"I thought you were no longer in the business of caring about aliens, Luthor," Leonard Snart said, standing a few paces back while Lex stood at the bow of the small boat they were taking out to one of the abandoned research facilities owned by LexCorp - an island out in the vast expanse of sea where they had given Black Manta free range to do his research.

"Ah, I am no longer prioritizing the plight of these aliens," Lex said, gesturing off to the side with a wag of his index finger but not turning around to face Leonard. He remained at the railing of the ship, looking out in the direction of their destination. "But this particular instance is nigh irresistible."

Lex pulled a device out from the pocket of his coat - a wool coat heavier than those he usually wore, due to the chill from the sea air they were sailing through. It was about the size of a regular smartphone, but thicker with a larger screen that had a map illuminated in bright green. "This," Lex said, finally pivoting slightly so Leonard could get a view of the screen, "is a personal project of mine. It tracks wireless signals, energy signatures, radioactivity - all of the good stuff," he said with a smirk. "And this," he gently tapped on the screen where an apparent land mass was illuminated in red, "is where we're headed. A verifiable hot zone."

"You have a superpowered generator on that island, Luthor, that's hardly surprising."

"That's not the fun part - you are impatient, Lenny," Lex said with a half-sneer, half-smirk. "The fun part is that this unidentified homing signal," Lex said, tapping on a blue line on the screen originating from a nondescript point in the ocean map, "has been inching closer and closer to my facility for the better part of the last two weeks. Something's tracing our island - which, by the way, is growing hotter. Probably about to explode," Lex said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

"Explode?" Leonard asked in a near bark. "You're going to allow the island to explode with the Manta -"

"Don't be silly," Lex interrupted. "I take good care of my staff. I advised David to relocate to a different facility days ago. He's meeting us back here to investigate - I take good care of my employees," he smirked, which gained a brief eyeroll from Leonard but not much more. Undeterred, Lex wrung his cold hands slightly before continuing. "I'm interested in the fact that the island has only been getting hotter since then - since this signal has been getting closer," Lex explained. "So you and I are going to play detective. It'll be fun, Lenny. Don't you trust me?"

"You're too smart for that to be anything but a rhetorical question, Mister Luthor."

"Clever," Lex said with another smirk in Leonard's direction, though something about just saying the word brought a strange twinge of something akin to pain. Lex shook it off quickly. "I assure you. This is going to be quite the game, Lenny. Just you wait."

"Training's cancelled."

Claire had grown accustomed to something of a routine on the island, even if only because Arthur Curry was adamant that it remain this way - daylight hours were for training, because utilizing them otherwise was a waste. So, hearing him speak the words that training was in fact cancelled for the day left Claire with an unshakeable sense of worry.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing. You're going to stay here -"

"And do what?" Claire retorted. "Arthur, something is going on, and if you don't tell me what it is, then I'll just have to follow you."

With a frown, Arthur regarded the young woman and noted her resolve. He had planned on leaving her out of this, but it was evident that one way or another she would find a way to get involved or get herself into very bad trouble trying. She could, he concluded, be useful without knowing exactly what was happening. There were things, after all, that he had kept her in the dark about for the better part of four months now. The weather had changed, and so had she. She could handle a little responsibility. If there was anything that anyone had learned about Claire Branigan, after all, it was that she coped very poorly with being kept in the dark.

"There's an unidentified power source a few hundred miles from here," Arthur said, crossing his sinewy arms over his chest and tilting his head upward. "We don't know anything about it except that it seems to be growing by the day. It's disrupting the currents, ruining the catch of the fishing villages in the North. It could be nothing, but we can afford no risks, knowing what we do about what is coming for our world."

What is coming for our world. Hearing it phrased this way made it more painfully real that none of this was a dream - and even now after months, the reminder that things would never be the same again still struck Claire with a twinge of pain every time. However, along with that pain came the reminder that her own pain was the least of anyone's worries.

"Are you coming, then?"

Claire's ability to keep up with Arthur Curry was still limited, but had no doubt improved over the span of a few months of training - she had never been much of a swimmer to begin with, but her newfound strength had made it less of a chore, to be certain. However, across the vast distance the traveled over which she had spent a great deal of time simply chasing the trail of bubbles left in Arthur's wake, even someone with super strength was bound to feel some level of fatigue. Practically dragging herself onto the shore of a much colder, greyer island, Claire panted a few times to catch her breath while Arthur got to his feet.

"You'll find there was a reason I was reluctant to have you tag along," he said with a nod into the distance, where a wind turbine stood atop a building hidden deep in the brush. On the side of the turbine was the familiar LexCorp logo, which gave Claire a moment's pause. Arthur clapped a hand on her shoulder to rouse her from her thoughts. "It's not too late to go back."

"Go back for what?" Claire scoffed with feigned nonchalance. "We're here, aren't we? What's the plan?"

"Something on this island is the energy source I told you about," Arthur said, his voice stiff with the knowledge that he was not telling Claire the whole story. "We find it, we shut it down before the villages in the North miss the window for a decent catch this season. If the fish steer clear of their shores, they starve."

Claire gulped audibly, crossing her arms over herself - partially from a chill at the thought of a whole village starving and partially, she could admit, from the fact that it actually was fairly cold here. So this, she thought to herself, was what went into being a superhero. She allowed herself a small chuckle at the surrealness of considering herself a superhero of all things, but didn't waste too much time of the frivolity before starting to trudge into the rocky treeline. As she walked, however, she felt herself jolted off balance by the shaking of the ground around them. Holding onto a jutted out tree limb for support, Claire turned back towards Arthur with a questioning, 'what-the-hell' expression - earthquakes had not been a part of the briefing.

"I forgot to mention that the entire island is unstable, didn't I?" Arthur asked with a shadow of an expression similar to a smirk - this in and of itself was perhaps a bigger surprise than the surprise quake. Claire hadn't realized that Arthur Curry was capable of joking, even in such a miniscule way. Shaking off the surprise, Claire trudged on into the cover of the trees and towards the center of the island where the LexCorp turbine was located.

Walking right into something that was probably dangerous. Claire rolled her eyes at herself a little - it felt absurd. She wasn't a hero. She wasn't even someone like Lois Lane. She was a nurse who was in over her head with no way of getting out. She huffed as she walked along the path, overgrown and muddy, shaking her head gently to herself. "You know, I don't know what you expect me to be able to do, Arthur. Use my semi-super strength to punch the lights out of it?" Claire asked with a sardonic lilt. No response. Apparently, the moment of candor on Arthur's part was only fleeting. With a brief grimace, Claire looked back over her shoulder, only to find that he was nowhere to be seen. Stopping so that the sloshing of her steps and the snapping of twigs was silenced, she heard the sound of voices in the direction she had come from.

"This island's not going to hold much longer, Manta," Claire heard Arthur's voice roar loudly, followed by the sound of a loud crash. "This fight is not for today -"

"Our quarrel chooses no time or place, Your Highness," an unfamiliar voice growled, and while Claire's initial reaction was to turn back to help, she also remembered that Arthur Curry was not one to be forgiving of distractions. Just then, another tremor rattled the ground, sending Claire dropping to her knees in the mud until the shaking subsided. Her lip curled in disgust and determination as she got to her feet, darting further towards the center of the island and not stopping until in the distance - now faint because how far she had run - she heard the same unfamiliar voice one more time. "You're getting in the way, Luthor!"

Luthor. Lex Luthor was on this island. Claire could swear that she felt the blood drain from her face and her hands as she again froze in place. Of course he would be here. It shouldn't have been a surprise, she briefly thought to herself. This was his facility, literally at the center of some kind of geological anomaly, it shouldn't have been unexpected and yet here she was, feeling strangely cold and sick to her stomach. But there was no time for this now. Now, with Arthur Curry occupied, she was the only one left to get the job done. She inhaled deeply and, ignoring her shaking hands, again started running off down the path until she reached the center of the island.

She found that here, the ground was already jagged and uneven - the fence that should have stood in the way had already sunk into the mud so that it would hardly serve as a barrier at all. Glancing around, Claire looked for the tree closest to the fence that looked the sturdiest and somewhat awkwardly climbed up. She noted to herself briefly that kids from the South Side of Metropolis very rarely did much tree climbing, which she felt should have excused her from doing this with any amount of grace. Still, she managed to make her way to an overhanging limb and leap to the other side of the fence, landing with a squelch in the mud. Claire allotted herself a brief moment of pride at having made it before extracting her feet from the sludge and making her way into the building at the base of the turbine.

It was dark inside when she kicked in the door - the ease with which she could do these things still surprised her, even if she'd had months to acclimate. Claire was unsure if it would ever feel completely normal to her. However, despite the lack of lights from the dusted-over industrial lights lining the ceiling, there was still a telltale whir from the generator in the corner. As she moved to the take another step towards it, however, there was yet another tremor that shook the ground. This one, despite being stronger and more violent than the ones before it, didn't manage to throw Claire off of her feet though it now managed to make the windows of the building shatter. As it subsided after a good ten seconds, however, it was only moments before a loud crash outside caused Claire to take a a leap backwards as she saw one of the large trees outside, apparently dislodged by the shaking, tilt slowly and ominously until it reached a critical tipping point, collapsing onto the fence outside and falling just short of the building itself.

They were here just in time - perhaps even too late.

Claire took another breath and moved across the room to the generator with a newfound sense of urgency, feeling underneath her feet that now, it almost felt like the ground had not calmed completely. Where was Arthur? What the hell was she supposed to do now? The thought from outside returned to her mind.

She might just need to literally punch this thing's lights out.

Claire raised her hands and held them in front of her, scanning over the exterior of the generator and trying to find some weak point. She glanced over it until her eyes came to rest on a seam where two sheets of steel met. Gripping her fingers right at this area, she felt a strange sense of hesitation at using her strength. Was this her lot now? If it was, acceptance was likely the only painless way to go about this.

With a groan of exertion, Claire's eyes clenched shut as she pulled apart the steel at the seems, revealing the vulnerable, intertwined wires and innards of the machine. The whirring now louder as the inside of the machine was exposed, Claire reached in and briefly imagined herself getting electrocuted the way cartoon characters did as she ripped out a handful of wires, then another, then a circuit board and other components, casting them aside over her shoulder until the whirring faded away like a slow death. As the energy from the machine died, so too did the rumbling beneath her feet. She then hoisted up the panel of steel that she'd torn from the front of the machine and carried it with some strain outside, looking up into the still spinning blades of the turbine over the building. With another groan, she hurled the sheet of metal at the blades, dropping to one knee as it flew through the air and just barely made its mark.

There was a loud grating noise, then a rumbling, and Claire realized just in time that she needed to start running - she vaulted away over the destroyed area of fence where the tree had fallen on it and made it away just in time to avoid the sudden volley of flame that erupted from the LexCorp turbine. She fell over herslef back onto the path she had been walking just a short while earlier. Gaining her bearings, however, Claire realized that even as the rumblings of the explosion subsided the rumbling in the ground beneath her had started again. Her expression was clearly puzzled and a little bit terrified as she came to realize whatever the damage was, it was already done - and destroying the power source on the island may just have made it worse. They had to get out. Steadying herself on her feet, Claire darted back down a muddy path, though she couldn't be sure it was the same that she had taken before, as her footsteps hadn't lasted long in the sopping wet mud.

Claire managed to stay on her feet as she dashed and vaulted down the path, feeling almost as though she could see the trees shuddering and threatening to fall as their roots failed to keep a hold of the muddy, soft ground. Claire could see in the shrinking distance where the trees thinned out at the end of the path and was determined to make it until the sound of a thud and a familiar voice yelping in pain reached her ears. Lex.

Almost as though she couldn't control the direction of her own feet, Claire found herself pivoting off of the path she was walking, off into the trees towards the sound of the voice. She whacked away branches with her forearms, determined to reach her destination. Finally, though the view was obstructed by the undergrowth, Claire saw someone on the ground ahead of her, having gotten stuck in a tangle of mud and roots - and close by, a large, old tree like the one back at the facility, slowly tilting as its roots tried and failed to stay anchored in the muddy ground.

Willing her legs to carry her fast enough, Claire hurtled forward as she watched the tree slowly tip to one side, again reaching the certain point where its fall began to accelerate. Gritting her teeth and straining against the sticking of the mud, Claire tore over the ground and made it just in time to slide underneath the falling tree and stop it with her hands. She shook under the weight, having never yet taken on such a weight, and made a pained groan as she hurled it away in the opposite direction. She panted and forced herself to her feet as the trunk of the tree took out a few in its wake, revealing a shorter way to a clearer path out. She had half the mind not to turn around and see who she had just saved - because she already knew and because she didn't want the confirmation. However, against her better judgment perhaps, she turned and felt her breath catch in her chest as she saw Lex in the mud, his leg tangled and stuck. She wordlessly walked over and bent down, gripping the thick, appendage-like tree root that kept him stuck and ripping it out of the ground.

Almost simultaneously, looking at one another with oddly blank expressions, both Lex and Claire got back to their feet.

And, so unexpectedly that it made Claire flinch slightly, Lex's first reaction was to give a small chuckle, shaking is head and taking a few steps so that he could circle Claire slightly like he'd done so many times before.

"Now," he said, gesturing with his index finger, "it all makes sense."

"I didn't know how to tell you," Claire said honestly, seeing that the color had drained from his face and realizing she very likely looked just the same. "I didn't know what would happen if you knew I was one of them -"

But again, Lex interrupted with a high-pitched, nasal sound that Claire knew was meant to be a laugh. He clucked his tongue, and Claire felt herself growing antsy at the fact that this was not the time. She had to get away from this island - they both did - but she somehow couldn't. Lex simply continued circling, though his steps were more exaggerated as he was forced to trudge through the mud, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his muddied coat. "Claire," he said, finally pausing and turning to face her, leaning so that he face was closer to hers. "Just because you can do that doesn't make you one of them."

The statement should have been relieving, but it filled Claire with a cold sense of dread. Where was the response she had been preparing to receive for months when this day came? Where was the outrage and the terror? She found herself shaking a little bit more, stammering to try and respond to no avail. Lex looked at her with a slight sneer, shaking his head.

"What did they tell you?"

"They said it wasn't safe for you to know," Claire admitted, feeling weaker despite her show of strength from just moments earlier. "They - they told me that I couldn't -"

"That you were one of them?" Lex asked derisively. "That you couldn't go home?"

"Metropolis... isn't my home anymore," Claire said weakly, suddenly aware of the rumbling of the ground below her and the way it strained her already weak knees. They had to get out of here, she knew, but she couldn't move. She was dazed, snapped out of the spell only when Lex spoke again.

"It doesn't matter what corner of the globe they take you to, Claire," Lex said over the growing rumble of the self-destructing island, seemingly unfazed by the din around them. "Metropolis will always be where you land."

Claire knew she should move - she knew that the island was unstable and that every moment lost was a moment farther from safety. Still, she could not bring herself back to this reality until the sound of her name spoken by another voice roared over the tumult interrupted.

"Claire!" Arthur's voice roared from just beyond the treeline in the space that Claire had managed to clear. "Get out of there!"

"It looks like you're being summoned, milady. I'll be seeing you. Soon, I suspect," Lex said with a smirk and a cocksure tilt of his head before running off in a different direction. Jarred by the surreal calm of the moment, it took Claire a moment before she could gain her bearings and run off towards the sound of Arthur's voice.

It was only when they were back on the safety of the sanctuary island that this flurry of thoughts seemed to coalesce into resolve of what Claire wanted to happen next. She hadn't expected to see Lex Luthor again. Not now. Not any time in the near future. But it had happened, and even in such a brief, seconds-long encounter, it left Claire with the sense that she had been duped. This was not the way she been told it would go - the way she believed it would go. This fiasco of a revelation that she had left home to avoid had not even been a reality, and it left Claire with a strange sense of bitterness.

"I need to talk to Bruce Wayne," she said sternly as she treated a small scrape on her arm, looking up only briefly at Arthur who watched her with concern, having noticed the change in her demeanor since their return. "Can you reach him?"

Arthur bristled, knowing that this meant something. What it meant, he was not yet sure, except that due to Lex Luthor's reentry in the picture, it meant things were going to change.

A/N

I hope everyone enjoyed this update! As always, thank you for all of your support, even if I haven't been able to respond at times. Between work, school, and now just entering the third trimester of my first pregnancy, things have been absolutely nuts. You all are the best. Until next update, which I hope will not take as long as this one, cheers!