12th April
14:21 GMT -5
"Shouldn't you be in school?
"
Richard shakes his head.
"Batman's busy with the 'ClusterCorp' thing and the 'Russia has spaceships' thing, and
you're in Gotham."
"I
live in Gotham.
"
Richard smirks.
"So you get why he's concerned."
"…extremely disrespectful to public property."
"Ah… Yeah… Babe."
Below us,
Koriand'r attempts to berate two young men who were graffitiing an underpass while Detective Montoya looks on. I don't think they've stopped staring at her breasts since she landed.
I'd criticise, but they are
very nice breasts being displayed to their
best advantage.
"So is that Komand'r or Koriand'r?"
"Koriand'r.
"
"Why do you think her name sounds like 'coriander'?"
"There are only so many syllables.
"
"Does she
know those guys are checking her out?"
"I… Fifty-fifty. She knows that she's attractive, but she also knows that she's an alien on an isolated world. And Tamaraneans are a lot more open about that sort of thing than humans tend to be.
"
"…paint over the marks you have made to restore this place to pristine condition."
"Can we just paint over this bit? I mean, the city hasn't done any painting here for, like, years."
"No, because you are being punished for your misdeed. Now go!"
One takes a step away from her, probably-. Yep, intending to head home and forget this ever happened, which sounds like a good way to get an alien warrior princess knocking on your door to me. The other hesitates.
"If I do, will you give me your number?"
Koriand'r looks slightly puzzled.
"I do not have a number. I am a person; I have a name."
There's a somewhat
complicated burst of emotion from the other chap, a combination of irritation that his friend is drawing this out combined with good natured envy at his friend for having the moxie to ask.
"Could you get
me her number?"
I raise my eyebrows.
"What? I'm fifteen. And she's… How old is she?"
"She's from a different planet, a different species and a different culture. Her people consider her an adult. I've pegged her as seventeen-equivalent. And she doesn't have a number.
"
"She doesn't
have a number or she doesn't 'have' a number?"
I actually don't know what Tamaraneans do for telephones. Adam said that their communications were
working, but I didn't think to ask what that means for individual citizens. I'll have to ask Koriand'r.
"Look, she's right there. You can just talk to her, or ask me to send her a message, or ask any other Lantern in the universe to send her a message.
"
"Because Lanterns are so-. Huh." He nods. "Earth actually does have a lot of Lanterns. That's actually not so hard."
"I
know. We have more Lanterns assigned here than any other Sector in history. Though.. Sector Lanterns are a post-Qarrigat thing, so there were probably regions before that which had more Lanterns.
"
"You said that Orange Lanterns can do whatever they want when they're not doing Orange Lantern work. Does that mean that Koriand'r is a free agent?"
"She's assigned to Vega. She's here because she's interested in Earth and Vega is quiet at the moment. This is.. sort of a holiday, so… Yes.
"
"I don't suppose she works for
another trading company?"
I shake my head.
"I already thought of that. Tamaran-.
" No, she
can use her ring for private commercial activities, as long as they don't conflict with her official assignments.
"Tamaran doesn't really have anything to export at the moment. In.. five to ten years they'll have spare space in their space docks and a population with a space age education, but at the moment the place is too badly damaged.
"
"Is there anything they want from
us?"
"You can ask, but I doubt it. They're rebuilding and don't want to be dependent on aliens, but they're rebuilding back up to a higher level of technology than we have. Ah, in widespread deployment at least. They used to have an interstellar fleet and interstellar merchants. The only thing we could really offer would be mass low-tech manufacturing, and then there's.. the problem of
shipping.
"
"I thought they were building an interstellar fleet?"
"'Interstellar' doesn't mean
instant, it just means that they can get from system to system without needing a generation ship. Flying around Vega is a day or two between systems, but the planets in Vega are weirdly close together. Depending on which FTL drive they go for, flying from Vega to Earth could be anything from six months to two years.
"
"It doesn't take Lanterns that long."
"True, but I don't-.
"
My ring blinks.
"Illustres here.
"
The helmeted head of Comic King appears, and my heart sinks.
"How can I help?
"
"Are the Russians natural pranksters?"
"I'm afraid that I don't know enough about Russian culture to answer that. Why do you ask?
"
"Their fleet has vanished."
Oh… Gods.. damn it.
"And my ship disappeared as well."
"And you can't track it?
"
"ClusterCorp has an excellent safety record for the lives of our senior executives! All standard tracking procedures will have been implemented the moment anything untoward happened! I have received no signal, and my ring shows nothing!"
"Alright, that's a little-.
"
"Nothing! Nothing at all."
"I underst-.
"
"Not the slightest buzz of the hypercom, not a fizz from the bleedcom."
"Any deb-?
"
"Not a peep of a spatial dis-."
"Mute. I will begin investigating. Feel free to either make yourself useful or keep out of my way. Illustres out.
"
I lower my left hand as Richard breathes in sharply.
"Well
that isn't good."
