Shade

Bereft

  First thought that came to me when I woke up: Ouch. Did Superman hit me again? (Don't ask). Second, I felt someone shaking me and I groaned.

 "Five more minutes, Alfred," I mumbled. I then heard a very familiar chuckle.

 "Come on, Alice. You need to get up," I heard a familiar someone say.

 Third thing, it was way too hot to be my room. I bolted straight up, and knocked heads with a boy in a black, red, and yellow outfit. As I rubbed my sore forehead, I opened my eyes to see my brother, Robin, rubbing his own forehead.

 "Jeez Alice, you have a hard head," he mumbled. I glared at him and smacked his forehead. "Ow! What was that for?"

 "For waking me up. You know how grumpy I get when I get woken up," I answered. Then I looked around. I noticed that I wasn't in my room, but in a desert in my uniform. "Um, where exactly are we?" 

 Robin was about to answer, when we saw trucks coming towards us with men holding guns. We quickly climbed up some rocks, and watched the men go by. Those uniforms look familiar.

 "Those are Bialyan Republic Army uniforms," Robin said. He opened up a hologram of a map where we were. "But what are Bialyans doing in, uh, Bialya?"

 "I don't know Rob. How about you ask what Canadians are doing in Canada?" I said sarcastically. 

 "Not helping," he said, still looking at the map. "Okay, better question. What are we doing in Bialya?" I looked over my brother's shoulder and saw the date. My eyes widened.

 "In September? What happened to March?" I asked incredulously.

 "Better radio Batman," Robin mumbled. I nodded and we both reached for our comms, and I had a sudden flashback.

 Maintain radio silence at all times, Batman had said.

 "Or not," I sighed.

 "You had a flashback about Batman ordering radio silence, too?" Robin asked.

 I looked at him. "How'd you know?"

 "I had it too."

 I just nodded.  We jumped down from the rocks, and I spotted a Superman symbol on a ripped piece of black cloth. I tapped Robin's shoulder and pointed to it. He picked it up and examined it. 

 "Who do you think that belongs to?" I asked. 

 "Don't know. But we should start heading off to where I put this tracker," Robin answered, showing me the map where a blinking red dot was. He stuffed the cloth in his pocket, and we went on our way. Since we were in the desert, the heat was really intense and my black clothes were not helping. So, trudging though the heat of a desert was not fun.

 Anyway, we walked all day towards wherever Rob put his tracker for some reason. It was dark by the time we came upon the marker.

 "Wish I could remember why I put a GPS marker here," Robin said as we approached a sand dune. 

 "Wish I could remember a lot more than that," I said. Over the dune a few meters away from us, was some kind of machine. We ducked behind the dune.

 "Huh, guessing that's why," Robin commented.

 We peaked over the dune to see if anyone was near at the apparatus. No one. I expected there to be at least one person there because there's a huge metal thing in the middle of the desert. Then again, the desert is huge. 

 We leaped over the dune and landed a few feet away from it, when several soldiers sprouted up from the sand. How on Earth did they hide themselves like that? One of the men spoke in their language, and they charged. Robin dropped a smoke bomb, and we started taking them out. Robin threw two bolas, and caught two men as I knocked another down. Robin used his birdarangs to disarm some men. I did a handstand on one of the guy's shoulders and kicked two men in the face, then knocked the guy I was on down. The remaining ones spoke again, and shot at us and we backhand springed away. Suddenly, a black and red blur came in and took the men's guns.