by Starsky Hutch 76
When Star Sapphire and Coral reached the hallway, they found Batwing, Arrowette, and Flare staring up at the elongated, frozen form of Stretch O’Brien. “He’ll be right at home in this place,” Star Sapphire said.
“Amanda!” Arrowette said in alarm. “Are you all right?”
“How about you, Mina?” Batwing said as he and Flare moved to her side.
“I’m OK,” said Coral. “Thanks to Amanda. Still a little groggy, though. You should see the way she took out Faust.”
Batwing stared back into the room with the enormous jewel. “You saved both Mina and the Eye of Qurac! Way to go!”
The five of them walked out to where Superboy, Whiz Kid, and Damage stood watching as the Special Crimes Unit loaded Savant, Dollface, Bluestreak, and Kid Grundy for transport. Savant and Bluestreak were sedated, while Kid Grundy and Dollface were simply bound head to toe in special reinforced restraints, Grundy’s made of highly reinforced titanium. SCU officers passed them on the way in to study the problem of how to get Stretch O’Brien out the door.
“You gonna be all right?” Superboy asked Whiz Kid, who stared sadly as Savant was carried by two paramedics into a special SCU ambulance.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “But I wonder when it’s finally going to stop hurting so much.”
“It’ll be a while,” Superboy said, thinking of all the loved ones he had to leave behind when his world died. “You’ll get on with your life, but you’ll always think of her.”
“We did real good here, gang,” Batwing said. “We stopped a robbery with a minimum of damage — a couple of broken mirrors and some cracked floors. The important thing is, we saved the treasures.”
“Yeah,” Star Sapphire said, still dazed by everything that had happened.
“You’ve got to be feeling a little better, anyway,” Flare said.
“Y-yeah,” said Amanda Martin. “I should feel better since I finally got some payback, but…”
“But you’re still pretty shaken up,” Arrowette said sympathetically.
“Yeah,” she said smiling nervously.
“We’ve all been through a lot,” Batwing said. “But we’ve come through our biggest challenge ever and proven ourselves. No one can take that away from us.”
Everyone stood in silence, weighing Batwing’s words. Today, they had truly come together as a team. Their graduation from kids into heroes had come. And for the first time, they felt as if they really deserved to be the next generation of the Justice Society. And even though their struggle had left them all a little rougher around the edges, that was a pretty good feeling.
The End