Tempest: Chapter Thirty-Eight: An Assortment of Gifts
Storm Chaser was sour when Artemis saw her on patrol once Green Arrow and Black Canary had lumped them together once more.
"How's your day, SC?" Green Arrow had asked her cheerfully and the grey-haired atmo-kinetic glowered viciously at him.
"I have a knife hidden in my boot and I'm not afraid to use it," she warned him, but that only seemed to brighten his smile.
Artemis rolled her shoulders, still strained from training the previous day with Kid Flash, who had proved to be incredibly difficult to match, mostly because of his speed. "What's got you so mad?" she asked when they branched off.
"I hate today," Storm Chaser grumbled. "August tenth is the worst day of the year."
"Why?" Artemis asked flummoxed before the pair had to dart along the rooftop to leap to the next one.
"Everything special about me was cooked up in a petri dish," Storm Chaser muttered, "who would want to celebrate the day they were pulled out of an artificial womb?"
Artemis paused and looked to her in surprise. "Today's your birthday?"
Storm Chaser grunted and that was about as close as she was going to get to an agreement.
"You hate your birthday?" Artemis repeated dubiously.
"Spoken like someone who wasn't cooked up in a lab," Storm Chaser said, pulling her batons out of the holsters on her thighs and twisting them into a long bo-staff before yelling across the roof, "Hey, idiot, pick on someone else your own size!"
Really, robbing someone in broad daylight? Artemis swore criminals were losing brain cells every day. Both robbers in dark ski masks swore loudly and dropped their loot in order to make a hasty getaway.
"They won't get too far," Storm Chaser decided after considering the pair, "besides, it's not like they got away with anything."
Artemis arched an eyebrow, though it wasn't visible beneath her mask. "Do you even get presents for your birthday?" she asked her younger companion.
"I can't really get out of it," Storm Chaser admitted with a bit of exasperation. "RA, Robin, and Kid Flash are taking me out to lunch and GA and BC are doing dinner, you're invited to my suffering, by the way."
It was slightly uncomfortable how at ease Storm Chaser was with some of the other sidekicks, but she had known them awhile.
"I'm not—" Artemis started to say.
"If you don't come GA will be insufferable, I promise you," Storm Chaser said blandly, making a voice echo in each of their ears.
"I heard that," Green Arrow sulked.
Storm Chaser winked to Artemis, "Don't worry, GA loves me."
Artemis rolled her eyes in return, and Storm Chaser sighed, checking her watch. "I've got my shift at work in a few hours…"
"You're working on your birthday?"
Storm Chaser grimaced, resting her bo-staff against her shoulder. "I told you, I hate my birthday…so, what's new with you? Your mom doing all right?"
"Glad to be out of prison," Artemis said as they settled onto a high perch in order to see a wider area and both girls pulled out their own binoculars and sat with their backs to one another, "but it's kind of hard to find a job, you know."
With her prison history and being wheel-chair-bound, it was hard.
"Maybe I should get a job," Artemis considered. "I've got to find a way to pay for the apartment."
Her dad had always paid for it, but she had no way of knowing if he was going to continue to do so, even if she was his daughter and her mother was his estranged wife. Sometimes she wondered why her mother didn't just get a divorce from him, but in their own twisted way, they loved each other.
"I hear Oracle could use some runners," Storm Chaser said mildly, focusing her binoculars downwards on the streets, looking for any hint of the criminal, Pete Lomax, a criminal with a skill in archery that had once ended with an arrow through Black Canary's shoulder. Neither Black Canary nor Green Arrow were a fan of him, and that had extended into their protégé's, though neither had been present when Pete Lomax had attacked as Storm Chaser had been on the run and Artemis hadn't been Green Arrow's protégé then.
"Runners?" Artemis repeated dubiously.
"Masquerade does a lot of Oracle's legwork, because no one's personally met Oracle, and that's for good reason," Storm Chaser snorted.
That, Artemis could understand. Reputation was everything on BlackNet, it was how you got and kept jobs from being stolen by potential rivals, that much Artemis had learned from her father. Oracle was a fixture in BlackNet and even though she was very skilled, no one knew hardly anything about her other than she was female and Masquerade did her legwork for the most part. The idea that Oracle was only thirteen would probably limit potential clients.
"Runners get paid to do favors for Oracle," Storm Chaser continued, "mostly its dropping off and picking up stuff. Sometimes its new passports and identities for people trying to get away from abusers, or items that were stolen from them, returned."
"It's not legal, is it?" Artemis asked dryly, her long ponytail swishing behind her.
Storm Chaser snorted. "Well, it's not not illegal. Strictly there's nothing wrong with people going around giving packages to specific people if it's what they want and need."
Artemis twisted around to look at her, still surprised that someone like her ended up on BlackNet. "How did you even get into BlackNet in the first place?"
"I had a lot of time on my hand," Storm Chaser said simply before taking the binoculars away from her eyes with contemplation. "Maybe I should quit my job…"
"Thought you liked that flower shop," Artemis mentioned in surprise.
"Oh, I do, but I'm getting really busy, you know, Team stuff, Star City stuff, Oracle stuff, it's getting kind of hard to juggle and Dad thinks I should drop something –personally, he wants me to give up Oracle, but that's not happening– so it'll probably be the job."
Ella was also leaving the shop close to the end of September and the beginning of October, and that might have played a part in it, because the casual banter she had with her coworker was something she was probably going to miss the most from working at Bouquet Boutique.
"There's nothing over here," Artemis way saying into the comm, "do you want us to stick with it, or more to a different location?"
"Stick with where you are," Black Canary said a second later. "He's either going to come through here or where you two are."
"I was never good at waiting," Artemis muttered and Storm Chaser smirked.
"Come on, be a little bit excited," Ella wheedled when Amara showed up for her shift, a bit harried and hiding an arrow graze to her side under her shirt as Ella lifted a subtly colored bag that was green and black checkered.
"I hate you," Amara said, but Ella only grinned wider, especially when Amara raised a hand to run a hand through her curls, the peridot ring catching the light.
"You only turn thirteen once," Ella laughed, "just open it, I promise you'll like it."
Amara gave a very put upon sigh at that, after all, presents had never really been her thing. "Fine," she muttered, leaning against the counter, situated opposite Ella, as though she was a customer, "but I'm doing this under protest."
"Of course." Ella's eyes glittered as Amara pulled the bag towards her, pulling the bag towards her. "My girlfriend helped me pick them out, so they're classy."
Amara turned faintly exasperated. "Them? You didn't even have to buy me one thing, Ella."
"It's only two things," Ella assuaged her fears, "and they were both on sale, I'll have you know."
The first thing Amara pulled from within the bag was a laptop skin with DNA strands on it and she took it with interest. "Wow," she remarked in surprise, "this is really cool!"
"I picked it out," Ella preened when she saw how much Amara liked it. "The next one is something Harley saw and thought you might like."
"You tell your girlfriend about me?" Amara arched an eyebrow and smirked.
"Oh, don't get ahead of yourself, Amy," Ella said, waving a hand carelessly, "I tell my girlfriend just about everything."
"So you're saying I'm nothing special?" Amara was grinning widely even as she goaded the woman who could have easily been her mother.
"Those words were yours, not mine," Ella said pointedly as Amara laughed, pulling out the next item. The second one was significantly smaller than the first.
Amara's brow furrowed as she held it. "Lipstick?" she questioned.
"Not quite."
That made Amara frown and she twisted it until the lipstick was supposed to appear, but in its stead was a hidden knife. "That's handy," she said. "I could kill Roy if I'm annoyed."
"You are absolutely unreal," Ella laughed before heading into the back to grab some new flowers to set out front.
"Aw, come on, Ella, you know you love me," Amara said, sitting on the stool behind the cash register, so she missed the soft look in Ella's eyes. "I'm thinking of quitting," she said a moment later, making Ella pause in her efforts to slice the stalks of some gardenias.
"Why?" she asked in surprise.
Amara shrugged. "Mom and Dad think I should focus more on my grades," she said. That much was true, Barry thought her grade in math was a little low, which was true enough, she still had her C in the subject, and Iris thought she needed to spread her attention over all her subjects, not just Science. Amara was almost a straight B student, barring the A in Science and the C in Math, and her parents knew that was just because she wasn't putting more effort into her schoolwork when it could have been spent superheroing in Star City.
"That's too bad," Ella said. "You make my shift exciting."
"It's what I live for," Amara promised, her eyes glittering.
"Have you told Sandra?" Ella asked her, resuming her work of shortening the gardenia stalks.
"Well, I haven't mentioned it to my parents, so, no," Amara said, rubbing at the back of her neck as she did so. "I'm sure I'll get around to it." But then Sandra would be losing both of her employees, though she had still managed the shop rather well before Amara and Ella had started working there.
"So, how's your birthday been so far?" Ella asked her, making Amara wrinkle her nose at her for good measure.
"Mom made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, Wally came over and tried to eat them all." Amara rolled her eyes, remembering Wally as he tried to stuff so much of the pancakes into his mouth only for it to backfire. "My room is actually off limits today because Dad and Wally are painting a DNA strand that goes completely around it." That had been a pleasant surprise, but with Amara's love for genetics, it was one to be expected. It was the type of gift that Amara couldn't really mind. "And Mom got me some fingerless gloves and new combat boots that I asked for and some new clothes."
Iris was trying to broaden Amara's horizons on the color spectrum, but she was starting small and going with Amara's interests, so now Amara had two shirts with two different designs of flowers on them and in two different colors: red and purple. Since the colors were so dark, Amara didn't mind wearing them, but she had rolled her eyes at the exclamation of joy that her mother had given.
A package had dropped by for her with no return address and it had turned out to be a voice modulator, courtesy of Jade, which might have been a roundabout way of saying Masquerade's Russian accent was pretty terrible, but Amara would never know.
"Sounds like you're having a good day, regardless," Ella remarked.
"Could be worse," Amara agreed, "my last birthday I was barely out of the hospital and couldn't feel my legs, so, really, I'm having a fantastic day."
Ella's exasperation couldn't have been made clearer.
"I hate every single one of you," Amara declared when she arrived to the pizza parlor with a scowl on her lips when she took in the three boys sitting in the booth.
"How many times have you said that today?" Roy wondered.
"Honestly, I've lost count," Amara drawled, sliding into the empty seat beside Roy, and both Wally and Dick laughed, while Roy merely smirked.
"Why do you guys have to make my life so difficult?" Amara lamented. "You all know how much I hate my birthday and here we are, celebrating it with pizza and gifts."
"Well, you're having pasta for dinner with Ollie and Dinah, so we figured this was the next best thing," Roy said dryly.
"You're an asshole," Amara countered, "and you cornered me, you guys and Ollie and Dinah, you're all a bunch of conniving little—"
"Can't you just admit you like that we went out of the way to do something nice for you?" Dick asked, an eyebrow arching over the top of his sunglasses while Wally laughed into the table.
"One day, Richard Grayson," she growled under her breath, "one day very soon I will destroy you."
"I'm looking forward to it," Dick said without a change in expression.
Amara muttered heated insults under her breath, making her friends snigger until the waiter came over to take their order, and then presents appeared on top of the table and Amara glowered at them all.
"Wally, you're the only one safe from persecution," Amara decided, mostly because her cousin hadn't brought a present, since his had been part of Barry's, as they'd both worked on the DNA strand together, and he gave an exaggerated "Yes!".
Dick, on the other hand had brought a rectangular box in wrapping, while Roy's box was designed simply and easily opened.
"I hate you," she repeated before tugging Dick's towards her.
"We've heard," he said as she ripped the wrapping off the box to look upon the image pictured on the box in surprise.
"A Wayne Tech laptop?" she asked, her eyebrows raising high on her forehead.
The Wayne Tech laptops had longer functioning and a much better system than normal laptops, but they were also more expensive, exactly for that reason.
"Well, you were complaining about your laptop not working all that well anymore," Dick mentioned.
"Yeah, but I can still use it," Amara insisted.
"It has a diagonal crack on the screen from the time you dropped it onto your bathroom floor when you were listening to music while trying to stitch yourself," Roy pointed out.
"You have to hit the 'P' and the 'R' extra hard in order for the letters to come out," Wally added.
"You lost the down button months ago," Dick put in his two cents and Amara wrinkled her nose at them.
"Thanks, Richard," she muttered, cheeks turning pink, moving the box to rest by her feet and Dick smiled.
"All right," she said with a sigh, crooking her fingers towards Roy, "lay it on me."
And he slid the box towards her and she took it without enthusiasm, pulling off the lid and staring at the contents. It was a number of papers bound together, ones that Amara had compiled herself. The Meta-gene by Amara Allen, the front page read.
"This is mine," she said, blinking in surprise as she tapped her finger on the page, looking to Roy with wide eyes. "I finished it while you were away…where'd you get it?"
"I asked your dad about it," Roy said with a shrug, taking a swig of his coke when their drinks arrived. "He mentioned you'd finished your research and he thought it would be a good idea to show it to a geneticist to see if you were on the right track."
"Yeah, he mentioned that," Amara muttered, lifting the paper-clipped papers, flipping through the pages, frowning at the sight of red marks on the pages, circling things, crossing things out. "Whose writing is this?"
"I gave it to Dr. Roquette to look over," Roy said and Amara paled.
"I can't tell if she's happy or upset," Wally murmured to Dick and his friend couldn't help but agree.
"She did it as a favor since I got her out of the Shadows hands, and when I mentioned your research on how some people developed abilities while others didn't, she got a bit interested."
Amara flipped to the back page, her heart hammering in her chest as she read over the red scrawl.
Miss Allen, this research is rather impressive, given your age and inexperience, though I will admit there are several areas where mistakes were made, at the core of it all, your research was rather well done, and I can see you have a steep interest in genetics. A seasoned researcher would have done better, but coming from a girl who expanded upon a class project, it's rather well put together. I would be happy to show you where you went wrong and correct you on what kind of resources to use for your research, as it appears some of yours might be outdated or incorrect.
Serling Roquette
Beneath was a number and Amara's phone was out in seconds and dialing it.
A secretary answered it, so it must have been the secretary. "Hi, my name's Amara Allen, I was wondering if Dr. Roquette was still in?"
"I'm sorry," the woman on the other end apologized, "this is her day off, but I can take a message for her. What was your name again?"
"Amara Allen," Amara said carefully, before rattling off her number, "she looked over some of my research and I'd like to hear her feedback, but it's not an emergency."
"I'll let her know when she's in," the secretary promised and both ended the call.
"Roy Harper," she said, breathless in her excitement, and he looked up, "you are an angel."
Roy blushed and their friends all laughed.
The Med-bay was largely dark, but there were a few lights on in the back where there was a set up of several computers, which was where Superboy found Amara, typing away.
"This is what you do as…Oracle?" he asked, sounding the word out carefully and Amara twisted around in her chair in surprise.
"Hey, Superboy," she said, "what're you doing here?"
"I could hear you talking," Superboy mentioned, jerking his thumb towards the door.
"Damn super-hearing," Amara muttered under her breath, though that was easy to hear as well, "pull up a chair, Gene Pool, you might learn something."
She grinned when he gave her a rather befuddled expression, though he did as she requested, looking at the screens in confusion. "What is it that you do as Oracle?"
"Depends on who wants to know," Amara smirked, giving him a glance out of the corner of her eye. "What I do as Oracle is a bit controversial, Flash definitely doesn't approve, but I find it's worth it in the long run."
"That's not an answer," Superboy pointed out.
She laughed. "It's really isn't. Oracle deals a lot with the BlackNet, you've probably not heard of it, but it's this kind of criminal underworld but online. There are nine circles on BlackNet, each based on a circle of hell from a book called Dante's Inferno, you follow me?"
"Sort of," Superboy conceded, his brow furrowing.
"Oracle only works in the first circle which is called Limbo and its easily the least criminal one there, people go there asking for help with problems like…escaping an abusive relationship, getting evidence for a crime committed against them, wanting to reclaim goods that were stolen from them, that type of thing."
"That doesn't sound so bad," Superboy said, looking at the varying screens with veiled interest, "why doesn't your dad approve?"
"Well, nothing's really free and BlackNet's services are fairly lucrative," Amara said, fixing the head piece into her ear once more, drawing the speaker close to her lips. "Of course, some of the people needing help can't actually pay very much, so there's an exchange of favors."
There was a sudden appearance of a green dot on the screen in front of her and Amara tapped on the enter button.
"You've reached Oracle's supreme highway of knowledge, how may I direct your call?" she asked cheerily, her voice altered by the speaker, while zooming in on a camera that was located in Gotham to rest on a young woman leaning against a bus stop and tugging on wild and untamed dark curls.
"You do this to annoy me, don't you?" the woman asked her, slightly aggravated.
"Oh, Destiny Wilson, I would never dream of annoying you," Amara disagreed, "you're my favorite runner."
The woman, Destiny, turned to see the camera on her and flipped it off and Superboy gave Amara an odd look.
"What've you got for me?" Amara asked instead.
"The package has been delivered."
"Good," Amara said. "Go home, Destiny, I don't have any more jobs for you and you look exhausted."
"Sure," the woman drawled, but she still hung up on her cell and climbed into the bus when it stopped by.
"One of your runners?" Superboy presumed.
"Funnily enough she's the only one that's stuck around," Amara hummed, "she started close to the beginning of July, mostly they're just people that need money fast, people that have landlords that make them pay more than they earn, people with medical bills too far out of range, that kind of thing. Destiny's trying to get her life together and working for Oracle makes good money. She might stick with it for a few months, I'm sure she'll kick the habit sooner or later."
It was like working for Oracle was a drug, but Superboy remembered Robin once calling Amara an adrenaline junkie, so maybe it was something like that.
Amara blew out a breath of air late into the night as she sat at her desk working on some math problems, raking her hand through her hair, the strands catching on the ring until she drew back to twist it around her finger.
She frowned, pushing back the chair to grab the small envelope that held her birth mother's words before pulling upon one of her desk's drawers and pulling out a rectangular wooden box and putting it on the bed.
The key to the box's lock was dangling on her key chain, and they jangled when she twisted it into the lock, popping it open.
Since the attack at her house, Amara had gotten a bit paranoid as evident by the packs of bills and the passports for different aliases that were held inside as well as the gun Cheshire had given her and her birth mother's previous letter. Amara put the second one with the first and locked the box once more and frowning.
Sooner or later her father and mother were going to notice the ring…what would she say then?
