It was night by the time that everything at the Mountain had wrapped up, with plans made and orders given. As such, by the time Diana and Donna found themselves hovering over the New Jersey suburbs, the land beneath them was dark and dotted with lights. "You really didn't have to fly me home," The young woman said as she turned to her sister.
"No but I wanted to," Diana smirked. "Besides, you have school tomorrow."
Donna groaned. "Oh gods, with everything that happened the last few hours I actually forgot. I don't suppose you could give me a superhero's note, could you? It's like a doctor's note, except it excuses me for having to deal with killer androids."
"Unfortunately, American schools do not accept such notes. I checked." Diana said, and Donna groaned a little louder. Diana place a hand on her hip. "You can't complain too much. You have already made your commitment to school. If you don't think that you can handle both it and the Team-"
"No, no I'll make it work." Donna insisted. "If my teammates can manage school and missions, I'm sure I can too."
"Very well. Though I am still a little uncertain why you chose now to split your focus between the ordinary and extraordinary. You were content before to focus on one or the other."
Donna stared up at the starry night sky. "I just don't want to miss out on something important. Everything seemed calm enough for the past few months, I thought I could focus on being normal for a bit. And I liked it, I really did." She gave a soft laugh. "But it's just so dull sometimes. And then I see you on the news with-" she cut herself off, her blush barely visible in the dark.
Diana understood the young woman's yearning; the amazon had felt it herself in the years before Steve crashed onto Themyscira. It didn't help that Donna had always felt somewhat out of place. It was luck that Diana had run across her five years ago, then an adolescent bystander watching as Diana did battle with Cheetah. A tree had been damaged during the fight, and the trunk snapped before toppling toward a crowd of people. That was until, much to Diana's and even Donna's surprise, Donna flew up and caught the falling trunk effortlessly.
The obvious answer was that Donna was just a metahuman who had awakened to her abilities, but something about Donna made Diana feel a sort of kinship she never knew until that moment. She took Donna back to Paradise Island, and sure enough they discovered that Donna's powers were similar to her own, a blessing from the divine. And yet no god came forward to claim responsibly. That combined with the girl's hazy memory of her youth before foster care meant she was a mystery.
As Diana watched her sister look back up at the stars, she wished there was more she could do for her in that regard. She had asked Jacob what he knew about Donna Troy's origins… and the answer he gave was less than helpful. According to the dimensionally displaced man, the authors of their stories had made so many conflicting origins for her over the years that eventually they made it so some cosmic entity was constantly altering her past. Or something like that, he wasn't personally familiar with the details. All Diana knew was that if she ever met this 'Dark Angel', there would be some very pointed questions.
In any case, the Amazons took her in, and Donna spent several years on Themyscira. But somewhat recently she had been feeling restless, wanting to go back to Man's World. And so Diana had found her a small home for rent in the New Jersey suburbs and enrolled her in the local high school. And Donna seemed to be content, but again that seemed temporary.
Back in the present, Diana focused on the last part of her sister's statement. "You know I wasn't trying to 'replace' you with Starfire. I just wanted to give her a little guidance. I never brought it up to you because I didn't think you'd be interested."
"Well I know that now," Donna rolled her eyes. "I still wish I didn't have to find out about it through the news."
In hindsight, Diana had to concede the point. "And you're fine with Starfire? Being your leader on the team?" She asked.
Donna actually laughed. "I thought I might butt heads with her, but it's really easy to understand the kind of person she is after talking to her for a bit. She's the kind of girl who wears her heart on her sleeve and cares a lot about those around her. I think we'll get along fine."
One less thing to worry about. "I know I asked you before, but how do you feel about the rest of the Team now?"
Donna thought for a moment. "I like them. They weren't what I was expecting, but they have a real drive in them. I haven't seen too much, but they seem to work together pretty well. I don't quite understand the team dynamic though…"
"What do you mean?"
Donna hesitate for a moment before asked "Which one is the leader, again?"
Diana arched an eyebrow at her sister, wondering if she had gone hard of hearing. "Starfire, with Aqualad as the second in command. I just said as much."
"Yes, but…" Donna trailed of as she tried to find the words. Eventually she just said "What's the deal with Machina then?"
Somewhat bemused, Diana replied "Oh? What do you mean?"
"I mean I don't get the guy. Sometimes he's quiet, other times he's a goofy dork, and yet when he talks seriously the rest of the team shuts up and listens to him. What exactly is he on the Team?"
Diana hummed. "You'll have to ask him if you want to be sure, but you should know that he originally joined the team in a support role. He only gained his powers a few months ago, and before that he was a perfectly normal man."
"Could have fooled me," Donna mutter. "Normal people don't shake off nearly dying like he did today."
"He's grown a lot since then. And while he has graduated to being a full member, he's taken the responsibility of supporting the team seriously. He supplies and maintains most of the Team's equipment, and from what I have heard has helped a few of his team members on more… personal issues. Starfire is team leader, but I would not be surprised if they consider him the team's manager."
Donna was silent for a long moment before she said "I thought Batman was team manager," she stopped and snorted. "Then again, it didn't seem the rest of the team appreciated his 'management'."
Diana frowned. "The missions Batman assigned the team were important, but there has been some debate as to if proper support was given."
"Well, if nothing else," Donna said, a confidant smile forming. "I have the feeling that he'll make sure I won't miss anything interesting."
In the depths of interstellar space, two points of emerald light streaked between the stars, unseen due to their super-luminal speed. The pair shot towards a binary star system, slowing down slightly as they entered the stellar plane. There was a brief pause before they adjusted course and started moving towards one of the planets deeper in the system.
Once again, John Stewart checked the telemetry readouts his ring was giving him. "There's no doubt, this is definitely the right place."
Lantern Katma Tui flew beside him, and she eye him with a skeptical look. "Assuming that Corphan was telling the truth."
"Don't worry, he may be an opportunistic black-marketer, but he knows better than to lie to a Lantern. Besides, the facts line up. This system is both close to common interstellar routes, and has massive gravity eddies. If any ships find themselves broken or dead in the black near here, the system would pull them in." Ostensibly, it was a scavenger's goldmine, but the gravitational flux combined with the high radiation emitted by the twin suns made actually going there a dangerous prospect (their Rings could handle it, though it was a bit draining on their charge). As such most people didn't even consider it; the system only had a serial number on most star charts.
Corphan however managed to get his hands on an old Orvian sun-skimmer several years back, a freight ship made for harvesting solar wind straight from a sun's corona. He saw his opportunity, and since then had made a comfortable living for himself selling prime scrap on the black market. The man had been reluctant to tell them all this of course, but John knew how to be persuasive to his sort.
It didn't hurt that they weren't looking to shut him down. They just needed some conformation that he was the one who had savaged a particular item from the system. An item which Corphan said he had found in the ruins of a highly advanced ship he had never been able to place.
A silence settled between the two as they approached the planet Corphan has said he found the 'trinket' on, but it wasn't a comfortable one. Eventually, John looked toward Kat. "Something wrong?"
"…Weren't you supposed to be back on Earth by now?"
John looked at his companion, a small smirk crossing his face. "I asked Hal to give me a little extra time. Why, you want to be rid of me so soon?"
Kat rolled her eyes, but her expression softened a little. "You know that's not what I meant. And the fact that you didn't tell the Guardian's about this little side trip means you know you shouldn't be doing this."
John's frowned. "You can't tell me you think the Guardian's response to Hal asking about those nanites wasn't strange."
"It wasn't that strange, considering the information was restricted." She countered. "There could be a good reason they're not sharing what they know about those things."
"Maybe, but I'd expect them to at least do something about it when tey learned about Machina. Instead… nothing. They haven't tried to contact him or even have us bring him in. They're just ignoring him." Or at least, that's what it looked like, but John had his doubts.
"And your response to something that has the Guardians acting secretive is to go poking around where they don't want you?" Kat snorted, her tone reminding him of when she had been his instructor. "Speaking of this 'something', when you spoke to Machina you told him that it could have been a number of sources, but you seem to have one in particular in mind."
John didn't look at her. "It makes sense. You've seen what the man looks like, and you know the Guardians have a bit of a sore spot in regards to them. And given Corphan's description of the ship he found… well, there aren't many factions with 'chitinous' spaceships."
"But why the secrecy then?" Kat insisted. "They've never had trouble talking about the Reach before. And we still have Lanterns whose job it is to make sure that they're keeping to the treaty. If this friend of yours really did stumble onto some old Reach technology, they'd be much more interested in him than they seem to be."
John's frown deepened. "I don't know… something doesn't feel right about all this. I need to check this out myself, and quietly." He glance over at her, a small grin his face. "Stealth and guile, right?"
"That is my motto, John Stewart. And why I'm here with you." She moved so that she was flying underneath him, and poked him in the chest with the other hand on her hip. "You'd be helpless on this sort of mission without me."
John couldn't help his grin growing wider, mirroring the one Kat had.
The planet they were after then came into view, a dull brown rock that most spacefarers wouldn't give a second thought to. It was much larger than Earth, but devoid of atmosphere and constantly pelted by asteroids and space debris. Due to the specific orbits and gravity wells of the other stellar bodies in the system, a large amount of interstellar debris that found its way into the system would eventually end up on the planet.
The pair settled into low orbit, and Kat said "Where do we even start? You can't seriously expect us to search the whole planet."
"Corphan said he and his team investigated a site in the northern hemisphere. Right about… there." He pointed to a spot on the landmass below them.
Kat opened a magnification window in front of her, and paused. "Did he mention anything about a massive crater?"
John's brow furrowed. "No…" The two then flew down to the surface, and his frown deepened. The crater was quite large, nearly a kilometer in diameter and a quarter that deep. The entire space was filled with loose rocks and dirt, and not a single hint of any crashed space ship in sight. "Are you sure you got the coordinates right?"
"Yes…" John held out his ring and scanned the area. "It looks like a meteor crashed into the site recently, about a month ago if these scans are correct. But it's all just rock. I'm not detecting any metals or artificial components. Even something that left a crater this large should have left some remains a power ring could detect."
John focused his scans deeper down, looking for anything that might give him a clue to what happened. Did some other scavengers manage to come here and take the hollowed out hull before the meteor hit? He wondered. That ship wasn't small though, about 20 meters long by Corphan's measurements. There should be some trace of it there, whether it was cut up or dragged away wholesale-
His scans came back with something, if not what he expected. "There's an oddly shaped chamber beneath us." John then created a drill construct and made a large hole at the base of the crater, drilling down for a few dozen meters. And soon enough, the drill breached an open chamber. It was only a few meters across and it looked like part of it had collapsed some time ago, but a small section on the other side was smooth and untouched.
A quick scan of the chamber failed to reveal any trace of technology, but John paused when he started getting readout on the far wall. "That can't be right," he flew closer to the small section of wall, and sure enough he found it sparkling in the green light his ring gave off. "This wall is almost perfectly smooth, right down to the molecule."
"How is that possible?" Kat asked. "That's normal planetary rock. There isn't even water on this planet, let alone anything that can do that."
"It looks like this was made just before the meteor impact, too." John said as he scanned the edges of the smooth section. "Well, not here, the impact buried it. If I'm reading this right, this used to be on the surface."
"It's definitely not natural then, something that used to be on the surface above us made this. Some kind of anti-matter screen, perhaps?"
"Right. Which means that whatever used to be up there had tech that the scavengers missed, which spontaneously activated and completely annihilated itself…"
"Or someone else came along and did it." Kat finished the thought.
The two stared at each other for a long moment… before their rings both started blinking. Kat pulled up a screen. "I'm getting a signal. This is…" She trailed off before he eyes widened. "There's another Green Lantern approaching the planet."
The two of them floated back up through the hole and to the surface in time to see an emerald comet streaking towards them. In a flash of green light it stopped a few meters away, and another Green Lantern floated in front of them. Its main body was a crystalline sphere with a pair of glowing green eyes just above a band bearing the Lantern emblem. Its arms and legs were tapering tendrils, and a black Mohawk-like structure rose from its head. "Lantern Tui. Lantern Stewart. What are you doing on this planet?" The voice it emitted came in a series of patterned tones.
"Chaselon? What are you doing off of Oa?" John asked back. He couldn't say that he knew the other Lantern well, but they had met before. Just before John had turned down what Chaselon and four other Lanterns accepted. "I thought Alpha Lanterns only left to go after fugitives."
"I was given orders to take personal account of certain Lanterns." Chaselon replied, his voice somehow both musical and flat. "Several Lanterns have not reported in at their designated intervals. I was sent to ensure their status."
"Those 'designated intervals' are guidelines, not hard rules." John crossed his arms over his chest. "If the Guardians wanted a status update, they could have just called me."
"Perhaps they felt more direct contact was needed. I do not know, and I did not ask. And you have not answered my question. What are you doing here?"
"We were following a lead," Kat floated forward. "We were trying to find the origin of some unidentified technology. Our search lead us here."
Chaselon dipped a little. "Would this technology be related to the nanomachines that Lantern Jordan inquired about on Oa? For you should know that is restricted information."
John grimaced and got ready to settle into what was looking like jurisdictional pushing match. Sorry Jacob, looks like it's going to take me a bit longer to get you answers than I thought.
Serling frowned as she poured over the schematics that Jacob had sent her, trying to glean any hidden secrets that the weapon could be hiding from her. Jacob had already given her his analysis of how the energy field it emitted worked, but she still needed more to really understand how it operated. Unfortunately, unlike some people, she had chosen to specialize in her education. And since this weapon wasn't nanotech itself…
She grumbled and rubbed her eyes. I made these nanomachines to never be vulnerable again, and a week later someone already finds a way to kill me with them, she thought sourly. Ok, to be fair, the circumstances made it clear that this weapon was designed to kill Jacob rather than her, but it still irked her. She had barely had time to add some basic utility to her second skin and have some fun with it before this happened.
Not that other matters hadn't also been eating up her time. "Bloody useless University board," she muttered. 'Indefinite paid leave' was just another way of saying 'we don't want to deal with you right now'. She would have to leave dealing with that till later though, as taking care of this new threat was her top priority.
Fortunately, Ted was continuing to be incredibly helpful. She still had access to the lab he had given her to analyze Jacob, and that is where she was at the moment trying to figure out these 'nano-disassemblers.'
At that moment, Serling heard the door open behind her, but she didn't bother turning around. She focused her gaze to the upper right corner of her vision, and her HUD showed the feed from the camera in the corner of the lab. Oh, it's just Ted, she thought, keeping focused on her work.
It was only a few seconds before she heard behind her "It's a bit odd to see you without the labcoat."
That got Serling to turn around in her chair, fixing the man with a raised eyebrow. Ted just smiled and offered her one of the coffee cups he held. Serling took it and shrugged her silver clad shoulders. "My second skin is easier to work with when it's not covered." The simple tank top she wore exposed her shoulders and arms to the air, and was currently covered by her nanomachines. She was still learning how to use them optimally, so that meant practicing as much as possible. She may have had better insight into how her own nanotech worked, but Jacob had been practicing and adapting to his own for months. And she wanted to be at least as good as he was.
Ted took it in stride and asked "Anything new to report?"
"Unfortunately, no. I've gone over all the data, but it's just not enough for me." She turned a little and reached for her note book on the desk behind her, but found it out of reach. She frowned slightly before her second skin flowed into a long tendril which grabbed the offending item and pulled it to her. "I'm going to need to build a functioning prototype and test it under lab conditions. Maybe then I could get a good counter-measure going."
Ted watched the nanites around her arm return to their normal shape. "Did I tell you just how amazing those things are?"
"You have," She replied, bring the mug up to her lips to hide her smirk. "But I could stand to hear it again."
Ted pulled up his own chair and sat close to her, his eyes tracing up and down her arms. "It's not just the functionality, but how well you managed to integrate them into your body. Hell, you turned it into a functional blood substitute as a matter of course. I had no idea you knew enough about biology to pull that off."
Serling hesitated before saying "Well, I read up a lot of papers on cybernetics first…" There was also a significant number of functions and methods in that data file that made it all possible. She probably wouldn't have finished (or be dead) if it wasn't for that data file. Should… she tell Ted about it? Before she had kept it to herself because… well, she had been worried that someone would take it away from her. Before she could finish her second skin. But now that it was done, maybe…
No. No, there was still too much work to be done with it. After her enhancement, she started to see even more data and connections in the file. It was hard to explain, but it felt like there was a sort of metadata to the whole thing she had just barely scratched the surface of. She had to understand what it was. Because it sometimes… felt like the whole thing was part of one big Algorithm-
Serling shook her head as her HUD flickered with elaborate patterns before it settled down. Damn it, that bug is still there. There were still a few minor kinks to work out with her second skin, and that particular one always seemed to rear its head when she was deep in thought.
"Serling?" Ted asked, his expression shifting to one of concern. "Are you alright?"
She looked back at Ted, and the sight of his worried eyes looking into hers caused her mind to go from overcrowded to blank with alarming speeding. "I…" she started before she rubbed her eyes and tried again. "I've just been working on this problem for too long. Maybe I need to switch gears for a bit."
Ted arched and eyebrow, but it quickly changed into an easy smile. "Well, there are a few projects me an Jacob have on the back burner than you could be helpful with. We're looking into solutions for low-cost transportation…"
Dinah leaned back in her chair, settling into a comfortable position amid the leather. "So, how are things with Koriand'r?"
Sitting in the armchair across from her, Jacob arched an eyebrow, but smiled. "Good. Still trying to figure out a good activity we can do outside of the Mountain, though. Can't exactly stay in while everything is being rebuilt. Mostly we end up sightseeing. Oh, we are planning on visiting an orphanage in the Bronx tomorrow, it's one she's been frequenting. According to her, some of the kids are excited to meet me."
Dinah hummed. Their session was going well so far. Which wasn't to say previous ones had been bad, exactly, but it was nice to see the man genuinely comfortable. Or at least, that's was she picked up from his slight ramble. "Dinner and a movie not good enough?"
"We have- well, will again have, a more advanced home theater set up than actual theaters. And dinner… I suppose I get a certain pleasure out of watching her enjoy food, but it's really not the same thing." He shrugged. "And of course there are the stares, and people asking for autographs. Which is surreal for me, let me tell you. How do you deal with that?"
Dinah blinked. "I don't. I wear a wig when I'm on the job." She twirled a finger around one of her fake blonde locks.
Jacob opened his mouth before he closed it. Eventually he put his head into his hands. "No, no, don't even bother…" he muttered before he continued. "My point is that it can be hard to keep our outings to just the two of us, depending on where we go."
"Does the attention bother you?"
He shrugged. "More that I don't like it intruding when I want just want to be with Kori. As for myself…" The man held his hand out, and to Dinah's surprise the surface rippled and changed color to a Caucasian tone. "Mask nanites," he explained. "I made them myself just recently. I can use them to make clothes too, so I can probably be anonymous in public just fine now."
"Impressive."
"Thank you."
They talked for a few more minutes about the things going on in his life (personal, not job related) before silence fell between them. This was always the tricky part; deciding on which topic to start with after the banal pleasantries. When they first started, Dinah had hoped that Jacob would eventually start opening up to her on his own, but the man didn't oblige. He wasn't silent, but he tended to ramble about inconsequential things if she let him. A few times she had tried to nudge him a little, but the flat stare she had gotten in return dissuaded her from trying it too often.
It had taken a while for her to get an understanding just what his point of contention was with her: he thought she was patronizing. He never said it, of course, but it became clear one session when he pointed out that he was older than she was. Looking back, she realized that the tone and stance she had tried using in their sessions was of a more experienced person giving support to a less experienced one. And since their sessions were far more personal than professional, he didn't think she had those grounds to stand on.
Since then she had adopted a more taciturn and direct approach with him, which he seemed to appreciate. Switching away from advice to discussion had helped a lot, and she found that if she asked him something directly he usually answered without issue. Even when she asked things that were potentially uncomfortable, he never got upset with her. Ironically, he wasn't looking for sympathy, he was looking for criticism. The fact that her first bit of criticism she gave him was very poorly timed and rather thoughtless had made things difficult for her.
"Alright," Dinah leaned forward in her chair. Given everything that had happened recently, she decided to dive right into the deep end. "Tell me about Bialya."
Jacob grunted and leaned forward in turn. "Alright. What do you want to know?"
"I want to know how you feel about it." She said bluntly. "The last time we talked about this you said that you didn't like what happened, but would make the same choice if you had to. Is that still true?"
He nodded, and she leaned back a little. Again, the man was a hard read, but she was inclined to believe that he was at peace with his actions as he looked. The real question was why. "So, tell me about it." She said. Jacob gave her an odd look and she elaborated. "From the moment you decided to assault the base to the moment you found Koriand'r, what was it like?"
Jacob looked at the floor, his brow furrowing in thought. He seemed to be taking the question seriously at least. This wasn't the first time they had talked about the subject (and Superman had already told her the details of his conversation with Jacob), but she needed to be sure.
"Focused." He finally replied. "After the team's memory got wiped, I felt like I was getting pulled in all different directions, and I couldn't juggle it all. When the team nearly got killed by a cruise missile, the idea of finding the base and blowing everything up occurred to me. But when Bee made her threat…"
"You became angry."
"…Yes." He admitted. "But more than that, she crossed a line. Stupid, I know, considering she just tried to kill us all. But with that barrier torn down… everything just kind of came into focus. No more worry or doubt, because I knew lethal force was something I was now capable of." He sighed. "Looking back on it, I probably would have ended up doing the same thing whether or not Bee had called us. But she made me a lot more motivated."
Is he being honest, or is he trying to justify his actions? Dinah wonder. Again, she was inclined to believe him. Over the course of several sessions he had been consistent and rational anytime the subject had come up. "Lethal force is, of course, the last option we resort to in this line of work. But sometimes it is necessary. You and your team were also in a very extreme situation. Do you think you would react similarly in other situations?"
His mouth twisted. "Ideally I would keep these 'other situations' from happening in the first place. But, if you're asking when I personally think it's acceptable for me to use lethal force… I don't have a good answer for you. I could say 'to save another life' and 'when there's no other way', but without any context that just feels hollow. I suppose the best I can say is that I don't want to kill anybody. Whether or not that's always a good idea is another matter."
"What do you mean?" Dinah asked in concern.
Jacob looked to the side and gestured vaguely. "In Rhealasia, I left two of the War Dogs alive. I could have killed them, but I chose not to. Part of me wonders if that was the right decision. I mean, their teammate killed them later, but if they had escaped and killed more innocent people… that would have partially been on me."
"That's not true," Dinah was quick to say. "Ignoring that you can't predict the future, you can't take responsibility for other people's actions like that. You don't owe it to anyone to kill another human being."
Jacob looked at her skeptically. "Keeping true to my morals doesn't seem worth it if other people die because of it."
Dinah was silent for a long moment, thinking of how best to respond to such a… morally pragmatic statement. Eventually, she simply said "That's a defeatist attitude."
Jacob blinked, and for the first time in all their sessions the man actually laughed. "Just always win, is that it?" He said. He didn't say that in a mocking tone, but seemed amused by it. "Still don't really agree with you, but don't worry, I don't think I'm going to be 'doing what needs to be done' anytime soon."
She gave him a cautious look. "I'm certainly not going to dissuade you from that, but why?"
He sighed. "Because I don't want to be someone who finds killing people easy. Oh, I'll never turn into some murder-crazy vigilantly or anything like that but… It'll only take one. One time I get careless or lazy, where I justify it to myself because I've done it before and things seem bad. Where I don't think too hard about it and 'solve' the problem in the fastest way possible. Just one time to make a mistake and take a life I didn't have to."
What a strange man, Dinah thought to herself. He had clearly thought about this a lot, but you would almost never know it from the way he acted. He had a dry, almost understated sense of humor, and was fine with going along with the flow of general superheroing. Dinah was sure that there were others (maybe even in the League) that were like him, but in her experience you typically met people with outspoken and forceful personalities in this line of work. You would never think him capable of attacking with lethal force.
Right up until he showed you otherwise first hand.
Regardless, she had a decision to make. And after all these weeks, she was finally sure of her answer.
"I think you're ready to go back to active duty."