Out of the Ashes, Book 2 Part 1

Out of the Ashes, Book 2 by Misty Meenor A Comic RetCon Universe Story The Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian characters are the property of DC Comics. She sat up to face me, her expression serious. "How can you plan for contingencies, when you can't possibly guess at all the scenarios? Who knows what's out there? Every nation that can manage it will have their own metas there -- and not all of them are friendly to us. Then there's the groups that don't want these talks to happen at all, or the crazies who just want to see their name in the headlines. What if they have a meta up their sleeve?"

The sun beat down cheerfully across the sand, competing good-naturedly with a gentle onshore breeze that whispered over the surf and rustled through the palms. It was a perfect, glorious, beachy day, and I was damn well going to make it work.

I'd found a secluded section of beach, a good distance away from anyone else; the schools were out for the summer holiday, so that was a little harder than it would have been a month ago. Nevertheless, I managed to stake out a spot a good distance from the laughing and splashing and squealing crowd, and threw a towel down under my hastily planted beach umbrella, settled down on the warm sand, lay back, closed my eyes, and got on with feeling miserable.

Since moving here, I'd been keeping as busy as I could, filling in for Jade as much as I was able -- but how do you fight a tsunami or an earthquake? Unless you've got a green ring, there's not a lot you can do, except help clean up afterwards. Of course it was wonderful to find survivors amongst the wreckage, and the media do love their happy little human interest microstories -- "Green Girl Saves Orphans! And now the weather." -- but that's not the reality at all; the sad reality is, most of the time it's not survivors you are pulling out. It wasn't right to expose the young meta would-be heroes to that, most were still just kids. So I spent a lot of time doing cleanup so they wouldn't have to. I'd been a cop for twenty-five years, and I'd seen some awful things, but even I had a hard time coping.

Then there were the man-made disasters; a poisonous petrochemical gas leak in Nairobi threatened to rival Bhopal, if I hadn't been able to get close enough to seal it. The dam in Chile I managed to keep from collapsing until they could evacuate the flood area downstream. A bus full of children held hostage during a botched bank robbery in Perth.

So, yeah. Busy. Busy means I don't have to think so much, for a few hours or days.

The media loved me, though. In South America, "Seá±orita Marte" didn't have the same ring to it as "Miss Mars", so for the most part, I was "Verde Chica". Green Girl. "Verde Chica salva huérfanos! Y ahora el tiempo." I spent a lot of time watching TV and reading newspapers, I had a new language to learn, after all.

When I wasn't out heroing, I flung myself into life as Megan Morse. I was taking a conversational Spanish course at the University; the Spanish they spoke here was a very different language than the street lingo back home, but I was immersed in it, after all, and I was picking up the local idioms and accents more quickly than I had expected. I volunteered at the language lab as an English tutor, too. I didn't mix much socially, but I'd become friendly with few others in my apartment building by sight; mostly other students at the university. Sometimes we'd walk back from class together, or a group of us would go out for a bite to eat, but that was as much as I was willing to do. They reminded me too much of Trish and the gang back home; there may a lot I still needed to learn about being a young woman, but I wasn't one of them, wouldn't pretend to be any more.

Tonight... tonight was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve in Montevideo. A time for family and friends. It was the height of summer here, and the seasonal celebrations were lower key compared to back home, but still a little disconcerting. It should be a time for sleds and snowmen, not surfboards and sand castles. Now... it was a season for other people to celebrate, not for me, not ever again.

Oh, Dolores... I'm trying, I really am, but it's so hard without you.

The beach had seemed like the most un-Christmassy place around, a place to escape my head and just live in the moment for a few hours. It had been a mistake, of course. Even at a distance, it was impossible to tune out the sounds of children and teenagers and parents and... families. Still, I was giving it my best shot, and maybe even succeeding a little.

Until a shadow fell across my face. "Hey, you using all that umbrella? I left mine in my other purse."

I knew that voice, even if it didn't belong here. Despite my mood, I couldn't help but smile. "Depends. I don't suppose you brought any beer?" I asked lazily, without opening my eyes.

"Psssht, duh. What are drinkin' buddies for?"

"In that case, pull up some shade and beer me." I opened one eye, and then had to open the other, just to be sure the first one got it right. "Why, Agent Carter, that is a very fetching bikini." She stood over me, silhouetted in the sun, her long blonde hair floating loose in the breeze, surrounding her head in a golden halo. The aforementioned bikini was a relatively modest light blue floral print, but nevertheless a two-piece swimsuit that showed off her considerable assets to good advantage.

She blushed and glanced around nervously. "Shut up. If my team finds out about this, I'll never hear the end of it." She laid out her towel next to mine and sat cross-legged on it, then unzipped a softside cooler and handed me a cold can. "Besides, next to yours, mine is practically suitable for church."

I had to grin at that, especially since it was true. "I'm reasonably certain you were checking out the other girls -- and their suits -- on your way down the beach. My bikini isn't the skimpiest by a long shot. Seriously, Court, you aren't dressed any differently than any other young woman here. There's nothing to be embarrassed about," I reassured her.

She popped the top on her own beer and took a long drink before replying. "I know, I know. But it's the attention I can't get used to. It's one thing, in street clothes. I can kid myself that I'm not doing anything special to attract attention -- " She laughed sharply, cutting off my retort. "Yeah, yeah, I know, it doesn't much matter what I wear. Okay, fine, I get it, I'm a woman. I'll be damned if I'll hide what I am, I know guys notice. But the point is, I don't go out of my way to make sure they do. This..." she gestured at her bikini, "this is definitely making sure."

I propped myself up on one elbow to face her, opening my own beer. "Well, look at it this way. As a Ranger, and then an FBI hotshot, you must have been pretty fit. You lifted weights, did a zillion pushups and ran a hundred miles every morning before breakfast, the whole bit. You were more than fit, you must have been positively buff. Am I right? And I bet you took pride in your body, who wouldn't? So tell me, what did you wear to the beach?". I pointed my beer at her. "I didn't even know you, and I can probably tell. Swim trunks -- you don't strike me as the speedo type -- and that's about it. Maybe a t-shirt, more likely a tank top, and I'll bet it wasn't hanging loose and hiding your body."

She nodded sheepishly.

"And I bet you had a pretty good idea of how you compared to the other guys on the beach, too. You didn't flaunt your body, but you knew you were attractive to the ladies, and that wasn't a bad thing. You were proud of the way you looked, and, beach or not, you dressed to show it to good advantage. Your clothes fit properly, tailored if you could afford it. To please yourself. So tell me, what's changed?"

I sipped my beer and stated the obvious. "You're a girl now. A woman," I corrected myself. "And a stunner. Everything you had going on as a guy, you have the girl side of it now. In spades. So tell me, are you going to live the rest of your life embarrassed by what you are? Because you'll be a woman the rest of your life, however long that might be now -- but for sure it will be longer than you were a guy. So why not dress like you're proud of what you are -- for yourself -- and if some guys trip over their tongues, that's their problem."

She blinked at me. "You sound like my shrink, but I gotta tell you, it's a whole lot more credible when you say it."

"Yeah. Well." I laid back, looking up at the umbrella that had suddenly become blurry. "You wanna know a secret? I gave myself the same pep talk this morning. Just before I bought this bikini, as it happens." I choked out a laugh around the lump in my throat. "Dolores was always wanting me to push my comfort level. I figured she would have liked this one."

Court heaved a sympathetic sigh and lay down on her towel. We just lay there for a few minutes, listening to the surf, soaking up the warm sun.

"Christmas sucks, huh."

I let out a long breath. "Oh, yeah. Do they get any easier?" I knew about Court's own unhappy situation. She had an ex somewhere she'd fallen out of touch with before her change, and a baby girl who'd died in infancy.

She shook her head. "No, not really... you get better at locking it away, is all."

We were quiet again for a time, content to be alone with our thoughts in each other's company, occasionally taking a pull at our beer. Finally I had to ask, "Not that I'm ungrateful for the beer, and your company, and all, but you're kinda out of your jurisdiction, Agent Carter. What brings you to my beach -- and how did you find me here?"

"Finding you was the easy part. I just asked the ring," she smirked, holding up her hand to display the item. Duh, stupid question, I forgot she had one now. "As to the why, I knew you were hurting, and that you'd probably find some excuse to be alone and miserable if I simply invited you home for Christmas, because that's what I usually do when somebody invites me -- so I decided to inflict myself on you, and we could keep each other company."

"So you hopped the next jet and came 5000 miles to see me. I'm flattered. And a little skeptical," I added dryly.

"Oh, it was no trouble at all." I wasn't looking at her, but I could hear the humor in her voice. It wasn't quite 5000 miles. I'm working out of the consulate in Buenos Aires for a little while. Just a hop and a skip away."

"Seriously?" Buenos Aires was practically next door, just across the river in Argentina, maybe a hundred and fifty miles or so. For someone who can fly to the moon, 5000 miles was as close as 150, but I was strangely pleased to have a friend so close at hand. "What have they got you doing?"

"The U.N. talks on the Metahuman Treaty start the week after next."

I knew about the talks, naturally -- every meta would be watching those closely. A number of countries, led by Canada and Japan, were pushing for a ban on the use of metahumans in any military role. Other nations saw metas as a force equalizer against their stronger neighbors. Some, the U.S. included, were on the fence, proposing that military metahumans be allowed for defensive purposes only, within a country's own borders, or only when attacked. Other parts of the treaty involved setting up a global agency to monitor and respond to 'rogue' metas. 'Rogue' probably meaning whatever the Security Council decided they wanted it to mean, of course. God knows the world could use more meta agencies, we were booming business in the national security game, an entire sub-genre of the military-industrial complex springing up overnight, devoted to "meta control". Metas were good for the economy, who knew?

"That part is very high profile, naturally. But -- and this is very low profile -- the real meetings start next week. That's where the important decisions will be made. The Secretary of State will be flying in Monday morning. Everyone knows what American Dream looks like -- it's hardly a secret who I am -- so Agent Carter is going to be right up front with the Secretary, in the center ring of the circus. To reassure our allies and hopefully dissuade our enemies from doing anything foolish. Of course, the Secretary is a woman, so an extra female agent can't hurt, either."

I made a face. "Have fun with that. Escorting a bigwig to the ladies' room. Clearly you have reached the pinnacle of your career. Try to steal some of those little soaps."

She cleared her throat. "Um. Well. Actually, I've got an extra ticket to the circus. The D.E.O. has been asked if Agent Jahns might be available. There's probably an email in your inbox by now."

I rolled to face her, frowning. "They want two metas on the team? Tell me this isn't some civil servant throwing their weight around."

She opened her eyes and grinned at me. "Well, it sort of is. I guess you could call me a civil servant, these days."

"You requested me? This isn't a misery-loves-company thing, is it?" I knew full well it wasn't. Court worked for the Metahuman Information Bureau. I -- as Agent Joanne Jahns -- did occasional work for the Department of Extranormal Operations. The two agencies didn't play well together. For the MIB to ask a favor of the DEO, it couldn't have been anything trivial.

"It's not so bad," she soothed. "I'm borrowed talent, on loan from the MIB. Nobody really knows where I fit into the chain of command, so I'm not part of the actual security team. They still do the important stuff, keeping the Secretary and her delegation safe. Nominally, I report to the head of security, but mostly my job is to be visible, a resource if things go south. Extra protection against those who don't know who I am, and a deterrent for those who do. Worst-case scenario is, nothing happens, and we spend a nervous couple of weeks worrying that something might. On the other hand... the best-case could get interesting."

I growled in frustration. "Out with it. Something's up, or they wouldn't have borrowed you. It's bad, or you wouldn't have come to recruit me."

"Well, partly it's the fact that metas exist at all, that's scaring the shit out of every security team out there. Especially now Jade is gone." She sat up to face me, her expression serious. "How can you plan for contingencies, when you can't possibly guess at all the scenarios? Who knows what's out there? Every nation that can manage it will have their own metas there -- and not all of them are friendly to us. Then there's the groups that don't want these talks to happen at all, or the crazies who just want to see their name in the headlines. What if they have a meta up their sleeve?"

My eyes narrowed. "That's an ugly picture. But it's even worse? You said that was only part of it."

Court nodded grimly. "We have intelligence about one of those groups. We're not sure if they're crazies or not.

They call themselves 'El Crá¡neo Rojo' -- 'The Red Skull'. And... we think they have zombies."