I was born in a thunderstorm
I grew up overnight
I played alone
I played on my own
I survived

∞∞

Wall.

Wall.

Wall.

Office. 

Using my camouflage I'm able to enter the control room unseen. There are two people in there; one is guarding, the other is watching over the panels.

First I take out the guard. It's a move Halo used to use all the time. It's a simple one; bash them over the back of the head until they go to sleep.

My arm hardens into a rock-like material, 'adapting to the situation' if you will, meaning the impact takes him down on the first go. Unfortunately I forget to grab him and the sound of his body hitting the ground catches the engineer's attention.

"One guard? Really? In the room that controls everything?" I ask. He panics, elderly eyes widening before I whack him across the face too. It knocks him from his chair and he sprawls out along the ground. "Weak."

I locate the socket for Batman's device and insert it gently.

The result is instantaneous. Electricity crackles up along the panels, forcing me to step back. The buttons and switches buzz with the energy before imploding into clouds of smoke that drift up into the air. I watch them until they disperse.

In the second that everything is still, I wonder if that is it.

When the panel explodes, forcing me to react quickly by shifting my density, the full-scale effect of the virus rockets through the warehouse. The rumbling of the floor and the cables beneath it paired with the distant echoes of explosions prompt me to fly back through the walls.

Robin and Batgirl are no longer standing where they were before. I understand why when I get to the edge of the bridge. 

A battle wages on the warehouse floor beneath me. With the barrier shut down everyone has their powers back. It's heroes verses gun-wielding henchmen. Fish Boy has gained an astonishing amount of weight, Bumblebee is literally a Bumblebee, Superboy lives up to his name with style. Bullets fly but the heroes seem to literally knock them away, like they're a mere inconvenience rather than something that can kill you. It's pandemonium, but they are all calm like they've done it a million times. Watching this team in action is the kind of invigorating thing you'll remember for a lifetime.

What an interesting dynamic.

I'm so caught up in watching the battle, I fail to pay any attention to what is behind me. When someone grips my hair and yanks my head back hard, the cold eyes of Black Mask's leather face stare down at me.

In a weak panic I try to pull away from his chest. His suit reeks of leather a cigars.

"What did you think?" He growls so roughly that he sounds like some beast, "You and this piece of trash could double-cross me and get away with it?"

At first, I think he is talking about Ellery. In his other hand however, he holds a beaten and broken Felix Faust by the collar of his jacket. His face is caked with blood, one eye swollen shut with the flesh of his cheek hanging off of him like a rag.

The deal suddenly feels like it is going haywire.

"You talk so much bull," I grind out through clamped teeth, my fingers clasping my own hair to stop it from pulling so much, "It was easy to go behind your back." My words are so measured that he does not anticipate the attack from my elbow.

I drive it backwards and in those mere travelling inches it becomes hardened stone. It hits Black Mask directly in the stomach with the impact of a car, probably rupturing something as he is sent flying backwards, off of the bridge and into a set of wooden crates on the next level.

Faust drops, reaching for my arm desperately. 

He gurgles out some words I don't understand. Cautiously, I lean in further and he repeats.

"The," he coughs blood and I draw back slightly in disgust, "p-potions. He-...has..." 

He has the potions. 

My head snaps back to where Roman Sionis is collapsed on the broken crates. Only, he is no longer on there, leaving splintered wood in the wake of his landing. He's nowhere to be seen.

Below has quietened with no more gunshots, battle cries or racket.

"Spice?" Illusion calls out. She sounds fine, calm. Ellery may just be in her true element.

"He got me," I call back, my voice echoing throughout the cold storeroom, "Black Mask. I have Faust here... He's not looking good."

Finally turning away from that side of the warehouse, I peer down at the team of heroes and my sister. Superboy leaps up onto the bridge, startling it into a swinging motion that nearly makes me yelp.

He grabs the now unconscious Faust, perhaps a little too roughly.

"Are you okay?" He asks, and the question is so abrupt and random I can only nod dumbly in response. He nods back before descending to the ground with the beaten sorcerer in hand.

I fly down behind him. At least thirty assailants lay unconscious on the concrete floor of the warehouse, all clad in their fancy suits and masks. What good did they do them in the end?

Illusion immediately walks towards me as I try to fix my hair.

"He grabbed you by the hair? What a wimp," she comments when she reaches me.

"Faust said he had the potions. He must have got to him the moment he realised what was happening," I tell her, but they all hear.

"Where did he go?" Batgirl questions.

The moment she finishes speaking, a tiny noise clips through the room, loud enough for everyone to hear but soft enough to put us all on edge.

Every eye is on Ellery and I because it came from behind us. Concerned that it was a grenade clip or something, I twist around, finding nothing but the warehouse shadows.

"Look lower," Black Mask's gruff voice startles everyone, but I'm too distracted by his words to care where he is. Because when Ellery and I do exactly as he asks, when we look low to that cold concrete floor, every hope and dream we had for this painful deal implodes into nothing but dust.

Two vials of Felix Faust's diamond healing potion lay shattered and puddled there. The sound was of the leather wearing freak dropping them in his spite, a payback for betrayal.

Livinia's cure is lost.

Ellery grabs my arm like she needs to steady herself. I feel bile raise first at the complete and utter loss of hope. She's going to die without it.

"I'm so sorry," the Martian comes to our side, her voice sounding honest and sympathetic. It's nice, the clear and reverberating care this team seems to have. And yet it does nothing to quell either of us, though it is not in Ellery or I to sit and sob.

So the both of us turn to where he is being apprehended by Batgirl, Wondergirl and Robin. Illusion is reaching for her sticks and I'm rearing my blades out.

They have him locked down. It seems he already knows he's done for. My guess is I broke a couple of ribs with that elbow. He aggressively spits blood to the ground through the zip which serves as a mouth- and that's where I'm going to start. I'm going to knock his teeth out and then press them into the soft flesh at his sides.

Suddenly, a firm hand drops heavy on my shoulder, halting all plans to make him pay.

{I'm still breathing, I'm still breathing // I'm alive}

"He will be put away. That is his punishment," Batman's voice echoes in a much more eerie and threatening tone than Black Mask's ever could.

Illusion spins around abruptly, glaring up at him as she slaps his hand away. Everyone in the audience seems to wince like she just punched God in the face.

"He gets to live while she dies. How is that fair?" She demands loudly, pulling me away as well. Batman continues to stare down at her in some sort of disapproving manner. I don't know their relationship or anything, but there's something knowing there.

Just as she lurches forward for another verbal attack, I cut in.

"Stop," I say decisively, placing my hand over the one she has on me. "There's no point in arguing or fighting." I look up at Batman with an entirely blank face. "He's going to end up in Black Gate, or maybe Arkham. Somewhere he has been multiple times like it's a hotel to him. Then he'll put some things in order, like they all do. He'll be out within the month and then we can kill him."

Everyone, the team of heroes, the new arrivals of Batman, Nightwing, Blue Beetle, Black Canary and Red Tornado remain silent at the remark.

With Ellery behind me, we walk around them and head towards the stairs to the hallway out of here. No one says anything until we leave.

◊

◊

I nudge Ellery with my foot when she sighs for the thousandth time. It is starting to get irritating.

She gives me a half-hearted kick back.

We're both disappointed, so much so that going home wasn't an immediately exciting idea. Not home, where Livinia whose cure we have failed to procure lies dying in her sleep.

"Do you think mom's realised we're gone?" Ellery asks, putting her hands behind her head and lying back. We're on the roof of our Aunt's store, hiding from anyone who might be looking.

"No," I respond, folding my arms, "She's been working on her new perfume line all day. She'll be fast asleep with all those fumes in her head."

"I was going to change her labelling plans," Ellery admits.

"To what?"

"Fart by Sofía." 

"You are so immature," I snap, kicking her leg again. She snorts, knocking me back.

The two of us sit in a knowing silence. We can both agree on one thing; if our mother knew what we were doing, she'd kill us. Things were dangerous enough back in Colombia and it was things like that which took my father away from us. When we came to North America my mother told us every day that we were safer here.

Turns out this place is almost exactly the same.

"You know mom's bringing out a perfume brand based on her children?"

I shake my head, "I don't see the things you do, idiot."

"Well she is," my sister ignores my remark, "It's a trio of miniatures. They're called Daughters and she has big plans."

"Wait," I twist around to look at her, frowning, "I thought you said it was a trio?"

Ellery snorts again, "I did."

"But-"

"Yeah, there's four of us. Guess what the names of the scents are? Scientist, Ballerina and Battler. I wonder which one of us she skipped, hmm?"

Her tone is bitter.

My heart aches for Ellery, but I'm not allowed to express it. I did that once and she hit me so hard I saw stars. So instead I just stand up and pretend the whole conversation never happened. I also push the dread of having a perfume made and named after me out of my head.

That's going to do wonders for the drama at school.

Neither of us speak as we head home, the Gotham city lights being entertaining enough as we head towards the ignorant rich part of the city. Buildings grow, crime recedes and filth fades until we're in soccer mom suburbia.

Over Bambi's house we go. I'd imagine she's far asleep, in her normal bed in her normal house owned by her normal parents. She wasn't out tonight, amongst bullets and explosions, watching hope for a life dropped to the ground because of an evil sack of garbage. No bloodied man gripped her clothes and stained them red. Tonight she did not look into the face of the scariest legend in this city and give sass.

No, that was me.

"Hey, the lights are on," Ellery notes. We stop mid-air, above the neighbour's house. Sure enough the windows at the front of our home glow, reflecting off of the dew on the grass.

"They know," I whisper urgently, stomach dropping at the thought of my mother waiting on the couch with a glass of brandy and her chancla.

"Duh. So much for your she's asleep trope. We're going to die," she complains, landing on the ground.

I follow her down, "Can't you cast something on her?"

"Cast something on mom?" She responds in a rude tone as we stomp over the front yard, "That won't work. She's mom." 

"You're useless," I snap.

"You're useless-er!"

Right as we reach the front door it swings open rigidly. I kiss any sort of date with Tim, or outing with Bambi goodbye, because there is not way Ellery and I are not grounded and possibly beaten after this.

Reece is standing there in the plain shirt and sweatpants he sleeps in. His hair is a mess, like he has been gripping it in anguish. He looks us up and down, clad in hero (villain?) uniforms with tired eyes. There is something in that expression I don't quite understand.

"Girls, come in here," our mother's voice calls from the living room.

This is really happening. I know the rules; when we're being hit, we're not allowed to use our powers in any way.

So, I take a deep breath and step over the threshold.

The staircase in front of us is dark with shadows leading up to the second floor of the house. I want nothing more than to sprint up them and hide in my room, but I know there is no escaping Sofía Jackson's wrath.

Instead I turn right, facing our living room.

And I get the shock of my life when my eyes meet with the cold cowl of Batman, surrounded by Nightwing, Black Canary and my mother.

∞∞

I had a one-way ticket to a place where all the demons go
Where the wind don't change
And nothing in the ground can ever grow
No hope, just lies
And you're taught to cry into your pillow
But I survived