"Jaina...Are you sure you know where you're going?"
"Shut up, Wally!" She shouted in her mind, it took everything she had not to scream out loud and possibly let the terrorists know that they were coming.
"She doesn't know where she's going." She could feel the satisfaction radiating off of Superboy, a pinprick in the doubt flooding the force from everyone else.
"I can do this, I can do this," She whispered.
"Anakin, if you're there, I could really use your help-"
"Who's Anakin?" Rocket asked loudly. Jaina had forgotten that they could hear what was going on in her mind. She was on her own now.
Jaina pulled out the doll again, tracing it's short braids and rubbing the cheap calico fabric used for her dress in between her fingers.
The aura connecting the doll to its owner lit up again, but less brightly this time. Jaina was getting tired.
"This way," She led the team through a forest that started on the outskirts of Lowethe. There were millions of trees tightly packed together, but all of the leaves had fallen off in the drought that currently claimed the country. The bioship flew invisibly over the treetops, following the glowing green speck that was Jaina, floating in the forest below.
If she was wrong about the empathetic connection between the doll and its owner, Batman was going to kick her off the team, Hal and John would be ashamed, and maybe Ganthet and the other Guardians of the Universe would take away her ring. That was not something Jaina was willing to let happen. The team, the League, and the ring were the only things she remembered and she was not going to loose any more memories.
"Wait a minute!" Robin exclaimed, "I'm picking up some readings!"
With a bit of adjusting on the mindlink, Jaina could hear what the team did.
"Brakiss to H'rath'na...Brakiss to H'rath'na...pickup will commence in one hour."
"Who's Brakiss?" Kid demanded.
"Don't know, but H'rath'na is Tamba's Chief Commander. Brakiss must be coming to pick up the kids!"
"Let's go!" With this added threat, the connection glowed brighter in the dark. Jaina could see the rest of the path clearly.
In the middle of her flight, the trees stopped suddenly, and Jaina peered into the almost perfectly circular clearing.
The warehouse was large, rectangular, and sloppily-built. Windows lined the roof, and there weren't even any doors to block the light from inside. H'rath'na must have been counting on the density of the forest to shield his operation. Though she couldn't blame him, Africa was hot.
"Miss Martian, camouflage mode. See what they are hiding in there." Aqualad commanded.
Jaina spotted the bioship, blurring against the darkening sky. A tinier blur broke off and flew over to the warehouse, phasing through the roof.
"They have the kids." M'gann reported almost immediately. "All one hundred of them."
For a brief moment, Jaina could see what M'gann did: four rows, twenty-five strong, of barbed-wire cages, holding children ranging in size from Jaina's knee to taller than Aqualad.
"I'm going in! H'rath'na's gonna pay for this," She growled.
"Girl Lantern, don't-"
Girl Lantern ignored her teammates warnings. Her ring glowed brightly, ripping a wondow from it's frame. Only at the last second did she remember the team's "covert" responsibility, and set the glass down quietly on a pile of dead leaves.
She floated down to the floor, and the one girl who spotted her gasped quietly.
"Who are you-"
"Shh!" Jaina urged her, ducking to avoid a patrol.
She crawled back out when it was safe, quickly making her way over to the little girl in the barbed wire cage.
"My doll!" Jaina didn't need the force to confirm this connection. She slid the doll off her belt and through the gaps in the wire.
"I'm Girl Lantern. My friends and I are here to help you." Jaina whispered, gripping the girl's tiny fingers.
"I Lousia, this my brother, Vic-tor." The girl spoke in broken English, but the boy in the cage next to hers didn't speak at all.
"Louisa, Victor, I'm going to get you all out of here. Can you tell everyone else to stay quiet?"
Louisa nodded with a huge, toothy smile before hissing a few words in her native tongue to another girl in the next aisle over.
Victor's thin arm poked through the bars of the cage, pointing up. Jaina followed the direction.
There was a catwalk strung along the walls, making a sort of second floor that surveyed the whimpering children. Jaina nodded her thanks, and flew up, careful to avoid any surveying eyes.
On the opposite end of the warehouse, there seemed to be a headquarters of sorts set up. Inside was a bald, dark-skinned man in a brown military uniform with tattoos under his sleeves and a cigarette between his first two fingers.
He was talking, well, more like shouting, angrily at a small blue man that reminded her of Anakin's form inside her mind.
"H'rath'na's talking to someone, I think it's Brakiss." She told the team. She felt the air stirr next to her, and suddenly M'gann was at her side.
"They're communicating via hologram, like the ones we have back at the cave." Miss Martian told the team.
"Girl Lantern, can you get inside? Perhaps record the conversation?"
Jaina looked at the door, which was slightly ajar.
"I'll distract the guards." Miss Martian nodded, flying off to do some damage.
"We're still going to free the kids, right?" She asked, Louisa's voice echoing in her mind.
She could feel Aqualad's confirmation. "Of course."
She slid her hand through the crack. "Record," she whispered to her ring.
"You are certain that they are the children I told you." The blurry blue form of Brakiss asked doubtfully.
"All one hundred, all match the list you gave my men." H'rath'na boasted, tapping a piece of paper on the crude wooden desk he propped his feet on.
"Good, because if even one child is missing, I you will not be paid."
"About the price," H'rath'na lit another cigar, "You said a thousand per child?"
"Double for each child that is completely unharmed."
H'rath'na grinned, but not the kind of smile that Jaina liked to see.
"We are preparing for re-entry now. We will see you within the hour." Brakiss snapped his fingers, and the blue form disappeared.
"Okay, Aqualad, now is time to get the kids out. Brakiss is coming in." Jaina told her team, backing away from the door.
"Very well. Miss Martian, return to the bioship and enlarge it as much as you can. Superboy, prepare Sphere in super-cycle-mode to carry those the bioship cannot. The rest of you join Girl Lantern in freeing the children."
M'gann gave Jaina a thumbs-up and phased through the wall. Just beyond the reaches of the warehouse's light, Jaina could see her teammates dodging from foliage to foliage as they made their approach.
She floated down by Victor and Louisa again, unlocking their vcages first.
"My friends are out there in the black uniforms. They will take you to safety. Go!" She instructed sharply. Louisa hugged her doll and held her brother's hand, running to freedom.
Wally appeared at her side, knocking iut a guard before he could yell and unlocking a dozen cages at a time.
"Kcolnu eht segac." Zatanna whispered. Now twenty children were free, running towards Aqualad at the bioship.
Jaina found Artemis beating up another guard who tried to get the drop on her, and Rocket carried a few of the littlest children in her force bubble.
Jaina unlocked a few more cages, carried a couple children who had badly wrapped bullet wounds, took out another guard or two, and made sure the fleeing kids got to the bioship safely.
"I think these two are the last of them," Wally said, holding a duo of twins who didn't have shirts.
"Five minutes until Brakiss supposedly touches down with whatever forces he has!" Robin warned everyone.
"Everyone on board." Miss Martian said. The bioship was starting to hover as Zatanna and Artemis leaped up the ramp.
"I'm shielding Superboy and Sphere. See y'all at Lowethe!" Rocket said. Sphere tried to be quiet, but she let out a roar as she zoomed over the treetops.
That got H'rath'na's attention.
"Oh Blaster Bolts," Jaina muttered, shielding herself, Kid Flash, and Robin from the bullets shot by the guards they had not managed to take out.
"Kill them! Kill them all!" H'rath'na screamed.
"Wow, he's got worse anger issues than Superboy." Jaina observed.
"Well, Supey's had therapy." Kid shrugged, taking out a row of guards.
"Kid, Lantern, Robin, we need to go now!" Aqualad shouted, not even bothering to use the mindlink.
Two green hands shot out of Jaina's ring, grabbing her two teammates by their collars and pulling them after her onto the bioship.
She collapsed on the floor of the bioship among several amber-colored children.
Jaina laughed nervously. "Some rescue, huh Louisa?"
There was no reply.
"Louisa?" Jaina sat up.
"Louisa? Victor?"
She didn't want to panic, panicking would mean being afraid, and that was the first step down the path of to the dark side.
She looked over all the children in the ship, but none of them had Louisa's two braids.
Except for a doll lying in the corner.
Jaina picked up the doll, and quickly reached out with the force.
Louisa's connection string went right through the floor of the bioship.
"M'gann, open a hatch! We forgot two! I'm going back!" She shouted.
"Jaina, how could you know-" Jaina didn't give Aqualad the chance to finish his question before she dropped through the hatch in the floor, to the amazement of the children on board.
The wind rushed past her ears, and Jaina let the adrenaline flow through her before she lit up her, ring, literally inches above the pointed branches of the treetops.
She checked Louisa's connection again. It was pointing back to the compound, but it stopped a few feet shy of the clearing.
Jaina landed, but instead of Louisa and and Victor, a giant, yellow, ooze monster greeted her. It was constantly moving, with thin tentacle appendages swishing back and forth over the leaves, but it seemed to stick to the form of a mound of glowing, yellow goo.
"What have you done to my friends?" Jaina demanded.
She aimed her ring at the oozing creature. She knew she had enough charge to blast him to the moon, if not the sun. But this time her ring didn't respond.
"What the-?" Jaina shook her ring and tried again, but still nothing happened. Not even the tiniest vibration.
"What is wrong with you?" She screamed at the ring, slightly grateful that the ooze monster had chosen not to attack yet.
"Ah...it seems your mentors neglected to tell you the largest weakness of your newfound powers..." A silken voice observed.
"Who are you?" Jaina demanded, still aiming her ring at the large, glistening yellow slime monster.
"Ah-ah-ah, I'm afraid that won't work, Jaina Solo."
She thought that the slime creature itself had been speaking, but a man stepped out from behind a tree, holding Louisa and Victor by their collars.
"Put them down!" She shouted, changing her aim from the slime to the man.
"Of course, I never meant to harm them." He let go, and the two dark-skinned children dropped to the ground.
He may have not hurt them physically, but by the way Louisa and Victor clung to her legs, they certainly had some traumatic mental scarring.
"What do you want?" Jaina growled, her gaze and her ring unwavering.
"To catch you attention, most specifically. On a grander level, I wished to empower these children. Not just those two, all those that were selected-"
"That's one way to put it," Jaina interrupted. She mentally patted herself on the back as the man appeared to lose patience with her, if only for a moment.
"...all of those who were selected have the immense potential for power. Just like you, Jaina Solo."
"What, you mean the rings?" Jaina asked, her mind flying back to the list of colors that John and Hal had rattled off at their training session earlier.
The man laughed, tossing a long, silver cape over his shoulder. He wore a fitted black jumpsuit, secured at the waist by a belt that also held a silver cylinder, just like Jaina's laser sword back at the cave.
"I mean something far more powerful than those rings. The power to control the universe."
"Tempting offer, but I gotta say no." Jaina barked with laughter. "You took these kids from their homes, what makes you think they would have listened to you?"
"The life I would have offered them is much grander than the slums where they currently live."
"The cages? Holed up like animals for sale?" Jaina scoffed. "You have a pretty skewed idea of grand, mister."
The man chuckled. "If you say so, Jaina Solo."
He kept repeating her name, and the patronizing tone in his voice made her nervous.
"You still haven't answered my first question." Jaina realized.
"Pity, I'd have thought you would have recognized me by now. Perhaps you gaining that ring was a stroke of luck for me. Anyway, I won't tell you my true name, that might make you remember and I can't have that, but you may address me as Silver." He flourished his cape to show off.
Jaina felt the blood draining from her face. "You know...how do you know me? How do you know my name?" She forgot Louisa and Victor, focusing only on the possibility of answers. Her ring pulsed with light, threatening the Silver character, but he only chuckled.
"Another time, perhaps, Jaina Solo." He was using the name to taunt her. "Come, Waru."
Jaina barreled forward as the creature surged around Silver, consuming him. Then they were gone.
Long chapter wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
It's late please don't blame me for mistakes ;3