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Okay, let's try this version instead, without the half-edited sentence fragments ... Saturday, 27-May-2000 23:48:10
Aquaman cocked an eyebrow at Banjooooo skeptically. "I always thought that Sea Monkeys were just those packets of brine shrimp, that they sold in the pages of comic books, along with the Charles Atlas bodybuilding system and chances to sell subscriptions to GRIT." Banjooooo puffed himself up with a hint of indignation. "Well, there are those too, of course. But on my world, the Abhumans actually mutated an entire race of super-humanly powerful Sea Monkeys, many millenia ago. And believe me when I say that we Sea Monkeys shall never rest, not until all of our indentured brothers and sisters are freed from their forced servitude to their uncaring human masters! Oh, by the way, while we're on the topic, I'm curious ... how did you learn about about those comic book ads, anyway?" Aquaman groaned and shook his head. "Back when he was still just Aqualad, Gar saw the ads in all his favorite comics, and even made me send away for some pet Sea Monkeys of his own to play with. It broke his heart when they finally came, and they turned out to be nothing but those damned brine shrimp, most of which were dead by the time the package had arrived. I told him that it was his own fault for trusting those two-faced air-breathers, and to let this be a lesson to him the next time he dealt with the surface-dwellers, blah blah blah, but he still whined and complained until I gave in and let him join the Titans, and call himself Tempest or Tsunami or whatever the hell stupid-ass name he's going by this week." Banjooooo squinted in contemplation. "Um, ooohhh-kay ... but I guess what I don't understand is, how did you guys read comic books down there in the first place, without the salt water of the ocean dissolving that cheaply printed paper on contact?" Meanwhile, the Sorceress of the Abandoned Legion was sharing a surprisingly frank exchange with the former Justice League magician Zatanna, who had stopped by the Watchtower with her fellow retired Leaguer, Black Canary, to drop off a few mementos she'd borrowed from the trophy room - items which had dated back to her days in the JLA - but after she'd returned these keepsakes to the custody of her ex-teammates, both she and Black Canary had decided to stick around and visit with their ... interesting guests. Zatanna gasped and giggled at Sorceress' admission. "Only 17? You naughty girl! Still, he IS cute, even though younger men were never really my thing. Dinah, though - heh. Ask her about Ray Terrill, and watch her go completely red in the face." Sorceress smirked coquettishly, and allowed herself to slip into her usually repressed Southern drawl, delighting in the company of a fellow spell-caster who was also so much of a flirtatious kindred spirit. "I have to admit, what my Jay occasionally lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in enthusiasm. And he's VERY attentive, especially for a guy his age." Zatanna sighed, and slumped as she recalled some of her own less-successful affairs. "You are so lucky, Whit. It's been a LONG time since this lonely little witch has had the opportunity to ride the big wooden broomstick." Sorceress cast her eyes down towards Zatanna's shapely legs, and arched her eyebrows. "Well, you might have a better success rate with the mature and intelligent men that you're looking for, if you ditched the fishnet tights!" Zatanna scowled in mock offense, and playfully punched Sorceress in the arm. "I'm being serious, you hexy minx! The last time I had a boyfriend, he was an emotionally disturbed, super-patriot cyborg, with ZERO romantic technique. His code-name, Steel, fit him; he was as solid as an iron girder, but about as imaginative as one, as well." Sorceress' eyes widened, as she cast a furtive glance towards John Henry Irons. "Steel? You mean you and he ... ?" Zatanna followed Sorceress' gaze, and nearly burst out laughing when she realized how Whitney had misinterpreted the situation. "Ha! Oh, God no! DEFINITELY a different Steel. Although, from what I've heard, John Henry is certainly no slouch in the drilling department, himself. They never copped to it in public, but from what I've been told in the strictest of confidence, he and Huntress apparently came down with a brief but scalding-hot case of Jungle Fever, back when she was still on the League's line-up alongside him. And if anyone asks, you did NOT hear that from me." Sorceress nodded her head. "Ah, alright! Gotcha. It sounds like that relationship was horribly unsatisfying, though. How did you deal with it?" Zatanna flashed a wicked grin. "There's nothing in the rules that says we can't have a little fun with our magic tricks, right? So, whenever the lantern-jawed lug was pounding away inside of me, with all the passion and sensitivity of a pipe-layer, I'd scream, 'EKAM EM MUC, YBAB!' I'd come, he'd come, and we'd both be happy. It's a good thing he never learned to understand what I was saying when I talked backwards, or I would have had a LOT of wounded male ego-stroking to do that night." Sorceress squealed and rolled her eyes. "ZEE! You are simply AWFUL!" Zatanna shrugged in resignation. "Don't I know it. I blame it on my spending too much time around that evil Brit, Constantine, myself ..." As Zatanna and the Sorceress bonded, Dinah Lance and Meggan Foxxx also discovered that they had more in common than either one would have suspected. "Well, of course, Pieter and I are still just getting to know each other, but in a lot of ways, he seems like a better fit than Ollie, you know?" "Mm-hm. Same with me and Dan. Don't get me wrong, I loved Louis - I still do - but it's like, no matter what we did, we could never make it work, because -" "Because you'd always drive each other crazy, for the exact same reasons that you loved each other." "Exactly!" Black Canary paused, and broached the next conversational topic very hesitantly. "Meg, may I ask you a personal question?" Action Figure flung her arm around the younger woman, offering her a reassuring squeeze. "Sure, hon. I don't keep secrets from nobody. Anything you want to know." Dinah cocked her head to one side, not quite sure how to phrase her query. "I get that you're a superheroine, even though you have no real super-powers. After all, ever since I lost the sonic scream of my Canary Cry, I've been stuck in that situation myself. I can also understand why you would choose not to be the driving force behind your superhero partnership, since I was much more comfortable with the idea of being the 'trailing spouse' during the majority of my team-ups with Ollie. I can even accept that you wouldn't necessarily be the dominant one in a superhero pairing between yourself and your son, given the fact that I've worked with Roy, who's become something of a surrogate son to me, on several occasions, and ever since he became Arsenal, I've always treated him as an equal. But, being a SIDEKICK to your son? I don't mean to belittle his abilities as a costumed crime-fighter, but shouldn't it be the other way around?" Meg's smile betrayed that she had been expecting this subject to come up. "Well, darlin', not to belittle what you guys and gals in the capes-and-cowls profession do every day, but the only reason I got into this silly business to begin with was to look out for the welfare of my baby boy. I'll be the first one to admit that the publicity from being a so-called superheroine has helped boost my earnings, since I've got a lot broader audience now than I used to, but the only point of me pulling on a spandex suit and calling myself by some overly cute and clever nickname is because Dream needs his momma there to watch his back. Besides which, even though I'll always be able to boast more years of experience at living than my son, just by definition of being his mother, Dream actually understands this superhero stuff better than I do - hell, probably better than I ever will - so as strange as it may seem, I recognize that, in most situations, it's in both of our best interests to follow his lead." Dinah blinked in astonishment. "What's really scary is, that whole explanation makes more sense than the reasons I rationalized for sticking with Ollie as long as I did, even after I'd finally figured out that it would never work out between us." Such was the developing sense of sisterhood between the two women that Dinah never once made mention of how Meg's cherry red hair dye didn't do anything to disguise the fact that she was going gray, nor did Meg even consider uttering a disparaging remark about how patently obvious it was that Dinah's long blonde hair was nothing but a badly weaved wig. While all this girl-talk was taking place, Plastic Man was racing away from the black-cowled, yellow-caped, white-suited figure that was so doggedly pursuing him. "Get him away from me! I can't take it anymore! He's driving me out of my mind!" Hot on his heels, Space Ghost stumbled forward, drunk and pantsless, crying out, "Don't you looooove me, Plastic Man? PLASTIC MAN DOESN'T LOOOOOVE MEEEEE ..." And all the way back, in the furthest corner of the room, two grim urban avengers, the Batman and the Dark Knight, stood cloaked in the black shadows that inevitably seemed to embrace them, no matter how brightly-lit their surroundings, and stared at each other over freshly brewed mugs of black coffee. Neither one moved, neither one spoke, neither one even blinked, until they both drew slow, brief sips from the steaming hot liquid in their hands, and one of them - neither one would be able to recall with complete certainty which of them it was, afterwards - finally spoke. "Good coffee." "Yes," the other responded, with a gravelly-voiced terseness that was indistinguishably identical to that of his counterpart. Neither one said anything to the other after that. Neither one needed to. Because nothing more needed to be said. They both knew. And they both remembered. _____ Hopefully, this is giving you guys some ideas. I'll keep chugging along with this, for now, but dammit, it'd be nice to have someone else help out and pick up the stick on this, too. :) To be continued ... CSFB! asks you to please read this one, rather than the above version. Thank you. |
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