Room 503, Monday Evening

[time_flyer_5]

She'd seen Dojima and Romeo off earlier in the day, and tomorrow it would be her turn. That meant tonight, according to her only halfway regimented -- where a year and a half ago it would have been obsessively so -- schedule of tasks was going to be spent packing up and cleaning what was left of her things. There wasn't a whole lot left: her few

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[blondecanary]

Dinah half-remembered Jen saying she was only staying 'til the end of this term, and between the trips to Arrakis and New Gotham, figured it would be better to be safe than sorry and check on her now.

And look, she was efficiently packing. Great timing. "Hey." She stuck her fingers in her pockets, and felt bummed. "Almost time?"

[time_flyer_5]

Jen stopped rearranging her duffel bag for the seventeenth time and looked up, smiling ruefully. "Hours left to go, yeah. I start my new job next week and I need time to settle in." She gestured for Dinah to come in. "Looks pretty spartan in here, doesn't it?"

[blondecanary]

"Really barren and Spartan and kinda sad," Dinah said, sitting down on Dojima's empty bed. "I said good-bye to Romeo in the salle today, and realized you might be leaving really soon. I was hoping I was wrong, though. I wanted one more spar with you before you went."

[time_flyer_5]

"Come visit me in the future sometime," Jen offered with a grin, though the lost opportunity made the grin falter just a bit. "We can always spar then, if not at homecoming."

[blondecanary]

"Homecoming," Dinah said, seizing on this with determination. "You have to come to Fight Club then, and we can fight like old times. Maybe I'll be more caught up to you by then," she kidded. After a second, she sobered. "Where are you going?"

[time_flyer_5]

"Newtech City, California, just a few years into the future." Jen tapped the pile of paperwork on the nightstand. It was . . . kind of a frightening pile, actually. "You remember Bridge and Z, from that panel at CopCon?"

[blondecanary]

"Yeah, they seemed pretty cool." Like she'd forget being put in a tiny card jail? "You're going to join up with them?" That didn't seem bad at all, compared to Jen's past stuff.

[time_flyer_5]

"That's the plan. Space Patrol Delta hired me as a research assistant. I get to help develop all the cool gadgets." She grinned and shoved the duffel bag aside. "And no, it's not that I already know how they work; the technical specs were pretty highly classified. But apparently I'm back in Time Force's good books, too, so I'll still be working for them, too. It's going to get tricky."

[blondecanary]

"Undercover, kind of?" Dinah checked, curious. "I mean where do they think you're from? Did the Time Force give you a new identity or something?"

[time_flyer_5]

"I did use the computers in the time ship for that," Jen joked -- look, humor! "Actually the displacement wasn't an issue, and half of that paperwork is confidentiality agreements. I'll basically be on call for them, in case something comes up, and keeping an eye on any time travel anomalies."

[blondecanary]

"Your life sometimes makes my head hurt," Dinah said seriously. "But this time I'm glad it worked out. If you can't go back--" And why would Jen want to, to a place where everything was changed but the same? "-- might as well go forward from here." She sighed. "I'll miss you, though. And trying to get you to lighten up."

[time_flyer_5]

"Believe it or not, you have," Jen said just as seriously. "You and Dojima and everyone, and if I know Bridge half as well as I think I do, he'll keep working on it too. This feels good, you know -- from here on out the past won't be hanging over my head. Even if some of that past is the future, but . . . it's a relief. And I'll miss you, too. This just means you have to keep getting better, and surprise me next time I see you on the mats, right?"

[blondecanary]

"Totally!" Dinah grinned, face brightening. "Okay. Phone numbers, e-mail, and address to send cookies if you need 'em. And I want pix of your new place and your co-workers, so I can get an idea of what it's like."

[time_flyer_5]

"I'll see what I can do about pictures," Jen cautioned, with a gesture back toward the stack of paperwork. "Living and working in police headquarters might mean I can't take a camera everywhere. Nuts, do you have something I can write this down on?"

[blondecanary]

Dinah pulled out her phone and handed it over with a tolerant smile. "And no worries. Off-duty's fine, you know. I just want to know you're having a life in NewTech City." She cocked her head. "Hunh. Do you think your next HQ will be a big clock too?"

[time_flyer_5]

Jen burst out laughing as she started programming her number into Dinah's phone. "Actually, no. It's an architect's industrial rendering of a giant dog."