Tempest: Chapter Thirty-Four: Results of Research
AN: This chapter contains references to genetics and DNA, and there's a possibility I may have gotten some information wrong, since I was just using what I looked up online.
It'd been a long time since Jade had had any friends, much less ones that were still alive despite their friendship with her, and she hadn't initially considered Amy to be her friend, but the meta-human had grown on her, a bit like a fungus –which was incredibly ironic, given who her mother was– and it was refreshing to have a hero that actively dealt in thievery.
But here she was with a twelve year old –nearly thirteen, Amy never let her forget that– being the person who seemed to know the most about her. It was strange how it had come to that, but they both had their share of oddities.
The problem with being friends with Amy, though, was that she had a tendency to stick her nose where it didn't belong, and that didn't sit well with the Light. She could distinctly recall her father's voice edged with cold warning: "Find a way to keep her out, or I will, permanently."
Jade's legs twitched uncomfortably under the table as she tapped her fingers against it in aggravation. She remembered how it had been when Amy had lost the use of her legs, with fury boiling just under the surface of her skin, only kept at bay by determination, –she'd been able to ascertain that even with their limited involvement– but she wouldn't let her father do that to her again, or worse.
The door to the pancake house opened and she looked up to see the door shutting behind Amy and the younger girl smiled when she saw her before making her way towards the booth she was situated in.
"Assassinated anyone important since I last saw you?" Amy asked her lightly before ordering some chocolate chip pancakes.
"Nothing that I'd admit to," Jade smirked, watching her with interest as she downed the steaming cup of black coffee that Jade had ordered for Amy shortly before she'd arrived without even blinking. "Late night?" she asked mildly.
"I wouldn't know," Amy snorted once she'd swallowed the last of the drink, "I haven't been to sleep yet."
Jade arched an eyebrow. "You'll work yourself to death one day, Storm."
Amy rolled her eyes, thanking the waitress when the pancakes were slid in front of her. Jade didn't see the point of her getting a lot of food since she wouldn't be there long, but she did snag a bit of one of Amy's pancakes, much to Amy's outrage.
"So, what've you got for me?" Amy asked once she'd gotten about halfway through the pancakes and Jade withdrew a small box and slid it across the table.
Amy took it, weighing it in her hands before arching an eyebrow. The box was shaped like it held a necklace of some kind, being long and black. It was the color of the box that mattered the most, because, like many things that involved Cheshire and Masquerade, it was a code.
Black boxes always contained flash-drives.
"I'm going to be out of the country for awhile," Jade said and the expression on Amy's face warped into confusion.
"How long?" she asked.
"Couple of months, maybe," Jade gave a shrug, trying to play it off as then less than it was, and it was only because she was so good at lying in her line of work that Amy didn't catch it. "My master has me on several high profile assassinations that will keep me out of the states for awhile."
There was a slight twitch in Amy's jaw that no one but someone who knew her exceedingly well would have caught, and Jade knew how Amy felt about Ra's al Ghul, but Jade's loyalty to him wasn't something she could really understand.
"Those should keep you busy while I'm gone," she added, gesturing towards the box she'd given Amy.
"You know I can find my own jobs to do," Amy said with a sigh, her shoulders sagging just a little, just enough to make Jade smirk. "I was Oracle long before I started working with Cheshire, you know."
Jade's smirk drew into a grin. "Well, if you don't think you can handle the challenge…" She extended her hand and was amused to see how Amy's grip tightened over the box.
"I didn't say I was completely against it," she said sourly. "Besides, I'm ahead on my studies anyways."
"And who doesn't love a rebellious teenager," Jade snorted while Amy stabbed at the remnants of her pancakes.
"Not a teenager until August 10th," Amy muttered, "and my dad, probably. He's tried to get me to give up what I've earned as Oracle and Masquerade before." She gulped down some more of the coffee from her recently refilled cup.
"How'd that go?"
"Well, it could have gone better," Amy conceded, "but it's not like anyone knows my current aliases, but he doesn't like the idea of me being on BlackNet."
They settled into a stilted silence while Amy finished the last of her pancakes and Jade toyed with her cup of tea that she'd barely taken a sip from. The only thing that broke the silence was the buzzing from Jade's phone.
"I need to head out," Jade said, barely glancing at the words on the screen.
"Make sure you don't die," Amy said, lifting her eyes to follow Jade as she slid out of the booth to stand, dropping enough change to cover Amy's breakfast and her tea. "You keep my life from being utterly boring."
"Ah, Storm, keep talking like that and you're going to make me swoon!" Jade fanned herself and Amy rolled her eyes before giving her a little wave as Jade stepped out the door into the bright sunlight, content in that the contents of the flash drive would at least keep her attention away from the Light and thus away from her father.
Barry could hear the soft thrum of music coming from Amara's room –some new rock band whose name he couldn't have recalled– which wasn't necessarily unusual, but Amara had a tendency to stay at the Cave when he and Iris were working, but maybe the Cave had too many people now with M'gann and Superboy living there.
He gave a light knock on the door, calling his daughter's name gently, only pushing the door open when she didn't answer, and it was only then that he was greeted with a surprising sight.
There were papers strewn throughout the room, which wasn't like her; Amara was generally very organized with her things.
The genetics book he'd gotten her back before her temporary leave of absence, as they liked to call it in the Allen family, was open to a random page and Barry could see signs of her tell-tale green high-lighter on the pages open. She'd pasted two enlarged and very different DNA strands on the walls with red marks and notes over them.
She'd clearly spent the day throwing herself back into her genetics research, but the girl herself was much less chaotic.
Barry had to smile softly at the sight of his daughter curled up on the part of her bed that wasn't covered with paper or books or even her laptop. Her face was relaxed and her breathing was even and deep and Barry couldn't quite remember a time that he'd seen her so peaceful.
He shut off her iPod where it was still playing music from the speakers it was plugged into, before shutting her laptop and clearing the books and papers away from the bed. He piled them neatly on her desk and she was still so deeply asleep that she didn't so much as twitch as he pulled the light blanket up over her.
Barry smiled softly as he bent down to press a kiss to her brow, leaving her to slumber in the silence.
"I found something amazing!" Amara declared the next day when she was fully conscious once more. It was a Saturday, so her parents could indulge her manic excitement.
"Given the state of your room, I would hope so," Iris said wryly and Amara waved her off, her excitement too great to be abated as she spread papers across the table, which wasn't necessarily a good thing, considering they were eating a late breakfast.
"This is a strand of your DNA," Amara said, jabbing her finger at her father before tapping it against the paper only to draw out another long paper with a similar strand of DNA. "And this is what a normal human's looks like. It's actually Mom's."
"Aw, babe, did you hear that?" Iris grinned towards her husband. "Our daughter things I'm a normal human!"
"That's terrible!"
"You're both terrible," Amara grated. "Look at my research, I found something huge!" She scowled for emphasis, and then they both paid attention, because this project of hers was very important to her and she'd been working on it (and putting it off from time to time) for awhile.
"The outer-part of the DNA strand is the sugar-phosphate backbone –I know, I looked it up–"
Barry stifled his snort.
"Anyways," Amara continued, pointing at Iris' DNA strand. "On Mom's, everything's normal, just the usual sugar and phosphate, but over here—" She switched quickly, leaning over the table to where Barry's data was strewn, pointing out the outer shell of his DNA which both Barry and Iris noted in surprise was very different from Iris'. It looked almost like a foreign substance had integrated with the sugar-phosphate, changing it entirely. "—it's completely different. I think this is what you get when a meta-human is man-made, like how Dad was completely normal before his little accident. But the nitrogenous bases with their hydrogen bonds inside the sugar-phosphate are fine, they haven't been changed at all."
Iris was certain she wouldn't have been able to follow as well if Amara hadn't brought a key to label the parts of the DNA, because science had always been more of Barry's things than hers.
"But then you look at mine, being a meta-human that was born, not made…" Amara continued, pulling a new DNA strand on paper, this one, undoubtedly hers. "And there's nothing wrong with my sugar-phosphate backbone, that's completely normal, like Mom's, but the nitrogenous bases are out of whack."
"I'm lost," Iris sighed, looking from Barry's to Amara's and not really seeing much of a difference, which made Barry laugh and Amara turn just a bit exasperated.
"Nitrogenous bases only pair to certain other nitrogenous bases," Barry explained for Amara, "Adenine only pairs with Thymine, and Guanine only pairs with Cytosine, but Amy's got several that don't match up." His finger smoothed over the several areas on her DNA strand where something didn't belong was.
"Missense mutation," Amara said proudly, her eyes glittering, "I looked it up myself."
She hefted her book from where it had been resting on her seat, reading from a passage that she had clearly high-lighted.
"A missense mutation is a mutation in which a single nucleotide change results in a codon that codes for a different amino acid," she recited from the book. "Only, these nucleotides weren't recognized by the genetic marker database that S.T.A.R. Labs has, get it?"
Iris had no idea, but Barry leaned forward in interest. "Because their database has never seen it before," he considered, "no one really thought about isolating the sequence that causes meta-humans to be born the way they are."
"Why not?" Iris and Amara asked as one.
"Well, heroes aren't really into giving their blood to other people since it can be used to identify them," Barry informed them.
"I got several heroes blood," Amara said a bit miffed.
"You're also a hero and this was technically for a science project," Barry said dryly, "though I still think you should have a geneticist look over your research, they probably know more."
Amara's shoulders fell slightly. "Oh."
"But this is real great stuff," he assured her, "you really went all out and you know Mom and I are really proud of you."
Amara's face glowed as she smiled and Iris was glad that she had something to fascinate her as much as genetics did, even if she could barely understand it.
"Ella!"
Amara positively sang her name when she came tearing in through the door during her shift the next day and Pamela couldn't help but grin in response. Even if Amara had no idea who she was –yet, she would be telling her before she left Central City, even if it was the day of, because Pamela was good at nothing if not putting things off to the last possible second– it still warmed her heart to see her daughter so happy to see her.
"Having a good day?" Pamela laughed, leaning against her broom and arching an eyebrow. Amara's birthday was coming up, but it was still a bit more than two weeks away, so that couldn't be why she was excited.
"I made a breakthrough in my genetics project!" If she was smiling any wider she would have split her face and it almost made Pamela want to take out her phone and snap a picture of the expression, but she held herself back.
"That's great!" Of course, Amara hadn't really mentioned what in particular she was researching, so Pamela had to assume that it had something to do with her extracurriculars, by which she meant when Amara was running around with a bo-staff and wearing an outfit that was almost entirely black.
"Dad wants a geneticist to look over my research to see if I'm actually onto anything serious, though," Amara hummed as she hopped up onto the chair behind the counter which only caused her to swing around in her exuberance in jumping up onto it.
"Which is a good idea," Pamela agreed and Amara wrinkled her nose, making the woman laugh. "That's how you know if you're going in the right direction."
"I suppose," Amara gave a very put-upon sigh, greeting the customer that entered the doors with a smile and a welcoming tone.
"How's the math going?" Pamela asked once the harried customer had paid for a bouquet for a wedding she was evidently very late to, and Amara's face drew into a grimace.
"I mean, it's not going terrible," she acquiesced, "I'd probably be doing worse if my friend Richard hadn't given me some pointers."
"A math whiz?" Pamela presumed.
"Worse," Amara drawled out with a shudder, "a mathlete."
And they both couldn't help but laugh.
Storm Chaser's shoulder was aching as she leapt from one building's rooftop to next one, using air manipulation to lighten her weight so she didn't crumple when she landed, but Storm Chaser didn't stop moving.
It was nothing short of aggravating that Speedy wasn't around, she'd gotten far too used to having him at her back that going to not having a partner was actually a bit debilitating.
Of course, she still had Green Arrow and Black Canary, so it wasn't like she was running around by herself, because that would have been rather terrible.
A bullet just missed the back of her leg, lodging into the brick roof and Storm Chaser bit down a swear.
"Tell me I don't have to keep running around like a chicken with its head cut off," Storm Chaser seethed through gritted teeth. Her exhaustion was starting to get to her and she hadn't really mastered the ability to stop projectiles moving at high velocity through manipulation of the air, which was something Black Canary was trying to test her skill in (needless to say, it wasn't going very well).
"Almost there," her mentor's voice rang in her ear, and Storm Chaser was forced to duck behind a brick wall to avoid the next spray of bullets. The sniper was good, that was for sure, but those bullets weren't fast enough to hit her.
"You know," she said breathlessly, "when you asked me what I was doing tonight, being used as target practice wasn't exactly what I had in mind."
There was a distinct chuckle that Storm Chaser knew from memory belonged to Green Arrow.
"We'll keep it in mind for next time," he promised and Storm Chaser couldn't help but groan, pausing at the sound of a scream piercing the night that had often made Storm Chaser wonder how she hadn't lost her hearing by now.
"We got him," came Black Canary's voice over the com, "you can take a breather, SC."
"Good," Storm Chaser groaned, leaning heavily against the wall. She was starting to regret all those times that she'd turned down her father to go jogging (of course, it was a stupid idea to go jogging with him to begin with because he was the Flash and he was going to be faster than her anyways).
She allowed herself a brief moment to catch her breath before Black Canary came over the com: "Looks like you and I are on downtown duty, SC, want to swing by and pick me up?"
Black Canary meant by cloud, obviously, because Storm Chaser had hardly touched Speedy's motorcycle since he'd taken off, and her mentor, at least, wasn't all that squeamish about traveling via cloud.
"On my way!" Storm Chaser took a running leap off the building, gathering the air around her into a visible cloud, swinging around the high-reaching abandoned building that the sniper had once been nestled in.
There'd been a few lucky shots, but it was almost a good thing that he'd only been aiming at the three of them, and Storm Chaser counted her lucky stars that she hadn't ended up was a bullet through part of her body like Green Arrow had (his upper arm, and he was very miffed about it, if the grumbling complaints were any indication) because there'd be no way to explain that away from her dad.
Storm Chaser hovered outside of one of the cleared windows, allowing her mentor to jump out onto her back before shooting off towards downtown.
"You did good work today, Amy," Dinah smiled when they were back within one of Oliver's equipment caches, but Amara didn't really feel that way.
After the whole mess with the sniper was dealt with there'd been no less than five criminals trying to make good use of the Star City Heroes distraction, and that was in downtown alone. She'd managed to fall on her face and scratch up her cheek and she was definitely going to have bruises down the side of her left leg, but at least she didn't need to be stitched up like Oliver.
"I was almost shot four times," Amara said flatly, "I fell on my face and down some stairs."
Oliver coughed to silence his chuckles and Dinah's lips curled up into a smirk.
"That falling on your face was pretty funny," she conceded and Amara rolled her eyes, ignoring her mentor just in spite, "but considering everything today, I still think you did pretty good."
Good without Roy, she meant, and Amara was glad that those words hadn't been spoken.
"Ollie," she said instead, "want me to stitch you up?"
Dinah had been working hard the past few days and Amara knew she wasn't the only one that thought the meta-human looked dead on her feet. Amara wasn't even trying to be subtle and Dinah narrowed her eyes shrewdly.
"That's a roundabout way to kick me out, isn't it?" she asked wryly.
"Yes," Amara and Oliver said as one and she rolled her eyes before striding forward to give her boyfriend a swift kiss.
"I'll see you at home, then, babe," she said before making her way out of the cache and leaving Amara to pull the rolling stool towards the chair where Oliver was sitting in, before grabbing the tray of utensils that the Star City Heroes used to stitch themselves back together.
Amara threaded the needle with the suture thread before examining the wound and pulling the skin together which wasn't an exactly pleasant feeling, but Amara was sure that Oliver had been stitched up too many times to feel that uncomfortable with what she was doing.
"So what've you been up to?" the man who she rather considered to be a surrogate uncle asked, eyes fixing on her even when she didn't look up from her task.
"I'm no longer failing math," Amara informed him, "because I think Dad was about to pull me from hero duty if my grade dropped." She had a mid-C right now, but she was sure she could bump it up before the semester was done.
"Well, that's good," Oliver said blandly and Amara couldn't help but smirk.
"I've pretty much finished that project on meta-human genetics and Dad thinks I should have a geneticist look over the results to make sure I didn't make any mistakes."
Oliver arched an eyebrow, impressed. "Really? What did you find out?"
"Its, um, very science-y, you might not like it," Amara muttered as she threaded the needle through his skin, pulling the suture thread taut.
"I don't mind," Oliver almost laughed but aborted the action at the last moment and Amara bit the inside of her cheek, considering him.
"I may have found what makes someone a meta-human when they're born with it instead of man-made, like Dad."
Oliver found himself staring at her. "Really?" he repeated.
"Maybe," Amara acquiesced, "if I can find some geneticist to look at it and give me a serious opinion, but it's not like it's something that's really important, I mean I don't need it looked at immediately."
Oliver gave a one-armed shrug. "Either way, you found something, which means you get credit for the discovery, what are you calling it? The bit that makes someone a meta-human?"
Amara hadn't really thought about it and paused her work to screw up her face slightly.
"Meta-gene," she decided before opening her mouth to say something when her phone buzzed and she shrugged it out of her pocket, using her shoulder to keep it in place on her ear. "Hey, and here I thought you weren't going to be in contact for awhile," she said and Oliver feigned not listening in on the one-sided conversation.
"Your sister lives in Gotham, it's not exactly close by, babe," Amara continued with a vein of annoyance, sticking the needle through his skin again, "Goddess isn't stupid and she's got a bow, I'm sure she doesn't need someone checking up on her, much less someone doing it at her sister's request…fine, but you owe me."
She grumbled as she dropped the phone onto the tray. "Sorry about that," she added to Oliver, "one of my BlackNet contacts has a pretty shoddy father and she's worried about her sister."
More like Jade was worried about how Sportsmaster would react if he found out his daughter was out in costume and firing off arrows at criminals. Amara could understand that, but it wasn't as though Artemis couldn't handle herself, Amara had gathered that much from spending one night with her, besides, Sportsmaster struck her as being the type to be more absent than present.
"I'm apparently a very ditchable prom date," she grumbled.
Oliver gave her an odd look. "First Roy, now her, my partners keep up and vanishing."
He probably would've said something on the subject of his adoptive son or even Amara's involvement with BlackNet, but by then she'd finished suturing and had pasted gauze over the wound and the look on her face showed that her thoughts were clearly elsewhere so Oliver thought it was best to keep his mouth shut.
The next day a man in Gotham found himself lacking several rather expensive first edition books with a golden masquerade mask resting inside the relatively undisturbed case where the books had once been with the words Better luck next time on it.
And he couldn't help but wonder how a thief had managed to get past his extensive security to take the books of all things.
