Dreams & Ghosts

To anyone who didn’t know who she was, it might appear that Tinya was stymied by the wall in her way. To someone who did know who she was, it might appear confusing that Tinya was looking curiously at the wall in her way, and not just going through it. Eyes closed in concentration, she finally worked the route out in her head, and promptly sank into the floor, passing through the corner of Jan’s quarters (he didn’t mind) and part of Ayla’s quarters (she also didn’t mind). She grinned a bit as she detoured around Tasmia’s quarters (she most certainly did mind, and there had been words spoken about that incident!) and Gim’s quarters (that was certainly an eye-opener, and if they didn’t want anyone to know, it was not her business to be spreading gossip, no matter how much she burned to tell someone!).

She checked her Flight Ring and determined that she’d saved 30 seconds off of her previous time. This route was more efficient. Tinya had no idea when it would be important to cross the HQ in less than a minute, while still avoiding passing through private spaces where she wasn’t welcome, but it seemed like a useful skill to pick up. She also was working on some rudimentary search patterns, breaking the spacious building down into grids and seeing how many rooms she could ‘sweep’ in a pass, but Computo was no help working out the math, as it kept offering multiple solutions that would only get her snarled up.

Drawn out of her reverie by a beeping sound, she turned to see a cleaning droid flash-sterilizing the floor, which had a trail of blood leading towards… She closed her eyes for a second. The med-bay, of course. She quickly took off in that direction, passing over the busy little robot and passing through the door before it recognized her presence and automatically opened.

Inside the medical bay, looking very much the worse for wear, was… Dream Boy? He turned to her, shirt half off, and one arm hanging limply at his side, apparently stuck for the moment, unable to get his shirt the rest of the way off.

“Could I have a hand here?” he asked, as she realized that she was just floating there staring.

“Sure, sorry. “ she said quickly, as she moved over to him and tried to figure out a way to remove the shirt from over his dislocated arm, even as he flinched at her every contact.

“Use your powers.” He said, pre-empting her decision to do just that.

“Stop doing that,” she snapped, phasing his shirt and pulling it through him fluidly, before tossing it behind her. She absently noted that it landed on the cleaning robot, which had followed the trail of blood into the room, and was now bleeping in consternation as it spun around, trying to get the bloodied shirt off of its visual sensors.

“Thank you, Phantom Girl.” he said curtly, turning and pulling off his pants and throwing them on the floor as well, before climbing into the regen tank.

“What happened to you, uh…” Tinya hesitated as she realized that she didn’t remember his name.

“Rol.” he says ruefully. “Don’t feel bad. None of you remember my name.” His face grows pale and his whole body shudders.

Tinya rushes to hold him up as he almost slumps below the suspension fluid, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, yet. That was a pre-shock.” He says, teeth gritted as he slams his shoulder into the side of the tank and pops his shoulder back into joint, and then falls unconscious for a moment.

She holds him up for a long second, checking the monitors to see that his pulse is steady, and then he draws a shuddering breath and starts awake.

“You could have warned me.” She says accusingly.

He grins tightly. “You would have tried to talk me out of it.” His face grows serious for a moment, “Sometimes I envy you, only having to feel pain after an injury, and not having to feel it in advance.”

Grabbing a cloth from the dispenser, Tinya wipes blood from the side of his face, which has trickled down from a cut in his scalp. “So how did all of this happen?” she asks, noticing that some black soot has also smeared onto the cloth. “Some sort of explosion?”

“Tourist flight went down over the Death Valley Solar Array, I saw it coming and commandeered another tourist shuttle and got underneath it, guiding it to a spectacularly bumpy landing. The shuttle I was in was nearly crushed flat, absorbing the impact of the passenger shuttle.”

“Wow, it’s a good thing you were there! You should have called for backup, silly.”

“No time. I only knew that something was going to happen to some tourists I saw in the Metropolis spaceport, but not what. So I followed them, and as we got closer to the Solar Array, things got clearer. I was on the ground as they were taking off on the tour, and realized that their shuttle was going to crash, so I had to act fast.”

Tinya absorbs this, and while checking the monitors notices a file extension that seems odd. “You saved a lot of people it sounds like, and you were very brave.” She says absently, pulling up the file and noticing that Rol had been in the regen tank four times in the last month.

“I keep busy,” he says, again pre-empting the question forming in her mind. “It’s not like I’ve ever been assigned to a mission or anything...” He adds, with a trace of bitterness.

Looking at the injuries he’s come in with, Tinya shuts off the display and turns to him. “So you’ve just been going out and getting into fights, stopping crimes and saving people? All on your own?”

“Yeah. Kind of like a Super-Hero.” He concedes. “I hear there’s a whole team of them or something, although I can’t say that I know any of them, not really.”

“Well that’s going to change.” She says curtly, brushing her hair back as if preparing for a big date. Tinya sticks her hand in front of his face, “Hi. I’m Tinya Wazzo, Phantom Girl. Welcome to the Legion of Super-Heroes.”

At her serious, if somewhat absurd, declaration, Rol laughs softly and raises his hand out of the greenish regen-suspension to take her hand and shakes it. “Thanks. I’m Rol Purtha, Dream Boy. It’s nice to meet you.”

She throws the bloodied cloth to the cleaning robot and turns decisively towards the wall, imagining the headquarters in her mind so that she can take the quickest route towards the command center.

“Thank you,” Rol says to her as she turns away.

“You know where I’m going already don’t you?”

“To talk to Lightning Lad about including me on mission teams.” He says. “And thank you. For that, and for welcoming me to the team.”

“No problem. I wish we’d done it sooner.” Tinya says, before floating through the wall on a mission of her own.