May 27, 2016. 06:04.
The Warworld.
~~Emma~~
"Where are they?"
"Nightingale-"
"I said-" I grabbed Captain Atom by the collar of his protective suit.
"Where. Are. They. Captain!?!? What happened to my team!?"
Mara. Tim. Cassie. Everyone. Gone.
They were all safe, we had just won! We were going to bring them home!
But it had been hours with no contact, when we finally got a distress call from Jaime. He had no idea how to pilot the bioship, and everyone else was gone.
"Nightingale, please." Blue Beetle begged. "Don't blame him, it's all my fault."
"That statement is inaccurate." Green Beetle patted a lonely Jaime's back as I let go of Captain Atom, completely ignoring Nightwing behind me.
Cap sighed, massaging his neck, "Just tell them what you told us."
Jaime took a deep, but shakey breath. "We had won. We were all here in this bay, and Wonder Girl had Mongul hog-tied. Then suddenly, a boom tube opened up right beneath us!" His voice increased with volume as he dropped the plot twist in all this.
"I flew up and out, it was instinct, you know? But before I could do anything..." his voice cracked. "The boom tube closed, and the others were gone."
"Definitely reading traces of boom tube activity." I didn't give Nightwing the satisfaction of having looked at him.
"We think Mongul may have opened the boom tube as a means of escape, gaining the team as captives in the bargain." Captain Atom explained. "The team...and worse."
"Blur had the crystal key." Jaime informed us.
"So the priority is making sure no one uses it to reactivate The Warworld. Captain Marvel and Rocket are already guarding the key chamber." Captain Atom assured Nightwing, as allergic to looking at me as I was to looking at my brother. "The Justice League will continue guarding it in shifts, until the key is found and the threat is ended."
Ended. So it wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot. There wouldn't be any mercy for Mongul when this was done, none!
"It's all my fault." Blue Beetle whispered, almost inaudibly
"Stop." Nightwing said sternly. "You didn't do anything wrong. We'll figure this out. But, for now..."
I turned to Green Beetle, "Will you see to it that he gets home?"
The Martian-Reach hybrid nodded.
Jaime paled. "What am I gonna tell Brass Beetle's parents? Our friends..."
"Sarah's parents knew what she was signing up for when they agreed to it." I sighed, "I'll make sure all the team's family members know what's happened. Don't worry about them."
Doctor Fate opened a new portal to take Jaime and Green Beetle back to Earth when he started to protest.
"N-no! I wanna stay, I wanna help!" He pleaded
For a second, I almost agreed, not wanting to be left alone with Nightwing. But the slump in Blue's step told me Jaime was far from being able to help.
"Later. For now, you need to rest." Nightwing read my mind. "Go." He urges the two Beetles.
Jaime sighs, "I'm sorry." He repeats.
"No," I clenched my fists, Whoever did this, they're the ones who'll be sorry."
Jaime and Green Beetle finally disappeared into the portal, and Nightwing urged Doctor Fate and Captain Atom to follow.
"We got this. Go."
Atom seemed only too eager to leave, and I understood why, but I was still mad that they left me alone with Rick. At least when they made me wait on the Watchtower, they kept Aquaman with us.
"I'll get a bird's-eye view," I huffed and took off, landing on a catwalk above the docking bay and looking around. I could feel his eyes on me every so often as we both walked back and forth across the bay, searching for clues in deathly silence.
Richard cleared his voice, echoing through the bay.
"I'm sorry."
I gripped the iron railing, staring at him walk below my feet without looking up.
"That's it? That's your big apology?"
"Well, I had it all planned out, but now I forgot it. I tried to give it to you earlier, but you threw something at the door! What was that, a body?"
My hand flew to my mouth to cover the giggles as I thought of my mangled laptop, back at home in Wayne Mansion.
"Why did you keep it from me?" I was whispering, but the acoustics carried my voice through the room as I examined knocked-over boxes and scuff marks on the floor below. Definitely signs that a struggle had taken place.
Richard sighed. "It was Kaldur's idea."
I stopped studying and started listening. I crouched low in the catwalk, face peering between the poles. Nightwing's back below faced mine as he searched for the words.
"Well, I wanted to tell you, we both did. But Kaldur..." He stopped, lost in the memory. "He loves you, Emma."
I still didn't know if I believed that or not.
"He didn't want the secret to put you in jeopardy. He thought if you knew, you'd go running to help him at the first sight of danger-"
"Would not," I thought, miffed.
Richard continued "-And, if the Light discover he was a double agent, it would be better for you to think he died a traitor instead of mourning his death."
A chill ran through me, and I was immediately grateful for Kaldur's acting skills, brought to light when I needed a rehearsal buddy.
"And, well, I agreed." Nightwing finished, quietly.
I sat down, letting my legs hang over the walkway. There was the familiar sound of a grapple gun, and soon Rick was seated beside me, kicking his legs back and forth.
I wrapped my arms around him. "I love you, you idiot."
He grinned and tugged my ponytail playfully, "Love ya too, sis."
We were a tumbling mess, wrestling around the catwalk and agily keeping each other from falling off the edge.
Then, my eye caught sight of something sticking out of the wall by the airlock. Something bright yellow that definitely looked like it did not belong in the brown-and-navy-blue furnishings of the Warworld.
"Oh my gosh," I grabbed Nightwing tighter and flew us over to two of Mara's birdarangs, sharp tips just barely wedged in the wall. He quickly scanned them both, and pointed out several blue spots at the molecular level.
"Matches with the scan she found of the Reach metal she and the other girls found in the Lexcorp warehouse."
"Blue's armor." I nodded. Richard pocketed the weapons as a red light began to flash in the corner of his holo-screen.
"Team SOS!" I gasped.
"But it's not coming from the Warworld," Richard told me. He checked the GPS. "It's coming from..."
"The Atlantic Ocean." I gasped.
He shut off the computer. "Tell Captain Atom we have a lock on the team."
"No." I put a hand on his chest to stop him. "Not the team."
"But who-" he stopped himself.
"M'gann." I nodded.
-------
I carefully piloted the bioship through the cerulean waters, doing pretty well for only my second time at the helm, even if I do say so myself. After dropping Nightwing off at the warehouse in Bludhaven to do more detective work, I continued on to where M'gann's signal had been broadcasted.
I checked the GPS in my computer again, and kept moving forward. Out of the murky blue waters, a fish-like shape emerged. Half-fish, half-human. But there were no mermaids this far from Atlantis.
Smiling happily, I waved to M'gann through the windshield. Her mermaids body whirled around and a stream of bubbles burst from her mouth as she squealed with joy underwater.
I opened a hatch in the floor, and a moment later Miss Martian emerged, quickly looking her tail and growing to her full size after being crushed by the pressure.
"You're alright!" I shrieked, attacking her with a hug.
"Of course I'm all right, I was with-" she trailed off, wondering if I knew the secret.
I waved my hand at her. "Yeah. Kaldur and Artemis. I know. Connor too. And La'gaan. Willow and Richard told us after you got kidnapped."
To my surprise, M'gann had no interest in her injured boyfriend.
"Emma, when I was fixing Kaldur's mind, you were there." M'gann said excitedly, not wasting a moment in telling me as she took her place in the captain's seat.
I stopped for a moment, pondering what she meant as the bioship's seat belts wrapped around me snugly, but comfortably.
"No I wasn't." I said at last. "I was right here, doing nothing but moping about my pathetic life." I let my face fall into my arms on the controls in front of me.
"Emma!" M'gann scolded, giving me a telekinetic slap to wake me up. "Listen to me! You were in his mind as a guardian, a protector. That position of a psyche is given to a person who is greatly cared for by the one whose psyche it is! Don't you get it? Kaldur still loves you! He's doing this for you, to protect you."
I froze mid-headshake. "What do you mean?"
M'gann sighed and stood up from the pilot's seat. In an instant she had crossed the space between us, and before I could resist, she put her hands on either side of my head.
I was confronted with an image of myself, in full Nightingale uniform minus my mask so that my eyes were visible. I was attacking M'gann. We were underwater, in the ruins of someplace that somewhat resembled Atlantis. Then I realized that this was Kaldur's psyche, after M'gann had destroyed it. I, this said "guardian" of his psyche, obviously saw M'gann as a threat after she had attacked the first time.
I gasped as M'gann released her hold and broke the psychic link.
I leaned back on my chair, "Explain psyches to me again."
M'gann took a seat next to me, bioship on autopilot. "Your psyche is a mental image of a place that means the most to you, filled with things that remind you of the people closest to you," she smiled at me confidently, "And the guardian of your psyche is the person who means the most to you. The one you love the most."
We sat there in silence for a while, as I analyzed what M'gann had told me. She looked at me expectantly, but when I failed to break into a smile as well, her face fell.
So Kaldur really didn't love Tula, as he claimed to have. But if that was the truth, if Kaldur really did love me, then why didn't he tell me? Why did he abandon me?
"So..." M'gann sat back in her seat amid the awkward silence that had filled the cabin. "What happened while I was...gone?"
"Yeah..." the I trailed off, slightly scared of how she would react.
"The team...sort of...got captured."
"WHAT!?!?" The ship lurched to the side with M'gann's exclamation.
I shook my head to get rid of the noise. "Yup."
"Garfield? Rachel?" She was this close to hyperventilating.
"Captured."
There was complete silence for a moment.
"Connor?" She whispered, almost as an afterthought.
I sighed, "Captured. And Willow too." I added as a reminder.
The bioship surfaced out of the water with a giant splash, and M'gann gave me a weird look.
"Um, Emma? What's with the second moon in the sky?"