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Five dollars. Five measly dollars for a costume, and it's already coming apart.
The girl in the black tights, long-sleeved leotard, ski mask and sneakers is already fretting over the structural integrity of the costume she kludged together, and she looks down at herself. Already a rip along the left side. She scowled under the mask, then looked up. "I oughtta pound on your head until MANNERS come out. Do you SEE what you did to this?"
The guy webbed to the wall next to his friend, inches above the pavement, moans, shaking his head. He's still trying to get all the fuses replaced in his head. The woman they had planned on mugging, the cute blonde with the pearl necklace, had already run off, so it was just the girl in black standing in front of the two would-be muggers.
"Jerks," she mutters, pacing in front of them.
Overhead, a woman in green is slowly making her way across the city. She's had the ring, like, two days. Since Mr. Galczynski went nuts and tried to kill Mrs. Galczynski, and Jessica broke down the door and saved the day.
Something that still makes her want to throw up.
Now she's got this ring. It says she's the Green Lantern. It says she can do all kinds of stuff.
Right now, she is floating at about twenty feet off the ground and traveling at approximately ten miles an hour. Baby steps, right?
At this height and this speed, she cannot help but notice the woman in black shouting at the guy stuck to the wall. Under the circumstances, she's not sure who's the bad guy here, but she's fairly certain that, as The Green Lantern, she is supposed to do something.
The ring has provided her with a costume — a glowing green Lantern symbol over her right eye, an entirely too form-fitting top in green and black with a second lantern centered over her bosom, and a pleated green skirt of the sort she hasn't worn since high school that shows off too much leg. Granted, she has nice legs, but still.
She lowers herself slowly toward the woman in black and clears her throat, making her voice deeper. Superheroes are supposed to have deep voices, right?
"Is there a problem here, Citizen?"
'Dios mio," she thinks. 'I sound like Crouton when he's chasing a lady cat.'
Up in the sky over the city, Lara's been trailing the green-glowing woman in the miniskirt outfit. She's seen a Lantern before… but not -this- one; in fact, she can't remember anyone, in her past, mentioning a female Green Lantern on Earth… much less a human one — all the human Lanterns she'd ever heard of were men. So, she's watching and listening from afar… out of curiosity, because she's certain that one of those rings wouldn't allow itself to be used badly.
When the Lantern drops to street level, Lara angles herself to where she can see what's going on, and keeps her super hearing focused in on the Lantern and the area she's in. This is when she spots Gwen and hears the tail end of the girl's complaints. This actually makes her grin a bit, as she recalls a time when her own early costumes were somewhat less durable than she'd hoped they'd be.
The woman in black looks up, spotting Jessica and blinking.
Okay…she's flying. She didn't think she was that loud. She sighs and says, "These two were threatening to rob someone. They didn't get to, but then one of them SHOT at me. Ripped it right here." She pointed to the teae in the fabric.
Jessica leans in to peer at the tear on the woman's costume. Grimaces faintly. "That was just rude," she informs the two men. "And also, guns kill. Here…" She focuses a minute, forming an emerald needle and thread in mid-air and sews up the tear in the costume quickly and neatly. "That should hold 'til you get home. Unless I lose focus." Pause. "Sorry. I'm the Green Lantern." She glances at her ring, displays the lantern symbol (count 'em, three lantern symbols). "See?"
Lara drops down out of the sky, finally, to land on the rooftop overlooking the alleyway the others are in. Hands on her hips, she says, "I didn't know Lanterns were tailors, as well", as if to announce her presence, before she steps off the edge and floats down to land lightly on her feet, on ground level. Eying the stitched-up tear, she says, "Your costume was torn… but you weren't hit. You managed to dodge the shot completely", to Gwen, no part of what she says sounding like a question. "You must have very fast reflexes."
Gwen looks up at the words from the new arrival and is suddenly very glad they cant see her stare through the mask.
Geez, ANOTHER professional supertype. And the Green Lantern (odd name, but judge not, lest ye be frickin' judged), that is a VERY handy ability to have. You can still see the crease, but pretty clean. Didn't even get pricked with the needle.
The second thing she noticed was how powerful Lara was. She had thought SHE had been in shape, but this woman made her look how she used to look.
"Uhhh…yeah, I can be pretty fast. Not fast enough, though…If I had been, maybe I wouldn't need a patch job." She takes a breath, aware her mouth had gone dry. She was nervous, but tried not to show it. "I'm…new to this. I don't have a real name yet."
Jessica glances up as she and the woman in black are addressed. She's still affecting her male-cat-trying-to-get-attention-of-female-in-heat voice. "It's just a patch 'til she can get an actual piece of thread," she explains. Then double-takes. "Lanterns? There are… what?"
"That you can dodge a bullet at all is very impressive. Not many are capable of that, and some needn't even bother, as well", Lara says to Gwen, before looking back over to Jessica. Hands back on her hips she says, "You -are- a Green Lantern, are you not?", then adds, "My words about your being a tailor, as well… they were an attempt at a jest… did I fail in that attempt?" The last, the question, is directed to Gwen.
Gwen looked up thoughtfully, looking from Jessica to Lara. "I think you caught her off-guard with the plural of 'Lanterns.'" She smirks wryly. "Your delivery was good, but I think you distracted her with the wrong part of the punchline."
"Erhhhhh…" the thug on the right moans.
"No comments from the Peanut Gallery," The girl in black snaps to him, then looks over to the entrance of the alley, seeing flashing lights. "Uhm, I think the almost-victim found the cops. Maybe we should hustle on outta here. I make a LOUSY innocent bystander."
Jessica nods to Gwen in agreement. Yes, that was the part of the sentence that had her confused. "I'm -the- Green Lantern," she tells Lara hesitantly. "I've never heard of another one." More Green Lanterns? That could be problematic. What if they don't want her to have the ring? What if they think she's an idiot, or bad at the job?! What if… what if…
After a few moments of a look of panic she stops, closes her eyes, whispers to herself, "I am not my fears. I am not my fears. I am not my…" Another nod to Gwen. "I think elsewhere would be best."
Lara's eyes widen a bit. Those words from Jessica apparently caught -her- by surprise. "I see…", she says. "Nevertheless, the ring chose you. It wouldn't have done so if you weren't meant to have it." When the lights become obvious, and everyone seems to want to go elsewhere, she says, "We can meet elsewhere, if you'd all like. I haven't many other places to be, to be honest." Already, though, her feet have lifted off the ground as she hovers in place.
The girl in black smiled under the mask. "Follow me."
She raises her outstretched arm, and there is a sudden "thwipp!" as a thin line of some silky material shoots out from between the sleeve of the leotard and the fingerless glove. It hits a ledge high up. It is getting a LOT easier. It's almost instinctive now.
She suddenly YANKS down on the line, and then she is vaulted upward a clear 30 feet before she fires another webline, and is swinging south, rising at the end of the swing to catapult herself through the air with an eerie grace and harmony of movement.
Jessica can follow. She's good at following. She even increases her speed so she's not far behind Gwen as the other woman leaps upward. "Neat," she murmurs to herself, considering her ring briefly. She'd try it, but she suspects she'd wind up yanking a gargoyle off a church or something, and the number of acts of contrition she'd have to do would be ridiculous.
Lara also takes to the air, following after the web-slinger. She watches, too — this isn't a powerset with which she's familiar. "You're stronger than normal, in addition to more agile", she comments. "This", she adds, clearly meaning the web-slinging, "isn't something a typical person could do, even should they find equipment capable of allowing it."
Gravity can be SO much fun. The flyers don't know what they're missing.
It has gotten much easier with practice, once she realized how everything worked. She stopped thinking about how she was going to make it from point A to point Z, and realized she just had to let herself relax and let body knowledge handle the details. It was not just instinct, it was…discovering what she had to work with. As the days went on, she looked less and less like she was in gym class, holding desperately to the rope. She began to look more and more like a circus acrobat, all the little engines working in concert. She did not simply hang in the air between the weblines—she angled her body for longer distance, somersaulted to dodge objects, soared through the air like a basketball player ready to deliver a massive dunk after an inhuman hang time.
She was, not to put too fine a point on it, enjoying it. For her, 90 percent of the fun was in the travel.
"Normal people can't fly, either," Jessica points out to Lara, then zags wildly to avoid crashing into an antenna. As noted, she's new at this. "I mean, she had two men webbed to the side of a building. Clearly she's some kind of spider woman." She glances after Gwen, hoping she doesn't have mandibles under her ski-mask. Spiders are horrible.
Lara nods. "Still, our ability to fly isn't requisite on muscular and skeletal structure capable of the acrobatic and aerobatic stunts she's performing at the end of a tethered line. Her mode of travel requires a great deal of strength, agility, and raw skill. It's quite impressive, if a bit limited by comparison to how we travel", she says to Jessica. She's much more comfortable with flying, it seems, easily maneuvering around obstacles that present themselves. This woman's quite used to her own powers, even if the ability to fly is the only one she's, thus far, shown.
The woman finally stops at a small pizza joint near Brighton Beach, skidding only slightly as she comes to a stop. She turns and looks to the approaching two women.
She thinks ruefully, *God, please let me find a way to look as cool as those two do. Bad enough this is all I can afford but does it HAVE to look it?*
"So…do you both like pizza by the slice?"
Jessica would be somewhat shocked to know that she's being thought of as cool. She is distinctly uncool — though she's not sure if that's actually a word. She's a nervous wreck and afraid of her own shadow — just ask Crouton. However, the question is an easy one to answer. "I'm not certain there is a person in New York who dislikes pizza by the slice."
Lara's voice sounds excited when she smilingly replies. "I haven't had pizza in quite some time!", she says. Then her face falls a bit, and she sounds a bit sadder when she admits, "I… have no money with which to purchase it."
The girl in black smiles. "Oh, don't worry about that."
The head appeared from above the awning, and Vincent jumped.
He stared at the masked face. "Hey…izzat you?"
"Don't know who else it could be, Vinnie." She fished out a ten-spot, placing it on the counter. "I'd like three slices of pepperoni. Uhm…hang on, let's see what they want." She is crouched on the awning, the arms and legs slightly akimbo, all lean muscle and gradual curves that would make many people want to take up geometry. "Any preferences, you two?"
Jessica pauses a moment, then moves up beside Gwen and hangs her head over the awning — she's not actually on the awning, but hovering above it in a kneeling position. "One slice of cheese, por favor," she says politely, and then straightens, fumbling to find cash — she actually has it, because you never know when you might need bus fare. Even with a Lantern ring.
"Pepperoni would be lovely!", Lara says, smiling brightly once again, stressing the last word. Then she adds, quickly, as if trying to not be rude. "Pepperoni please, sir, if you would." She then moves to sit down on the little, upraised parapet around the edge of the rooftop, hands on either side of herself, feet crossed at the ankles. "I go by the name 'Supergirl', by the way."
The girl in black nods, then peers over the edge. "Make that six slices of pepperoni, one of cheese."
Vincent nods, taking the ten-dollar bill. A webline snags the money Jessica put down and she tugs it back, peeling the webline off before handing it back to Jessica. "My treat. They'll be ready in a few minutes."She stands up, strolling lightly along the canvas awning as if walking along the boardwalk below. "I was thinking Black Widow, but that's taken…so I'm thinking of going with White Widow."
"Thank you," Jessica says. "White Widow. Seems a good name." She hesitates a moment before asking, "You… don't have mandibles under the mask, do you?" Once again, spider-people are likely fine, but spiders are terrible things. She's already been established as the (possibly 'a') Green Lantern, so does not feel obligated to introduce herself again.
Lara looks up and over at Gwen's face… and then says, "I see no mandibles under her mask", as if being able to see through fabric is normal for her.
The girl snorts a little laughter, then starts to peel up the ski mask to expose her mouth. She freezes as Lara makes her declaration.
Maybe she was talking about there being no suspicious bumps. Yeah, that has to be it.
She continues to peel the mask upward to expose her pink lips, which part in a wide smile. No mandibles, no translucent fangs dripping clear venom, just even white teeth. A mouth well-cared for.
"See?" she says warmly, giving Jessica a good look before pulling the mask down again.
Jessica looks somewhat relieved. "Thank you," she says. "And I'm sorry. I'm…" She grimaces quietly. "I am not as fearless as my ring seems to believe."
"I have never called you 'fearless'," the ring says in a pleasant female voice. Another generation might say it sounded rather like somebody named Siri. "You have the ability to overcome great fear, but you are terrified 63.7 percent of the time, J-Bird."
Lara looks over as the ring speaks… and doesn't seem at all surprised by that. "Would you prefer to be called 'Green Lantern', or 'J-Bird', as your ring calls you?", she asks of Jessica. She remains seated as she has been, waiting 'patiently' for the pizza she's been offered.