Into Each Life A Little Chaos Must Fall
All in all, Alina is pretty fond of the desert. It’s local, beautiful, and full of large empty spaces where she can sling her spells about without worrying that something terrible is going to happen. She favors a particular bluff that’s hard to get to if you can’t fly and gives her a good view of the surrounding area – the last thing she wants is to accidentally turn a wandering idiot into some kind of crazy monster. Today though, she’s not out here to practice. She’s out here to try an experiment.

After the whole “Blackest Night: Redux” thing, Jaime Reyes had settled himself back into his life, albeit without the scarab and the super-powers. He hadn’t given up the good fight or anything, he’d made sure she knew that, but he wasn’t going to try and pull Khaji Da off of Dinah either. And really, Alina’s just glad that he’s not dead and putting his life back together. That’s not what she’s doing out here. What she’s doing is trying to find Black Beetle. Just because Jaime’s not dead anymore doesn’t mean that Alina’s going to let Black Beetle get away with murder.

Today, she’s just looking to find him, find some way to trace him back to his lair. It’s hard, because time-traveling enemies suck goats that way; but Alina has determination on her side, and power to burn. She’s also got food, water, shelter, and both a fully-charged cell phone and a YJLA communicator in case she burns a little too much.

(Of course, if she were being properly responsible she’d have someone with her to make sure she didn’t burn out, but if she were being properly responsible she wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.)

Settling herself into a comfortable cross-legged position, Alina begins to meditate. Her magic, never far out of reach, wells up inside her and swirls around her like thin water or a thick wind. It tugs at her hair, her clothes, her butterfly mask, but it also seems to sense that she’s serious today. It’s almost inquisitive in texture, though not in the polite way; more like the way a dare-devil wants to know if a friend needs someone to hold their hand while they jump off the roof and into the pool. She visualizes an empty sphere between her palms and pours her magic into it.

I want Black Beetle. Alina focuses on her memories of him, the details of his armor, the hatred in his voice when he said Jaime’s name, the way he’d taunted her the few times they’d fought. I want to know where he is. I want to know what he’s doing. I want Black Beetle. Find him for me, lay all his secrets bare. Find me his weaknesses, show them to me. His scraps, his fragments, his trail and his lair. Find them. Bring them to me.

Her magic doesn’t much like being focused like this. It fights her, but she’s used to that, and feeds more of it into the imaginary sphere. She can do this. Her palms begin to tingle like she’s holding a ball of millions of tiny pins, but she breathes deeply and feeds it more magic.

Then she hiccups, and vanishes with a crack like somebody hitting a home-run.