Happy Harbor

  May 31, 17:40

  Construction gsses sat snugly on my face as I stood beneath the much more whole Zephyr and used a welding tool to seal the square shaped compartment I’d just installed a modified and miniaturized repulsorlift coil in.

  Of course, by construction gsses I meant a high tech set of spectacles that guided whoever wore them on how to accomplish a task from the long list needed to be tackled for the Zephyr to come to life.

  And by welding tool, I meant a gun shaped device that projected a beam of matter shifting material that basically blended two, three or more separate pieces of material together into one intact whole, leaving no gaps and seams.

  Once the compartment vanished from my sight and I lowered the matter welder, I checked the HUD and looked over the on screen rendition of my pne, eight spots highlighted as where more of such coils had to be fitted.

  Seven(mine included) were already in pce. The st one, destined for the lower end of the pne’s right wing, was still being slotted into pce, judging from how it was the only spot with red highlights.

  Ducking and coming out from under the fusege, I walked the length of the bck ship and found Superboy, wearing a set of gsses identical to mine and finishing up.

  In no time, the red highlight vanished and the entire ship was lit green. Everyone present—which was the whole team—approached each other with varying levels of pride on our features.

  “Repulsorlifts done. Whooo!” Wally threw his hands up in the air and high fived the others.

  Sharing their smiles, I looked up and said, “Mike.”

  He responded right away. “Activating repulsor array.”

  There was no sound or fsh of light. The pne just trembled a bit and I gave everyone new orders. “Alright. The supports and frames.”

  Fully trusting in my own work, I stepped forward and started to disengage the scaffolding that had been holding up the ship this past week.

  Having already expined how it operated and functioned to them, the team didn’t voice the usual compints of ‘what if they fail’ or ‘what if it they ran out of power’ and just helped.

  They had seen ample evidence of what M and E could do in my many creations, so they were long past the stage of disbelief. However, even I smiled and felt relief inside when the pne remained in pce when enough supports on one side were removed.

  Soon, the floor beneath the ship was bare, nothing holding it up except the fields of antigravity pushing against the Earth’s.

  “Amazing.”

  “Yeah. It is,” Superboy said, supporting Wally’s statement.

  We looked at each other and grinned, the collective sense of accomplishment clearly felt by all of us.

  “What’s next?” Robin asked.

  “Well, for one the stairs,” I gestured to the exposed entrance at the tail end of the ship. “After that it’s all interior and system instaltions. This part will mostly be me. I’ll need to personally make sure everything works as best as it can. The power aspect too, I’ll be connecting every single system together so that no power goes to waste. You guys don’t need to be here for this, but you can stay around and watch.”

  “How long will it take?” Wally asked.

  “Two, three days tops. Mike and I will need to take a ton of scans and do even more tests to make sure everything’s on the up and up. So by Friday, yeah.”

  “Cool,” said Robin.

  Wally however, had caught on. “Wait. Isn’t Friday when Speedy’s—”

  “Yeah. GA has provided a b for the instaltion. It’s in Star City, and this baby will take us there. Don’t worry, I scheduled the time so everyone will be here. Wouldn’t want anyone to miss this.”

  “That’s… thanks,” Robin replied.

  Kaldur also had something to say. “Rob is right, and not just for that, but for this opportunity as well. We have all learned a lot.”

  “Yeah,” added Superboy.

  Roy looked a bit uncomfortable but he managed to win whatever fight he was having with himself.

  “Agh, dammit,” he forced out and looked me in the eye. “Like everyone else said, thanks. Not just for the arm, the gun, and the gear, but for including me in this. You have no idea what—” he paused, closed his eyes and took a breath. “I guess, thanks is all I’m saying. I’m gd you’re team leader.”

  This all came out of nowhere, but damn, these kids had their way with words, almost making me tear up. And I still didn’t even do that much. At least to me. They didn’t seem to see it that way.

  I nodded and adopted the most sincere expression I could manage and took off my gsses. “I am grateful to hear you guys say that. Your words mean a lot.”

  “Alright! Alright. Enough of that,” excimed Wally before rushing towards the ship, breaking up the sullen atmosphere. “You said we can watch. I wanna see how you’re gonna achieve the impossible of one hundred percent energy efficiency.”

  Following his lead just like everyone else, I jumped into the ship’s interior and corrected his statement.

  “I didn’t say one hundred percent. I said ‘close to’.”

  “Potato tomato. Hey have you guys seen any chips around?”

  Rob responded dryly. “You ate all of them.”

  “Dang it.”

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  Star City

  June 3, 10:44

  This was my first time at Felicity’s pce, and no it wasn’t for what you were thinking. This was purely business.

  The day after our first date, we’d met with our respective wyers and signed the contracts we needed to make our partnership a reality. Afterwards, we had a mini date at an ice cream shop where we discussed first steps.

  Her first job as a budding C.E.O. was to do the necessary research on how the business was going to be started and operated. I also tasked her with the ndfill acquisition and finding eligible locations in Bludhaven for an office, R and D, and factory buildings.

  On that front, she proposed booking a hotel in the city as the first use of company funds I’d given her access to earlier. I advised against it, not because I didn’t want her touching my money, but because I didn’t want her wandering alone in Bludhaven.

  There was a reason that pce became a nuclear wastend in the comics. Even Gotham never fell so low. Or maybe my knowledge of comics was inaccurate on that front.

  There was a reason Gotham scared me a lot more than Nightwing’s stomping grounds. My subconscious was just refusing to py ball and cough up what it had buried. Probably for my own good.

  Anyways, I asked her to wait until I had enough free time and proper security set up for her. She’d need a guard and a vehicle, both souped up to unbelievable levels before I was comfortable with her in that thing called a city.

  In the meantime, she worked on the research and it seems her work had produced some results, because she asked to see me asap, even inviting me into her home. I knocked on the door to said home and waited, gently tapping my left foot.

  From beyond it, I heard soft footfalls scramble around for a bit before growing louder as they drew closer. The door opened not long after and we came face to face.

  ““Hey,”” we both smiled and greeted each other, and I leaned in for a hug. “Hi.”

  “Elliot, hey,” she returned the hug and we parted after a short while, the things I carried drawing her gaze down instantly.

  “Flowers,” she said with a twinge of… was that surprise?.

  For a moment ‘beautiful flowers for a beautiful dy’ seemed like the right response, but that felt a bit too corny even for me, so I decided to go with the honest truth and passed the gifts to her.

  “Yeah. It felt strange to come empty handed to you know… the house of someone I’m dating. That’s all.”

  “Dating, right,” she said like she was unsure and took the flowers and the small gift bag. Stepping back, she gestured with her head for me to follow and I did, shutting the door behind me.

  “You were not coming empty handed. I said I wanted to see the device. Which we still haven’t gotten a name for by the way.”

  She set the bag down and carried the flowers to a white vase, where she removed the yellow and green pstic ones in there and repced them with the store bought orchids, forcing the huge bouquet in there.

  When she turned around, she found me holding up a small suitcase at chest level with a sly grin. “One Medscanner, as requested.”

  “So you did listen to me. Thank you. For the gifts as well,” she looked over to the bag. “Even though I don’t know what it is.”

  “You can take a look. Or we can talk about why you called me here. The choice is yours. How are you by the way?” I ended by pointedly staring at her messy hair.

  “Oh,” she noticed where I was looking. “Ugh, forget about that. I’ve just been a bit busy. Learning new things, things I need to make sure I don’t botch the job that is going to take up a whole bunch of my life and also help a lot of people.”

  I nodded and took a step toward her. “You didn’t answer me though. How are you?”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m fine. Really. Don’t let this,” she gestured at her appearance “fool you. I’m running on no small amount of motivation and coffee. Wait here.”

  With that, she vanished into a room and I chuckled, shaking my head making myself comfortable on her couch. Tipping over the gift bag a bit, I stared at its contents and wished I’d bought some of the chocote for myself.

  The pitter patter of footsteps reached me and I let go of the bag.

  “Oh you’re already seated. Schooch over.”

  I did as the dy said and she moved the bag out of the way, joining me on the small couch. There was a little space left between us and it became filled with a small stack of papers and documents.

  She had her gsses back on and she handed me some of the sheets, finally expining why I was here.

  “After no small amount of reading and research, it has become clear that your original pn is not feasible.”

  The evidence of her cim was printed on the sheets before me, but I didn’t say anything and let her continue. A lot of work had clearly gone into this so I thought it was best to let her finish. Besides, I liked hearing her voice.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “Okay. So I’ll break it down into steps. For the company to be fully up and running, we need to be registered, that’s step one. And then we need to send our products in for certification. A bunch of tests need to be done to ensure that our product is not harmful, that sort of stuff.

  This is where the problem comes in. Our product is a medical device, and certifications for those take six months, minimum. And that is in the case of already established companies. If we do this, it’ll take us years and a lot of money. A million dolrs at the lowest estimate. Elliot, are you listening to me?”

  I guess it looks like I might’ve zoned out to her… because I did, but I heard her perfectly so I was in the clear.

  “Of course. I’m listening. It’s just… I didn’t know the process had so many yers to it. Or well, I did, because I asked you to be my partner. I guess in my head, I was expecting things to be straight and simple. Smooth sailing, due to what the device can do. Hmm.”

  Everything she just said repyed in my mind and I tried to think of possible solutions. I mean, I wasn’t in any rush, but six months to 2 years and three million dolrs felt like a bit too much for the introduction of a device that would save millions of lives.

  The smell of chocote hit my nose and I sniffed, turning to the source. Felicity had her gsses off and held a piece of the hard brown bar in her grip as she nibbled on it.

  She had a wry smile on her face as she matched my gaze, and it hit me. Why was I trying to find a solution when I had hired someone specifically for that. Delegation would take a while to get used to I guess.

  “What do we do?”

  Like a shark that smelled blood, she sat up and grabbed a different set of papers before passing them to me. “I’m gd you asked. Because Mama has a pn. She doesn’t just research problems, she formutes solutions.”

  “Hm,” I chuckled and took the papers, restraining the urge to comment on the “Mama.”

  “The best way forward is a hybrid strategy. Some inventors, like you, start their own company. Others license their work to other companies and get royalties in return. Licensing is basically giving these companies the right to do all the things they’d do with their own products to yours and they’ll pay you a percentage for every unit sold.”

  “How will this affect the certification? Doesn’t it still need to be done?”

  “Nope. Well, yes but not by us. The companies will deal with those headaches on their own, with their own money, connections, and in house regutory teams. And that’s not even the best part. We get to manufacture and sell the product ourselves, basically skipping the certification process.

  Of course, there are some downsides to this, like less profit and less control over how the end product will look. But these are the less harmful ones. I’ve listed the ones I’m worried about here,” she handed me another sheet, take a look.”

  It didn’t take me long to read through the entire list, even with the dense expnations and possible solutions attached to each of the points. By the time I finished, I had a wide grin on my face. This was too good.

  “Hello,” Felicity called out. “Mr. Inventor ssh superhero. Anything you wanna share with the css?”

  “This is perfect. Most of the problems here won’t be a concern for us. Because I know a company or two we can work with.”

  She gave me a ‘well, spill’ look and I smiled mysteriously.

  “One of them is where you used to work. Your former boss owes me big time.”

  Her confusion and succeeding armed understanding was a bit comical to see.

  “You know Oliver Queen. And he owes you? How?”

  “Let’s just say it has to do with my super activities. I saved a close retive of his. Imma leave it at that.”

  The pce became quiet save for the occasional rustle of paper and sound of breaking chocote as I went through the licensing drafts Felicity had come up with while the woman herself dealt with the new piece of information.

  “I could kiss you right now,” I said and lowered the sheets, keeping my gaze on her face and conspicuously flicking it to her lips from time to time. She bit on another piece of chocote, slowly this time, licking her lips and giving me the urge to do same.

  I gave in and so did she. She leaned forward, yanking me by the hem of my jacket and stealing my lips like they belonged to her. The kiss quickly grew intense in a short time and she pulled back, breathless.

  “This is just making out.”

  “Just making out,” I parroted, and she leaned further into me.

  DaringEagle