The Bow
The cylinder room trembled. Everyone froze, glancing anxiously at the door where Court shook his head in negative.
"There are adults here. Perhaps they set off a bomb or something," Morris soothed as he manipulated the insides of a cylinder's controls. "Got it!" With that, there was a small, nearly inaudible click and the glass of the cylinder rose smoothly up.
Leilani sat against one of the unopened ones, Sabrina still asleep on her shoulder. Much like Ella, they hadn't been able to wake her up. Ella, though, was showing fitful signs that she was trying to wake up. Leilani had kept talking to Sphinxie who had finally said that she would try to help them do so. Leilani suspected it had more to do with shooing her out of their shared head than anything else.
"Do this one next," Aarti said, showing back up from her explorations of the farther reaches of the large room. "There's just empty cylinders back there along with another door that's been welded shut." She frowned.
That statement made most of the older kids frown. Leilani did a quick, surreptitious sweep and found a lingering question of just why would the door be permanently shut. She looked up at the ceiling of the cylinder room. A few of the cylinders were floor to ceiling. Those needed to be actively broken open since there was no way to actually open them. Both San and Ella were in those types of cylinders.
The rest only stretched upwards, not touching the ceiling with metallic caps. From the few that they'd opened, you could tell that the caps acted as securing agents, but with the right commands from the cylinder panels, would retract the glass upwards. There were still unused cylinders that waited to be closed further into the room.
Leilani pulled her consciousness back into herself. She didn't want to know anymore. All she wanted was to drag Sabrina back to the hideout and teach her how to make candy blocks. Trolli had somehow figured where they'd been stashing them and had relieved them of enough to build two inches of the Daily Planet model they'd been planning. While it could be shorter, it wouldn't give it the levity that she and Carol had been going for.
Plus, afterwards they were going to break it at the 'Welcome Back, San!' party they were planning. With San and Don's appetites, the building had better be huge.
"Who is she?" Leilani asked, looking up at Aarti who was frowning at the sleeping girl in the cylinder.
Leilani wondered just what sort of sedative the overlords had developed in the years since they'd been Liberated. Everyone who had it had trouble waking up. The thought made her shiver. She hated sleeping. She had no control, and other people's thought would intrude. That's why she liked sleeping in museums and arboretums. After hours, there were few people there and nighttime only had guards and the random delivery man. Leilani couldn't be bothered to remember the thefts she'd inadvertently foiled; sometimes she broadcasted in her sleep as well.
"She's a very foolish Amazon," Aarti said, crossing her arms. She shook her head. "Still, she's coming with us."
The Amazon had bruises and cuts that were visibly healing. Leilani shuddered to think just how badly she must have been wounded before being tossed into the cylinder. Her cylinder was one of the floor-to-ceiling types which gave Leilani paused. Then she studied Aarti.
"Is this the infamous Amazon?" Leilani asked cautiously.
"The one and only," Aarti affirmed. "But it's still my fault that this happened. She's my responsibility. They all are," she whispered as she turned away, rubbing her upper arms as if cold.
They turned towards the doorway at Court's shocked exclamation. The door irised and a set of drones carrying a bow darted in. The bow was an interesting one; it didn't seem to have a string along the back like regular ones.
Leilani idly wondered just how that would work. From her experiences, bows needed strings and arrows to function properly. This was just a pretty piece of carved wood from what she could tell.
"A bow?" Aarti said, her brow furrowed as the drones came to a stop in front of her. She grasped it by the middle part, and the drones retracted the little guidelines they'd had attached to it. "How did Grandmother's bow get here?"
"That's what I want to know," a voice said from the doorway.
Leilani whipped her head around to see a woman who looked a lot like a grown-up, blue-eyed version of Aarti standing in the doorway. Court was off to the side having a fierce conversation with Lucy while Cassidy was studying a cylinder by the door that was crawling with duplicates of the messenger drones.
"Fascinating, just fascinating," Cassidy was murmuring in an absent tone that made the hairs on the back of Leilani's neck stand to attention. She was reminded that of all of them, Cassidy was the most dangerous simply because she didn't care about consequences.
"Mother," Aarti replied, not releasing the bow. Instead, she maneuvered it behind her back and it stayed there as if it was a sheathed sword.
Leilani really, really, really wanted to know just how that was possible. Aarti wasn't even wearing any armor. She was in a trendy little tank-top and mini skirt that most of the other older kids were wearing, though it seemed that Lucy was now in what looked to be like scavenged guard armor over a pair of purple short shorts. Leilani sighed. Only Lucy could pull something like that off. She'd even knotted what was probably some poor guard's gloves around her twintails to complement the outfit.
Leilani pulled out a handful of her own hair from behind her back and eyed it with disfavor. She promised herself that when this was over, she was so going to let Rena buy her those sparkly ribbons she'd wanted to buy. Rena had too much money anyways. Who knew where she got it from.
As Aarti's mother stalked forward, her expression changing with almost every glance around the room, Lucy and Court sidled towards the door.
"And where are you going?" Niles called, standing up from where he'd been examining Paul in the corner. Niles had produced all sorts of injectables and supplements after he'd arrived, insistent on making sure everyone could run. "Little sister?"
Leilani winced with Lucy. Niles was scary. He was even scarier now that he was a full-fledged medic instead of just learning. His whole mind was a jumble of medical terms, blood and a fixation on his little sister. There had also been another growing one on a couple of people Leilani couldn't figure out but guessed must be his little nurse and someone else.
There was some sort of open secret none of the older kids were thinking about in her presence.
Leilani sighed and shook Sabrina once more.
"Sabrina, wake up?" Leilani tried again. She was rewarded by a mumble which was encouraging. Before, she didn't even get that much.
"Just going to see if the coast was clear?" Lucy ventured, and even Leilani could hear the hope in her voice.
Leilani shook her head. As if that was going to work...
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Tashady
Tashady Rearranging things...I had a scenario in my head, but now I think it's not good enough... (blame Stargirl...I love Stargirl... but Earth-2 is too interesting to me!)
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone