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[Arcalian]

"....we figured out where Intergang took the alien element when they used it," Prester Jon continued.

"Used it?" Tara and Gar said, almost in union. Gar winced. Tara blinked. She looked at him, but he looked down. Dagon and Killowat shared a grin at that, while Redwing rolled her eyes.

"Ahem, yes. They reactivated an old base of theirs that had been abandoned some years previous, on the outskirts of Boston. They moved no generators in, just one day it was suddenly up and running again."

Killowat sucked in a breath; energy was something he, above all, innately understood. "The idiots are using it as a power source?"

"Apparently so. The resulting light showed up on sattelites easily." The picture changed, showing a sattelite map of the northeast US. One orange blip near Boston showed up brilliantly. "And that's not all. Here's a closeup scan from one of the military sattilites."

The top of the base had new construction, something that was long and tube shaped.

"Power source and cannon," Redwing breathed.

"Energy weapon," Prestor Jon agreed grimly. "They may decide to hold the entire city of Boston for ransom or something equally annoying."

"How much time do we have?" asked Tara.

"Weeks at most. Probably less. The jet is already fueled and waiting."

----

The jet they were using was the same basic model Tara had come to know in the alternative timeline from whence she had come. It was the closest thing she had known to a home. Their quarters in the Checkmate base were not home, not yet. Perhaps in time they would become so. But for Tara, the narrow corridor of the private jet with it's stations for the team was both comforting and bitterly nostalgic. Back when the father of Mirage's child had been with them, that alternative timeline, older, battle scarred version of Nightwing they had known, he had piloted their plane while the rest of them slept or talked or ate. It had been,...almost like family.

She had met Geo-Force, the half-brother of the original Terra, and certainly he was willing to treat her as the sister she had never been to him, but he was not her true family. At least not yet. This was her family. And this plane was the closest thing she had ever had to a home.

Now Dagon and Killowat sat at the controls. Changeling took the passenger seat furthest from her, and she sighed, as the plane took off.

"What is it, Terra?" Redwing asked.

"You can't go home again," she said simply.

Redwing's luminous, not-quite-human eyes blinked back tears of their own as she nodded her understanding.

The trip to Boston was very quiet.

[Arcalian]

That's Prestor Jon's initial theory. Theories have this way of being disproven.

BTW thanks for continuing to respond to this. Seriously.