Send me a ♣, and I’ll write a limerick about your character.
Koriand’r, a Princess by birth
From Tamaran, came to our Earth
Although she lacked pupils,
She had ample scruples
Kissing Dick gave her the most mirth.
Kori turned to look at her friend, frowning slightly. “Well given we are a part of the same Team. I guess I will have to say yes, and I will be more than happy to bring him something from you.” She smiled. “His birthday? I must remember to get him something nice, then.” Taking a mental note, and labeling the little task as her priority she nodded at her friend. “You can give whatever you want to Bette. I shall be sure to give it to him.” She frowned. “Wouldn’t you like to give it to him in person though?” She asked cautiously.
The blonde fidgeted with her hands on her lap as she spoke. “I’m…I don’t think he’d really want to see me, to be perfectly honest, Kori. We didn’t exactly part company on the best of terms when we last spoke,” she finally admitted. "You see, he kinda fired me from the team.“
To say she was surprised would be an understatement. She was shocked. "He what?!” Kori couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This didn’t sound like Dick at all. He wouldn’t just fire anyone from the team. And she knew Bette. The young woman was a valuable asset considering her determination to help people. And a good friend.
There was probably some sort of misunderstanding. There must be. The alien hated it when her Teammates fought between themselves. It made them weak and a target and Kori would rather die than see any of her friends hurt because of some argument. She frowned slightly as she crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at her friend with a slightly stern expression on her face. “Would you please elaborate as to what exactly happened?” Her voice was sharp but it wasn’t unkind.
Bette’s eyes widened a little to see Kori all stern like that. It wasn’t that she feared her, but it reminded her of the very incident they were discussing, and the expression Nightwing wore at the time. Even with his mask in place, covering his eyes, he had seemed cold, blunt, and unyielding the last time he had ever spoken to her. She cut her heart on this sharpness whenever she remembered that night…
Grin plastered across his face, Jason practically sprinted after her. There would almost definitely be trouble if they got caught, but that was half the fun, and a lecture from Bruce would be totally worth the rush. And, hey, he could probably say that it was just training for… if he ever had to jump out of a plane or something. It could happen.
It wasn’t long till they were well underway, though the climb was a little longer than he had expected. Still, that didn’t stop him grinning as he watched the world below. He looked up at Bette, smile growing a little. “All good. You doing okay with that?”
Again, he found himself looking around and let out a laugh that was almost a giggle. “It’s so cool up here!” Jason had been climbing up into places he shouldn’t for about as long as he could remember. Seeing the world from that angle… it just felt different, a really good kind of different.
“Doing fine, just about got it!” she reported back, giving the anchor one more solid pound for good measure, then fed a rope through and yanked hard to test it. “There! You want to give the next one a go?” she offered, tying off so they could continue their assent another twenty-five feet or so. He’d watched her do enough of them, and she figured he might like a turn.
Another few rope-lengths, and they took a very short break. She heard the near-giggle, and the exclamation that followed, and let her own eyes follow his gaze at the marvel of a view that lay below them. This was how birds must see the world, she thought briefly, taking it all in and sharing some of the joy her climbing partner was expressing. “Sure is, Robin,” she agreed. She cast her eyes skyward then, and sucked in a breath at a patch of darker clouds being blown towards the coast by the ocean breeze, pierced by beams of bright sunlight here and there. “Ugh, I don’t like the look of that though. Let’s see if we can beat the storm to the top and race the raindrops down!” she laughed.
The first drops were falling as they reached the top, and once they were both safe, Bette shrugged off her pack and rolled onto her back to rest for a minute. Her limbs felt a bit like jelly after that long climb, but the rush was great. She couldn’t help herself, and began to laugh, lying there as another drop smacked her on the cheek. She wondered if Robin thought she was out of her mind, or if he could feel it too, the excess adrenaline coursing through one’s veins, with no physical exertion to burn it off just yet. Still smiling, the laughter still dying down, she rolled her head to one side to look at him.
Starfire smiled at her friend’s exclamation as she gripped the box of pizza in her hands, lifting her shoulders in a small shrug, making it seem like the most elegant movement. “It is the only place I had the pizza from that was the closest.” She paused before adding. “Or rather within the city limits.” She gave a small laugh as she thought of the many many pizza’s she had tried with her friends and Team.
Sitting down next to Flamebird, Starfire couldn’t help picking up the biggest piece and biting into it. It had been too long since she last had pizza and she was going to savor every single bite. They ate the first few bites in silence before they started to talk about all the times they had spent together, most of them on missions. Kori tried not to choke on a bite as she remembered the milkshake incident and how Megan had scolded Wally after his little accident. That was the first an and only time she had ever seen the alien angry while off the battlefield. It was rather amusing to see Wally cower away from Megan.
Kori smiled at her friend, pulling her into a one armed hug, after she had calmed down from her fit of giggles. “I am glad to be back as well Bette.” She glanced around at the city before heaving a sigh. “After such a long time in the battlefield and then space it is nice to simply be with a friend.” She said smiling softly.
The spent a short while in companionable silence, looking out over the city that even now was pulling itself out of the ashes of destruction, “Kori, do you think you’ll be seeing Nightwing soon? Since you’re still with the Titans, I figure you would know how to contact him through non-emergency channels, and I was wondering if you’d mind delivering something to him for me?” Bette looked down, her voice a bit more subdued. “It’s his birthday next week.”
Send me a ♣, and I’ll write a limerick about your character.
There once was a doc named Quinzel
An Arkham shrink ne’er-do-well
While dissecting his Id,
Into love she had slid
With Joker, don’t that beat all Hell?
Send me a ♣, and I’ll write a limerick about your character.
Dent, that duplicitous cray
Was once an up-standing D.A.
His encounter with acid,
Made him no longer placid,
Now coin-tossing chooses his way
Send me a ♣, and I’ll write a limerick about your character.
There once was a Nightwing name Dick
Whose fighting was really quite slick
He patrolled Gotham City,
With comebacks so witty,
While gripping his escrima stick
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Kori nodded, a small yet sad smile on her face as she listened to what her friend had to say. “I know that words can be very powerful weapons Flamebird. They can hurt as much as one of my starbolts. And I know that they do no heal as easily as a physical wound.” She paused for second before continuing. “Fear can make a person do many dangerous things, even turn them against the people they love.” Her lips pulled into a bitter smile at the last statement. “I am not afraid to hide who I am. If they want to register me so that they can recognize me.” She head tilted in a small nod. “Then so be it. They shall see that I am not a threat.”
She smiled at the simple gesture of affection. For humans it might not mean that much but she wasn’t human. For her touch was everything. It was how a person conveyed their feelings, told them they cared about them. Her people thrived on contact. “I shall get the pizza for you then, Flamebird.” She took the money flying to the nearest Pizza place and ordered the vegetarian pizza as her friend had asked.
Flying back with the box in her hands she smiled as she landed gracefully next to the young heroine. “I hope this is alright. I did order the vegetarian pizza but it has been so long since I last had one that I am quite muddled on what was vegetable and what was meat.” Earth cuisine was something of a mystery to her.
Flamebird grinned wide as she saw the streak of red making its way back to her, and waved her arm, even though it probably wasn’t necessary. “Giovanni’s!” she cheered when she saw the familiar logo from Little Italy, “You remembered!” Many a successful mission led by Nightwing had ended in pizza from Giovanni’s, back in the day.
She sat on a row of unopened bundles of new roofing material and patted the place next to her for Starfire to join her, then opened the box. Both women were greeted with a delicious scent that brought back memories of older, and much better, times. They reminisced about the team’s flawless extraction of scientists from Crete, the thrilling destruction of Black Manta’s base in the sub-Arctic, and then laughed themselves to the point of tears over the infamous Wally West Milkshake Incident.
Bette was still giggling herself as she leaned affectionately against her friend’s arm, and let her head roll to the side to briefly rest at Starfire’s shoulder. “I’m really glad you’re back, Koriand’r. I’d forgotten how much fun you can be to just hang out with.”