Thank you again to everyone who reviewed! I've given Omen's some of a back story in this chapter, she'll get more don't worry. Brainy isn't really in this chapter either it's more getting the ball rolling for the rest of the story so sorry if it's boring. Anyways, please enjoy.
Pizza had been far more awkward then Omen had expected, not so much for the other team members, they were chatting away with each other reminiscing on past adventures and making jokes, the real awkwardness was between her and Brainiac 5 or 5.1 as he now went by. To his credit Brainy did his best to act like nothing was wrong, but whenever he and Omen made eye contact it was immediately followed by a glance at the clock over their booth or Brainy asking one of the other team-mates a stupid question. Needless to say the night was exhausting, Omen almost wished she was fighting criminals again, at least then she could have something to take her frustration out on.
The moment they got back to the headquarters Omen headed straight for her room, she needed to be alone to calm down, she almost made it too until Bouncing Boy caught sight of her.
"Hey Omen, you're not going to stay up with us?" Said girl froze just outside her door, taking a deep breath she put on the best fake smile she could and turned around.
"Nah, I had fun at the pizza place but I'm a bit tired. Plus I haven't had a chance to meditated today, you know what happens when I forget to do that." She began inching into her room hoping Bouncy wouldn't try to make conversation.
"Don't remind me, we never actually got the new wall the same color as the rest." He rubbed the back of his head remembering when Omen first came to the legion, she was in a crummy mood and something Lightning Lad said set her off. He ended up through the wall in the main hall and Omen's place on the team was brought into question, luckily Saturn Girl taught her how to control her sudden bursts of anger through meditation and from then on Omen never went a day without it. Whenever her anger got the best of her, Omens powers tended to take on a life of their own.
"Yup, well anyways I'll see ya tomorrow Bouncy." with that Omen shut the door, she felt a bit rude but what she had told Bouncy wasn't a total lie, she really did feel like she needed a good long meditation. She walked over to a corner in her room with some candles and with a sweep of her hand had them all giving off a dark glow. Placing herself in the middle of the candles she sat down and cleared her mind of all thoughts.
A few minutes later a dark blue aura began surrounding her body, after about a half hour passed the dark blue started to change color. Once it was almost white Omen broke her concentration and the now pale aura vanished. She let out a shiver and stood up, she still had no idea why that happened, at first she thought that everyone did that when they meditated but it turns out only her. Maybe it was the nature of her powers, she controlled dark matter so that gloomy mood usually associated itself with her but it never became visible. Well whatever, Omen stopped trying to figure her powers out a while ago,now she just accepted whatever they did.
Taking a deep breath she stretched and walked over to her wardrobe taking out a half shirt and sweats. She changed into them and threw her uniform to the right of her dresser, at the moment Omen's only goal was to crawl into her bed and sleep, but before she got a chance to even take a step in her bed's direction there was a knock at her door. 'Maybe if I ignore it they'll think I'm asleep and leave' Omen contemplated and began to tip-toe over to her bed.
"Omen I know you're awake, I can sense your mind." It was Saturn Girl, great the one person who could ruin her plan.
"One moment, I'm coming." Omen sulked over to the door and let her friend in, trying not to seem too frustrated with her. "Can it wait until tomorrow Imra, I'm really tired."
"It can, but I thought you might want to talk about what happened at dinner tonight." Saturn Girl placed her hands on her hips and waited for a reply.
"What happened at dinner?" Omen raised an eyebrow and crossed her hands
"Between you and Brainy, I thought you two would be happier to see each other but neither of you said three words."
"Oh, that, well we talked before dinner, I guess we didn't have anything else to say." Omen looked away from Saturn Girl and walked over to her bed. Hopefully if she couldn't see Omen's eyes she wouldn't know somethings wrong.
"Did you guys break up? Because that's the only thing I can think of that would make things that awkward." Imra followed Omen over to her bed.
"No, I mean, I don't think we're going to be a couple anytime soon. But we definitely didn't talk about a relationship."
"Then what? I know I'm prying but I can sense the tension between you two without even using my powers. I just thought I could help."
"I appreciate it, but I don't think you can, not unless you want to wipe Brainy's memory of three years ago." Omen sat down in her bed and touched her mechanical eye.
"He still feels guilty? But no-one mentioned what happened three years ago, and it's not like we made him feel unwelcomed."
"No, it's not that, well, it kind of is, before dinner I went to talk to him and he asked about my eyes."
Saturn Girl then understood, after the battle when the legion found her under some rubble she had been close to death. If Brainy found out about that then he'd never forgive himself.
"I didn't tell him too much about it, just that I lost my eye sight in a battle and Shrinking Violet helped me get it back. But he's a smart guy, he figured rest out himself."
"He tends to do that, well did you talk to him about it when he figured it out?"
"I didn't really talk to him, when he figured it out I said yes and we stood there for a few minutes then I told him I was going to go get ready to leave and he said sure."
"Maybe you should talk to him, you know, tell him you forgive him and still want to be his friend...or more." Imra smiled when she spoke the last part
"Yeah, maybe. I'm not one to bring people down with my emotions. I'll probably just take him somewhere and force him to talk to me." Omen smiled into her lap then before Saturn Girl could say another word she let out a yawn. "Anyways, like I said, I'm really tired. But good talk."
"Right, well seeing as there hasn't been a real emergency in months how about you take the day off tomorrow." Saturn Girl said walking out of Omen's room.
"Maybe I will. Thanks Saturn Girl." Omen waved good-bye to her friend then burrowed under her covers, waiting for sleep to put an end to this frustrating day.
The next day came way too fast in Omen's opinion, she tried to force herself to go back to sleep but after an hour she gave up and got out of her bed. She grabbed up her legion uniform and went to the bathroom for a nice hot shower.
Before she stepped into the water Omen took a minute to look herself over in the mirror. She never has been a self conscious girl, but after yesterday all she could see were her eyes. Her left was glazed over and staring off into oblivion and her right mechanical eye gave off a slight glow. It looked almost evil in her opinion, there was no pupil, unless you counted the gears in the center of it which she didn't. The scares around her face had faded over the years but were still plenty visible, most of them were burns, but as you went down her neck they began to turn into cuts and stabs. One nasty one in particular went down the entire right side of her back and wrapped over to her stomach down her left thigh, this one wasn't from the battle with Brainiac 5, if anything the story behind it was worse. Despite the fact that no-one on the legion ever pointed out her wounds, Omen felt ugly, who wanted someone who looked like a rag doll? The idea never bothered her before because there wasn't anyone she was trying to impress, but now that Brainy came back she felt like she wanted to hide her body in a potato sack. Her uniform didn't help either, the top barely covered her midrift and there was no back to it except for the ties on the neck, upper, and lower back part. At least her bottoms covered her, they were baggy black training pants with red seams. Maybe she should wear her civilian clothes today and instead of attempting to catch up with Brainy she could go into town.
Finally after realizing the mirror had steamed over Omen took her shower and replaced her uniform with stretchy red pants, a light pink shirt and brown jacket with matching brown boots. Instead of letting her black hair hang loose like she usually did she wrapped it up into a short pony-tail while still allowing her red-dyed bangs to swoop over her left eye. A quick glance in her vanity mirror and she grabbed her wallet and made her way to the teleportation pads.
Omen was teleported into the more crime dominated part of New Metropolis. She casually walked down the streets ignoring the homeless people and thugs hanging around their corners. Eventually she came to a small house that seemed to be on it's last legs. She knocked on the door and waited patiently for an answer, soon the door opened to reveal a young girl who couldn't have been more then 12.
"Tilly!" She yelled and wrapped her arms around Omen's waist. Omen tensed at the use of her real name but returned the hug nonetheless. The girl took a step back and gasped "Woah, what happened to your eyes?" she winced taking a good look at Omen's new pink orb.
"Long story Lucy. Is your mom home?" Tilly asked as she entered the home.
"Yeah, she's in the back watching TV." Lucy ran in front of Tilly and called to her mother to come out and say hi. A few minutes later a women a bit taller than Tilly wearing baggy sweats and a t-shirt came out holding a baby in her arms.
"Oh my god! Tilly? How long has it been big sis! Oh god, what happened to your eyes?" Despite her young, graceful features the girl sounded as if she'd been a smoker her entire life.
"Four years Nina, you have no idea how busy I've been since I joined the legion, and the eye's a long story, trust me." Tilly smiled and walked over to her sister giving her a quick hug then looked down at the baby.
"Hows he doing? In you're holo-cards you said you weren't sure if he'd make it" She asked holding the small child's hand
"He's better, but he still has trouble breathing at night." Tilly's sister gave the baby to her and walked over to the small sofa in the center of the living room clearing the toys from it.
"At least he's not passing out anymore. So what's new Nina?" Omen walked over to her sister and took a seat next to her.
"Lu' just got accepted into some dance academy, so as long as she does good her school is covered. I just got a job at a cafe a ways from here."
"That's good."
"Yup, it's a good paying job too, it won't be long before I can move to a better house." Tilly smiled at her sister, she loved her friends at the legion, but due to all the chaos of dealing with Imperiax and cleaning up after the incident with brainiac 5 she missed out a lot on her only family's life. "I'm glad to hear that, hey I have all day to myself, why don't you get dressed and we can all go to a movie or something?"
"Sounds good. Lucy get dressed we're going out for a bit!" Nina yelled at her daughter who was in the kitchen messing with an insect.
"K!" Lucy yelled back and ran for her room.
Soon Nina had on her nicest pair of black jeans and a purple blouse, her long black hair was combed out and left hanging just above her lower back. Lucy wore her light brown hair the same as her mother's and was presently shoving some shoes on her brother.
"Where are we going?" She asked after successfully getting the fussing baby to stop kicking his shoes off.
"I don't know, out." Tilly shrugged and grabbed the boy from Lucy, they were all about to leave when a loud boom came just outside Nina's house.
"What the hell?" Omen gave the boy back to Lucy and went to look out the door.
In the middle of the street a group of men were surrounding a man who was currently grabbing his head and rolling on the ground. Omen was about to step in when she saw the gold badges around the group's necks, bounty hunters.
"Ugh, really? We need bounty hunters around here now?"
"They've been here for about a week, they keep yelling about big money but so far they've only taken in small time criminals like that guy." Nina explained glaring at the group of men who now had the bleeding guy cuffed.
"What big money? The legion hasn't gotten info on any big time criminals that need to be taken down."
"I don't know I've been avoiding them, the last thing I need is one of those pigs recognizing me, or worse yet, recognizing my relation to you." Omen narrowed her eyes thinking back her days before she joined the legion. Those were dark times for her and her sister. Shaking her head Omen closed the front door and took a deep breath. "OK, I'm going to open this door again and we are all going to walk to the ice-cream shop. Don't look at them and we should be fine." Tilly calmly re-opened the door and she and her sister and her family began to walk into town. Once they were a safe way from the group of men Tilly dropped her guard and started up a conversation with her sister.
"How many have you seen in the past week?" She asked grabbing a hold of Lucy's hand.
"If I had to guess, almost all of them."
"Huh, the one time I get a day off and it ends up being the biggest thing in four months." Omen groaned, she just knew there would be a mission about this.
"It's not about you so don't worry, when I first saw them in my neighborhood I thought they were looking for leads, but it turns out they have no idea that you're even alive." Nina reassured her sister, Tilly smiled back then changed the subject.
"Hey Lu' what kind of ice-cream you want?"
A few hours later Omen was giving hugs to her small family.
"It better not be another four years before you visit again."
"It won't I promise." Tilly waved and headed out a bit from town, once she was a good distance she pushed a small button on her legion belt she hid under her shirt and within seconds was back in Legion HQ. Omen made her way to her room to change back into her uniform, but stopped when she saw Saturn Girl talking on her COM.
"Hey Saturn Girl, I have a quick question." Omen waited for her to hang up on her call then continued. "While I was on my day off I noticed a bunch of bounty hunters, is there something going on?" Omen placed her hands on her hips and waited for an answer.
"Not that I know of, but if there's a lot of them then I assume we will soon."
"Yeah, I guess. Well it's just their making a lot of people nervous."
"I'll look into it, now go change I want to brief you on a mission for tomorrow."
"Yes ma'am!" Omen fake saluted then took off to her room. She pulled on her bottoms and tied on her top, she let her hair down and tugged on her grey and red fingerless gloves that went up to her elbows. On her way out of her room she yanked her red feet pads on and dashed to the briefing room. Once inside she saw she wasn't the only one being briefed, Timber Wolf, Lighting Lad, Cosmic Boy, Phantom Girl, Triplicate Girl, and Bouncing Boy were also sitting around the room looking more disturbed than she'd ever seen them before. In the center of the heroes was Brainiac 5.1, Looking far more white than green at the moment.
"Woah, is this going to be a tough mission or what?" Omen joked, everyone turned to her but no one laughed.
"Omen, remember when I said I'd tell you if I found anything out on the bounty hunters?" Saturn Girl said walking up in front of the room.
"Yeah it was like 30 minutes ago. What did you find out?" Omen began to get a bit worried, everyone was looking at her now, did they know?
"We found this a few minutes ago, the briefing of your mission was cancelled to show it to core members. Omen swallowed her growing fear and walked over to get a better look at the screen, what she saw almost made her fall to the ground.
Right there on the screen, under most wanted was Brainiac 5.1. The bounty on him brought him up to the top five. Omen looked over at Brainy trying to think of what to say, he looked like he was about to run out of the room. Instead she turned her attention to Saturn Girl.
"So how are we going to fix this?"