy calling her, but Amara had given up now. The longer she thought about Roy leaving the more angry about it she got.
"Hey, Wally," she said, leaning back against her pillows with a sigh, "what's up?"
"How do you feel about camping?"
Amara arched an eyebrow. "Camping?" she repeated. "Camping where?"
"Amy, get your butt over to the Cave!" came Dick's voice over the phone. "You're missing out on all the fun and Wally's eating all the smores!"
"Tragic," Amara drawled a laugh. "Is everyone else there?"
She could hear the sounds of a scuffle, most likely resulting from Wally pushing his best friend away from the phone. "Yup," Wally said, "everyone but you, so get your sulky butt over here, Amy!"
Amara sighed, raking a hand through her hair, but she wouldn't deny being sulky. Robin's partner was Batman and Kid Flash's was Flash, and while Storm Chaser did partner a lot with Black Canary, she spent most of her time with Speedy, and now she didn't have Speedy.
"I'll be over," she said finally, cutting off the connection as she shut the laptop, returning her translations with the originals back to its folder and placing it in the lowest drawer of her desk, the one that was made to host files and the only one with a lock on it; there were at least three things in that drawer that Amara didn't want her father to know about.
And then she left the house with a quick explanation to her parents who were watching a movie in the living room.
It was a short jog to where the zeta-tube was hidden, but once she'd made it to the Cave, all she had to do was head outside, walking around until she heard the sound of voices and saw flicking fire around which several people were gathered.
"You're about as subtle as a train wreck, you know that?" Dick was saying to Wally as Amara made her way forward.
"You're not going to catch any fish unless you go fishing, dude," Wally said around a mouthful of smores before jerking his head back to where Kaldur was sitting, looking rather ill at the mention of fishing. "Sorry, no offense."
"Hi, Amy!" M'gann said brightly, waving when Amy got close enough to be seen, moving slow enough that she wouldn't startle them too badly. "You came!"
"Well, Russian has turned my brain to mush so I figured this might be a bit more fun," Amara said with a careless shrug.
She got a few laughs before she swiped the marshmallow roasting stick from Wally, grabbing up her own supplies as he gave an outraged "Hey!" before moving towards the opposite side of the fire where Superboy was sitting, seeming to her to be a bit confused about the whole thing.
"Do you mind?" she asked, nodding to the space next to him and he gave her a gesture that said he didn't care and Amara plopped herself down beside him. "So, Superboy, ever had smores before?"
"No," he said honestly and Amara grinned, putting two marshmallows onto her stick.
"Well, you're going to, Gene Pool."
He choked. "Gene Pool?"
Amara smirked as she thrust the stick into the fire, roasting the marshmallows in the open flame, because Amara Allen did not do lightly browned, she did charred.
"Nicknames, Superboy," Amara snorted, "I give them to everyone…I haven't got one for M'gann yet, though."
She pulled one of the marshmallows off onto graham crackers with chocolate, handing it to Superboy who took it a bit dubiously, eyeing it a few moments before taking a cautious bite.
Amara laughed when his eyes shot wide. "Good, yeah?"
He didn't answer her, but he did eat the last of it as M'gann spoke. "Oh! I would love to hear your story, Kaldur! Could you tell us how you became Aqualad?"
"I was thinking more of a ghost story type of thing, but I guess…whatever," Dick said with a shrug, the flames reflecting off his sunglasses that he was still wearing despite the fact it was dark out.
It didn't take much effort to convince Kaldur to tell his story.
"Well, I grew up in the city of Shayeris, which is a city in Atlantis," he began. "Surface dwellers think all Atlanteans are the same, but our kingdom has many cities, many people, many cultures. So, when I was twelve, I completed my education and began my mandatory service in the Atlantean military, which is standard for all at that age. After awhile I was transferred to the prestigious Conservatory of Sorcery in the Atlantean capitol of Poseidonis."
Amara had always been more inclined to trust science over magic and Wally remained dubious about the idea of magic, which showed in his face the longer Kaldur talked.
"Queen Mera is the headmistress of the Conservatory and the wife of King Orin, Aquaman," Kaldur continued, a small smile gracing his lips, even as he corrected himself in case they didn't know Aquaman's true name, "it was a very different time for me. It was difficult, as it would be for anyone at age fourteen, I suppose, but also a time in my life where I met friends that I know will be with me for a lifetime... Then came a day, a horrible day when Poseidonis was attacked by the Ocean Master…it was the day Aquaman nearly met his end."
Amara's marshmallow fell off her stick and into the fire and she didn't even notice.
"Aquaman and Ocean Master fought for what seemed like hours. When Aquaman and Ocean Master clashed, it seemed to shake the foundations of the city." Kaldur gave a dramatic pause but Amara was almost certain that it was unintentional, though he did have a skill in story-telling, she wouldn't lie. "Ocean Master had gained the upper hand and nearly defeated Aquaman when Garth, a fellow student, and I intervened on the king's behalf. It was the only thing we could think of doing. The danger did not occur to us, the only thing that mattered to us at the time was that our king was in trouble."
Amara leaned forward with interest and she wasn't the only one.
"It may have been one of the most foolish things Garth and I had ever done, as we nearly met our own ends," Kaldur conceded with a small grimace. "We had no hope of defeating him whatsoever, but the time we spent engaged in battle against the Ocean Master was time enough for our king to recover, and that was all he needed as Aquaman finally triumphed over Ocean Master! He was able to drive him from the city and save us all!"
Amara searched for another marshmallow while the others remained enraptured.
"Realizing that on the surface world Batman and Green Arrow and Black Canary had all taken on apprentices that could one day take over their respective mantles, King Orin had been contemplating the same idea, with this in mind he approached both Garth and myself about the possibility of becoming his protégés, and we both considered his offer seriously, but Garth ultimately chose to continue his studies with Queen Mera at the Conservatory of Sorcery. For me, however, the chance to visit the surface world was a dream come true, so at the age of fourteen I became Aqualad."
"Wow!" M'gann smiled brightly. "So you wanted to be Aqualad?"
"Yes," Kaldur agreed, "the opportunity arose. I could think of no other path."
"Yeah?" Wally snorted loudly. "If you think he wanted to be Aqualad so bad? Let me tell you about how I got started!"
"Oh God, Wally, don't make this complicated!" Amara laughed, removing her marshmallow from the fire.
"Sh!" Wally said with a grin, making an elaborate gesture towards Amara that made the others laugh. "All right, so it literally goes back a couple of generations, and each generation of Flash started with a bang, literally!"
Amara rolled her eyes for good measure.
"Jay Garrick was in a freak lab accident, and then boom! There is was! During the forties and fifties he was everywhere! The fastest man alive! Jay Garrick was the world's first Flash! Then one day this guy comes along, a huge fan of the Flash, wanting to know all about this Jay Garrick, back in those days Jay didn't really hide his identity—"
"Probably because he didn't care," Amara muttered before taking a bite out of her smores, ducking under the pebble Wally threw at her head and ignoring the smirk on Dick's lips.
"He contacts Jay," Wally said over his cousin, "and the two spend hours and hours talking about his adventures and about the accident that turned him into the Flash. This guy even goes so far as to recreate the accident that created the original. But where Jay Garrick's accident was a total freak thing, this guy recreated the accident under laboratory conditions. He set the whole thing up in a lab and tried to make it happen."
"Which doesn't sound like anyone else we know," Dick mentioned before Wally got him in a headlock.
"Result? Still a big explosion, but lo and behold he becomes Speedy McSpeed-Speed himself!"
Superboy huffed a small laugh.
"Now he's the Flash! Well, not the original Flash but the new Flash…the Flash we all know! I mean, there's the Jay Garrick Flash and now there's the new Flash. You know, it just occurred to me that they could probably use different names…" Wally admitted in consideration and Amara had to stuff her fist in her mouth to silence her laughter. "Anyways, this time he's even faster than the Flash, well the old Flash…it gave him even more speed!"
"Wally, Wally, you're going way too in-depth," Amara sniggered, "you're probably just confusing them all. Basically, the apple didn't fall too far from the tree and Wally was a ridiculous Flash fanboy and he found out Dad was the Flash by reading through his experiment journals."
"Hey, this is my story!" Wally pouted.
"You were taking too long," Amara shrugged. "Anyways, Wally here decides that Flash could use a sidekick, which Flash is totally against, by the way so—"
"I recreated the experiment with my own chemistry set," Wally said proudly. "And I was able to do it!"
"The experiment actually worked?" Kaldur asked in surprise.
"Well…"
"He blew up his room and ended up in the hospital," Amara snorted.
"Dude! You weren't even there yet!"
"Dude," Amara repeated, "that story's flown around the family for years, it's why I'm not allowed to practice atmo-kinesis at home."
"So, a few weeks later I found out it'd actually worked, and I couldn't wait to tell Flash, and when he saw that I had powers, how could he not want me for a partner?"
"He's a bit confident, isn't he?" Superboy muttered to Amara who smiled.
"The word you're looking for is arrogant," she informed him.
"You are welcome," Wally said once he'd finished, crossing his arms and smirking.
Amara glanced to Superboy, how he was carefully sitting away from everyone, not unlike M'gann and Kaldur, though they had the excuse of having a weakness to fire to keep them sitting behind where Dick and Wally were. "Don't worry," she said to him and his eyes drifted to her, "Wally'll grow on you…like a fungus."
He smiled as Wally made a few jokes about Dick not being allowed to tell anyone his secret identity or how he got started and attention drifted to M'gann.
"All Martians live in underground tunnels because the surface is inhabitable," M'gann explained with a bright smile (Amara wasn't entirely sure it was possible for her not to smile), "our lives are very intertwined, as you already know, we mostly communicate telepathically. The form of communication we use helps large Martian families maintain a sense of community and stay together."
"How large is your family?" Amara asked with interest.
"I have twelve sisters and seventeen brothers and I have over three hundred cousins in my extended family," M'gann informed her and them all, clearly missing how Wally flirted blatantly with her about her cousins being as hot as her before continuing on. "Most Martians look rather similar, mostly green like myself and Uncle J'onn. But there are other's with…differences."
Her shoulders sagged just slightly, her face falling before she smoothed her features once more and Amara frowned. "There are also Martians that are white and some on my planet do not see the whites as equal. My parents were both green Martians and I was raised in what you could call a 'liberal' type of environment. My family…I…had no issue with white Martians."
"And how did you happen to come to Earth?" Kaldur asked, putting a marshmallow on his stick, wanting to change the subject for M'gann's sake.
"Well, my uncle J'onn having learned about all of you –Robin, Storm Chaser, Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Speedy– decided it was time to introduce a younger Martian hero to Earth, so he held a competition to see who would return with him to Earth, so I entered the competition with what seemed to be half the Martian population."
"Whoa," Dick and Wally said.
"The competition was fierce and dangerous and at first Uncle J'onn seemed like he didn't want me to compete, but I changed his mind when I showed him all that I was capable of. And how I'm here with all of you and I'm part of a team!" M'gann said, smiling as she spread her arms, looking up to the sky.
"We are happy you're with us as well," Kaldur said to her enthusiasm.
"You could say that again," Wally gave an exaggerated sigh.
Amara was sure that M'gann was truly happy to be on Earth, but there was something a bit off in how she'd come to Earth in the first place, she was sure of it.
"What about you?"
Amara started, looking at Superboy. "What about me?"
The clone gave a grunt. "Everyone knows my story, so what's yours?"
Amara chewed on the inside of her cheek, noticing the interest on M'gann and Kaldur's faces and giving a small sigh. "Well, I'm a bit like Superboy, I was made in a lab, a genetically created offspring to Weather Wizard."
Kaldur's eyes widened slightly. "Your skills are similar to his."
"Yeah, only he's got to use a wand most of the time and I don't," Amara drawled, fingers twitching over her knee. "Anyways, I was raised in a lab for awhile, I don't remember how long, but at some point I was removed and foisted off on Weather Wizard…and he didn't really like the idea of carting a kid around." She gave a vicious frown.
"We ended up in Central City when I was eight and he was facing off against Flash, he probably would have killed him, too, if I hadn't thrown myself between them and took most of the shock of the lightning, scarred my chest permanently, not fun, let me say."
She rubbed at her chest as if she could still feel the strike of lightning that had sent her flying.
"Flash took a shine to me but I was nine before he and his wife adopted me officially and ten before I was allowed to be Black Canary's sidekick."
She didn't see the point of weaving a story like what the others had done; hers was very matter of fact.
"Weren't you the one that disappeared for almost a year?" M'gann mused thoughtfully and Amara graced her with a stiff smile.
"Yes, that'd be me," she said and Dick and Wally looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Merlyn put me in a wheelchair for eight months."
"Oh," M'gann said delicately, a sudden awkwardness overtaking her features.
"Don't forget the time you ran away," Wally added.
"Which time?" Amara asked dryly. "It seems to happen a lot."
They all laughed as smoke curled into the air, their laughter echoing around them in the silence.
