Daughter of the Timeless

Adolesence Part 2

I am well acquainted with putting on appearances. However I don't like it. I don't like being fake. I am not the dress wearing type of girl. 

I pull on the bright, sparklinlg blue knee length dress. It puffs at the shoulders, frills at the edges everywhere. It has horizontal dark blue hemming contrasting the light blue of the skirt at each tier stitched together. I put on the old blue leather court shoes that Dad gave me for lady-likeness. I am guessing they were Grandma's. Not Grandma Kent's, but Lilians. They seem more her era anyways. 

I put on the dark fabric cuffs around my wrists and tuck the key to the car into it so I can sneak out for a ride later.

"I'm ready Torque." I say bounding out of the big O.Q. office doors.

"Slow down, Miss. Remember you debutaunt walk." He begs.

"Ah, fine. Just for you big buddy." I say tapping him on the arm. 

We walk down the winding halls, past the posted security guards, the ever buzzing and watching cameras, right to the grand elevator. Soon we are downstairs on the 5th floor. 

The elevator opens out onto the ever white interior of the building. The Fifth floor sprawls out off the right and directly ahead of the elevator there is a giant stair case leading to the fourth floor. People of my father's social status from around the world loiter about with champagne glasses poised in their hands. They look like ancient greek statues, posed just so. Can't be relaxed for even a beat, these people. Ugh.

The music swells to a cressendo and I am escorted slowly down the stair case to the middle landing where it branches off to two other sub levels. To the right a mini bar, the left a mini bar with a little lounge. My father traverses the landing from the lounge with Mercy 3.0 at his coattails. The blood sucker. 

She doesn't age.

"Little Lily Pad." Dad croons lifting my hand and kissing it gently, the same on my forehead. "You've grown to quite the lady. And quite the troublemaker I hear." He says gently ushering me to our standing point at the head of the landing.

"Can't be helped. If you gave me more to do than read, maybe I wouldn't be so full of energy to try to kill off the maid with a massive goo bomb." 

"She wasn't too happy." He says under his breath. 

Father is shorter than me. Flowing red hair coiffed back into a waist long ponytail, shaved at the sides. I remember the pictures of him with shoulder length red hair, and the other ones with an angry face paired with a bald head. Those wild, evil eyes. Replaced with the kindest eyes I have seen, now weighed down with an unspeakable sadness.

He is different now. Or so they tell me. He isn't as light hearted as I remember. He grows increasingly isolated and grumpy. His only company being the holograms of the UN leaders and Earth's Counselors. Amanda Waller being among them. And then there is Mercy 3.0. The apparent biological remake of the robot he once toted around as a security measure when he went out in public freely. Back when his arch nemesis was Superman and everyone in the world. Back when he wanted to kill them all and conquer the world and the whole universe. 

"She was far from death, I assure you. It was literally all water, flour and whatever else they taught us in science class. I don't remember. Just added a bunch of stuff together."

"Well super intelligence isn't in your genetics darling." He says wincing. That cut. His words never cut. Either of us.

He begins his greetings to the people gathering in the ballroom below. We stand at the balcony as he regails the past and his change from evil to good. His work with Cadmus and Waller for a better future. All the while I wonder why he would all of a sudden turn cold and snide with me. Why he would in other words call me stupid.

"And you all know my darling daughter, Martha. Our gem. Our hope for the future." A chorus of people clap and whoop. 

"Have you to say anything to the people, child?" Mercy asks.

"Like what?" I say. I hear a piercing feedback squeal through the speakers as she shoves the microphone into my face.

"Anything." She says, nodding.

"Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming to my fifteenth birthday party. Thank you for being as so kind to personally attend a Luthor event considering the past and my father's isolation." I say. Dad peers at me sideways. I shrug at him, and ignore Mercy.

"I don't know about being the hope for your future, but I do know that if my father says it is so, it will be. My father is not known for his experiments failing." I say. Everyone picks up the joke and laughs. Mercy yanks the microphone away, Torque escorts me off to the side while Dad does damage control.

"You shouldn't taunt them, Miss." 

"Who? The Barbie's and Ken's? I don't think they have much going on upstairs these days. Most of them are using their brain power to stave off aging and gaining weight."

"Not them. Them." He says pointing towards Mercy and Dad. 

"Why?" I say. I look at Torque's worried face and back at my father and Mercy, who are now talking very closely. She is smiling while she listens to him talk at her. His posture displays annoyance. "What's going on that he is changing?"

"You are growing, Miss. You are older. Different. So is he. You will learn on your own what is going on soon enough." He says. And as if he was never there next to me, speaking face to face, he vanishes in the crowd.

Guardians aren't to leave their charges alone. Either something is going on, or I am given free reign to tour the fifth and fourth floors.

Either way, there isn't much I can do. Nowhere I can really go.