This chapter is exactly three thousand words! Haha...
Okay, I totally had no idea what the names of the new characters in this chapter were, so I kinda made some up. Hope you guys don't mind! It's still pretty obvious who they are.
Thank you so much to cartoonfire, Black Raven 13, ChristianAndGatorGal, BerryDrops, Starsoffire, SuPeR HyPeR chick 101, RavenSis, tennisgal456, Alien Emerald, shattered-hearts-602, and lykomigosh23 for reviewing the last chapter! YOU guys rock :)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything mentioned below.
Nightwing grabbed Starfire, clutching her close to shelter her as the top of the building blew apart completely. They were flying through the air, and screams of people who'd lived in that building were all that were heard in the still night air. Then, a bright, roaring fire sprang up out of nowhere, and the screams grew louder. In his shock, Nightwing hadn't noticed until now that he hadn't fallen to his death. Starfire was hovering, holding him as tightly as he was holding her.
"Star, get back there! Those people, we have to help them!"
Starfire nodded at once, the thought of just leaving never crossing her mind. She flew them towards the burning building, watching in horror as people jumped off the highest floor to avoid the crackling flames. She dived, grabbing one man by the wrist and swooping down to let Nightwing catch another's, and she dived again to have them all land safely. Before Nightwing could protest, she flew up, catching more of the jumping people. This time, she only stopped three feet above the sidewalk, dropping them the rest of the way so she could find more people.
She flew into the burning building, subconsciously acknowledging the fact that Nightwing was there, having climbed up fifteen flights of stairs to reach the top, where the explosion had occurred. Starfire gathered three or four people in her arms and flew out of the window she came in through, again, dropping them on the sidewalk and flying in to find more.
The fire was raging uncontrollably, now, and sirens were heard in the distance. Fire truck upon fire truck and ambulance upon ambulance arrived on the scene, immediately springing into action. Starfire continued to look for the still trapped people, beginning to choke on the oxygen-less air. Had she been fully human, she probably would have fainted from smoke inhalation long before. This was the one time she was glad she was different. Maybe Nightwing was right about--
Nightwing!
She shot up, rocketing through the flames in her search for Nightwing. There were no more screams, no more cries. Everyone in the building was either rescued...or unable to say anything.
"Nightwing!" she called through coughs. "Nightwing!"
No answer.
Then, she caught a flash of blue amongst the orange and red. There was Nightwing, cornered by flames, protecting three young children with his body. His mask met hers, and a smile of relief crossed his features. It disappeared in a fit of coughs. Starfire truly panicked for the first time in this ordeal. Before, she'd known what to do, but Nightwing...Nightwing was hurt...
"The kids, Star!" he wheezed, doubling over to cough again. Starfire rushed to them, darting between the flames, though her meta-human body could take the heat, and grabbing a girl around the waist. With the same hand, she clasped a little boy's arm. Nightwing held another boy by the wrist, and he latched himself on to her. Flying as fast as she could, Starfire dodged the leaping tendrils of fire with amazing agility, and found herself out in the night.
Nightwing began to cough again, and his grip on her slipped. She landed quickly, detaching the scared little children from her fingers and desperately trying to keep Nightwing upright. It was no use; he'd already passed out. A paramedic pulled him away from her, setting him on a stretcher and starting to haul him away. The other ambulances had already gone, carrying victims with burns and damaged lungs, just like Nightwing. Nightwing's was the last one. Firefighters, however, still remained, trying to put out the insuperable fire.
Someone seized Starfire from behind and pressed a knife to her throat. "Don't move," her attacker said in a quiet, dangerous kind of voice. Obviously not expecting this right after the fire, Starfire obeyed his command, too exhausted to fight him.
Nightwing came around, though, and she was the first thing he saw as they tried to load him into the ambulance. "NO!" he cried, paying dearly for his outburst by hacking up a storm. Still, he had gotten everyone's attention, and they all turned to follow his line of vision. They saw the girl, the one who'd been rescuing everyone in ways they couldn't even imagine, about to have her throat slit.
The firefighters came rushing to her aid, but her attacker tightened his hold on the knife, tilting her head upwards as he nicked her skin with the blade. Starfire's breathing turned ragged, and the firefighters stopped, unsure if any move they made would get her killed.
"That's right. You are going to come with me, slowly, now. Don't try anything, or I will not hesitate to kill you," the man whispered threateningly in her ear. Nightwing gave another yell for her, as soon as his bout had ended, but it started up again. He could almost feel the air around his mouth shift as the man smirked. "Or better yet, I can just kill your dear boyfriend..."
"No," she croaked.
"Good. It doesn't look like it would matter, though, would it? Sweet girl, it looks like he's going to die anyway, if he can't breathe properly. Too busy caring about you to stay alive, is he?"
Nightwing...she needed to help him. What if he DID die? "Let go of me!" she mumbled, afraid to move too much lest that knife slipped. She only felt the knife move a little, but a drop of blood tickled her throat as it trickled down on to her costume.
"No, I don't think I will. Now, if you don't want to watch him die, you will walk."
Starfire's eyes began to glow a bright green. "You cannot make me!" In that second, she forgot she had to pretend to play a tough criminal. She forgot how worn out she was after the battle with the fire. She forgot everything, except that this man was taking her away from a loved one, and it was most certainly not going to happen again.
With a battle cry, not only her hands, but her entire body aquired the same neon green aura as her eyes. The man was startled, but not startled enough to let go. Starfire unleashed all of her anger in the form of a powerful shock wave, like one immense star bolt, blowing the man away from her instantly. It was not quite big enough to harm anyone more than ten feet away from her, but it was enough to drain her completely.
She fell the the ground, desperately trying to stand up. She couldn't pass out here. She needed to find that man, something needed to be done about him. Not only that, but they would take her to the hospital, they would find out who she was. Her thoughts were blurred, and coming too fast for her to focus. But she couldn't leave Nightwing...
Starfire stumbled over to where he lay, coughing, in the ambulance. "Nightwing," she whispered.
"Go," he hacked out. She obeyed him before he had to say anything else.
As soon as she landed inside her house, she passed out on the floor.
"Thank X'hal for Saturday," Kory told Karen at the mall the next evening. "I have never slept so well. Is this what most people do on the nights of Friday?"
"Yeah," Karen replied happily. "It's pretty much custom to sleep in until one o'clock in the afternoon, or, if you're a guy, one o'clock the next afternoon." She picked out a pair of jeans and held them up to her waist. "These are cute. What do you think, Kory?"
Karen had called Kory at around three, and Kory had just gotten up. Karen was about to invite Rachel to come with them, but Kory hurriedly persuaded her otherwise, saying Rachel wouldn't like it anyway. Kory had spent most of the past two days avoiding Rachel, afraid the girl would figure out who she was and report the discovery to her father. She knew she should have been able to trust Rachel, after all, she was one member of the group who'd taken her under their wing on her first day, but Rachel was shady and mysterious. Kory was finding it difficult to trust her at all, now. She knew nothing about Rachel, she realized. Nothing at all.
"Kory?"
"Oh yes, they look wonderful. Perhaps this shirt would go well with them?" she asked, holding up a random T-shirt.
Karen frowned. "Nah, too dark. Rachel might like it, though, why don't you buy it for her as a Christmas present?"
Kory frowned, the word 'Christmas' ringing dusty bells in her mind. It had something to do with the snow she had seen with Dick not too long ago. "Karen, what is Christmas?"
Karen cocked her head, obviously having forgotten that Kory had such a limited knowledge of everything that went on around their community. "It's a religious holiday, but we get two weeks off of school for it. You get all of your friends and family presents. 'tis the season for giving, or something like that."
Kory thought long and hard about this. "When is it?"
"December twenty-fifth. On second thought, though, Rachel might like something along the lines of a book..."
Eventually, the two decided that Christmas shopping was far too much of a hassle without preparation. They wandered around the mall for a few more hours, and Kory knew she wouldn't have been able to keep up with Karen's practiced shopping expertise if she hadn't had her super strength. Even so, she was still worn out from the night before and was the first to admit to being tired.
They sat down in front of a TV and flipped to the news. Kory gasped at the first thing she saw: the fire of the building she had been on the night before.
"...Police say they could not find the arsonist, but evidence proves that someone had purposely tried to start the fire," the reporter declared. The picture switched to one of people jumping out of the sky, but...there was Starfire. Flying. "But that's not all. Eyewitnesses admit to seeing a flying woman, and survivors agree that this 'bird-lady' had grabbed them, jumped out of the fifteenth story, and landed safely on the ground. Accounts of her are confused and disoriented, and some are gladly turning to the belief that witnesses were delusional after the ordeal. Any other news of her is to be turned into the police department immediately. Forty-three victims suffered burns, and the Jump City Hospital reported one death. In other news..."
"Flying woman, huh? They must be delusional," Karen commented. Kory was stunned into silence. The whole world knew. And now she was on the news. Roth Industries could find her, they knew she was in Jump City...she felt sick.
Jump City Hospital reported one death...her breathing came faster and faster. Nightwing! Nightwing was sent there! Was he okay? Was he the one who...
Karen looked over at Kory, and saw the girl shaking uncontrollably. "Kory? Kory? Hey, you okay? Listen, it's me, Karen! Come on, let's get on home, you need rest."
"Nightwing," Kory murmured quietly, her eyes filling with tears. She should have been there! Why did she have to be so tired? Why had that man attacked her afterwards? He must have started the fire, she should have seen that! She should have turned him in! She should have followed Nightwing's ambulance! She shouldn't have gone home! She shouldn't have cared about protecting her identity! So what if she was jailed, what if Nightwing was dead?
"What was that?" Karen asked her.
"I--I said, what a horrible thing," Kory lied, hugging herself. She would never forgive herself if Nightwing wasn't okay.
"Rest assured, my partner will not fail," said the thin, balding man sitting across from Tristan in the CEO's office. "He is capable of both brute force and cunning."
The corner of Tristan's mouth curled up in a snarl. "He had better not, or I'll kill him AND you, just like I did to that idiot Slade Wilson...Failure is not an option while dealing with this mutant, and mistakes will not be tolerated." To the other man's credit, he didn't even blink.
"There will be no need for that. Contact me when you make your decision." The man slid a card across the desk. Tristan read,
Jaques de Gaulle, Sc.D.
Monsieur Mallah Marseille
And there was nothing more. But he needed nothing, Tristan could track them down using their names only, frauds or otherwise. "Good. One question."
"What is that?"
"If he's got the smarts and muscle, what are you in this patnership?"
Jaques gave a small half-smile. "Who do you think taught him what he needed to know? Mr dear sir, I am the brain."
Kory accepted no calls at all for the rest of the day. Partly because she needed to save money for the phone bills, but also because she was in total mental distress over Nightwing's condition. She'd walked down to the hospital and asked for the name of the person who had died, but was told that it was confidential. She begged to at least know what the person was wearing, but recieved a funny look and figured out security was about to be called. She didn't even own a TV, so if something about him came up over the news, she would have no idea.
This found her back at the mall, sitting and staring at the TV screen she and Karen had rested in front of earlier. So far, there was nothing but repeated news. She was about ready to throw up, seeing the picture of Starfire yet again.
"Kory? What are you doing here?" a voice asked her. Kory turned and forced a smile.
"Hello, Dick."
He sat beside her on the bench, frowning. "You okay? What's going on? I was waiting for you at Gar's."
"I apologize, it is...quite a long story," said Kory. "I am merely tired. Resting." Turning back to the TV, she finally heard what she was looking for.
"...Earlier today, an escape was made from the Jump City Hospital. Believed to be an accomplice of the flying woman who saved so many from the fire on 135th Street, the man was hospitalized for smoke inhalation. A nurse found his bed empty at eleven o'clock this morning. Back to you, Bob..."
Her heart soared. She knew sitting here for two hours would pay off! She felt like hugging Dick, but his face looked abnormally blank. "Dick? Are you undamaged?"
He snapped out of his trance (or death glare to the TV screen, whichever it was) and smiled at her. "Oh, yeah. Just thinking." Kory probably hadn't noticed before, busy being distraught, but his face looked ashen, and he'd taken to clearing his throat quite a few times. Or was it covering a cough? "Don't worry about it, Kory. I've got a cold, 'tis the season, right?"
"For giving? Has someone presented you with this cold? I was unaware that Christmas was so early this year, is it not on December twenty-fifth?" Kory asked, confused. She was probably confusing Dick, too, so she stopped talking.
"Nightwing!" Starfire barreled into him, enveloping him in a back-breaking hug. Nightwing gasped for air, and Starfire let go quickly, watching in horror as he doubled over with coughs again. "Oh no...no, no, no, Nightwing, are you undamaged?" She slapped her hand over her mouth at her slip of language, but it was too late.
Nightwing's coughs began to subside, and he gazed at her strangely. "Yeah, I'm fine. Did you get home okay last night? I'm sorry I got carted off, I--"
"It's okay, you weren't..." she struggled out. Her practiced ease with slang all went down the drain at the first sign of an emotional strain. "You were hurt."
"What about that guy? The one who tried to..." Nightwing shuddered, entwining his gloved hand with hers. Starfire shook her head, feeling shaky again after seeing Nightwing look so weak.
"It was a small cut, m-my costume took most of the knife. It wasn't too bad." Nightwing pulled her into a much gentler hug.
"I was so worried... things like that hopefully don't happen around here too often. But that was insane..."
Before she knew it, Starfire found herself holding back tears. She didn't even bother trying to fix her language now. "The n-news said that s-someone had d-died...I thought it w-w-was you..." She buried her face in his chest, her shoulders shaking with her attempts to stifle her sobs.
"Shh...it's okay. I'm not going anywhere..." Nightwing kissed the tears off of her cheeks, but they kept right on coming. Her mask began to peel off, and she tried in vain to hold it up. Nightwing turned her around. "Fix it, Star, I won't look."
Starfire wiped her tears, pausing for a moment as the cool night air danced around her eyes. She considered, for a moment, turning around and peeling Nightwing's mask off as well. Sighing, she sniffled one last time, and put the mask back on.
Hope this was more of a fast-paced chapter...