The New Generation: Earth-53

"Just make sure they don't catch you, you know... while staring at a wall," Zatanna added, giving him a pat on the back. "That might be a little hard to explain. And speaking of which, if you need to go have some private time after that, then by all means. I think I'm about ready to head to bed myself, it's been a long day." Giving him a small wave, she heads off back to her bedroom. "And remember to keep practicing those new spells!"

"I'll make sure to not get caught, but I'll come up with an excuse in case I do," Neal said with a large grin on his face as Zatanna patted him on the back. "Get some rest Zatanna, and I'll see you tomorrow," Neal said before turning and walking down the hallway towards his own room. He walked at a casual pace, but once Zatanna was out of earshot Neal let out a large breath of air. "Man, today was ONE eventful day," he said before heading to his own quarters to get some sleep.

The next morning, most of the team was spread around through the main cave area. Miss Martian and Argent were in the kitchen, cooking up lunch for everyone, while Robin and Speedy were getting a workout in at the gym area. Kid Flash, too, was nearby, running on the treadmill. Cheetah lounged on the couch, presumably next to Neal, as she watched some boring, Sunday morning television. All in all, it was a pretty normal, quiet morning... until Rose came marching down the corridor, with Black Canary right behind her.

"I don't have a problem!" Rose shouted, not looking back at her mentor. "It's not my fault these losers can't get along with me!

"Rose, keep it down," Black Canary urged. No doubt the rest of the team heard her comments, considering they're pretty much right there. "That's not what I want to talk to you about right now anyway."

Glancing back at Black Canary, Rose scowled. "Then why do you keep following me around?"

"Because I'm your teacher, and I'm concerned," she countered, trying to keep her voice in a whisper. "I want to talk to you about what happened last night. About... you know. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but if there's a problem, we can help you work through it."

"Oh my god," Rose shouted, rolling her eyes. "You're not my mother. And I've told you a dozen times already, I am not a chronic masturbator!"

And then there was silence, as everyone slowly turned over to stare at her.

"Dude..." Kid Flash said, blinking a couple times. "Did you just...?"

"Uh huh," Robin replied. "I heard it."

Rose stiffened up, turning her head and glaring at the others, already feeling her face go hot. "What are you looking at?!"

Neal sat next to Cheetah as they both watched some Sunday program. It wasn't that they were really getting a lot of entertainment from the show, but it was an opportunity to sit together and just be with one another. They hadn't directly said it, but Neal felt like he and Cheetah were a couple now. They had kissed, hung out a lot, and she seemed to be quite attached to him. Neal was surprised, he would have figured that she would make a move on Robin if anyone. He was glad that they were together though, very glad.

As Rose walked in to the room she made it pretty clear that she wasn't exactly in a talkative mood. Neal glanced around to watch as Rose and Black Canary spoke. He couldn't help but feel like this was going to be good. J'onn had mentioned that he was going to speak with Black Canary after all. Apparently she had already tried to speak to Rose about it.

As the conversation went on, Neal could barely hold back his laughter as Rose spoke loudly about what she had done. Apparently she didn't care if anyone had heard or not. Neal just held a large smile but didn't look in Rose's direction as she yelled at the team. "Sounds like something interesting happened last night," Neal said in a whisper to Cheetah.

Cheetah blinked, glancing up over the couch at Rose. After a few moments, she lowered her gaze again and looked back at Neal. "Uh... apparently. Did she just say she was a chronic masturbator? Shouldn't that relieve stress, instead of, you know, adding to it?"

Grumbling to herself, Rose turned away from Black Canary again and began heading over to the teleporters.

"Where are you going?" Black Canary asked, marching after her.

"I'm going out," she retorted, activating the machine. "I don't care where, just as long as it's away from here. I'll be back whenever." And with that, she stepped through the white portal and disappeared.

Black Canary uttered a frustrated groan, holding her face in her hand. "I swear, that girl is impossible sometimes."

---

The portal emptied Rose out into a back alley of New York City. She didn't mind where she was, as long as it wasn't back at the cave with the rest of those losers. She'd just have to remember where the return teleporter was, though, so she could get back later. If she even decided to go back. For now, though, she was perfectly content with walking the streets aimlessly. She just wished that the teleporter was linked to a better part of town, instead of this rundown, gang infested neighborhood that she found herself in. At least, that's what it looked like, anyway.

"You would think right?" Neal asked Cheetah rhetorically as they continued to watch the confrontation that existed between Black Canary and Rose. It kept on going until Rose sent herself through one of the nearby teleporters. Neal just shook his head. One day she was going to push herself too far away, and no one was going to be in reach to save her. She nearly got herself killed against Cheetah, what was going to happen when someone really wanted her dead?

---

This part of New York was always known for the scum that it seemed to attract. Police were constantly patrolling it in an attempt to find something, but they very rarely actually were able to make an arrest. The gangs here were organized in their actions, and they didn't ever like to take chances with who they talked to and who they did it around.

As Rose walked, she would notice the kind of filth that plagued the area. Hookers, drug addicts, drug salesman, and other sorts of trash. In fact, as she walked the only thing that seemed strange would be the person across the street from her. She was a bit taller than Rose but had to be around the same age, she also had brown hair, a slim build, and she was dressed in a rather nice business suit. The only thing that she wore over it was a trench coat and a bad attached to her back.

Rose would see a man approach her, apparently trying to hit on her based on the expression of his face. The girl kept walking though, eventually turning down an alleyway and walking further down it. The man though didn't look pleased. He made a single motion with his head before he and three other men moved down the alleyway after her. It wasn't long before they cornered her towards one of the darker parts of the alley.

Uck, what a fantastic neighborhood this was. Why on earth did one of the Justice League teleporters connect to this place? Why not, like, Central Park or something? Everywhere she turned her head, she saw a hooker, or a drug dealer, or a gang member, or some other shady individual. Hell, she could swear she saw a crackhead sitting on one of the building stoops a short distance away. The whole place made her spine tingle. In fact, there was only one normal person in the area.

This person, though, was a cause for confusion. The girl looked to be about the same age as Rose, and yet was dressed in a business suit and a trench coat. To questions came to mind. One, what on earth was a girl her age doing in a business suit, and two, what on earth was a woman her age dressed in a business suit doing in such a shitty part of town? Obviously, there was something going on that she wasn't aware of, and might not have given it another thought if not for what she saw next.

As the sleezeball approached the girl, only to get shot down rather quickly, Rose paused a moment and watched. She had to mentally facepalm, though, as the girl turned down an alleyway, probably the dumbest move she could have made. Sure enough, the guy and a few of his buddies followed her into the alley. Girl was going to get herself raped and murdered.

"You stupid, stupid girl," Rose muttered, as she quickly made her way across the street and then down into the same alley, arriving just as the men started to corner the other girl. "Hey, ass clowns. Back off!"

As Rose walked in to the alley way, she would see that the girl was backed in to a wall. The men were a short distance away from her, all of them with stupid grins on their faces as they were ready to take what they believed was rightfully theirs. The apparent leader of the group was only about a foot away from the girl's face, whispering something to her. The girl didn't look scared or even worried. She just stared back with a very blank expression actually as her hands remained in her pockets.

"Look girlie, this is OUR area," the man said as he leaned forward just a little bit more. "And when you pass through our area you either need to pay the toll or give us an 'alternate' form of payment," he said as his hands reached forward to cup the girl's cheek. It was only after he said this that Rose made her comment and got the attention of the men.

One of the thugs turned in Rose's direction. "Hey boss! Two for the price of one! Talk about our lucky day huh?" he asked as he turned fully to face Rose. "Guess we'll just make this real quick and eas-" but he never had a chance to finish his sentence.

The girl suddenly lashed out a fist, punching the leader of this group right in the face and sending him back at least five feet. Before anyone else could even react she quickly pulled a knife from one of her pockets before twisting her arm and stabbing it right in to the chest of the man standing next to her, downing him instantly. Her other hand also moved out, pulling out a silenced pistol. Four shots went off, each of them hitting a man in either the knee or the elbow. The only person that even began to react was the original man struck in the face. He reached in to his jacket and began to produce a weapon. Before he even had a chance to fire though, the girl aimed her weapon and shot him in the shoulder. The leader dropped the weapon before moaning in pain with the rest of his injured men.

"Damn wastes of air," the girl said before ejecting her current clip and quickly siding in a new cartridge. Her eyes quickly turned towards Rose, who was probably very confused by this point. "I suggest that you get out of this part of town. The locals aren't that friendly. I'd see you out myself, but I have a bit of work to do," she said before looking back down at all the men that she injured along with the one that she outright killed.

Well that had... definitely not been how she expected things to go. Here she had been all ready to get rid of a few frustrations by beating these goons senseless for trying to have their way with this girl, but instead the girl had promptly beaten her to the punch, so to speak. This raised even more questions. One, who the fuck was this girl? Two, what was she doing carrying around a silenced pistol? Three, did she just kill that one guy? Four, what 'work' did she have to do? And five, what the hell was someone Rose's own doing all of this?

"You just... how did you...?" Rose started, looking around at the crippled men lying on the ground. They were all mostly injured, though that one guy with the knife in his chest didn't look so good. Yup, definitely dead. "If I wasn't so confused right now, I'd probably say I liked your style. Who the hell are you?"

The girl glanced over as Rose commented about how she liked her own style. This just caused her to raise an eyebrow. She was happy about what just happened to all of these men? Most girls their age would have been running and screaming at what just happened. This girl seemed different though, she wasn't putting on an act at all. She really was calm in the face of this kind of situation.

As Rose asked who the girl was, she merely asked one question in return as she looked at Rose's jacket. The gun was suddenly raised and pointed right at Rose. "Open the jacket up fully," she ordered. "Are you packing?" she asked simply. Apparently trust wasn't this girl's strong suit.

Of course, why not turn the gun on an innocent bystander? Folding her arms across her chest, Rose just cocked her hips to the side and glared back at the girl. "Trust me, you don't want to be pointing that at me," she said, not letting the fact that she had a gun pointed at her face phase her in the least. "I'm not packing anything; I don't need a gun to handle punks like this. I do fine 'au naturel', so to speak. But if you're really that picky..." She then quickly shrugged off her jacket and tossed it to the girl's feet. "There. You're not gonna strip search me now, are you?"

The girl didn't seem to move as Rose insisted that she wasn't packing. Yeah, like she hadn't heard that one before. Once Rose was kind enough to remove her jacket, the girl was satisfied and she slowly put her gun away. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be this way but I have a reason to be nervous in a place like this," she said before putting away the pistol in her pocket while walking towards the man that she killed. She quickly removed the knife from his chest before wiping the blood on his own shirt.

Once that was done the girl checked on the downed men one last time, moving around and quickly picking up their weapons and taking them away from them before any of them got hte will to move again. "In regards to your earlier question by the way," the girl said before she stood up and looked at Rose again. "My name is Zoe"

"I see..." Rose said, giving the surrounding men another careful glance. None of them looked like they would be getting back up any time soon, especially the guy bleeding from his chest. "I'm Rose, in case you were wondering. So, do you often wander the bad neighborhoods and casually murder the local slime? I mean, what are you even doing in a place like this? And dressed like... that?" A suit and trench coat was hardly typical attire in this place, after all.

"And what kind of work do you even do? I mean hell, you're my age for crying out loud. At least, you look like you're my age. You're not actually, like, thirty or something and using some kind of weird voodoo age defying make up to look younger, are you? Because that would be lame." Considering Rose didn't even wear make up, it was no surprise to her thoughts on it. To her, make up was just how insecure made themselves feel prettier. It was dumb.

"What I really do isn't much of your business now is it?" Zoe asked as she moved over and picked up the dead men. She moved quickly before throwing him in to one of the nearby dumpsters and slamming the lid shut. Apparently she didn't really want anyone to find that dead body. "But....you were trying to do the right thing back there," Zoe admitted as she thought back to when Rose had yelled for those men to get away from her. She didn't have to do it, but she put herself out there anyway.

"If you need to know, I'm looking for my father," Zoe said as she turned to Rose once again. Right as she said that one of the men on the ground reached out to grab her leg. The moment that his hand made contact she quickly lifted up her leg before bringing her hell down in to his face, knocking him out instantly. "I know that he's somewhere in this area and I know that he's in trouble."

Rose paused a moment, watching as Zoe started to clean up the scene by dumping the dead guy in a dumpster. Probably an everyday occurrence in this neighborhood. When Zoe gave her reason for being here, though, Rose paused and breathed out a deep breath, while reaching down to pick up her jacket. "You... father?" For a brief moment, she thought back to her own father, wondered where he was and what he was doing... if he was even still alive. Of course, thinking of that only brought on other thoughts, like what Neal had said to her, insulting her father. God, she wished that kid would fall in a ditch and die somewhere. Maybe with his freaky cat girlfriend, too. Looking back up, Rose slipped her jacket on and gave Zoe a hard glare. "Let me help you."

Zoe tilted her head curiously to the side as Rose suddenly asked if she could help with Zoe's mission to look for her father. What was she mental? Did she not just see what Zoe had done to all of these men? This wasn't going to be a game of hide and seek, they weren't going to be working within the law and there wasn't going to be any sort of backup for them. "And why on earth would I want to accept your help?" Zoe asked before turning around and picking up the leader and throwing him over her shoulder. "You're only going to slow me down. You should go home."

"Look, I'm in a very bad mood right now," Rose said, folding her arms and glaring at Zoe. "And I really need to hit something soon, or I might just pop a blood vessel. So either you let me help you beat the ever loving tar out of some more asshats like this, or I'll have to settle for stomping out the bitch who pointed a gun at me. Your choice." For all her tough talk, though, she was mostly bluffing. She wasn't really about to attack Zoe, not while she had her father to look for, but goddamn it Rose needed some violence to settle herself down.

Zoe stopped and glanced back at Rose. She had no idea what it was, but something about this girl was different. There was the white hair for one thing, but it was mainly her overall attitude and how she held herself. She spoke with such a power and confidence, it was like she was willing to burn the entire world to make sure that she got what she wanted. Zoe just gave a small sigh before turning to look back at Rose. "Alright you can come, but I can't watch out for you all the time," she said before pulling out another pistol from a different pocket in her coat. "Can you use one of these things?"

"My dad was the best damn soldier the Army ever had," Rose commented, proudly, as she took the gun from Zoe. In an instant, she checked out the gun, made sure the clip was loaded, chambered a round, and then stuffed it into the back of her pants. "I've had a couple lessons in firearms." And that was putting it lightly. Aside from her martial arts training, Slade had taken her down to the shooting range once a week since she'd been seven. She was a pretty damn good shot. "Though, I doubt I'll need it. Anyway, where to now? You have any leads?"

Zoe was about ready to start walking away before Rose suddenly said something. She stopped suddenly before turning around to face Rose again. "Woah woah woah, come again?" Zoe asked as she looked right at Rose. "Your dad was in the army? So was mine," Zoe said as she looked at Rose in surprise. She could hardly believe that this girl's father was in the army as well, maybe she really could take care of herself. With the way that she handled that gun, Zoe would be shocked if she didn't know how to actually use it.

"Why do you think I let these guys corner me? I wanted to see which of them was in charge," Zoe remarked before pointing to the unconscious man on her back. "My father and I have a safe house nearby that we can use. I plan on making this guy talk to find out what he knows. Even if he wasn't directly involved, I'm sure that he saw SOMETHING strange going on."

"Your dad was in the Army, too?" Rose echoed, giving the girl a raised eyebrow. Huh, go figure. She was starting to like this girl a little more. "All the more reason for us to work together, right? We Army girls gotta stick together. And by stick together, I mean painfully interrogate this bastard for answers." She gestured down at the unconscious guy Zoe was carrying. This wasn't the kind of thing she'd ever get to do with the Justice League and their little goody goody teen brigade. This would be a welcomed change of pace, and a good chance for her to beat out some of her frustrations. "Alright, so lead the way to this safe house of yours."

As Rose spoke, Zoe just gave a small grin. "You know, I think that I misjudged you Rose. I'm starting to think that you might just fit in with my Dad and I," she said before starting to walk off. "Just stay close and walk like you're just doing your job," Zoe added as she glanced from left to right. "Most of the people in this area are cowards and I doubt that anyone is going to stop us to see what we're doing."

Zoe continued on for some time, mainly sticking to alleyways and corners. She was staying clear of the open area where large amounts of people were gathered. The only people they passed were some bums and a few drunks that were too wasted to even tell that the girls had a wounded guy with them.

"In the army, what did your dad do?" Zoe finally asked after a bit of silence.

"Well, I was too young to remember what he used to do when he started out," Rose explained, as she walked alongside Zoe through all the back alleys. She absently kicked a stray beer can on the ground, then stuffed her hands back in hr jacket pockets. "But more recently, they had him training the new guys. I think he was a combat instructor, or something. Taught me everything he know, too." Of course, she didn't know what Slade had really been doing, working as a government controlled hitman, basically. It wasn't exactly something a man came hold and told his family. "He recently retired, but then he... well, I haven't seen him in a while." She didn't really feel like going on to explain, so she'd just leave it at that. "What about yours?"

"If he was a trainer than he must have been good, the army doesn't let anyone do that kind of thing," Zoe commented as she continued to smile. She and Rose really did seem to have a lot in common. "I'm sorry to hear that you haven't seen him in some time, but I know how ya feel. It's why I came here looking for my own dad," she admitted. As Rose asked about what Zoe's father did, she thought for a moment about how to phrase it. "Well, he was the leader of his own team. They did a lot of secret missions that's confidential and stuff like that ya know?" Zoe said with a smile. "I met some of the men he worked with, apparently my dad was also one of the best snipers that the green berets has ever seen. They said that he could fire accurate shots from three miles away."

"Green beret, huh? That's some pretty hardcore stuff," Rose said, with a small smirk. "And I always did like Rambo." Snipers were cool, too, except when they were picking you off in Call of Duty... not that she'd know anything about that. She didn't even own an X-box. But she'd read people complaining about it on the internet, and that was good enough for her. "Okay, so random question unrelated to anything we were talking about previously. Why are boys such complete assholes? I'd just call them pigs, but that doesn't even begin to cover it. Assholes seems more accurate to me."