The Good Stuff (Artemis)

Once Opal gave more of her background, it clicked in with what Danny knew of the kids she went to school with. "So, you're a rich kid with drug dependencies and you learned to fight watching kung fu movies? No wonder we did so well. I'll stop hitting you, when you stop needing it. I don't do this very often, but I'm checking you into Prodigy to keep you out of trouble. We're a group of young metas. We mainly work off the west coast and keep a base there." Danny grabbed a stick and braced it against Opal's leg. A brief piece of regret came over her as she realized either the rope or the tape could brace this. Using the next best thing, Danny took off her shoes and pulled her socks of. Soaked, but still useful, Danny tied the stick in place. "But, you can't do drugs. Okay?" Danny urged a response, but instead she received an alert.

"One female? Well it will be someone new to terrorize us if they're unfriendly. Wouldn't surprise me at all tonight." Danny felt an urge to scold Opal for something, but it didn't fully come to her. Yelling just to yell would probably do very little to build the morale of someone with little heroic feelings right now. "If you don't come out right now, I'm going to take this fight to you before you take it to me."

"That's not how a hero should act." A woman in a nice blazer stepped out from behind a tree. Her hair was streaked with some grey in her soft brown hair. "I could be a scared child or perhaps law enforcement. You can't just-"

"I know."

"You can't just threaten people and get them to do as you want. You need to be more gentle."

Danny thought about the slaps she delivered to Opal. "I can see it working sometimes."

"Are you ready to go? You are very late."

"Yes, ma'am. Opal. Tell your mom you need to go to California for a bit." Danny started to walk towards her guardian. "And don't crack in between now and your house."

Danny would let Opal know the exact whereabouts of the Prodigy mansion and get a set of living arrangements set up for her. Once Opal showed up, Danny would greet her at the door in a much less heroic attire. Just wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, accessorized with a pint of ice cream, Danny would show Opal to her living quarters. And, show her where the gym was for those sparring lessons she needed so badly.

"Hmm... I guess it would make sense to join especially now that- OW!" said Opal, she flinched as Danny tighten the make shift brace that would last her until she could get looked at by a professional.

"Oh gross... wet sock." said Opal in slight disgust. A woman came out of the nearby foliage and it seemed Danny know who the woman was so Opal relaxed a bit. Danny and the woman talked a bit and Danny gave her the information of where she needed to go.

"Yeah, yeah no drugs I get it, now if you excuse me I'm going to get a change of clothes and hobble to the nearest Hospital." said Opal smugly.

--6 Weeks later---

Even though Opal wanted to go to the mansion a lot soon the moment the hospital called her mother to let her know that she was admitted with a broken ankle and a lot of unknown substances in her system. With in the hour Natalia had burst through the hospital doors and wouldn't calm down until she could see her daughter. Convincing her mother to leave her alone after that was a pain. But eventually she convinced her to let her visit Danny, saying that she made friends with her while she was visiting New York and that she wanted to see her. In the end Opal was allowed to go, if she had a bodyguard. Opal agreed and the moment she landed in California she managed to escape her bodyguard.

Arriving at the address she was given she was dressed in rather casual clothes. She wore a form fitting white graphic tee with the image of an anime style cat on it and a black skirt that rested halfway down her thigh. She wore a pair of white sneakers as well. She had clothes packed for a couple days and her hero suit. A brace was on her left ankle, by doctors orders she had to wear it for another two weeks at a minimum but as long as she didn't exert herself to much psychical activity should be fine.

"Umm... sorry. My mother wouldn't let me out of her sight and it took forever to convince her to let me come here and I had to ditch a bodyguard to get here so I imagine I'll be receiving a very angry call here shortly." said Opal, kinda rambling on at this point.

"I thought you got lost or something horrible happened." Danny turned and led Opal around the mansion. Their first stop came to the meeting room. A large table stretched around the room in a semi circular shape with a large screen towards the very end. "We get missions and plan stuff out in here. Occasionally villains taunt us from there before we go show them what's up." Another spoonful of ice cream went down Danny's throat as the girls continued to walk deeper into the mansion.

"Kitchen." Fully stocked with the best groceries. All vegetarian in respect for their shape shifting counterpart.

"Gym." A mat dominated the central floor with punching bags all around the room and free weights and machines along the back wall. "We need to do some work there. More you than me, but it is what it is."

"Prison block." On a basement level, the Prodigy base hosted a few specialty cells capable of holding the less than savory people in the world until a more qualified force could take them away.

"Medical bay." An examination table sat in the front room with a number of disposable utilities for tests. The back room hosted any members too sick or injured in a few beds. Luckily no one needed them right now. Before leaving the medical bay, Danny sat her ice cream down and picked up a plastic cup. She pressed it into Opal's chest. "Drug test. You pee in it."

"Dormitories." A nice sized room contained a bed with modest coverings for a warm climate, a desk with a top of line computer, and a drawer for all the clothes she could fit. A private bathroom adjoined the room along with a very large walk in closet, primarily for hosting superhero outfits and other gear they would need. "You can put whatever you want in here, but check all weapons at the armory."

"Armory." An actually very sparsely used room. Not a great deal of weapon users in Prodigy, so they mostly used it for holiday decoration storage. "If you need to put anything in here, we can probably move the reindeer."

Once the tour ended, Danny walked with Opal back to the living room. "I read up on your mom. Seems pretty crazy to grow up with a mom so against what you are. When did she start being so down on meta humans?"

"I wish I had gotten lost, my mother has always been really close to me but there are times where she gets... over protective, this being one of them. But I can't really blame her this time. If I had a daughter who showed up in the ER with a broken ankle and trace amounts of unknown chemicals in her systems I would flipped out too. Just not to the point where I cancel all my appointments for the next two day and work from home for the next 6 weeks." said Opal, a slight note of annoyance in her voice. She followed Danny around the mansion. It reminded Opal of her own home... just outfitted to be a hero base instead of being built for extreme comfort.

"If they can contact this room is it safe? Could they use the it to figure out exactly where we are?" questioned Opal. She followed Danny to the Kitchen, while she was there she pulled out a soda before returning to following Danny again.

"Trust me I am a fast learner..." said Opal. Once she observed an action it became ingrained in her muscle memory, the hard part was actually getting used to the new moves. She didn't travel into the prison section much, she didn't want to go in there without her mask. She followed Danny to the medical bay after that.

"Oh really!" said Opal with a look of disbelief on her face. She started down at the cup Danny had thrust on to her chest.

"Fine! You'll probably see the pain meds I have been on though!" said Opal, grabbing the cup and disappearing for a few moments. She returned and placed the now filled plastic cup on the counter with a happy now look on her face. She followed Danny to the dorms. After being shown her room she left her suitcase here. She could just unpack it later. The last stop was the Armory, although it looked like general storage. Opal began thinking of ideas to organised the room better. She would probably set up an area for her random projects in one of the corners of the room.

"Well my mom doesn't know I have powers. At least so far all my powers aren't really ones that are flashy and can be noticed. And if she has noticed anything she hasn't said anything. But as you probably seen she isn't one to hold back her knowledge so I think it's safe to say she hasn't noticed. She had always been like this from what I can remember. It wasn't until her company broke the multi-millions and was put into the public eye did she get vocal about it. I never really asked why she hated them. It just never crossed my mind. Heck for the longest time I just knew that she loved me a lot and she would always say whatever she did was for my benefit. And you have probably saw what happens when she gets passionate about something, not much is going to stop her. But now that I think about it I really can't think of a time where my mother was never not there in am emergency. I guess when you run a big company you can temporarily have some other people micro manage while you are gone. But other then that I had a relatively normal life growing up. For the most part it was just my mom and myself. My dad died before I was born, my grandmother died when my mom was young and my grandfather worked 24/7 before he got shot in the crossfire of a gang war and my mother took over and brought the company to where it is today." said Opal, kind of drifting off into thought.

A closet case meta human. This seemed like it took a turn Danny foresaw, but did not really know how to fully explore. "So. Does she know who we are or did you tell her you were using those degrees of yours for some kind of business?" Rounding up the last of her ice cream, Danny waited to Opal to continue on with her mother's crusades. "Well, we aren't going to wedge a divide between you and your mother, but we do good things and keep ourselves to a code of morals. We're not going to make you fight your mom or anything, but maybe we can change her mind. Sometime." The series of events Danny spoke of could in no way be grasped by Danny as to how it would play out.

Most of what Opal spoke about took Danny into her own head. "My parents are still alive, but I haven't actually seen them in about five years. It was on an a dig site in eastern Africa. It lasted three days." A couple of taps against the carton of ice cream melted away the last of the cream. "I think the only time I saw them before that was about four years, so I don't spend a lot of time with them. I still spend time with my aunt, who came to get me in New York, and then I travel to whatever excavations that will take me on because of who my parents are, but I don't really get to spend time with my parents. I've been around people with rich parents before, I go to school with tons of people with rich parents and chemical dependency. I guess you're done with college, so you don't need me to get you into my school like I've done for the other guys who joined."

Danny tossed her spoon across the room, trying to get it to land in the sink of the wetbar by a popcorn machine. "Dammit." Wide left. "Since we don't keep a lot of prisoners, we normally put stuff in the cells to work on. I'm going to start working on a new outfit before going out on the next mission. Oh, yeah, and villains being able to hack our monitor and taunt us, it's not safe at all. But, no villain has attempted to take all of us on. We have a dragon girl." Danny pulled a notebook out from under the couch cushion beneath her. A few doodles lined the pages of the notebook for her new suit. "I don't know what you're going to do in between missions. Most of us go to school, so you might get bored. And when you get bored, remember you need to take a drug test every week. And try to knock me out and I'll put you in a cell."

"No, as far as she knows you and I became friends while visiting New York. She still seems to be clueless about who I am. But I won't get your hopes up about changing my mother's mind, she is really really stubborn and finding out who I am or even me being here would hurt her greatly if she knew the truth. It's best we just do our best to avoid her and try and give her less reasons to hate us." said Opal, seemingly lost in thought.

"I didn't really get into drug problems till I was around 14 or 15 and by that time I was already in college. My grandfather had died and my mother seemed to be taking it really hard. I didn't know him to well since he always worked but when I did get to spend time with him he made she that I was his center of attention. I made the wrong friends in college and got stuck in a spiral for a bit. I have been on and off of recovery for about a year or two by this point.. But yeah I am good, I have plenty of projects I can work on. And yeah, yeah weekly drug tests, I get it you don't trust me." said Opal.

"It must be hard though, living without your parents. I wouldn't know what I would do with out my mother, despite all of her slight annoyances. But at least you get to travel. My mother usual only travels if it involves work or her campaigns and those tend to be rather boring trips." said Opal.

"I'll probably have to be in New York most of the time. I don't think my mom is mentally prepared to have me move out yet." said Opal with a small laugh.

"Speaking of other members I am surprised I haven't seen any of them yet."

Most of the story lined up with what Danny would expect. Opal probably just made a few mistakes, but ultimately wasn't the grapefruit in the fruit salad. "Just make sure you don't fall in with the wrong group when we go out on a mission. We tend to go up against a rough crowd, so don't forget who you're fighting for- or what you're fighting for." Probably a little rougher than what was needed, but Danny needed to make sure the newest recruit could handle the pressure of dealing with some of the worst people in the world. "I'll give you a run down of a few of the people we've dealt with and who we have around here." Danny grabbed a tablet and began swiping through. "Maybe we'll save this for later. Most of these people are stupid. I don't think you're ready to fight Alpha or Lucius yet. You had trouble with strung out druggies."

"Eh, parents usually stay rooted in what they do. It's what they do. Or, so I'm told." Clouds rolled over the sun, drawing a curtain of light across the ground. "The rest of the guys around here are out and about. Ryan is a water manipulator, Xiao is our dragon girl, and Silus is a weird little kid who is probably listening to us without us even knowing. We have some other members who come and go, but for the most part you'll see me and Ryan the most."

Each time they spoke, Opal brought up her mother. Seemed to be a rough spot, but one Opal liked visiting. Danny mostly nodded along with the talk of parents and advantages. "When you're ready to train, I'll be around. I'm going to go check out the information center to see if we have any trouble in the area. We'll probably need to have someone go with you on your first patrol to get you used to LA. And to make sure you don't try and knock over drug dealers for your own quick fix." Danny stood up and gave a shrug with a twist of the side of her lip.

"Hey, just because I have some... problems. It doesn't mean I will turn coat on you." said Opal, sounding hurt. Opal watched Danny flip through pages on a tablet but in the end placing the table down, saying she wouldn't stand a chance against the more higher end villains.

"Don't underestimate me, I am an extremely fast learner." teased Opal. Danny told her that she was going to check a few things and that once she was ready to go grab her. Opal nodded and left to return to her new room. She wasn't going to be here to long, at least a week before she had to return to new york. She was honestly surprise her mother hadn't- Opal's phone went off. She recognized the caller. Her mother had a separate ring tone. Opal sighed and answered the call, not looking forward to the up coming conversation.