Hurts Like Heaven

Chapter 18 - Let Nothing You Dismay

"'Tiny?'" Winn can't hold in the sound of his own laughter, and frankly, neither can I.

"Just hop on," I tell Winn after wiping a couple of silly, joyful tears from my eyes. "We're all going to the same place, so why not?"

Winn approaches Conner reluctantly, like my cousin's a wild horse. I seriously expect him to try and buck Winn off when he hooks his arms around his shoulders and his legs around his waist. "He doesn't bite," I promise Winn.

"You sure?" Winn jerks his thumb toward Conner's mouth. "Look at the fangs on this guy!"

"Say what you will about living under the Luthors' thumbs," Conner says, "but they always provided great dental care. One of the few things they ever did right by me."

We all fly down to the wreckage's landing site - me, solo; Winn on Conner's back; J'onn temporarily shape-shifting into an owl (and getting Winn to crack this joke: "Hedwig? You're back from the dead? But how?"); and Donna leaping from rooftop to rooftop with her knives held out. She looks so much like her sister in doing so that I'm not at all surprised to see everyone gazing at her with wonder when she finally lands beside the rest of us. She may be the slowest to fly out of all of us - well, of course she is, because technically she can't fly; she's just that borderline-Kryptonian good at leaping tall buildings in a single bound - but she's no less graceful for it, that's for sure.

By the time we land, about half of one of the candy-colored drones is fully reassembled. Winn quickly takes some of the remaining bits and bags them to take back to the lab for sampling. As for me and Conner, we heat-vision the reassembled half into more disparate parts, for good measure.

"Sweet sister," Donna mutters at the sight of yet more slow reassembling once Conner and I are done. "I've seen some weird stuff, but this is a whole other level of nano-hell."

"Could be, yeah," I say.

"I'll be the judge of that," Winn declares. Then, sheepishly, he adds, "But yeah, I'm inclined to agree."

J'onn folds his arms for a second, then points to a nearby café. Not one of Cat's favorites, so I imagine the house brew ain't the best, but I'm sure it'll still pass muster by my own less-discerning taste. At least Conner and I can probably keep on ordering tazza after tazza d'espresso and not suffer any ill effects, though I'm sure we'll both be drinking lots of decaf after the first cup just to pretend we're humans who can only take so much caffeine.

Which is exactly what we do when we sit there, casually keeping an eye on the alley where the drones crashed. And hey, it's not a bad espresso at all. Cat might be tempted to try this place out if I clued her in to it when she was in the right mood. Of course she'd insist on really measuring its quality with her usual overlong drink order that's really just a flat white-

"Hey." Conner gently nudges me while downing the last of his second straight espresso cup. "Does that look like someone we should follow?"

"That person picking the drone up? I'd say yes," I mutter into my cup. But I'm not sure jumping the gun is the best idea at the moment. Caution, I'm sure that's what J'onn would suggest. And I'm inclined to agree. I'm technically faster than Barry, but I don't work as fast as he does. I'd like to think I'm less impulsive.

But you know what? This person looks so casual as to be an obvious attempt at blending in. With a red-and-green Christmas plaid flannel shirt, no less. Barry likes to wear flannel sometimes, and I've seen him in a red-and-black plaid that could be mistaken for green at a distance. This green, though? It's forest green. Slytherin green. Nobody actually wears this in real life, do they?

Well, this lady does, and I'm sure she's not Kryptonian strong. I can see the sweat breaking out on her forehead as she hefts the drone pieces. Hell, a quick switch to X-ray vision confirms to me that her heart is speeding up with her exertion.

"What are you waiting for?" J'onn chuckles in my and Conner's ears.

"Finishing my coffee," I say before downing those dregs as quickly as I can. Even my alien mouth fires up for a second from the splash of near-instantaneous heat.

Conner follows me in a quick burst across the street, catching up to the woman in the brightly colored flannel. "Hey," I say jauntily, even waving to her to establish some of the friendliness that comes a little more naturally to Supergirl than to Kara Danvers. "You want a little help with that?"

"No," she says tersely. Typical Luthor lackey behavior, am I right?

Conner breathes ice onto her hand, freezing her to the inside of the open door.

"Hey!" she cries, struggling to break herself free.

"I asked nicely..." I check the wallet she left sitting on the edge of the van's open back. "Jackie Ames. Well, happy holidays, Jackie Ames."

Jackie stops tugging on her frozen hand long enough to stick her unfrozen one to her hip and grumble, "I celebrate Christmas."

"Not all of us do," Conner points out.

"And as someone who works for Luthor" - I slide her ID card out and into brief view behind her California driver's license, which expires in less than a year - oh wait, that's this year's date. How is she still going around with out-of-date documents? This must be fake. "I can't imagine you're much about the love of Jesus, are you?"

Donna joins us, climbing into the van and lifting the remains of the drone on her own. "Interrogation time?" she asks. "I'd get us out of here, though, if I were you. We stay here too long, we'll attract the wrong kind of attention."

Conner and I both nod, and he says, "Good point."