She...is...ALIVE! And she brings gifts!
WORK IN PROGRESS...Mickey, please come and grace my page with editing and suggestions, and together we shall rule the fanfiction.net and livejournal fanfiction WORLDS!
...So yeah.
----
For the very first time in a very long time, Rose Wilson realized that she was in over her head.
“Guys?” She called down the long hall, one of many in Titans Tower, peering into the open room beside her. “Crap…guys? Where are you?” The hall was silent in response. This wasn’t right. Usually this only took her a few minutes; half an hour at best, but it had been forty five minutes and Rose hadn’t heard a peep. No heavy, nervous breathing, no jittery movement. Even with her heightened awareness, there was nothing. This had only happened once before, and she didn’t like the idea of it happening again…
“What the-” Rose yelped as something whistled past her hip and struck the wall, releasing a billowing smokescreen. She reached out and snatched a tiny arrow off the wall and groaned as she examined it. The teen didn’t bother turning around; she could already feel the familiar looming presence. Only a few moments more and…
Wump.
Two tiny, giggling bodies landed on her back, knocking her forward and face first onto the floor.
“Okay, okay! You guys win,” Rose choked out as the two seven year olds on her back rolled off onto the floor beside her, still laughing delightedly. The smokescreen slowly melted away.
“Lian almost stuck ya in the butt with one of her daddy’s smoky arrows,” a violet eyed girl announced proudly, as soon as she had calmed enough to speak without bursting into a fit of laughter, “then I flew us to ya and we dropped!”
“Yes, yes you did. Weren’t we playing tag or hide and seek, not stalk-and-kill?” Rose sat up and rubbed her back with the hand that wasn’t holding the minute smokescreen arrow. Her gaze shifted to the girl who had yet to speak. She was twirling a lock of reddish brown hair around her fingers, trying to stop grinning at her babysitter’s stern look but failing miserably. “Did Daddy say you could play with these?”
“He said I could practice with ‘em…” the red head dodged clumsily.
“Outside the training room?” Rose gestured to the arrow with a nod, and both girls’ faces got a little less giddy.
“Uh…no,” the girl bit her lip, as though pondering what to say next, before suddenly proclaiming, “but it was Mar’i’s idea!”
“No it wasn’t!” The other girl protested loudly, jumping to her feet. “You were the one who said it’d be funny to sneak attack Rose when she thought we were hiding again, even if she got mad at us like last time!”
“Yeah, but you planned everything out!” Red hair flew as the first girl pulled herself up in a flurry to match her opponent’s height.
“Hey, easy you two,” Rose said, hoping they could hear her over their own little argument. “You’re both too much like your fathers…”
And it was undeniably true. Lian Harper was the daughter of Arsenal, Roy Harper, the Titan with big ideas but not a shred of plans to back them up. Nightwing, or Dick to those who knew his true identity, had fathered Mar’i Grayson, a daughter that, not unlike him, set things up with a frightening amount of precision. There was no doubt in Rose’s mind that both Lian and Mar’i were as brilliant as their fathers. Factor in Cheshire and Starfire blood, and the prospects were slightly alarming.
“Are you mad at us Rose?” Both girls were suddenly giving their babysitter the insufferably irresistible puppy face, although it was Lian who spoke.
“Oh, of course not," Rose sighed as she gathered her charges into a tight hug. They squeezed back, not being able to restrain more little giggles.
“Hey, guess what? I’m gettin’ better with my starbolts! Wanna see?” Mar’i stepped back, her hands balled and flickering with a hazy and seemingly untamed purple glow. A tiny bolt escaped the ebony haired girl’s fist, and she squeaked as it hit and left a small burn mark on the wall. “Oops…” Her hands lost their glow.
“That was…better than last time,” Rose decided with a small smile, hoping her words were somewhat encouraging.
“Last time she nearly burned off Aunty Kory’s eyebrows,” Lian reminded them smarmily, referring to Mar’i’s most recent training session with her mother.
“Oh yeah? Well last time you nearly froze Auntie Donna and Uncle Garth!”
“They’d just walked in the room! How was I supposed to know they’d be there?”
“You shot the arrow after they walked in!”
“Okay!” Rose called, finally hoisting herself to her feet in a desperate attempt to salvage her sanity. “Ice cream time.”
“Ice cream!” The argument was immediately forgotten at the prospect of a treat. Mar’i and Lian linked arms clumsily and marched toward the kitchen with nearly identical smiles. There was only one way Rose could think to describe the pair as she watched them walk down the hall.
Appropriately, albeit occasionally argumentatively, inseparable.
----
Name of the chapter is “Appropriately Inseparable.” The thing with Mar’i not being able to control her starbolts very well…at all…and Lian’s less-than-perfect aim will be kind of pivotal in the final chapter of this “stage” in their life that I’m writing, so I hope that doesn’t screw with anything you wanted to do. Also, I wasn’t sure whether or not you were doing tag or hide and seek or whatever, and I wrote this while I was in an airport running on 3 hours of sleep and a dosage of ibuprofen to kill the pain all my bug bites were causing me, so I kind of made it so they WERE playing hide and seek…but not any more? Jesus, I don’t know. My computer crashed and burned and for now I’m stuck using a stupid community library one with this wicked old children's librarian giving me the evil eye every so often, so I can only post this chapter (once you’re done editing it…to death) on fanfiction. I’ll stick it on TGN as soon as I get back into school, which will be…Tuesday of next week. Anyways, that’s my chapter. Hope you approve, suggest anything you see fit to suggest, and I await your chapter with eagerness. ^_^