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For the next month Sapphire works to reestablish something approaching normality. She's not really comfortable being as important to the world as she's become but she isn't alone, she has the support of the league. She finds an apartment, sends applications to schools, and helps. She meets with the team from Star Labs, researches infectious diseases and starts working on what she can, researches hospitals and makes plans for how to improve them and she pays attention to the news and goes to help with earthquakes, tornados, and floods. There's a particularly bad flood in Pakistan and also a series of wildfires in Russia. Batman also sends a few requests for scans, she doesn't like the cloak and dagger work but she understands it's important and she helps. That doesn't stop her from keeping meticulous records and tries to understand his plan. She keeps herself very busy and at some point she decides she needs a break. She reaches out to Atlantis about visiting. It's amazing that it's real here.
She's not done yet. "Can you take me to one of them?" Ring can you assess the risk of long term damage? Cross reference with a scan of one of the weapons if that will be useful."
"Sure. Garth, can you help the guardsmen secure these guys?"
He leads her outside, to where there are some unconscious guards. A few are bleeding, but it doesn't look like anything serious.
Ring heal the unconscious guards within line of sight. She focuses on their families and how happy they'll be to have them back safe and sound. She feels more comfortable now. Healing feels right it isn't complicated like hurting people is.
"I'll go look for other people who need help now. It looks like people will probably recover on their own but I healed them anyway."
Sapphire travels around the city healing everyone injured by the attack. Thankfully, it's nothing she can't fix. The guards finish rounding up the attackers (and impounding the Manta-Sub). The people of Poseidonis are relieved to have gotten off so lightly, and give her friendlier looks than she got when she entered the city.
She's glad she could be helpful. Before she leaves she finds somewhere to retrieve the rest of her food and finish it. She savors the flavors. Then she transitions home she needs a vacation from her vacation. She flops into bed and does her best to push away any worries about what will come because of today and fall asleep.
The next day, Batman gives her a call.
"Thank you for sending me that scan. I forwarded it to the Green Lanterns, who informed me it's a type of creature known for enslaving entire planets with mind control. Needless to say, we had it thoroughly destroyed."
"Wow, you're welcome I didn't realize it was anything like that I'm glad it didn't fall into the wrong hands." That means it was worth it. This wasn't just an ordinary attack. She didn't know it at the time but now she can move forward with no regrets.
"It was something we had no idea to look for, especially frozen in the arctic. The lanterns say it's almost unprecedented for one of these to lie dormant for so long. What troubles me is that Black Manta had some reason to try to steal it. That's something we'll be looking into."
"That is worrying. The main reason I sent you my records was to confirm I hadn't revealed too much about what power rings can do. As it turns, out this was important enough that it would probably be worth it, but did I?"
"You revealed to a few guardsmen that you were able to detect people from a few kilometers away, if they even think about it in such general terms. From an information security perspective, that kind of leak is best avoided. But probabilistically, I think it's extremely unlikely that information will spread beyond those guardsmen, or that they will infer general knowledge about your capabilities. If I were in your position, I would have left for the Science Center alone, without saying anything to the guard about where I was going, but otherwise I don't think you made any mistakes."
"I'll keep that in mind, thank you." That is not what she expected the problem to be.
Sapphire returns to her normal routine: locate and kill pathogens—she's making good progress on measles—let people at STAR Labs ask her ring technical questions (which they are very excited about), and get ready for school. Time passes.
Next week, she starts class at Columbia University. Ordinarily, one would have trouble getting admitted on such short notice, or transferring credits from 'I went to college in an alternate universe, I promise', but she mentioned these problems to Batman. A week later, she got a letter informing her she had been admitted and would be able to take placement tests to skip the classes she's already taken. How did Batman accomplish this? Who knows, but there's got to be a reason everyone is scared of him.
Junior year classes aren't focused on the part of psychology she's most interested in but she manages to mix a therapeutic focused class in with the mostly experimental psych load. She doesn't ask questions about what strings Batman pulled.
She found a tasteful pair of rainbow patterned gloves with exposed fingertips that hide the glow of her ring and don't obviously bulge to wear when she's trying to be incognito.
Fortunately, she planned ahead so she's living within walking distance of campus and she walks instead of using the ring to get to go to her first class on experimental methodology. The school was kind enough to mail her the welcome packet and her ID as a transfer student.
By the time she gets to class, there are a few empty seats left. One of them is next to a long-haired guy who looks vaguely expectant.
She stops herself from rolling her eyes. "It just looked like maybe you were waiting for someone." She sits down.
She smiles, that was a little nicer than his first comment. "I'll introduce myself then. Sapphire Eyestone."
Class begins. It's fairly typical for the first day of a college course: this is what the class is about, this is the syllabus, this is how it's going to work, here's an introductory lecture.
Sid sporadically takes notes in a small, pocket-sized notebook. He looks faintly bored.