Her mother's daughter

The apartment Dinah shares with her mother is a medium sized, two-storey affair above the florist shop in a pleasant neighbourhood in downtown Gotham. Her room, into which her Milliways door opens, is a mess of discarded clothes, which she hastily kicked under her unmade bed as they pass.

The rest of the apartment is tidier, but not spotless There are few bookshelves, and what there are are filled with well-thumbed crime novels. Photos throughout feature a handsome man with dark brown hair and a crooked grin that exactly matches Dinah's own. Other portraits on display include professional quality group shots of the Justice Society of America; the kind of glossies you buy at a special interest store impersonally signed by a tired hand. In the living room, an old leather chair that doesn't match the couch is still angled at the TV, but it's the couch that bears the marks of having been used recently: a paperback lies spread open and upside down next to a cold coffee mug, which Dinah scoops up on her way past. Fresh cut flowers can be found in nearly every room.

The kitchen looks, for the most part, like a show kitchen, with every utensil and appliance accounted for and squared away in its place, and then coated in a very thin layer of dust, except for the microwave, sink and fridge, which obviously get their fair share of use.

And Dinah has most of her face covered with her hand.

"Aaaand now you've seen all my dirty laundry."

Literally.

Unlike many of the major US cities in this universe, the Chicago of the JLA's world is remarkably similar to the Chicago of many others. Certainly, when the door from Milliways opens onto Lake Shore Drive, the cityscape ahead of the visitors might look familiar to one or two of them.

Well, except for the glass giants laying waste to the city, and the squadron of giant yellow birds in the sky.

Black Canary is already shouting out instructions over the din of the destruction.

"Keep close and watch each other's backs! Clear the city and for God's sake watch out for civilians! Do not! Let their eyebeams touch you; they'll turn you into one of them!

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! "

Without taking a breath, her shouted orders turn into a scream and the diamond giant bearing on them from the left shatters into huge clear chunks that shower to the ground.

"Go!"

To say that things have been awkward in the Justice League since that thing they never talk about, would be a pretty severe understatement. Dinah is by now convinced that even Aquaman must have noticed how much she's very studiously avoiding any sort of eye contact with Green L- with Hal, and as for Flash and J'Onn - well. There's a reason she's been playing and replaying Foreigner in her head at top mental volume all day.

I'm hot blooded, check it and see. I've got a fever of 103.

She's becoming more and more sure that this song is going to be ruined forever for her and that she'll never be able to train in Ted's gym again for the risk it'll come on the radio.  But better this than suffer the mental images that turn up everytime she looks at a certain team member.

Oh god, for a mission right now.




Her prayers are answered when Snapper comes running into the meeting room.

"Guys, guys! Someone's in here!"

Wayne Manor is, it turns out, surprisingly easy to approach on a lone motorcycle. Dinah expected more intense security and maybe one of those gates you have to speak your name into before you're even allowed on the approaching road.

Instead she rides right up to the building and rings the front doorbell.

"Flowers for Mr. Wayne."

The door is answered by a tall, well spoken, honest-to-God gentleman's butler, who holds his hand out for the bouquet. "I'll make sure he gets them."

...and he's actually British, as well! Dinah immediately thinks that's adorable. But that doesn't mean she's going to let him take the flowers. Despite herself, she holds on to the stems and inserts her foot into the door, smiling.

"We at Dinah Lance Flowers like to put the flowers into the recipient's hand. It's our quality guarantee."

"I'm afraid Master Bruce is out right now, Miss. I'll assure you, if you gave them to me, no one will." He glances down at the foot over the threshold and up to Dinah's innocent face. "You're not a photographer, are you?"

She doesn't get the reference, obviously, and shakes her head. "Why don't you tell him I'm here?"

"I'm afraid He'll be quite some time..."

"I'll wait."

The butler takes a momet in which he appears to be assessing the situation, and he gives her an second, apprasiing look. "Hwy do I get the feeling that this ishn't about flowers?"

"Because you're remarkably asute and there's no keeping secrets from you?" Dinah suggests.

She looks at him. He looks at her.

"I'm going to need to shut the door while I see if he's returned," Jeeves says after a moment. She raises an eyebrow, and aquiesces.

It's less than a minute before the door re-opens.

"Mister Wayne will be with you in a few moments, Miss Lance. Do come in."

Gaining entrance to the manor, Dinah relinuishes the flowers to the butler's care hiwl she's shown into a parlour the size of her whole apartment. There, she flops down into a large leather armchair. While she waits for Bruce to show up, she removes the portfolio of papers from inside her leather jacket.

Before Bruce Wayne turns up, Dinah's aware of someone else in the room, watching her. Twisting around, she spies a boy who looks about fourteen, bbut she knows him to be older, standing in the door and watching her.

"You're Dinah?"

"Right," she says, "and you're..." wait, what was the kid's name? "Dick, right?"

"That's me," and he flips backwards into a handstand as naturally as someone would shift their weight from foot to foot. "Are you goin go ask Bruce to join the League?"

Dinah is shocked into a silent second before replying. "That's not up to me, you know."

Dick frowns, clearly unhappy with thisidea while he continues bending his feet back until he's in an arch on all fours. He looks about to says soemthing else when he's interupted.

"Dick," Bruce – who Dinah thinks now only looks a little bit like Bruce from the bar, is tying up a robe as he enters. He looks like he's between changes, and she's willing to lay money that he had to get out of her cotume to see her. "If they wanted Batman, they hae ways of contacting Batman. This is about Bruce Wayne, am I right?"

Dinah nods, and Dick looks sullen, for like a second. It doesn't suit his face anyway. Then he flips over and over, into another handstand, interested, but not enough to sit down. Bruce, however, takes a seat opposite Dinah.

"I'm not the anonymous funder of your League," he tells her, without preamble. "And I don't know who is."

As much as Dinah suspects he's lying on the second, she grins and shakes her head. "That's not it either, Bruce.

"I need to warn you about the earthquake."

...

"Earthquake?"

She opens the folder and spills out the contents, the maps from the USGs, the tectonic data and the graphs she's still not sure she understands. "Gotham's on a faultline."

"Gotham's on limestone."

She shrugs. "Yes, but it's on a faultline. Look."

He does, and he's silent for a few minutes. Eventually, even Dick has made his way over, peering over Bruce's shoulder.

"You think there might be an earthquake?"

"I know there will be," Dinah says. "In about ten years time."

Bruce barely moves his head to look up at her. "How do you know this?"

"Time travel."

It's hard to tell if he approves or not, but he does accept it. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"You own a good portion of the buildings in the city, right?" says Dinah. "You can make sure they're reinforced."

"For an earthquake? In Gotham?"

"Bruce..." She's sure she doesn't need to tell him how devastating an earthquake would be if it hit the island city, with the buildings as they are.

He nods. "I already have."

"You have?"

"Dinah," it's the first time he's used her first name. "I have geological surveys carried out every time Wayne Enterprises builds a new building. I know about the faultline. Knowing that the quake is an inevitability just means I will redouble my efforts to secure the city. Thank you."

And with that, the biggest burden is taken off her shoulders.

"Hey everybody, look who's here! One of those Justice Leaguers we've heard so much about!"

It's so rare these days, to get all her uncles in the same place, that Dinah's delighted by everything they have to say, even if most of what they have to say is to tease her about her new team name, press her for information about her new teammates and to pile on their hopes and dreams on to her. Her mother's right, if snide and tactless, when she says that she loves it.

It's Wesley's birthday, and everyone's at the Lances' house; Charlie, Alan, Al, Kent, both Teds.

Although. That puts a weird spin on the whole party.

Dinah's uncle Ted Knight - the old Starman - is one of her uncles she's seen the least of recently. Even less in the last few years since her Dad's death. He just... hasn't been around. And while he seems to be having a great time catching up with the guys, but with Dinah walks in on him and her mother in the kitchen...

There's an awkward moment, and he leaves the house.

"Weird," Dinah tells her mother directly. "What was that about?"

Dinah sr. hesitates, and finally tells Dinah all about her history with Ted.

Her daughter's indignant scream nearly breaks their glassware.

Even though, officially, Dinah Lance jr is the owner and sole proprietor of Dinah Lance Flowers, her mother still has a habit of turning up and giving her opinion. And in the case of the day after they encountered Locus, this opinion is once again about 'Flash and those others'.

"As a matter of fact, Mom," Dinah says after at least ten minutes of listening to her mother, "yes, we are planning to form a group. We're meeting on Monday, in fact."

"Really?" Honestly, Dinah sr didn't sound this excited when Dinah brought home her first boyfriend. Although as she never met Tommy, that was Craig Windrow. "You are? A new Justice Society?"

"We haven't talked about it."

"Oh, but you should. Where are you going to meet?"

"The Fox Hotel, actually."

Both Dinahs know it well. It's the place where the JSA first met. Dinah sr beams and instantly picks up the shop's phone.

"Mom? What are you doing?"

Dinah sr waves her panicking daughter away. "Hello, is that the Gotham Gazette?"

It's not until they're driving back through Gotham that Dinah realises how much she's missed being out on the street fighting the good fight. She's glad to see her Mom, of course, but no one's surprised when one of the first things she does is to grab her wig and fishnets and head out to see if her new skills have made her a better crimefighter.

It's just bad luck that her first citizen-in-distress isn't a run of the mill mugging, but a woman facing what appears to be a glass statue – except unlike most statues, this one is fully mobile and particularly malicious. As Dinah races to the scene, the creature fires what looks like a strange ray out of its eyes and turns the woman into living glass just like itself – a fate decidedly more eerie by the fact that the woman stops screaming and becomes placid the second it happens. It's also a fate Dinah narrowly avoids when it turns its gaze on her and the Black Canary has to dive out of the way – into a wide road populated by many glass zombies.

The numbness in her foot starts before she's even landed properly, and she turns the dive into a handflip, in order to land on her foot much more lightly. A glance down at the glittering scattered sunlight confirms her fears: her foot, from the midcalf over her boots, is suddenly made of glass.

Dinah allows herself a moment's indulgence of the irony of a martial artist with a glass foot, that makes her smirk, and another second's amusement of the bad luck this creature had by coming up against her.

Just as it gears up for another attack, she winks, and lets go with a scream.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

It's precision, not force she's going for; aiming tightly at the creature so as to avoid bystanders and her own foot, and guessing then experimenting for the frequency that will shatter it into shards.

It doesn't occur to her that this might be a sentient being she's killing. It was a threat that had to be neutralised.

The glass tinkles on to the road, and Dinah can feel the blood returning to her foot. She's just returning her weight to it when a voice behind her clarifies that the people had also been returned to normal. It's a policeman, offering his thanks with that wary gratitude Gotham's finest have about the caped community – even the Black Canary, who's decidedly more sunny than their more famous protector.

“How'd you stop him?”

“He had a glass jaw.”

(When you're set up like that, you have to take it)

The conversation doesn't stay too light, though, as he informs her that reports had been coming in of more of these creatures attacking other parts of the country, and as soon as Dinah gets the nearest location, she's on her bike.