Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: July 5, 2010
Time: 12:24 AM
Emmy pushed her ring to dig as fast as it could and smiled when the air changed from humid to frosty. She flew into the room and dropped her drill structure. Ten glowing blue cryogenic tubes stood in front of her. Hunter and Sage were in the two center ones.
Emmy rushed to them, punching through the frosted glass, freeing her family. Tears streamed down her face as she held her kids to her chest. They were both so small, with Hunter standing around 3 feet tall and Sage being slightly over four feet. They both had the black hair and grey eyes of their mother with their father's tan skin. They looked more like each other than like Emmy. She had gotten her mother's pale skin but her father's dark blonde hair and blue eyes. She often wished she had the same coloring as her siblings if only to avoid seeing his reflection in the mirror each morning.
"Please wake up, please wake up, please wake up," her desperate mantra was the only sound to be heard over the hum of the refrigerating generators. She felt a twitch in her arms. Sage's stormy eyes opened slowly.
Sage shrieked and slapped Emmy in the face trying to get out of her arms.
"Wait!" Emmy shifted Hunter in her left arm and touched her mask so that it disappeared. She felt her hair go back to its new slightly green state and her eyes return to their normal blue. "It's me, Sage," she whispered. "I'm back."
Sage stared at her with wide eyes. "We-I..I thought you were dead!" She launched into her older sister's arms and sobbed into Emmy's chest.
Sage's cries of "where were you" and "they told us you died" and "why didn't you come back sooner" were met only with Emmy's comforting murmurs and tight hug.
Hunter rubbed his eyes and made a strangled noise of joy when he saw Sage clinging to their sister. Emmy's tears returned when his tiny little hands roughly wrapped around her neck. For a minute, she felt that there must be a God and He must have felt He owed her one because she had never felt this much relief and joy in her entire life, and she couldn't see how it could be possible to be this happy in such a broken universe. But then she opened her watery eyes and saw the eight children still frozen. They all probably had families who wanted to see them again too. She still had a job to do.
She pulled away slightly from her siblings' hold and signed a quick message.
"I am so sorry I left. And I will explain everything later, but right now we need to go."
"What are you wearing?" Signed Sage when she noticed the glowing green suit on her sister.
Emmy smiled at her and moved her hands to reply. "To be explained later." She turned to Hunter. "Can you get your sister to stand in one spot for me?"
"Of course," he signed back seriously. Emmy beamed at them both, threw up a protective sphere around her world, and then turned to free the other children from their cages. She gathered the eight small bodies and put them in a circle. She dropped the sphere and turned to her baffled siblings.
Hunter moved his hands with furrowed brows, "Is Mom a hero now?"
"Looks like you've had a busy four months," Sage signed to her.
"You have no idea."
Emmy gently pushed her kids into the circle with the eight unconscious ones and made a bubble around them with a flat bottom. Then she let her mask return to her face and lifted her arms, sending the bubble crashing through the floors above. They were getting out of here.
They crashed through the floors easily until Emmy heard explosions and fighting above them. Gee, wonder who that is.
The bubble burst through the ground and she saw the Primary Color Crew of boys, now a foursome, fighting a giant grey thing. She overheard one of them call it Blockbuster.
Kid Flash hit Blockbuster with a high-speed jab and zipped away with some old skin on his gloved knuckles. "Got your nose," he teased. Ew. They looked like they had a handle on things, so she was about to leave when Hunter tugged at her knee. She looked at him.
"You're going to help them, right?"
She sighed. I am now. Emmy left the bubble, holding her right hand out toward it to make sure it stayed steady.
"I thought I heard you boys up here," she called cheekily over the battle. "Want a ride?" Her euphoria at finding her siblings safe put her in a better mood.
Aqualad smiled at her and dodged one of Blockbuster's attacks.
"That would be wonderful! Just give us one moment."
"This one and that one." Robin pointed to pillars. Superboy and Aqualad nodded before running to knock down the assigned supports.
Kid Flash avoided all of Blockbuster's blows, taunting him into hitting more pillars. Blockbuster missed the speedster again and Kid Flash chuckled. "Sorry. Try again!" He bolted to the bubble and vigorously waved at the slowly waking inhabitants. Hunter waved back enthusiastically while Emmy sent a large fist at Blockbuster when he got too close.
"Awe, they're so cute," Kid Flash cooed at the children fawning over him from their protective cage. "Looks like all ten of them are fine, too!" He ignored Emmy and flashed back into the fray.
Robin was drawing white X's on the floor. Aqualad used his water-bearers to create a puddle that Kid Flash skid through covering up the most recent X. Superboy punched Blockbuster into the water. Robin yelled for them to clear the area and electrocuted the beast. Huh, not a bad plan.
Emmy turned both hands to reinforcing the bubble structure as more of the ceiling fell onto it. This building wasn't going to stand much longer. Emmy saw more chalk X's on a few pillars and sent large boulders to crush them. This increased the falling debris and she shot up a green ceiling to keep the crumbling ruins off their heads.
"Thanks!" Robin's disembodied voice yelled from wherever he had jumped.
"No problem," she called over her shoulder, moving the bubble out of the way of a falling pillar. "You wanna hurry up some?"
A few bombs exploded and debris covered Blockbuster's body. The boys were struggling to make their way towards her barrier while avoiding the falling wall. She sent tentacles to grab all four of them while making the bubble structure big enough for the new members. She groaned with exertion and threw the boys into the structure right before the rest of Robin's bombs went off. Emmy fell to one knee, a bead of sweat dripping down her face, arms still raised out to her sides. With a final grunt she dropped the ceiling structure and sent the bubble out into the cool air of the night.
They landed on top of the rubble of Cadmus Laboratory and she let the structure disappear, falling onto her ass with a tired laugh. Hunter and Sage ran to her, both signing how amazing that was and a million questions. She grinned at her kids, vaguely aware of the boys in the background congratulating each other and showing Superboy the moon.
Emmy looked up and her smile fled her face as silhouettes approached in the night. Justice League. "Time to go," she signed to her kids before picking them up and flying to her motel without looking back at the sidekicks.
Her quick escape meant that she was not there for the boys' stand against the Justice League. More importantly, she missed Robin walking up to Batman and saying, "I need to talk to you. The newest Green Lantern is back on Earth."
Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: July 5, 2010
Time: 7:33 AM
The motel room Emmy loathed for the past three nights was suddenly her favorite place in the entire universe. Hunter was jumping on the bed while holding Monsieur Poulpe, and Sage was clutching her mint polaroid like it was a lifeline. They had stared at her with rapt attention as she explained everything that happened to her after she stole the money from Bobby five months ago. They had been talking non-stop since she rescued them, and, thankfully, they were too enthralled by having a Green Lantern sister to be angry at her for leaving them.
She told them about helping She-Tak, waking up in Oa, her training, the history of the GL Corps, and answered all the questions they had throughout the process. Including Sage's snide, "So, I guess you don't hate all superheroes anymore?"
Emmy shrugged. "No rule that I can't hate myself!" A short tickle war had commenced.
The conversation turned serious once she mentioned coming home to find them and seeing Mr. Ramirez's empty apartment. They told her that for the first month or two after she left, Edgar had insisted she was coming back. His depression after the loss of Mirella numbed him, but he was still there mentally. But then the hospital bills showed up instead of Emmy, and the money disappeared by June. Next thing they knew they were "taken for ice cream", met a strange man behind an alleyway, and then woke up in her arms in the lab.
Emmy was thankful that they didn't remember anything else, but her jaw twitched with thinly veiled rage after hearing that Edgar lured them out for ice cream and sold them instead. She should have killed him before leaving Bludhaven.
Hunter's grumbling tummy brought her back to the present. She exhaled her fury and smiled at her kids.
"You guys hungry?" She signed. They nodded.
"I'll go get us food from the buffet," she powered down her ring, just then realizing that she was still in uniform. Sage and Hunter had each spent an hour poking, prodding, and trying to pull at the suit, so she had just left it on. Her black outfit replaced her uniform. It was a little too slashed and dirty, even for this motel.
"I'm going to shower real quick then I'll go," she looked at Sage. "Find something for you two to watch on the tv?"
Sage flipped through channels and signed that she wanted a bagel with cream cheese. Hunter wanted her to "give him a waffle or give him death." Hopefully the two-star buffet had waffles then.
Emmy left the room ten minutes later in light blue jeans, a grey "Raise your hand if you believe in telepathy" t-shirt, and her aqua converse with her wet hair in a ponytail. She had left Hunter's and Sage's clothes, and most of hers, back in their old apartment. They couldn't go back there, so they would just have to get new clothes later.
Even in the dingy motel, she was smiling as she hopped down the steps. Yes, the money was gone, and yes, she had no idea where she was going to go from here, but her siblings were alive and healthy and that was enough for now. She had adequate cash with her to rent this room for two more weeks. That would give them time to regroup and make a plan.
Emmy was about to turn the corner into the lobby when she saw the reflection of a gun in the corner of her eye. She halted and flattened against a door. The concierge desk was behind her through the wall, and the continental breakfast room was across from the desk. No way to get to it from her current position without just walking across the lobby. She looked into the reflection of a metal cleaning cart. There were seven men at the front desk. One was holding up a picture she couldn't see to the druggy teenager manager of this hellhole.
"Have you seen this girl?" The guy holding the picture had a rough voice and she recognized him immediately as Vinny. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Shit. She had kind of forgotten about the Bobby problem when she had been tracking her sibling's down. Some of those Lazy Eye guys must have recognized her. "She's been beating up our guys all the way down the coast. We just need to talk to her. No harm, no foul."
"I'm telling you, man," came the slow reply of the manager. "I have no idea who that chick is." Emmy almost relaxed and started heading back to the stairs. "But there's a girl who kinda looks like her on the fourth floor. For $100 I'll tell you what room she's in."
Emmy stopped in her tracks. That conniving little bastard. Her kids were on the fourth floor so no way in hell she's letting any of Bobby's people up there. She glanced at the cleaning cart again. Towels. Sheets. Can of Hairspray. A lighter. Scissors. Okay. She could do this.
The goons were threatening to kill the manager if he didn't tell them the room number for free but weed was giving him a relaxed and misplaced courage. Emmy pulled the cart closer with her foot. She put the scissors in her back pocket with the lighter and palmed the hairspray. Three. She took a deep breath. Two. She released it. One. She jumped out from behind the wall and sent the cart flying toward Bobby's men. It hit one of them, but she was already darting behind the dirty couch. Six guns started shooting at her barrier. She flicked on the lighter. Four more shots and they would all be reloading. Wait...and...now!
She flipped over the couch and shot the hairspray through the fire making a homemade flamethrower. The men shrieked. One went down screaming and the other five jumped behind the desk with the manager. She grabbed the fallen one's gun and slid behind a pillar right as they started shooting again. I hope Sage can't hear any of this. She thought about calling her ring, but she didn't have the focus right now and she also didn't want to risk any of Bobby's men finding out that she had it in the first place.
"Hey Emerald!" Vinny shouted through the brief moment of silence. "Glad to see you're not dead. We had our doubts." She rolled her eyes at his exaggerated New Jersey accent. "You know, it's funny! Five years watching your fights, and you never once mentioned that you had two kids," Emmy's stomach dropped and she banged her head into the pillar behind her in frustration. She had gone to great lengths to never let anyone in the underground know about the kids. Well except for Akio but he wouldn't have- "and what's even more funny about it is that we never woulda known if you hadn't started beating the shit out of all our colleagues and demanding they tell you where the frozen kids were! But everyone knows you're back in town now! So, I'm sure bobby will get to meet them soon enough."
Her stomach dropped again, but her lip curled with disgust. She could feel one coming up on her from the right, so she opened the scissors onto an impromptu throwing star and sent it flying into the guy's shoulder. He clutched it yelping while Vinny continued forward without paying attention to his hurt buddy.
"Only ten kids on that list, Baby. Not hard to see which ones look like you, so why don't you just stop fighting and come in with us nice and easy."
She could hear Vinny approaching from her left. She darted out and shot him in his right thigh. He howled with pain. She grabbed him to her to use as a human shield against his men.
"Who knows their names?" She hissed in his crying ear.
"Just me!" He wailed. "I haven't reported to Bludhaven yet, I swear!"
She growled and knocked him unconscious with the butt of her pistol. She backflipped into the buffet room and turned over a table. Leaning on her right knee with her left foot firmly on the ground, she aimed at the concierge desk over the table edge.
"Vinny's unconscious now, dumbasses," she called to the four men huddled behind the desk. "Slide your guns to me on the floor, then come out with your hands up and no one else has to get hurt."
She heard four guns slide across the carpet. "Got any more?"
"No," came a feeble reply. Of course, Justin, Vinny's even dumber cousin, is here too.
"That wasn't a very convincing no, Justin," she chastised.
The wind changed behind her. A small black oval was thrown at her from the desk and landed by her table. A grenade.
"Fuck!" She dove away from the bomb and a shadow collapsed upon it. Her jaw dropped. Batman! There was a puff of smoke from underneath his chest and then he was flipping in a blaze of glory toward the remaining four conscious members of Bobby's group. All seven of the men were incapacitated and tied up in a back-to-back circle in under a minute.
The Batman re-entered the buffet room to see Emerald East standing at the counter next to the waffle cooker and a plate holding a cream cheese everything bagel. Hunter's waffle had another 40 seconds of cook time left.
"'Sup," she nodded at the Bat while leaning on the counter with both hands. "I know I'm screwed anyway, so I figured I'd go ahead and get my kids their breakfast."
If she had been less depressed by the situation, she might have noticed the way the Bat's lips twitched upwards for a second at the brazen display of moxie.
After she collected Hunter, Sage, and their things, a black bag was placed over each of their heads and Batman took them to whatever cave place he desired. She assumed it would be a cave thing. She couldn't really picture him in a non-cave location but that was more a brain ramble than a real concern. What was going to happen to them? How much did he know? Was he going to send her to jail? Emmy wished he had knocked her out, so she didn't have so much time to think as they traveled to their destination.
The car stopped and she got a shot of something in her arm. Her vision blurred underneath the sack. And people say wishes don't come true.
