There was nothing like riding a motorcycle. Jin Ifriti felt a laugh bubbling inside her as she turned the corners of Star City at near top speed. The wind on her skin, the rumble of the engine beneath her, the city rushing by outside her helmet... it was all beautiful. Her customized bike made it all the better. She'd taken an old Ninja and rebuilt it nearly from the engine up, making it sleeker, faster, and adding in some homebrewed tech. She had a city map with GPS, a few nitro thrusters, a comm system that linked to the HQ, and various other features, some of them that only she knew about. 

The thought of the Star City headquarters nearly made her miss her turn. She had been told that there would be some new teammates that the League had recruited. Jin wasn't so sure she wanted to meet them. She'd spent the last six months in therapy, and some days it felt like she'd never be 'better'. The team hadn't been the same after that whole Atlantean fiasco went down. She'd found herself awakening to an alarm that had long been blaring- by the time she got her suit on, the battle had been over. It had made her sick. She'd missed a fight- she had slept right through it! What if they'd been hurt, or worse? She never would have forgiven herself. Falling asleep on the job? What the heck kind of hero was she?

That had forced her into a sort of hiatus. She went back to Gotham, to try and sort things out on her own. Part of her missed Gabe deeply- when she took her break from the team, he went off to do his own thing. They exchanged emails often, but it wasn't the same as seeing that goof in person. She did her best to keep up her training, but didn't go out on patrol in Gotham. All she could see was her failures and the losses, and she knew that she'd crack if she went too far. 

Months passed, and she realized she wasn't doing much but improving her fighting skills and trying to crack long equations for money. She'd gotten some very discreet help from Black Canary, who had set her up with a very good therapist. It was very, very hard to talk to someone about her issues. With the way she'd grown up, she kept her troubles buried deep, like the core of the Earth deep. They only came up in her sleep, and even then they vanished (more or less) when she was conscious. Digging those up while she was awake, and having someone listen... it was a lot. The first few sessions were more silence than anything, and Jin was waiting for the therapist to abandon her case, to call her unfixable. That didn't happen, even when she stopped being quiet, and started to lash out, trying to scare the therapist off. That failed to work too, and after a month Jin took the lid off where she kept her past and bad memories buried, starting to pick them out one by one.

HQ was coming into view, and she breathed out a sigh. She didn't know if she was relieved or unnerved. There was nothing to it, though, but to get it over with. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad?

She pressed the code for the hangar/garage in on a tiny keypad on her bike's console. The hangar doors parted for her, and she rolled her bike in. Her favorite spot was still empty, so she parked and turned the bike off. 

Listening to the engine cool, humming and rattling away, she tugged off her helmet and finger combed her black hair. It had gotten longer, almost to her shoulders now, and she'd debated cutting it down to a more servicable length. Perhaps later. She stowed the helmet and unzipped her jacket, revealing a black tee underneath. Her hair wasn't the only thing that had grown- she'd had to buy new clothes a month ago, because the old ones didn't fit. It was upsetting; the doctor had gone on about some kind of late growth spurt and that Jin was a late bloomer. All she knew was that she had to wear a bra all the time now, and her boy disguise now required taping down her chest and wearing much looser pants. She wasn't quite liking looking like a girl.

She headed toward the hallways of the HQ, and exhaled slowly. Time to face the music. With a quick shake of her head and a double cheek slap, she headed inside.