“Reports are in from Mr. Queen’s press conference yesterday, and the rumors are true! The beloved daughter of Oliver Queen is back!”
   
Aspen sighed, turning off the TV in her bedroom. The press conference was yesterday, but her nerves were still running wild. She had a weird feeling boiling in the pit of her stomach, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

All she knew was that she needed to calm down, and she knew a perfect way to do that.
   
Aspen rolled off her bed and went over to her desk. 'Now where is it?' she wondered as she rummaged through the shelves and drawers. She went over to her closet and searched through it as well. Still coming up empty-handed, she decided to go find Oliver and see if he knew where it was.
   
Walking down the grand staircase and into the kitchen, Aspen found Oliver sitting at the counter looking at his phone. She tapped the counter and smiled at him.
   
“Question: Do you still have my old laptop?”
   
“I think so. Why it wasn’t in your room?”
   
“Nope.”
   
Oliver paused for a moment to think. “Check the study then. Someone might have moved it there.”
   
“Thank you!”
   
Aspen turned around and headed for Oliver’s study. 
   
She opened the door and immediately set to work, looking through the cabinets and closets in the room. Still not finding it, she sighed and sat down on Oliver’s desk chair. Why was it so hard to find a stupid laptop? She let her eyes wander around the room. They suddenly landed on the familiar sight of her laptop.
   
Finally! She jumped up from the chair and carefully pulled the laptop and the charger from the pile of stored items, careful not to cause anything to fall, and went back to her room.
   
“I found it!” she yelled as she passed the kitchen on her way back.
   
Once in her room, she sat down at her desk and set it up. After a few minutes of waiting, the familiar welcome screen popped up and Aspen logged in. Within another few seconds, a tab opened and writing appeared on the screen.
   
“Welcome, Miss Lafont. It has been >100 days since your last login. You have >100 new notifications. Would you like to view them or dismiss them?” A blinking cursor appeared, waiting for Aspen to complete the command.
   
She smiled at her program as she typed ‘<view>’.
   
“How would you like to view them?” She typed ‘<oldest_first>’. Another tab opened and lagged as the notifications loaded. The screen froze.
   
“Seriously? I thought I fixed that!” Aspen mumbled as she began typing. “Although it doesn’t help that it has to deal with 4 years worth of notifications and updates.”
   
The screen finally unfroze and showed Aspen all of her notifications. The first was a message from one of her friends, Margaret, that read: ‘Hey, where are you? Lorenska’s making us do partner work and I don’t want to work with Dylan’
   
Another one was dated a few days later, and still from Margaret: ‘Umm. Penny, it’s kinda been a couple of days now… where are you?? Are you sick or something?’
   
Aspen clicked through a few more messages all regarding the same thing, her friends wanting to know where she was and if she was okay. After going through a months-worth, she found that the time-stamps were getting further and further apart. The majority of her messages were from the first few weeks she went missing and from there the only messages every few weeks from then on.
   
“Hey, Aspen, are you busy?” Aspen looked away from the screen and saw Ollie standing in her doorway.
   
“Not really, why?” She closed out the tab she was on and opened a new one and started typing a line of code. She had to figure out this bug and find a way to stop her laptop from freezing and lagging.
   
“It’s about what Bruce wanted to tell you the other day.” 

Aspen’s eyes perked up as she remembered their conversation. She closed her laptop and turned to face him. “Oh yeah, what was that all about?”
   
“Bruce wanted me to tell you that he adopted another kid.”
   
“Cool?” Aspen replied, confused. Did he want to let her know that Ricky-Dicky had a sibling now? Why was that so important? “And why would he feel the need to tell me that?”
   
“Well, uh,” Oliver started. He rubbed the back of his neck. “He adopted your cousin, Jason Todd.”
   
“Wait, what?”
   
“And he wanted me to give you this,” he continued, handing her a folded piece of paper. Aspen unfolded it and saw a phone number written on it.
   
“Is this…”
   
“Jason’s phone number. Bruce figured you’d want to reach out to him. I would have given him yours, but we hadn’t finished setting up your phone.”
   
“Hold on, back up. How long have you known this?” Aspen asked as she held up the paper. “You’re only telling me this now?”
   
“Things were just so hectic with the whole press conference and I just kinda… uh… forgot?”
   
“You forgot to tell me that Bruce Wayne, one of your closest business friends, adopted my cousin, and gave you his number for me?” Aspen rolled her eyes and laughed. “And you think my memory’s bad.”
   
Oliver let out a defeated sigh and held his hands up. “You make a good point. I’ll leave you to whatever you were doing.” He started for the door but quickly turned back around. “Oh, and I’m going to be leaving soon. Text me if you leave.”
   
“Overprotective much?”
   
“I can be as overprotective as I want to be,” he said with a smile and ruffled Aspen’s hair, which was a bright violet shade today. A few stray strands fell into her face and she blew them away.
   
“Goodbye, Ollie!” she yelled out in a sing-song voice as she pushed him out the door.
   
As she pushed the door shut, Aspen took out her phone and quickly added the number into her contacts list. She then clicked on the ‘message’ icon and started a new message with him.

Me
Jay?? Is this you? 
It’s me Aspen… I got a new phone and Ollie gave me your number

Jay
Wait seriously?
Where have you been?

Me
Ummm
Kind of a long story to type out right now...

Jay
That’s fair
I knew B said he gave Oliver my number but I guess I forgot about it XD

Me
Yea… Ollie isn’t the best when it comes to remembering to do things 

Jay
We should get together sometime soon
You can tell me this ‘long story’ in person

Me
Next thursday? Gotham City Diner?

Jay
U act as if I have plans XD

Me
Us billionaire children have very busy lives XD
Also, you wanna tell me how that happened?

Jay
Long story

Me
Well now you need to tell me
So yes??

Jay
Yea.. around oon?
*noon?

Me
Works for me!
See you next week!

Jay
Wait how r u getting to Gotham?

Me
Don’t worry about that😁

Aspen smiled as she finished typing the last text and looked at the time ‘Shoot’. It was almost 3:00 and she had to be at the Cave soon. 

Throwing her phone onto her bed, Aspen quickly got changed and ran out her door.
The halls were quiet, which meant that Oliver was either in the Arrowcave or Queen Industries. Dinah had a patient’s appointment she had to go to and said she would meet Aspen at the Cave.

She sent a text to Oliver to tell him she was leaving and headed out the door. The closest Zeta Tube was an out-of-order police box barely a block away. Aspen chuckled to herself. Nicknamed the “TARDIS”, because of it’s blue color and Aspen’s love for the show, the familiar police box soon came into view.

Making sure no one was following her, Aspen stepped into the box and typed in where she wanted to go.

“Recognized: Enigma, B15.”

She walked through and exited into the Cave, where everyone was already getting ready for training. Aspen quickly scanned the room and saw that Dinah wasn’t there yet, which meant she technically wasn’t late.

Across the room, Artemis, Zatanna, Robin, and Nightwing were huddled together. Aspen heard Zatanna laughing and teasing Robin about something, but she wasn’t quite able to catch what it was.

She shivered. The Cave was drafty, at least it was during the winter, and it didn’t help that she was on the opposite side of the country. California and Rhode Island were vastly different in climate, and Aspen really wished her costume had a jacket

“Wasn’t sure you were going to make it in time.” Aspen turned to her left and saw Wally standing next to her, eating something out of a plastic bag. She lifted the bag from his hands and looked at the label.

“Says the speedster that’s late to everything,” she smirked. 

“I am not!”

“Sei fuori come un balcone?” Aspen looked over to her left and saw Raene walking up to the two of them. “You live not even ten minutes from the school and you’re late to homeroom almost every day. And yet I live almost a half-hour away and get to school early.”

Aspen’s mind wandered to her first meeting with Raene, and the ‘memory’ she experienced. It couldn’t have been her own, right? Aspen would have known if it was real. She was pulled from her thoughts by the strange look that Raene was giving her, and Aspen realized that she had been staring at the girl the whole time.

She quickly looked away and turned her attention back to Wally as rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. 

“You can teleport!”

“And you have superspeed,” Aspen said, backing up Raene.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to gang up on me too! Artemis and Rae do it enough, I don’t need another person doing it!”

“Going back to the point,” She said, holding up the bag of freeze-dried chicken in front of his face. “Chicken Whizee’s before training? Black Canary’s gonna get you for that.”

“I’ve got a fast metabolism," he said, grabbing the bag back from Aspen's hand and stuffing some in his mouth. "It’ll wear off before training even starts.”

Unbeknownst to Wally, as his back was turned, Black Canary was watching this exchange and she winked at Aspen and held up a ball. Aspen looked over to Raene, who also saw her, and the two slowly backed away from Wally.

“Wally, duck!” Dinah yelled.

Instead of actually ducking, Aspen watched as Wally zipped around, yelled out “Where?”, and was hit in the face with the rubber ball. The room filled with chuckles and snickers as Wally stood there with a dumbfound look on his face.

“Today’s focus is reflexes,” Dinah said, throwing another ball up and catching it in her hand. “They need to be fast and appropriate for the situation, and while your reflexes were fast, Wally, they were not the appropriate ones.”

* * * * * *

I love it when a filler chapter becomes 1,861 words long, which is about double of what I normally write 😂😂😂

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