I hope you like this chapter. It wasn't what I had originally wrote, so I don't know how well what I added goes with what I already had. Anyway, please review.
It was 8:30 the next evening when Mallory's comm buzzed in her ear. Because the teens' secret identities would never come into contact with each other if they weren't superheroes,
Batman had forbidden them from exchanging numbers to keep people from getting suspicious, so they had to contact each other through comms. Mallory clicked the earpiece.
"Inferno here," she said, copying the way the team signed on to their comms.
"Hey, Mallory, you need to get to the cave. Batman and Robin found something they think we can use," Artemis told her.
Mallory raced downstairs and told her parents that she might not be home that night, then dashed out the door and was at the phone booth in five minutes, zetaing to the cave. The team was in a semicircle around Batman and a holographic screen, and there were computer files up on the screen. Mallory joined her friends around the screen to get a better look.
"It says here that the Regent authorized the ship that John Corben sailed to Metropolis as a 'peaceful diplomacy trip', but he made sure that it was military grade with a cargo hold big enough to fit these measurements," Batman said. Numbers came up on the screen. "These are the exact dimensions of the battle suit." A picture of the battle suit came onto the screen with it's dimensions on the side of it. "A recorded phone conversation was also on the Regent's computer. In it, the Regent refuses to pay for the suit because he never got it, and Luthor says that the deal was for him to let Corben steal the suit, no more. This, along with the email Robin found, should be enough to keep the president from starting relations with Kaznia, and enough to put Luthor away for a long time. The mission was a success. Good work, team."
Mallory felt her chest swell at the praise. She couldn't believe that they had really gotten enough evidence to finally put Lex Luthor behind bars.
Batman left, and the team turned to each other.
"Well, what are we gonna do?" Artemis asked.
While the team was thinking about what to do to celebrate their victory, Wally's phone buzzed. He pulled it out and turned to the team. "Sorry, I have to go. Captain Cold and his crew broke out of Iron Heights. I've got to go help Flash get them back in."
Mallory looked at the team with a grin. "We could go, too. I've never fought outside of Metropolis."
The team looked at each other and seemed to reach the unanimous decision that they would. They went off to get into their costumes and met each other by the zeta tube. Kid Flash typed in the coordinates, and soon they were standing in a park that was both burning and frozen solid.
"Where's Flash?" Superboy asked, surveying the scene.
"I don't know, but there's the gang," Kid Flash said, pointing to a group of five people walking towards them.
When the group got within hearing distance, Wally turned to the team. "Guys, introductions. The guy in the leather jacket is Heat Wave, the guy in the eskemo jacket is Captain Cold, the lady in the eskemo jacket is Mrs. Cold, the girl in the eskemo jacket is Major Glacier, and the boy in the eskemo jacket is Corporal Cool."
"Enough with the pleasantries," Cold said, his voice slow and deliberate, "Let's just finish this." He turned to his wife and said, "You know, I thought I'd get the kid and make the Flash leave me and my operations alone in Central. Now, I'll have all of these kids, and I can start operating in all of their cities, too." The lady grinned widely.
The team looked at each other and Robin grinned, their signal to attack.
Mallory jumped over to Heatwave. He shot at her with his gun, and she collected the fire and held it in her hands. She looked at him and smiled, then shot the stream back at him. He dove out the way, but the sleeve of his jacket caught on fire. "You know what they say," she said, walking towards him. "You play with fire, you get burned." She brought a hand down on a pressure point and he went out cold. She put the fire on his sleeve out before turning to see how the rest of the team was doing.
Miss Martian and Artemis were fighting back to back against the combined efforts of Mrs. Cold and Major Glacier, with Superboy trying to help. Kid Flash and Robin were fighting Captain Cold and seemed to have it under control.
Then, she saw Aqualad fighting Corporal Cool. The villain managed to get the upper hand and froze Kalder's legs to the ground. Mallory hurried to her leader.
"Aqualad!" she called. Kalder turned to her in time to see her ignite a fireball, intending to melt the ice and free him.
"Never mind me, go after him," he told her, pointing to Cool running down the street. Mallory flamed up and flew after him. She caught up to him a few blocks away and landed in front of him.
"What, you're abandoning your family?" she asked, her powers ready to come out.
The boy, probably sixteen or seventeen, smiled and cocked his cold gun. "That's the first thing Pop taught us. Look out for yourself first." He aimed the gun at her and pulled the trigger.
Mallory shot fire at the stream, melting the ice before it reached her. She pushed harder, and her fire started climbing towards Cool. After a few minutes, it hit the gun, melting the tip of the barrel. Mallory tilted her head expectantly, and the boy dropped the gun and held his hands up.
"Well, I guess there's just one thing left to do," he said.
"Oh, yeah? And what's that?" Mallory asked, stepping closer to put cuffs on him.
"Run," he said, and started running down the street towards a warehouse. Mallory followed him in, but the place was pitch black inside. She raised a hand to light a fire, but Cool's voice echoed through the place, saying, "I wouldn't. Heatwave loves fire, and he's got enough kerosine and gas to light up a whole block."
Mallory quickly closed her fist, her eyes returning to black. She wasn't willing to risk starting a fire that big.
"You know, you're trapped in here. All I have to do is wait at the door for you to get bored or hungry and come on out."
Cool laughed. "Good luck with that," he said.
Mallory moved towards the voice, then she heard sounds of a struggle and a familiar cackle. A flashlight went on and Mallory saw Robin and Kid Flash with Corporal Cool between them.
"Thanks, but I had that," she said. "Yeah, but we got ours already, so we just figured we'd help you out a little," Robin replied. Mallory rolled her eyes and they left the warehouse, which she realized did have what Cool had said it did.
Mallory stayed at the cave with the team until two in the morning when Wally and Artemis decided to go home. She waited for Artemis to zeta off, then moved to punch in her own coordinates. She glanced at her gloved hand. She was still in full costume and she didn't feel like going back to her house. Besides, she'd told her parents that she wouldn't be back until morning.
She punched in the coordinates for Metropolis and stood in front of the scanner. The light sucked her away from the cave. She appeared in an old picture booth in an alley.
She looked around when she got out. The alley was pretty dark and there were overflowing trash bins lining the walls, so she assumed that she was near the docks.
She flew to the rooftops for a better look around and smiled. She was by the docks, and the air smelled faintly of salt now that she was away from the pungent smells of the alley.
She wandered aimlessly from rooftop to rooftop, hoping for some action. She'd been away from Metropolis for a week now, and she didn't need anyone from the school, especially Jen, putting the absences of both Mallory and the fire vigilante together.
Besides, she thought with a smile, it was a nice night for flying.
She soared over the city, the cool night air tickling her bare arms and blowing her hair back gently. She scanned the ground for signs of trouble, but everything seemed normal.
Finally, in the business district, she found what she was looking for. A man with a gun holding another man against the wall of a Lexcorp building.
She flew down lightly. "Hey!" she called.
The man grabbed his victim in a headlock and held the gun to his head. Mallory immediately extinguished the fireball in her hand and put her hands up, looking anxiously at the gun. She wished it was aimed at her. She couldn't risk heating the gun and it going off when it was aimed at the victim.
"Back up!" the man with the gun ordered. She did as he said, taking short steps back towards the street.
She suddenly stopped cold. The street was deserted. Something wasn't right. This street was always busy. She had never seen it at any time of the day or night not crowded with pedestrians and cars speeding along the road. The city never slept, especially not in the heart of the business district, but the closest sign of life was the normal city sounds coming from a few blocks away.
"I said back up!" the man yelled again, clearly not worried about being heard. He shoved the gun into the victim's mouth while the victim quietly sobbed in terror. Mallory backed up more. The man with the gun started to back up into the building.
When she couldn't see them anymore, Mallory moved to follow. She was stopped by a sharp pang on the back of her head and she slumped to the pavement, unconscious.
Mallory shifted her head, and her cheek scratched something hard. She frowned slightly. She didn't remember leaving anything hard on her bed. Then again, her bed was a lot harder than it should have been. She had a slight headache, barely even registering considering the tolerance for pain she'd built up. She tried to move her arm, but her wrist pulled against something coarse.
She bolted up, fully awake now as she realized that her hands were bound together behind her back.
"Well, I see our guest is finally awake," a calm, slow, collected voice said. The deep voice might have been soothing if she hadn't been tied up at the feet of the person. As it was, it had the opposite effect.
She blinked in the dim light coming from a lamp on the desk. When her eyes adjusted, she started to take in her surroundings. She was in some sort of office, there was a large desk and chair and a few chairs scattered around the room. The walls were a giant fish tank, and there was a dark figure swimming in it. The wall behind the desk was a wall-to-ceiling window.
There were four goons standing over her. She recognized two of them as the man with the gun and the victim. The victim seemed fully recovered and he was currently aiming a gun at her head. She glared at him. There was gratitude for you.
"Now, I don't believe we've had a proper introduction," the man with the calm voice said. He stepped in front of the light with slow, deliberate moves. He had on a dark suit, and his bald head duly reflected the light coming from the lamp. He knelt in front of her, his voice thick with false courtesy.
"I'm Lex Luthor," he said, his face expectant. Mallory simply stared at him, giving him no reaction at all.
"Well, I see you aren't surprised by my presence here. I suppose your friend Superman has told you about me."
Again, he got nothing from his prisoner, not even a glint of recognition. This seemed to shake Luthor's confidence a little, but he soon got over it.
"Now, I've been doing a little, well, let's call it research on you," Luthor said, standing up to his full height in front of her. "I know how you work. You never make the arrest, you always let Superman get the credit for the captures. Now, surely you can't be all right with his getting all the glory for your hard work. I can fix that, if you like. I can make sure that the people of Metropolis know exactly who is responsible for keeping them safe at night." Lex turned to her, expecting her to show some sign of falter, something, but all he got was the same expressionless stare.
"Nothing to say?" he asked. Mallory didn't respond. "Say something!" Lex snapped, his voice like thunder in the silence of the room. Mallory took her time.
"As long as the people are safe, I really don't care who they think is doing it." She tilted her head and let a small smirk cross her face, adding, "After all, isn't that something that Lexcorp says it does? Keep the street safe? Too bad the people don't know that you're keeping them safe for criminals like yourself."
Lex smiled at her comment, but she noticed his eyes hardened.
"Well, so our new hero has guts, coming up here and threatening me. I own Metropolis, little girl. You'll never be able to convince the people of this city that I'm anything less than an angel.
"Mallory just stared. She thought about the case Batman had on him and a small, confident smile came to her face, which seemed to irritate Lex.
"Listen, little girl, I had you brought up here to offer you a place with me. I'd give you more money and power than any kid your age could ever dream of. But since you don't seem interested, let me show you something."
He pulled out a computer from his desk drawer and pulled something up on the screen, then set it in front of her. It took a minute for Mallory to realize what she was looking at, then she realized it was a picture of her, Artemis, Miss Martian, Robin, and Kid Flash on the way to the bioship from the Regent's mansion. Her eyes wide and slightly, she couldn't help it.
Lex clicked something and the screen moved to a picture of the fire she started at the Lexcorp base on her first mission with the team. There were pictures of her flying just above the treeline, taken from what looked like the roof of the base. There were also pictures from before the fire, of when she had been walking to the site through the woods. Then, there was a picture of her passed out at the end of the mission, with Kid Flash leaning over her.
"Yes, I've known that you were on the little team of sidekicks since you made your first appearance with them," Lex said, collecting the laptop and putting it back in the desk.
"So, now that you know how far my reach is," he said, his composure back, "I'd like to tell you that I won't make this offer again. And I'd like to know just why you were trespassing in the Regent of Kaznia's mansion."
"Wow, you must be nervous to bring me up here and make me an offer. What's the matter, Lex? You worried about what we found in Kaznia? Or did you really think that I would betray my team and my city to be put on your payroll, and, what, follow orders from the idiot who couldn't even get someone to pay him what he was owed?"
Lex clenched his teeth and Mallory put the smile back on her face. "Oh, yeah, I know about you, too. I haven't seen you win against Superman or the League yet, and you want me to leave the winning side for money? It's not gonna happen, Luthor."
Lex sighed and put his arms behind his back.
"Well, then, I suppose I have no use for you. Except perhaps, as an example."
He snapped his fingers and all the men cocked their guns simultaneously. Mallory's heart started pounding, but she forced a laugh through her lips and was pleased when it actually sounded convincing.
"Well, I'm glad you are finding something to laugh at in your final moments, little girl."
Mallory got control of her laughter and sighed.
"Oh, I am finding this very funny. You just got through telling me that you know I'm on a team of superheroes and that I work with Superman, and you still feel safe enough to kill me. Go ahead, pull the trigger. Superman will come for you personally, and my team will make sure that enough sticks to you to make sure you go down. Maybe they'll even pin something on your little team. What do you call yourselves? The Light? That's a bit backwards, considering you work from the shadows."
Lex turned to face her. The calm smile on his face was unnerving.
"Little girl, they'll never be able to pin anything on me."
His eyes turned to the men and he nodded. Mallory burned through her binds and sprange to her feet. She found that the combat training had paid off as she fought the goons. She had taken two out before they knew what had happened.
The other two were prepared, though. She eyed them, adrenaline pumping and instinct telling her to use her fire. She calmed the storm inside of her and tightened her fists. The first one to rush her was the victim from the street. She sidestepped at the last second and the man ran into Lex's desk with a loud thud. The second man was the one who had the gun on the victim's head. When he ran to her she spun kicked, landing a hard blow on his jaw.
The victim had recovered by now and started to come back to the fight. They both lunged at her, and she ducked. They crashed into each other. Mallory smiled when she realized that the gunman was out cold. The victim was struggling to get to his feet. She walked over and quickly brought her foot down on a pressure point in his neck and the man dropped back down.
"Mercy," Lex said, and Inferno felt a sharp pain between her shoulder blades, the force of the blow sending her stumbling forward.
She turned to face her adversary and saw Lex's bodyguard standing in a fighting position, one arm opened into a gun. Mallory grinned and struck a pose of her own, then she noticed that the sky outside the window was getting light. She needed to get home. She conjured two fireballs and aimed them at Lex and Mercy.
"I'd love to chat some more, but I've got to run," she said and she backed towards the window. She opened it and was about to leave out when she turned.
"Oh, and Luthor?"
He looked at her, the calm expression plastered on his face.
"It's Inferno," she said with a smile, then dove out the window. She caught herself mid-air and started flying for the nearest zeta tube. She needed to get home.