Happy Boostlethon, rurone!
Title: Future Perfect
Author: poisonivory
Recipient: rurone
Rating: PG
Summary: Milagro's brother doesn't want her to be a Green Lantern. Rani's sort-of dad doesn't want her to be a Time Master. Clearly, there's only one solution: rescuing Ted Kord.
Notes: Thanks to mizzmarvel for the beta!
Part One
Part Two
Everything hurt.
Milagro groaned and opened her eyes. Then she frowned. Her bedroom ceiling looked strange, like it was made of metal or something. And why was her bed so hard?
“Oh thank God, you’re awake,” a man’s voice said. “We were getting worried.”
That wasn’t her father or Jaime. Milagro turned her head - and saw Ted Kord and Rani leaning over her, concerned looks on her faces. Oh. Right.
She sat up, wincing as she did. “What happened?”
“The science police stunned us,” Ted said. “I assume on charges of time travel. They’re probably filling out the paperwork to properly charge us now. Well, they don’t use paper in this century, but you know what I mean.”
“We just woke up a little before you did,” Rani added. “I don’t know how long we’ve been out. Or what they’ve done with the time sphere.” She looked pensive.
Milagro stood up and pushed her hair out of her face. “Well, good thing you’ve got a Green Lantern with you, huh?” She concentrated.
Nothing happened.
Dread coalesced in her stomach. Milagro looked down at her hand to find it bare. They’d taken her ring.
“Yeah,” Ted said. “My B.B. Gun’s gone, too.”
“What about your suit, Rani?” Milagro asked. Her heart was racing. She’d only had her ring for two days - that was, if her internal clock hadn’t been thrown all out of whack by all the time travel - but she missed it like a physical ache.
“It seems fine,” Rani said. “I don’t think they had time to tamper with it. Maybe they didn’t even know there was anything to tamper with. But I also don’t think I can fight our way out of a jail cell alone. I’m a scientist, not a pugilist.”
“A what?” Milagro asked.
“A fighter.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say that?” Milagro demanded. “Can’t you talk like a normal person?”
Rani pulled back as if stung. “What?”
“I mean, it’s bad enough that everything you say sounds like you’re vomiting up an encyclopedia, but now we’re in jail and you’re too busy showing off your vocabulary to break us out!” Milagro snapped. Her head was throbbing. Everything was throbbing. She’d never felt as helpless before getting her ring as she felt now, and she was pretty sure it was all Rani’s fault.
Rani’s surprise was visibly turning to anger. “Now hold on a minute,” she said. “This whole thing was your idea! And you’re the one who set off the alarm back at Khepri Industries! Maybe if we’d gotten Ted more subtly, the science police wouldn’t have caught us!”
Ted looked a little terrified. “Uh. Girls?”
“And maybe we would’ve rotted in that lobby instead of in jail!” Milagro retorted. “You can’t always just sit around waiting for Ted to come to us, or waiting for a way out of here, or waiting for Booster to remember that you exist. You have to make stuff happen.”
Rani went red. “He knows I exist!” she insisted. “And have you noticed that when you ‘make stuff happen,’ it’s always bad stuff? You left El Paso, and Black Beetle attacked you. You decided we should time travel, and Black Beetle attacked both of us. And now you got us here!” She glared at Milagro. “Maybe your brother was right about you being a crummy superhero.”
Milagro’s fists clenched. “Maybe you should shut up before I - ”
“With what ring?” Rani asked coolly.
“Okay, that’s enough!” Ted said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, and you’re both being really mean. God, no wonder I hated high school,” he muttered. “Anyway, we’re stuck here, and I wouldn’t let a fourteen-year-old girl risk her life breaking me out of jail even if you did feel up to it, Rani, so let’s just sit tight and figure out a plan instead of saying horrible things to each other. Deal?”
Milagro wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. Guilt was starting to set in. Being a superhero was turning out to be harder than she’d anticipated. “Deal. Sorry, Rani.”
“Me too,” Rani said softly, looking at the floor.
“Now, explain a little more,” Ted said. “Booster doesn’t know you’re here? And the, uh, the Blue Beetle?”
“My brother,” Milagro said. “Jaime.” She glanced at Rani, and then told Ted everything that had happened since yesterday - had it just been yesterday? - when she’d gotten the ring. She told him about the fight with Jaime, and the mugging, and going to his grave, and Rani showing up to rescue her from Black Beetle. Rani took over at that point, describing how they’d discovered that Ted’s grave was empty and journeyed to the future. She delicately skipped over their little side trip to Ted’s college years, which was probably for the best.
“So you don’t know who this Black Beetle guy is or why he attacked you?” Ted asked.
Milagro shook her head. “We don’t even know if he has a scarab like Jaime’s.”
“Wait. Your brother has the scarab?” Ted asked.
Milagro nodded. “Yeah. It’s attached to his spine and it gives him, like, this suit of armor, and wings and weapons and things. Oh, and it’s not magic. It’s from outer space. These aliens called the Reach sent it as part of a plan to take over the world.”
Ted stared. “Holy crap.”
So then of course Milagro had to tell him all about how Jaime had found Scarab and become the Blue Beetle and disappeared for a year and then came back and saved them all from the Reach. And Rani told them about how she’d been on vacation with her foster parents in the 30th century when they’d found themselves in the middle of a war zone, and how everyone had been killed, but Booster had saved her and taken her home with him. Milagro hadn’t known about that, and it made her feel even more guilty for saying that Booster didn’t know Rani existed. If someone had said that about one of Milagro’s parents, she would’ve punched them right in the teeth.
Ted sighed. “Well, thanks for the thought, anyway. It sounds like you two got further in rescuing me than anyone else, even if the motive was…well.”
Milagro scowled. She didn’t like Ted’s tone. “Even if the motive was what?”
Ted held up his hands. “Look, what I don’t know about kids could fill a book, and I’m hardly the person to question anyone’s life decisions, but it sounds like you guys were doing this less to save me and more to prove something about yourselves. And…well, there’s nothing less mature than making a big stink about how mature you are. Believe me, I know from experience.” He gave Rani a sad smile. “When you see Booster, tell him I said that.”
Rani frowned. “Wait. Why can’t you tell him?”
“Because I’m going to tell the science police that it’s my time machine and that I led you astray, of course,” Ted said. “Hopefully they’ll give you your ring back, Milagro, and then the two of you can find the time sphere and go home.”
Milagro sat up straight, appalled. “But they’ll execute you!”
“Maybe not,” Ted said with an unconvincing smile. “Anyway, if the last thing I can do for Booster and my successor is to send their loved ones back to them alive, well…”
“Absolutely not!” Milagro said, getting to her feet. “Now listen here, mister. I don’t care what you think of my ‘motive’ or how mature I am or whatever, but I came five hundred years into the future to save your butt, and I’m saving it whether you like it or not!”
“That’s right,” Rani said, scrambling to stand up too. “What would Mikey say if I told him I went to rescue you and got you killed instead?”
“I won’t let you two get hurt because of me,” Ted insisted.
“Well, too bad for you you’re not the boss of us,” Milagro retorted. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be a big genius. Why not think of an escape plan instead of a suicide one?”
“Good idea,” said a voice behind them. “Unfortunately for you, they’re one and the same.”
Milagro whirled around, though she already knew who it was. Sure enough, Black Beetle was standing in the middle of their cell, smirking at them.
“Black Beetle?” Ted asked.
“The one and only,” Black Beetle replied.
“You’d better get out of here,” Milagro said, backing up closer to Ted and Rani and struggling to keep her voice from shaking. “Time travel’s illegal. You don’t want to get locked up too.”
“Oh, I know it is,” Black Beetle said. “Who do you think gave the science police the anonymous tip that helped them catch you?”
“What? Why?” Rani asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill us yourself?”
“Stop helping, Rani,” Milagro snapped.
“Oh, I don’t want to kill you,” Black Beetle said, looking at Milagro. “Take you out of commission for a while, sure. But killing you wouldn’t work out very well for me.” He looked at Ted. “You, on the other hand…”
“I’ve been dead before. It’s not that scary,” Ted said. “Girls, get behind me.”
Milagro didn’t move. “Why don’t you want to kill me?” she asked. “Because my brother will kick your butt if you do?”
Black Beetle laughed. “Ha! Like that’s possible. No. Oh, no, that’s not what concerns me. It’s just…without you, there is no me.”
“What are you talking about?” Milagro said. “I know you’re not my brother from the future. Don’t try to pull that one again.”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Black Beetle asked. “I’m not your brother. I’m you.”
Milagro paused. “Um, you’re a boy.”
Black Beetle made an impatient noise. “God, I’d forgotten how stupid I was at that age. Don’t believe me? Fine.”
And he left the mask drop.
Milagro stared. It was a woman’s face behind the mask - a woman in her late twenties, Latina, with an ugly scar running across one cheekbone and the bridge of her nose, and dead, flat eyes with black irises and almost no white around them. Despite that, she did look familiar, like a younger, nastier version of Milagro’s mom. Or…
“But…your body,” Milagro argued, pointing to a figure that was much bigger and dude-er than Milagro would ever be. “And your voice…?”
Black Beetle rolled his - her - eyes. “You’ve seen the scarab make clothing out of dead skin cells and go undetected by the most sensitive instruments in the world. You think it can’t bulk me up or change my voice?” With the mask gone, her voice was female, too - and, like her face, horrifyingly familiar.
“But why…?”
“People don’t take cute little girls too seriously,” Black Beetle said. “You already know that. If passing as a man got me what I wanted…”
“Why should we believe you?” Rani interrupted. “If the scarab can convincingly pass you off as the opposite gender, it can make a total stranger look like an older Milagro.”
Milagro could’ve kissed her right then, but Black Beetle just looked bored. “Well, I could tell you all sorts of things that only Milagro could know, but hell, I could’ve just time traveled to find them out,” Black Beetle pointed out. “Instead, I think I’ll tell you what only I know.”
“Or you could just leave,” Ted said. “That’s a perfectly good option. My preference, actually.”
Black Beetle glared at him. “I definitely didn’t forget how annoying you were. I’m so glad you’re not dead. It would be so unfair if Max Lord was the only one who got to kill you.”
“What were you going to tell me?” Milagro interrupted before that particular line of conversation could escalate. She wasn’t about to let Ted get killed again, not when she’d come so close to saving him! Besides, she needed to hear more from this supposed older version of her. She needed to hear something that would hopefully prove that this woman wasn’t her and never had been.
But there was a sick feeling in her stomach already, warning her that she wasn’t going to like whatever Black Beetle had to say.
“Let me tell you how this goes,” Black Beetle said, smiling in a way that sent chills down Milagro’s spine. “You - we - make it home in one piece. Your friends, not so much.” She glanced at Rani. “Will it help your abandonment issues any if I tell you that Booster is really, really sad about your untimely death?”
Rani looked as if she’d been struck. Ted glared at Black Beetle and pushed Rani a little bit behind him, out of Black Beetle’s direct line of attack.
“Anyway,” Black Beetle went on, turning back to Milagro, “Jaime’s not too happy about it either. He blames you - us - for Ted’s death, and goes to Oa to get the Guardians to take your ring away. They don’t, of course, but Mom and Dad back Jaime up, and…let’s just say that relations at home are strained after that. You leave home not long after, and then that you finally open your eyes and see how the world really works. Jaime’s touchy-feely lovey friendship crap doesn’t get you anywhere out there. You turn hard.”
Her eyes went distant. “You still love your brother, though. So when all the heroes get called off to deep space to fight an advancing Dominator fleet and you find him floating in an asteroid field, dying, the scarab badly damaged…”
For the first time, her eyes looked almost normal. “The ring can heal. The scarab can heal. But neither of them could do the job themselves, and I couldn’t control the scarab.”
Milagro was pretty sure she didn’t want to hear this next bit.
“So I cut the scarab out of Jaime and used the ring to bond it to my own spine,” Black Beetle continued. “But a dying scarab pulled from a dying host doesn’t play well with a Green Lantern ring. It shifted my ring down the spectrum as it bonded with it. I wasn’t a Green Lantern anymore, but I wasn’t an infiltrator either. I wasn’t even a Black Lantern, because I was alive. I was something more.”
“What happened to Jaime?” Milagro whispered.
Black Beetle was silent for a minute. When she spoke again, her voice was careless and cruel again, free of its momentary humanity. “After Jaime died, I started exploring the limits of my new powers. After all, with a power ring and a scarab, I should be nearly omnipotent. Certainly powerful enough to resurrect a Blue Beetle or three.” She threw Ted another dark smile. He shifted, all tension and defensiveness.
“It was then - after poaching some techniques from our good buddy Rip Hunter - that I learned that I could skip through time,” Black Beetle said. “I started out trying to save Jaime, but I was thinking too small. With the power of the black scarab and all of time at my disposal, I could reorder the cosmos! Make it run the way it should run.”
“You’re insane,” Rani said.
“How is it any different from what the Time Masters do?” Black Beetle retorted.
“We don’t remake history in our image!” Rani said. “We allow it to unfold naturally.”
Black Beetle snorted. “Please. There’s nothing natural about time travel and you know it. But if we can’t live the way we’re supposed to, why not live the way we please?”
Rani rolled her eyes and turned to Milagro. “I’ve heard enough. Milagro, do you really want to keep listening to this? She’s obviously out of her mind.”
“That might be true, but she’s also telling the truth.” Milagro swallowed. “She’s me.”
“See? You don’t need to understand quantum physics to be the smart one in the room,” Black Beetle said.
“She’s a possible you,” Rani said. “Hypertime allows for parallel realities. Some can become unmoored and travel across the spectrum. She might have been you at some point in the past, but that doesn’t mean you have to become her.”
“Absolutely right,” Black Beetle said. “So I’ve come here to ensure my future. Which starts with getting rid of you two.” She turned towards Ted and Rani.
But Ted was ready. He tackled Black Beetle, sending them both crashing to the ground. “You…hnf…may be Milagro from the future,” he grunted as they struggled, “and you may be loaded down with weapons from space, and you may be Junior Miss Crazypants of America, but you are not hurting these girls!”
Milagro scrambled back, feeling helpless without her ring. “Use your suit!” she told Rani.
Rani already had her hands up, ready to fire a magnetic pulse. “I don’t want to hurt Ted!” she said.
Black Beetle shoved Ted off of her with scarab-augmented strength. He hit the opposite wall with a groan and dropped to his knees. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I don’t have that problem.” And she fired a blast at Ted.
He rolled just in time to keep from frying. The blast grazed his side instead and he shouted in pain.
“No!” Milagro said. She wouldn’t let Ted get hurt, not for her, not now. And Black Beetle had said that she needed Milagro alive…
Black Beetle lifted her hand to fire again, and Milagro charged into her. The blast went wild, blowing a hole in their cell wall.
Science police officers came running around the corner to see what the disturbance was. The one in the lead screeched to a halt at the sight of Black Beetle. “What th-okay, freeze!” he shouted, drawing his weapon. The men and women behind him followed suit.
“Idiots!” Black Beetle yelled. “I’ll kill you all!” She started firing through the hole in the wall. The cops fired back.
Milagro dropped to her stomach. “Rani! My ring! Now, now, NOW!” she yelled.
“What - oh!” Rani said. The air in front of her hands shimmered, and the ring came zipping through the hole in the wall and into Rani’s hand. She tossed it to Milagro, who jammed it on her finger.
“Force field!” she told it, and suddenly she, Rani, and Ted were encased in a green bubble.
“NO!” Black Beetle yelled, shooting at the bubble. It bounced harmlessly off the side.
“Find the time sphere!” Milagro yelled at the ring, and concentrated. Suddenly they were zipping down the halls of the police station. Officers flung themselves out of the way and doors crashed open, helpless against their momentum.
They burst into the evidence room. There were shelves with carefully tagged weapons and bloody shirts and the like, but no time sphere.
Milagro frowned. “The ring says it’s here…” There was a gurney in the middle of the room that would have been big enough to carry it, but it was empty.
Rani suddenly brightened. “Oh!” she said, and pulled out the remote she’d used to cloak the sphere before. She hid a button, and the sphere shimmered into view on the gurney.
The science police who weren’t busy fighting Black Beetle were piling into the evidence room. “Get us inside, quick!” Rani said as the cops’ stun-blasts ricocheted off Milagro’s green force field and the time sphere itself. At least, Milagro hoped they were stun-blasts.
“Okay, come on!” she said, letting them drop to the ground and turning the force field into a flat shield between them and the cops. She and Rani half-helped, half-carried Ted into the sphere, and Milagro used the ring to slam the door behind them.
“Get us out of here!” she yelled.
“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Rani snapped back, powering up the sphere. “When should we go?”
“Home! Wherever! It doesn’t matter!” Milagro said. “Just not here!”
“Right!” Rani hit a button, and they shimmered into the timestream.
Milagro breathed a sigh of relief. “We made it.”
But Rani still looked worried. “Maybe,” she said. “If Black Beetle doesn’t follow us.” She adjusted their coordinates. “I’m taking us to the 21st century. If nothing else, at least there are about a billion other heroes there who can help us.”
Ted groaned.
Milagro turned, heart sinking. She’d forgotten about him for a minute. Some rescuer she’d turned out to be.
He was sitting on the floor of the time sphere, his side scorched and bleeding. Milagro dropped to her knees beside him. “Are you okay?” she bit her lip. “Sorry, stupid question.”
Ted forced a smile. He was pale and sweaty. “I’ve had worse.”
Rani glanced over her shoulder. “Hold on, Mr. Kord. We’ll be home in a few minutes.”
“Maybe I can help,” Milagro said. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She didn’t really know anything about medicine, her mother’s profession notwithstanding, but she focused on the idea of flesh stitching itself back together, of pain easing and damage mending. When she opened her eyes again, the wound was still there, but it looked much less scary than it had before, and it was no longer bleeding.
Ted sighed in relief. “Thanks,” he said, letting his head drop back against the side of the sphere. “Hey.” He clutched at Milagro’s sleeve.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Listen, I don’t know too much about parallel realities and alternate futures, and I don’t know if Lady Scarface back there was you or what,” he said, “but your friend’s right. We are what we choose to be. And you seem like a really good kid to me.”
Milagro swallowed, then nodded. “Thanks, Mr. Kord.”
He closed his eyes and let go of her sleeve. “Call me Ted.”
“He’s right,” Rani said softly. “This isn’t a Gordon-Kord Paradox. You have a choice. And I don’t think you - the real you - would hurt your brother.”
Milagro thought about hurting her brother: Jaime, who’d taught her how to ride a bike and read her Caps for Sale three times every night when she was four and it was her favorite book. Jaime, who’d taken her to the Justice League Watchtower for her last birthday even when Batman said he couldn’t. Jaime, who’d disappeared for a year and shattered Milagro’s world.
She couldn’t make herself imagine it. Her brain skidded sideways and latched onto a side matter. “I don’t even know how she made the ring and the scarab bond. Oa and the Reach have been enemies for millennia. Their weapons don’t play well together.”
“Maybe that’s part of why she’s so unhinged,” Rani said.
“Maybe,” Milagro agreed. “And maybe…” Maybe that was why she’d been so angry at Jaime. Maybe that was why he’d been so angry at her. It was hard to think rationally when a little voice was whispering in your ear, telling you that the person standing in front of you, someone you loved, was really everything evil in the universe.
Rani glanced at the control panel. “Okay, we should be arriving in the 21st century right about now. I left the geographic coordinates where they were last time we were in this era, but we should talk about where we want to go from here.”
As she was talking, they popped out of the timestream and landed in the cemetery where Milagro had first met Rani. This time, though, it wasn’t deserted.
“That’s my brother!” Milagro said, pointing to the group clustered around Ted’s grave.
“And my whole family,” Rani replied, looking at the other three people who were now hurrying towards the time sphere. “I am in so much trouble.”
After hearing Black Beetle’s story, Milagro was ready to make peace with her brother. She opened the time sphere door and stepped out.
“Milagro!” Jaime said, storming towards her. “Where have you been? When have you been? Do you have any idea what - is that blood?”
“Jaime, what are you doing here?” Milagro asked.
“After you’d been gone for a bit, I tracked you here, and then Scarab said you’d time traveled. So I called Booster, and - ”
“Rani!” Booster said, running towards Rani as she climbed down from the sphere. “What were you doing taking a time sphere out on your own?”
“I’ll tell you later, but right now we need a hospital,” Rani said.
“What? Are you hurt?” he demanded, holding her at arms’ length and checking her over for injuries.
“No, it’s not me, it’s - ”
BLAM!
A massive concussive blast rocked the cemetery, sending them all flying. Milagro hit the ground hard. She looked up to see Black Beetle hovering over them, holding a sizeable weapon on her shoulder.
“Black Beetle!” Jaime said.
Milagro struggled to rise, to bring her ring to bear, but it felt like a huge weight was pressing down on her. She could barely breathe, let alone stand.
Around her, it looked like the others were having the same problem. Jaime’s suit was even retracting, leaving him in regular clothes. “Is that a - ?” Michelle asked.
“Inertial field generator,” Rip said.
“That’s right, kids,” Black Beetle said. “Rip gets the gold star - no pun intended. This little baby is used by the science police to suppress riots about 450 years from now. And lucky for me, a couple of brats had me spending some quality time in a 25th century police station recently.”
“An IFG won’t hurt us, Beetle,” Booster said. Milagro realized it was true; though she couldn’t move, she wasn’t in pain.
“Oh, I know it won’t,” Black Beetle said. “But it’ll keep my better half here from interfering while I kill the rest of you.” She - Milagro still thought of her as a “she” now, even though the mask was back up and Black Beetle looked completely male again - looked at Jaime and cocked her head contemplatively. “Well, not you. Although I wonder what would happen if I took your scarab now?” She shook her head. “Nah. Gordon-Kord Paradox.”
“What?” Booster asked.
But Black Beetle ignored him. “Now, who should I start with?” she asked. “Eeny, meenie, miney…” She pointed at Rani with her free hand. “Mo. You’ve been the biggest pain in my ass lately. Plus, I’ll get a kick out of this loser’s face when I off you.” She jerked her thumb towards Booster.
“Don’t do this!” Milagro pleaded. “If you’re really me, you cared about these people once. Rani’s your friend!”
“No,” Black Beetle said, lifting her free arm to fire at Rani. Rani, trapped on her back, managed to force her hands up to cover her face. “She’s yours. At least, she was.”
She fired. “Rani!” several voices screamed.
The air in front of Rani shimmered as she fired a magnetic pulse, bouncing Black Beetle’s shot. “Leave her alone!” Booster screamed. “You want a fight? Fight me, but don’t you touch my kid!”
“Ugh, shut up,” Black Beetle said, and fired at Rani again. It bounced again. “Would you stop? I know it’s getting harder for you to hold your hands up every second. I’m gonna kill you no matter what, so you might as well go easy.”
“Not if it leaves you free to hurt my family,” Rani said.
Milagro struggled desperately against the field that held her down. Something about the scene was naggingly familiar to her - the looming villain, the grounded hero, and her watching, helpless to do anything.
Then she had it. With a tremendous effort, she forced her ring hand towards Rani. “Rani!” she called. “How did Dan stop the mummy?”
Rani looked at her. And smiled.
Milagro shot a bolt of green lightning at Rani just as Rani unleashed a massive magnetic pulse. The electromagnetic field hit the inertial field and exploded outward. Milagro threw her hands over her face to protect herself from the worst of it. In the numbing silence that followed, she heard the thump of something hitting the ground.
She opened her eyes and sat up. The inertial field was gone, leaving her with an odd ringing sensation in her ears but otherwise none the worse for wear. As she watched, Rani and Jaime and the others all got up and dusted themselves off.
Black Beetle lay unconscious in the grass. Booster leveled his blasters at her. Jaime powered back up and approached her cautiously, then touched two fingers to the scarab on her back. “Scarab’s taken Black Beetle’s scarab offline,” he said. “We’ll be able to take him into custody now.”
“Her,” Rani corrected.
“What?” Jaime asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Milagro said, standing up.
The threat of Black Beetle over, Booster turned to Rani and grabbed her in a fierce hug. “Oof!” she gasped.
“I thought…I was so scared…” he managed. “Don’t you ever - ever….what even possessed you to - ”
“Aw, did I miss all the fun?”
Booster froze. Very slowly, he released Rani and turned towards the time sphere. Milagro jammed her hands over her mouth to hide her smile.
Ted, looking pained and tired but very much alive, was carefully making his way out of the time sphere. “Hey, Booster-buddy. Long time no see.” The tremble in his voice might have been from pain, but somehow Milagro didn’t think so.
“…Ted?” Booster breathed.
“Wh-Ted? Ted Kord?” Jaime repeated.
“In the slightly damaged flesh,” Ted said, stepping onto the ground. “You must be the Blue Beetle. I gotta say, your costume’s way snazzier than mine.”
“Ted,” Booster said again, sounding choked.
“Yeah, Boost. It’s really me,” Ted said gently. “That’s one amazing kid you’ve got there. You too,” he added, nodding at Jaime. “You know, sister-wise.”
Cautiously, as if Ted might vanish if he moved too fast, Booster approached Ted. “You…”
“Yeah,” Ted said.
Booster reached out a hand and touched Ted’s cheek. That seemed to solve whatever he was struggling with, because he made a small, helpless noise, and wrapped his arms around Ted.
Ted buried his face in the curve of Booster’s shoulder, and Milagro was glad, because whatever his expression was like right now, she was pretty sure it was too private for all of them to be witness to. Instead, she reached out and hugged her brother, who still looked flabbergasted.
“I…hey,” he said, hugging her back. “So. Very soon you’re going to have to tell me what just happened.”
“I will,” she promised. Around Jaime’s shoulder she could see Michelle alternating between hugging Rani and checking her over to make sure she was in one piece. Rip reached out and ruffled Rani’s hair, then looked up at Booster and Ted with an expression Milagro couldn’t name.
Booster pulled back to look at Ted, and if his cheeks were wet, no one commented on it. “But…how?”
“Ask the girls,” Ted said, nodding towards Milagro and Rani in turn.
Booster turned towards Rani without letting go of Ted. “Rani?”
“Now can I be a Time Master?” she asked.
Milagro couldn’t help laughing. Ted grinned. “Like I said. Amazing kids.” He shifted his weight, then winced.
Rip did something that looked suspiciously like brushing at his eyes, then cleared his throat. “I would suggest that we move this party elsewhere before the cemetery caretakers find us. Why don’t Jaime and I take Black Beetle into custody while the rest of you take Pa-take Ted to get that injury checked out?”
“Injury?” Booster asked, suddenly panicked.
“It’s fine, I’m fine,” Ted insisted. “I mean, yes, ouch, painkillers would be good, but I’ll be fine.” He cupped Booster’s jaw with his hand and gave him a comfortingly little squeeze. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Milagro glanced back at Black Beetle. She was pretty sure Ted was right, about that and about what he’d said in the time sphere. Maybe Black Beetle was Milagro from some reality. But not this one. Milagro would make sure of that.
She ringed up a stretcher for Ted, and a platform so that Booster and Rani could stand on it when they flew to the hospital, since Booster refused to let go of either Ted or Rani’s hands. Jaime hefted Black Beetle and headed for the time sphere with Rip.
Suddenly there was an orange blur, a sudden rush of static electricity, and a girl Milagro and Rani’s age was standing in front of them. She had red hair, freckles across her nose, and a yellow and white costume. “Hi! I’m Impulse,” she asked. “I kind of lost my dad’s treadmill, and I know Rip Hunter is a time travel guy, so I ran all around until I found him, and here you all are! So, can some of you time travel people help me?”
Milagro and Rani exchanged glances. Then they grinned. “Hi, Impulse,” Milagro said. “I’m Green Lantern. I think Goldstar and I can help you out.”
Author: poisonivory
Recipient: rurone
Rating: PG
Summary: Milagro's brother doesn't want her to be a Green Lantern. Rani's sort-of dad doesn't want her to be a Time Master. Clearly, there's only one solution: rescuing Ted Kord.
Notes: Thanks to mizzmarvel for the beta!
Part One
Part Two
Everything hurt.
Milagro groaned and opened her eyes. Then she frowned. Her bedroom ceiling looked strange, like it was made of metal or something. And why was her bed so hard?
“Oh thank God, you’re awake,” a man’s voice said. “We were getting worried.”
That wasn’t her father or Jaime. Milagro turned her head - and saw Ted Kord and Rani leaning over her, concerned looks on her faces. Oh. Right.
She sat up, wincing as she did. “What happened?”
“The science police stunned us,” Ted said. “I assume on charges of time travel. They’re probably filling out the paperwork to properly charge us now. Well, they don’t use paper in this century, but you know what I mean.”
“We just woke up a little before you did,” Rani added. “I don’t know how long we’ve been out. Or what they’ve done with the time sphere.” She looked pensive.
Milagro stood up and pushed her hair out of her face. “Well, good thing you’ve got a Green Lantern with you, huh?” She concentrated.
Nothing happened.
Dread coalesced in her stomach. Milagro looked down at her hand to find it bare. They’d taken her ring.
“Yeah,” Ted said. “My B.B. Gun’s gone, too.”
“What about your suit, Rani?” Milagro asked. Her heart was racing. She’d only had her ring for two days - that was, if her internal clock hadn’t been thrown all out of whack by all the time travel - but she missed it like a physical ache.
“It seems fine,” Rani said. “I don’t think they had time to tamper with it. Maybe they didn’t even know there was anything to tamper with. But I also don’t think I can fight our way out of a jail cell alone. I’m a scientist, not a pugilist.”
“A what?” Milagro asked.
“A fighter.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say that?” Milagro demanded. “Can’t you talk like a normal person?”
Rani pulled back as if stung. “What?”
“I mean, it’s bad enough that everything you say sounds like you’re vomiting up an encyclopedia, but now we’re in jail and you’re too busy showing off your vocabulary to break us out!” Milagro snapped. Her head was throbbing. Everything was throbbing. She’d never felt as helpless before getting her ring as she felt now, and she was pretty sure it was all Rani’s fault.
Rani’s surprise was visibly turning to anger. “Now hold on a minute,” she said. “This whole thing was your idea! And you’re the one who set off the alarm back at Khepri Industries! Maybe if we’d gotten Ted more subtly, the science police wouldn’t have caught us!”
Ted looked a little terrified. “Uh. Girls?”
“And maybe we would’ve rotted in that lobby instead of in jail!” Milagro retorted. “You can’t always just sit around waiting for Ted to come to us, or waiting for a way out of here, or waiting for Booster to remember that you exist. You have to make stuff happen.”
Rani went red. “He knows I exist!” she insisted. “And have you noticed that when you ‘make stuff happen,’ it’s always bad stuff? You left El Paso, and Black Beetle attacked you. You decided we should time travel, and Black Beetle attacked both of us. And now you got us here!” She glared at Milagro. “Maybe your brother was right about you being a crummy superhero.”
Milagro’s fists clenched. “Maybe you should shut up before I - ”
“With what ring?” Rani asked coolly.
“Okay, that’s enough!” Ted said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, and you’re both being really mean. God, no wonder I hated high school,” he muttered. “Anyway, we’re stuck here, and I wouldn’t let a fourteen-year-old girl risk her life breaking me out of jail even if you did feel up to it, Rani, so let’s just sit tight and figure out a plan instead of saying horrible things to each other. Deal?”
Milagro wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. Guilt was starting to set in. Being a superhero was turning out to be harder than she’d anticipated. “Deal. Sorry, Rani.”
“Me too,” Rani said softly, looking at the floor.
“Now, explain a little more,” Ted said. “Booster doesn’t know you’re here? And the, uh, the Blue Beetle?”
“My brother,” Milagro said. “Jaime.” She glanced at Rani, and then told Ted everything that had happened since yesterday - had it just been yesterday? - when she’d gotten the ring. She told him about the fight with Jaime, and the mugging, and going to his grave, and Rani showing up to rescue her from Black Beetle. Rani took over at that point, describing how they’d discovered that Ted’s grave was empty and journeyed to the future. She delicately skipped over their little side trip to Ted’s college years, which was probably for the best.
“So you don’t know who this Black Beetle guy is or why he attacked you?” Ted asked.
Milagro shook her head. “We don’t even know if he has a scarab like Jaime’s.”
“Wait. Your brother has the scarab?” Ted asked.
Milagro nodded. “Yeah. It’s attached to his spine and it gives him, like, this suit of armor, and wings and weapons and things. Oh, and it’s not magic. It’s from outer space. These aliens called the Reach sent it as part of a plan to take over the world.”
Ted stared. “Holy crap.”
So then of course Milagro had to tell him all about how Jaime had found Scarab and become the Blue Beetle and disappeared for a year and then came back and saved them all from the Reach. And Rani told them about how she’d been on vacation with her foster parents in the 30th century when they’d found themselves in the middle of a war zone, and how everyone had been killed, but Booster had saved her and taken her home with him. Milagro hadn’t known about that, and it made her feel even more guilty for saying that Booster didn’t know Rani existed. If someone had said that about one of Milagro’s parents, she would’ve punched them right in the teeth.
Ted sighed. “Well, thanks for the thought, anyway. It sounds like you two got further in rescuing me than anyone else, even if the motive was…well.”
Milagro scowled. She didn’t like Ted’s tone. “Even if the motive was what?”
Ted held up his hands. “Look, what I don’t know about kids could fill a book, and I’m hardly the person to question anyone’s life decisions, but it sounds like you guys were doing this less to save me and more to prove something about yourselves. And…well, there’s nothing less mature than making a big stink about how mature you are. Believe me, I know from experience.” He gave Rani a sad smile. “When you see Booster, tell him I said that.”
Rani frowned. “Wait. Why can’t you tell him?”
“Because I’m going to tell the science police that it’s my time machine and that I led you astray, of course,” Ted said. “Hopefully they’ll give you your ring back, Milagro, and then the two of you can find the time sphere and go home.”
Milagro sat up straight, appalled. “But they’ll execute you!”
“Maybe not,” Ted said with an unconvincing smile. “Anyway, if the last thing I can do for Booster and my successor is to send their loved ones back to them alive, well…”
“Absolutely not!” Milagro said, getting to her feet. “Now listen here, mister. I don’t care what you think of my ‘motive’ or how mature I am or whatever, but I came five hundred years into the future to save your butt, and I’m saving it whether you like it or not!”
“That’s right,” Rani said, scrambling to stand up too. “What would Mikey say if I told him I went to rescue you and got you killed instead?”
“I won’t let you two get hurt because of me,” Ted insisted.
“Well, too bad for you you’re not the boss of us,” Milagro retorted. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be a big genius. Why not think of an escape plan instead of a suicide one?”
“Good idea,” said a voice behind them. “Unfortunately for you, they’re one and the same.”
Milagro whirled around, though she already knew who it was. Sure enough, Black Beetle was standing in the middle of their cell, smirking at them.
“Black Beetle?” Ted asked.
“The one and only,” Black Beetle replied.
“You’d better get out of here,” Milagro said, backing up closer to Ted and Rani and struggling to keep her voice from shaking. “Time travel’s illegal. You don’t want to get locked up too.”
“Oh, I know it is,” Black Beetle said. “Who do you think gave the science police the anonymous tip that helped them catch you?”
“What? Why?” Rani asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill us yourself?”
“Stop helping, Rani,” Milagro snapped.
“Oh, I don’t want to kill you,” Black Beetle said, looking at Milagro. “Take you out of commission for a while, sure. But killing you wouldn’t work out very well for me.” He looked at Ted. “You, on the other hand…”
“I’ve been dead before. It’s not that scary,” Ted said. “Girls, get behind me.”
Milagro didn’t move. “Why don’t you want to kill me?” she asked. “Because my brother will kick your butt if you do?”
Black Beetle laughed. “Ha! Like that’s possible. No. Oh, no, that’s not what concerns me. It’s just…without you, there is no me.”
“What are you talking about?” Milagro said. “I know you’re not my brother from the future. Don’t try to pull that one again.”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Black Beetle asked. “I’m not your brother. I’m you.”
Milagro paused. “Um, you’re a boy.”
Black Beetle made an impatient noise. “God, I’d forgotten how stupid I was at that age. Don’t believe me? Fine.”
And he left the mask drop.
Milagro stared. It was a woman’s face behind the mask - a woman in her late twenties, Latina, with an ugly scar running across one cheekbone and the bridge of her nose, and dead, flat eyes with black irises and almost no white around them. Despite that, she did look familiar, like a younger, nastier version of Milagro’s mom. Or…
“But…your body,” Milagro argued, pointing to a figure that was much bigger and dude-er than Milagro would ever be. “And your voice…?”
Black Beetle rolled his - her - eyes. “You’ve seen the scarab make clothing out of dead skin cells and go undetected by the most sensitive instruments in the world. You think it can’t bulk me up or change my voice?” With the mask gone, her voice was female, too - and, like her face, horrifyingly familiar.
“But why…?”
“People don’t take cute little girls too seriously,” Black Beetle said. “You already know that. If passing as a man got me what I wanted…”
“Why should we believe you?” Rani interrupted. “If the scarab can convincingly pass you off as the opposite gender, it can make a total stranger look like an older Milagro.”
Milagro could’ve kissed her right then, but Black Beetle just looked bored. “Well, I could tell you all sorts of things that only Milagro could know, but hell, I could’ve just time traveled to find them out,” Black Beetle pointed out. “Instead, I think I’ll tell you what only I know.”
“Or you could just leave,” Ted said. “That’s a perfectly good option. My preference, actually.”
Black Beetle glared at him. “I definitely didn’t forget how annoying you were. I’m so glad you’re not dead. It would be so unfair if Max Lord was the only one who got to kill you.”
“What were you going to tell me?” Milagro interrupted before that particular line of conversation could escalate. She wasn’t about to let Ted get killed again, not when she’d come so close to saving him! Besides, she needed to hear more from this supposed older version of her. She needed to hear something that would hopefully prove that this woman wasn’t her and never had been.
But there was a sick feeling in her stomach already, warning her that she wasn’t going to like whatever Black Beetle had to say.
“Let me tell you how this goes,” Black Beetle said, smiling in a way that sent chills down Milagro’s spine. “You - we - make it home in one piece. Your friends, not so much.” She glanced at Rani. “Will it help your abandonment issues any if I tell you that Booster is really, really sad about your untimely death?”
Rani looked as if she’d been struck. Ted glared at Black Beetle and pushed Rani a little bit behind him, out of Black Beetle’s direct line of attack.
“Anyway,” Black Beetle went on, turning back to Milagro, “Jaime’s not too happy about it either. He blames you - us - for Ted’s death, and goes to Oa to get the Guardians to take your ring away. They don’t, of course, but Mom and Dad back Jaime up, and…let’s just say that relations at home are strained after that. You leave home not long after, and then that you finally open your eyes and see how the world really works. Jaime’s touchy-feely lovey friendship crap doesn’t get you anywhere out there. You turn hard.”
Her eyes went distant. “You still love your brother, though. So when all the heroes get called off to deep space to fight an advancing Dominator fleet and you find him floating in an asteroid field, dying, the scarab badly damaged…”
For the first time, her eyes looked almost normal. “The ring can heal. The scarab can heal. But neither of them could do the job themselves, and I couldn’t control the scarab.”
Milagro was pretty sure she didn’t want to hear this next bit.
“So I cut the scarab out of Jaime and used the ring to bond it to my own spine,” Black Beetle continued. “But a dying scarab pulled from a dying host doesn’t play well with a Green Lantern ring. It shifted my ring down the spectrum as it bonded with it. I wasn’t a Green Lantern anymore, but I wasn’t an infiltrator either. I wasn’t even a Black Lantern, because I was alive. I was something more.”
“What happened to Jaime?” Milagro whispered.
Black Beetle was silent for a minute. When she spoke again, her voice was careless and cruel again, free of its momentary humanity. “After Jaime died, I started exploring the limits of my new powers. After all, with a power ring and a scarab, I should be nearly omnipotent. Certainly powerful enough to resurrect a Blue Beetle or three.” She threw Ted another dark smile. He shifted, all tension and defensiveness.
“It was then - after poaching some techniques from our good buddy Rip Hunter - that I learned that I could skip through time,” Black Beetle said. “I started out trying to save Jaime, but I was thinking too small. With the power of the black scarab and all of time at my disposal, I could reorder the cosmos! Make it run the way it should run.”
“You’re insane,” Rani said.
“How is it any different from what the Time Masters do?” Black Beetle retorted.
“We don’t remake history in our image!” Rani said. “We allow it to unfold naturally.”
Black Beetle snorted. “Please. There’s nothing natural about time travel and you know it. But if we can’t live the way we’re supposed to, why not live the way we please?”
Rani rolled her eyes and turned to Milagro. “I’ve heard enough. Milagro, do you really want to keep listening to this? She’s obviously out of her mind.”
“That might be true, but she’s also telling the truth.” Milagro swallowed. “She’s me.”
“See? You don’t need to understand quantum physics to be the smart one in the room,” Black Beetle said.
“She’s a possible you,” Rani said. “Hypertime allows for parallel realities. Some can become unmoored and travel across the spectrum. She might have been you at some point in the past, but that doesn’t mean you have to become her.”
“Absolutely right,” Black Beetle said. “So I’ve come here to ensure my future. Which starts with getting rid of you two.” She turned towards Ted and Rani.
But Ted was ready. He tackled Black Beetle, sending them both crashing to the ground. “You…hnf…may be Milagro from the future,” he grunted as they struggled, “and you may be loaded down with weapons from space, and you may be Junior Miss Crazypants of America, but you are not hurting these girls!”
Milagro scrambled back, feeling helpless without her ring. “Use your suit!” she told Rani.
Rani already had her hands up, ready to fire a magnetic pulse. “I don’t want to hurt Ted!” she said.
Black Beetle shoved Ted off of her with scarab-augmented strength. He hit the opposite wall with a groan and dropped to his knees. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I don’t have that problem.” And she fired a blast at Ted.
He rolled just in time to keep from frying. The blast grazed his side instead and he shouted in pain.
“No!” Milagro said. She wouldn’t let Ted get hurt, not for her, not now. And Black Beetle had said that she needed Milagro alive…
Black Beetle lifted her hand to fire again, and Milagro charged into her. The blast went wild, blowing a hole in their cell wall.
Science police officers came running around the corner to see what the disturbance was. The one in the lead screeched to a halt at the sight of Black Beetle. “What th-okay, freeze!” he shouted, drawing his weapon. The men and women behind him followed suit.
“Idiots!” Black Beetle yelled. “I’ll kill you all!” She started firing through the hole in the wall. The cops fired back.
Milagro dropped to her stomach. “Rani! My ring! Now, now, NOW!” she yelled.
“What - oh!” Rani said. The air in front of her hands shimmered, and the ring came zipping through the hole in the wall and into Rani’s hand. She tossed it to Milagro, who jammed it on her finger.
“Force field!” she told it, and suddenly she, Rani, and Ted were encased in a green bubble.
“NO!” Black Beetle yelled, shooting at the bubble. It bounced harmlessly off the side.
“Find the time sphere!” Milagro yelled at the ring, and concentrated. Suddenly they were zipping down the halls of the police station. Officers flung themselves out of the way and doors crashed open, helpless against their momentum.
They burst into the evidence room. There were shelves with carefully tagged weapons and bloody shirts and the like, but no time sphere.
Milagro frowned. “The ring says it’s here…” There was a gurney in the middle of the room that would have been big enough to carry it, but it was empty.
Rani suddenly brightened. “Oh!” she said, and pulled out the remote she’d used to cloak the sphere before. She hid a button, and the sphere shimmered into view on the gurney.
The science police who weren’t busy fighting Black Beetle were piling into the evidence room. “Get us inside, quick!” Rani said as the cops’ stun-blasts ricocheted off Milagro’s green force field and the time sphere itself. At least, Milagro hoped they were stun-blasts.
“Okay, come on!” she said, letting them drop to the ground and turning the force field into a flat shield between them and the cops. She and Rani half-helped, half-carried Ted into the sphere, and Milagro used the ring to slam the door behind them.
“Get us out of here!” she yelled.
“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Rani snapped back, powering up the sphere. “When should we go?”
“Home! Wherever! It doesn’t matter!” Milagro said. “Just not here!”
“Right!” Rani hit a button, and they shimmered into the timestream.
Milagro breathed a sigh of relief. “We made it.”
But Rani still looked worried. “Maybe,” she said. “If Black Beetle doesn’t follow us.” She adjusted their coordinates. “I’m taking us to the 21st century. If nothing else, at least there are about a billion other heroes there who can help us.”
Ted groaned.
Milagro turned, heart sinking. She’d forgotten about him for a minute. Some rescuer she’d turned out to be.
He was sitting on the floor of the time sphere, his side scorched and bleeding. Milagro dropped to her knees beside him. “Are you okay?” she bit her lip. “Sorry, stupid question.”
Ted forced a smile. He was pale and sweaty. “I’ve had worse.”
Rani glanced over her shoulder. “Hold on, Mr. Kord. We’ll be home in a few minutes.”
“Maybe I can help,” Milagro said. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She didn’t really know anything about medicine, her mother’s profession notwithstanding, but she focused on the idea of flesh stitching itself back together, of pain easing and damage mending. When she opened her eyes again, the wound was still there, but it looked much less scary than it had before, and it was no longer bleeding.
Ted sighed in relief. “Thanks,” he said, letting his head drop back against the side of the sphere. “Hey.” He clutched at Milagro’s sleeve.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Listen, I don’t know too much about parallel realities and alternate futures, and I don’t know if Lady Scarface back there was you or what,” he said, “but your friend’s right. We are what we choose to be. And you seem like a really good kid to me.”
Milagro swallowed, then nodded. “Thanks, Mr. Kord.”
He closed his eyes and let go of her sleeve. “Call me Ted.”
“He’s right,” Rani said softly. “This isn’t a Gordon-Kord Paradox. You have a choice. And I don’t think you - the real you - would hurt your brother.”
Milagro thought about hurting her brother: Jaime, who’d taught her how to ride a bike and read her Caps for Sale three times every night when she was four and it was her favorite book. Jaime, who’d taken her to the Justice League Watchtower for her last birthday even when Batman said he couldn’t. Jaime, who’d disappeared for a year and shattered Milagro’s world.
She couldn’t make herself imagine it. Her brain skidded sideways and latched onto a side matter. “I don’t even know how she made the ring and the scarab bond. Oa and the Reach have been enemies for millennia. Their weapons don’t play well together.”
“Maybe that’s part of why she’s so unhinged,” Rani said.
“Maybe,” Milagro agreed. “And maybe…” Maybe that was why she’d been so angry at Jaime. Maybe that was why he’d been so angry at her. It was hard to think rationally when a little voice was whispering in your ear, telling you that the person standing in front of you, someone you loved, was really everything evil in the universe.
Rani glanced at the control panel. “Okay, we should be arriving in the 21st century right about now. I left the geographic coordinates where they were last time we were in this era, but we should talk about where we want to go from here.”
As she was talking, they popped out of the timestream and landed in the cemetery where Milagro had first met Rani. This time, though, it wasn’t deserted.
“That’s my brother!” Milagro said, pointing to the group clustered around Ted’s grave.
“And my whole family,” Rani replied, looking at the other three people who were now hurrying towards the time sphere. “I am in so much trouble.”
After hearing Black Beetle’s story, Milagro was ready to make peace with her brother. She opened the time sphere door and stepped out.
“Milagro!” Jaime said, storming towards her. “Where have you been? When have you been? Do you have any idea what - is that blood?”
“Jaime, what are you doing here?” Milagro asked.
“After you’d been gone for a bit, I tracked you here, and then Scarab said you’d time traveled. So I called Booster, and - ”
“Rani!” Booster said, running towards Rani as she climbed down from the sphere. “What were you doing taking a time sphere out on your own?”
“I’ll tell you later, but right now we need a hospital,” Rani said.
“What? Are you hurt?” he demanded, holding her at arms’ length and checking her over for injuries.
“No, it’s not me, it’s - ”
BLAM!
A massive concussive blast rocked the cemetery, sending them all flying. Milagro hit the ground hard. She looked up to see Black Beetle hovering over them, holding a sizeable weapon on her shoulder.
“Black Beetle!” Jaime said.
Milagro struggled to rise, to bring her ring to bear, but it felt like a huge weight was pressing down on her. She could barely breathe, let alone stand.
Around her, it looked like the others were having the same problem. Jaime’s suit was even retracting, leaving him in regular clothes. “Is that a - ?” Michelle asked.
“Inertial field generator,” Rip said.
“That’s right, kids,” Black Beetle said. “Rip gets the gold star - no pun intended. This little baby is used by the science police to suppress riots about 450 years from now. And lucky for me, a couple of brats had me spending some quality time in a 25th century police station recently.”
“An IFG won’t hurt us, Beetle,” Booster said. Milagro realized it was true; though she couldn’t move, she wasn’t in pain.
“Oh, I know it won’t,” Black Beetle said. “But it’ll keep my better half here from interfering while I kill the rest of you.” She - Milagro still thought of her as a “she” now, even though the mask was back up and Black Beetle looked completely male again - looked at Jaime and cocked her head contemplatively. “Well, not you. Although I wonder what would happen if I took your scarab now?” She shook her head. “Nah. Gordon-Kord Paradox.”
“What?” Booster asked.
But Black Beetle ignored him. “Now, who should I start with?” she asked. “Eeny, meenie, miney…” She pointed at Rani with her free hand. “Mo. You’ve been the biggest pain in my ass lately. Plus, I’ll get a kick out of this loser’s face when I off you.” She jerked her thumb towards Booster.
“Don’t do this!” Milagro pleaded. “If you’re really me, you cared about these people once. Rani’s your friend!”
“No,” Black Beetle said, lifting her free arm to fire at Rani. Rani, trapped on her back, managed to force her hands up to cover her face. “She’s yours. At least, she was.”
She fired. “Rani!” several voices screamed.
The air in front of Rani shimmered as she fired a magnetic pulse, bouncing Black Beetle’s shot. “Leave her alone!” Booster screamed. “You want a fight? Fight me, but don’t you touch my kid!”
“Ugh, shut up,” Black Beetle said, and fired at Rani again. It bounced again. “Would you stop? I know it’s getting harder for you to hold your hands up every second. I’m gonna kill you no matter what, so you might as well go easy.”
“Not if it leaves you free to hurt my family,” Rani said.
Milagro struggled desperately against the field that held her down. Something about the scene was naggingly familiar to her - the looming villain, the grounded hero, and her watching, helpless to do anything.
Then she had it. With a tremendous effort, she forced her ring hand towards Rani. “Rani!” she called. “How did Dan stop the mummy?”
Rani looked at her. And smiled.
Milagro shot a bolt of green lightning at Rani just as Rani unleashed a massive magnetic pulse. The electromagnetic field hit the inertial field and exploded outward. Milagro threw her hands over her face to protect herself from the worst of it. In the numbing silence that followed, she heard the thump of something hitting the ground.
She opened her eyes and sat up. The inertial field was gone, leaving her with an odd ringing sensation in her ears but otherwise none the worse for wear. As she watched, Rani and Jaime and the others all got up and dusted themselves off.
Black Beetle lay unconscious in the grass. Booster leveled his blasters at her. Jaime powered back up and approached her cautiously, then touched two fingers to the scarab on her back. “Scarab’s taken Black Beetle’s scarab offline,” he said. “We’ll be able to take him into custody now.”
“Her,” Rani corrected.
“What?” Jaime asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Milagro said, standing up.
The threat of Black Beetle over, Booster turned to Rani and grabbed her in a fierce hug. “Oof!” she gasped.
“I thought…I was so scared…” he managed. “Don’t you ever - ever….what even possessed you to - ”
“Aw, did I miss all the fun?”
Booster froze. Very slowly, he released Rani and turned towards the time sphere. Milagro jammed her hands over her mouth to hide her smile.
Ted, looking pained and tired but very much alive, was carefully making his way out of the time sphere. “Hey, Booster-buddy. Long time no see.” The tremble in his voice might have been from pain, but somehow Milagro didn’t think so.
“…Ted?” Booster breathed.
“Wh-Ted? Ted Kord?” Jaime repeated.
“In the slightly damaged flesh,” Ted said, stepping onto the ground. “You must be the Blue Beetle. I gotta say, your costume’s way snazzier than mine.”
“Ted,” Booster said again, sounding choked.
“Yeah, Boost. It’s really me,” Ted said gently. “That’s one amazing kid you’ve got there. You too,” he added, nodding at Jaime. “You know, sister-wise.”
Cautiously, as if Ted might vanish if he moved too fast, Booster approached Ted. “You…”
“Yeah,” Ted said.
Booster reached out a hand and touched Ted’s cheek. That seemed to solve whatever he was struggling with, because he made a small, helpless noise, and wrapped his arms around Ted.
Ted buried his face in the curve of Booster’s shoulder, and Milagro was glad, because whatever his expression was like right now, she was pretty sure it was too private for all of them to be witness to. Instead, she reached out and hugged her brother, who still looked flabbergasted.
“I…hey,” he said, hugging her back. “So. Very soon you’re going to have to tell me what just happened.”
“I will,” she promised. Around Jaime’s shoulder she could see Michelle alternating between hugging Rani and checking her over to make sure she was in one piece. Rip reached out and ruffled Rani’s hair, then looked up at Booster and Ted with an expression Milagro couldn’t name.
Booster pulled back to look at Ted, and if his cheeks were wet, no one commented on it. “But…how?”
“Ask the girls,” Ted said, nodding towards Milagro and Rani in turn.
Booster turned towards Rani without letting go of Ted. “Rani?”
“Now can I be a Time Master?” she asked.
Milagro couldn’t help laughing. Ted grinned. “Like I said. Amazing kids.” He shifted his weight, then winced.
Rip did something that looked suspiciously like brushing at his eyes, then cleared his throat. “I would suggest that we move this party elsewhere before the cemetery caretakers find us. Why don’t Jaime and I take Black Beetle into custody while the rest of you take Pa-take Ted to get that injury checked out?”
“Injury?” Booster asked, suddenly panicked.
“It’s fine, I’m fine,” Ted insisted. “I mean, yes, ouch, painkillers would be good, but I’ll be fine.” He cupped Booster’s jaw with his hand and gave him a comfortingly little squeeze. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Milagro glanced back at Black Beetle. She was pretty sure Ted was right, about that and about what he’d said in the time sphere. Maybe Black Beetle was Milagro from some reality. But not this one. Milagro would make sure of that.
She ringed up a stretcher for Ted, and a platform so that Booster and Rani could stand on it when they flew to the hospital, since Booster refused to let go of either Ted or Rani’s hands. Jaime hefted Black Beetle and headed for the time sphere with Rip.
Suddenly there was an orange blur, a sudden rush of static electricity, and a girl Milagro and Rani’s age was standing in front of them. She had red hair, freckles across her nose, and a yellow and white costume. “Hi! I’m Impulse,” she asked. “I kind of lost my dad’s treadmill, and I know Rip Hunter is a time travel guy, so I ran all around until I found him, and here you all are! So, can some of you time travel people help me?”
Milagro and Rani exchanged glances. Then they grinned. “Hi, Impulse,” Milagro said. “I’m Green Lantern. I think Goldstar and I can help you out.”