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Sheila was fifteen when there was an unexpected meteor shower in her small home town in Washington state. Shooting stars and other cosmic phenomena were cool in theory, but do to the constant storms and and overcast, the odds of actually seeing one was unlikely. But the planets aligned somehow and and for the first time in four months, the skies were clear at night, and Sheila live far enough away from the cities and towns that she should be able to see the meteors.
And she did.
They were far and deep in the sky, blinking in and out of the darkness, but it was a sight that Sheila would consider the most beautiful thing in her life.
Then one got too close, it was too bright, and disappeared behind the tree line on the edge of her family’s farm, less then a mile away. Naturally, as all curious teenagers would do, Sheila snuck out, grabbed her big brother’s bike from the yard, and made her way to the woods to see the crash sight of the meteor.
It took fifteen minutes to get there, and another twenty to find the damn thing. By the time Sheila made it to the small crater, she was wet from evening dew and shivering in the autumn air.
It was worth it. In the center of the crater, still steaming slightly like in the movies, was the most gorgeous stone Sheila had ever seen. It was easily as big as her golden retriever, looking like an uncut but polished diamond.
She slid and stumbled into the crevice, staring unblinkingly at the stone as the moonlight shifted and played with its colors, making it glow eerily in the dim evening light.
Carefully, Sheila crawled through the dirt and upturned rocks towards the space object, then cautiously placed her hand on it.
The second her finger tip made contact with the meteor’s surface, she blinked.
Then woke up three days later in the middle of a crop circle in Mr. Mahashwarren’s corn field at 2 in the afternoon with the farmer himself leaning over her with an unimpressed expression on his weathered face.
“Girlie, you had a hell of a trip.” Was all he said before he left to call the Pennup’s down the road, leaving Sheila in the corn wondering what the ever-loving hell had just happened to her and why she didn’t feel tired at all.
The panic that ensued shortly there after was reasonable. Sheila’s mother cried and wouldn’t let her go back to school for two weeks even though the teenager felt fine. Her older brother Guy wanted his bike back and griped and moaned about it until the bike suddenly and mysterious turned up back in their front lawn. Her father just scratched his head and frowned a lot, mumbling about the crop circles Sheila apparently made in four other fields and how the rat bastard of the local news station was making a bigger deal about his daughters bout of amnesia and teenage rebellion.
The aforementioned rat bastard was news caster Dick Malone, who apparently told several other news stations and online forums that Sheila was abducted by aliens.
The next few years of Sheila’s life were weird after that.
First off, several nut heads who were crazy about extraterrestrials visited on a weekly basis. Sheila could never answer their questions, about what the ship looked like or what they did to her. She still doesn’t think she’s been abducted, she believe she was very much on earth the whole time. The stupid news story that Malone broadcasted ran for years, showing a grainy picture of her house and the crop circles that Sheila supposedly created. This caused bullying. Those at school would call her “Alien girl”, or “the abductee.” There were more names, closely associated with the X-files (one boy had the theme song recorded on a disk and played it every time he saw her) and with the word freak. Her favorite was being called Ripley. At least she survived the movie.
The worst thing though, worse than the weirdos following her with weird devices and intrusive questions that her father had to spray with the hose to keep them away from her or the awful names and isolation from her peers and all the therapist her grandmother kept sending over was the fact Sheila could be hurt any more.
Not to say that she became calloused through the experience. Oh no, she just became a rock whenever something tried to hit her, or tried to hurt her.
Waking up in the middle of the night with your chest heavy because of a asthma attack only to discover the weight wasn’t because of her inferior respiratory system but rather because everything between her collar bone and hips was solid gemstone was not fun.
It took half a second to realize that whatever was in that meteor was now apart of Sheila. That wherever it came from it was meant to protect whoever was attached to it. Maybe it was a parasite creature that was trying to get home, maybe that’s what the crop circles were for. Maybe it was signaling it found a host. What ever it was, it was planning on keeping Sheila alive and well for the long run.
Ever since the infestation, as Sheila has been calling it, she was faster and stronger, never falling ill or tired. She was thinking faster, processing things faster and thinking outside the box. Down side, she sounds like a psycho in her head, looking over people to see if they were threatening and scanning for exits and possible weapons. As she got older, her choice in career was easy to choose. Especially when someone tried to rob the dollar store she was working at.
Jimmy’s Kwik Dollar was the shitty, 24-hour store in the center of town by the gas station, diner, and school (Douglas School held the whole town from daycare to twelfth grade). Kids came everyday after school for their sugar fix or grab a few groceries per their parents request. Sheila didn’t work during the day, just way late at night when no one would go shopping unless you were a fresh faced eighteen year old buying cigarettes without his parents permission.
That’s why seeing a grown man dressed in black was odd to her (that stupid little voice listing off his stance, his red eye, his grubby appearance; her own eyes looking to the exits, the panic button under the counter, the broken security camera in the corner). It became more odd when a gun was jammed in her face.
Alarms blared in Sheila’s head. She barely heard the man speak.
“Gimme all the money in the register, now!”
The barrel was hurting her browns from all the pressure being applied.
“Hurry up or I’ll blow your brains out!”
One second, Sheila was regretting not helping her family in the farm in lieu of this stupid, boring job, the next, there’s a gun in, ON, her face with a horrible little man glaring at her.
The next, the man looked scared. Her vision became crisper, clearer, with a strange white sheen making everyone seem bright. Reflexively (how was it reflexively she’s never even touched a hand gun before) her right hand came up and grabbed the gun’s shirt barrel, crushing it with her palm and fingers. That’s when Sheila realized her arm was crystalline.
The robber let go of the gun, it still in Sheila’s diamond hand, and backed away in horror.
“What the fuck are you?” He managed to murmur.
Sheila didn’t really know how to answer. She didn’t think he deserved one. Instead she effortlessly jumped over the counter (not bad for someone who broke their arm the previous summer tripping over rock) and grab the robber by the throat.
Somehow, she managed to form words, a sentence strung together in between all the panic in her head. “Get.” Her voice sounds wrong. Different. Her words laced with crystal chimes. “Out.”
Then she threw him through the door.
Sheila told the police that the robber shot the door in an attempt to threaten her, but she grabbed a display rack by the register and crashed it over his head.
Officer Mulaney didn’t look convinced, but Sheila plead with her eyes and she was genuinely on the verge of tears, so the young officer sighed and reported that Sheila handled the would be thief and the case was cut and dry.
When the robber tried to say that Sheila was a crystal monster on the stand, everyone dismissed it as him being high on drugs. The way Officer Mulaney looked at her like he knew the robber wasn’t unsettled her.
Again when he pulled her aside after the brief trial.
“I don’t know what you did Pennup,” he started. “Hell, I don’t know what you are,” he stressed and Sheila’s stomach dropped. “But-“ he seemed to struggle to get the words out of his mouth. He placed a hand on her shoulder gently and looked deeply into her blue eyes, serious and grim. “But know that whatever you can do, you can use it to help people, they way you helped yourself that night.”
Sheila didnt asked what he meant, she didn’t want to know. But the next shift she had her boss cursed at the camera saying of all the nights to crap out all of the sudden it was the night Sheila outsmarted a robber.
“Could have sold that shit to the news.”
“I thought the camera was broken.”
“Nah, just old.”
Sheila’s stomach dropped. Shortly there after she decided to become a police officer. If Officer Munaley can protect her, then the least she could do was protect him. Making the decision felt right, it felt easy.
Telling her parents… not so much.
Second biggest argument in the Pennup house hold (right after Guy deciding to forgo college in favor of worker on the family’s farm).
When Guy heard her choice, he laughed. “Perfect! You can’t get shot anyway, might as well put that power to use!”
Mrs. Pennup fainted at the thought.
And Sheila liked working for the local police force. She liked helping people and her community. Liked standing by Officer Munaly as he became Sheriff. Liked her stupid khaki uniform that Guy made fun of and waking up early to go to work and the long drives with the patrol car. She liked it plenty. She still felt a little discontented.
One day, a few days after she turned twenty-eight, Sheriff Mulaney slipped a piece of paper on her desk. Blue eyes scanned the header before looking up to her superior.
“Transfer papers? You’re transferring?”
The sheriff shook his head. “You are.”
Sheila looked up through her eyelashes at the man who had been guiding her for the last nine years with a look of either rage or desperation.
Sheriff Mulaney sighed and took a few moments to prepare his words. Anything sentimental was always sticky in his throat and refused to go past his teeth without a fight.
“You can do… amazing things, Sheila.” He started. “Things that I, Hell, no one in this town can comprehend! You can do so much more than pull sixteen year olds over for speeding. You can do the impossible out there!”
Sheila rose, indignant. “I can do things here!”
“Not what you were meant to!” He shot back. “You have a very rare, very useful gift. You got the right idea about being on this side of the law and helping others, but in this town? In Douglas?” He was beginning to look frazzled. “Sheila, you’re wasted here. The only thing this town can offer you is sentiment and disappointment. Our last major crime was that hold up from when you were a teenager, and that didn’t even make the local news.”
The silence was tense. Sheila felt like crying she was so confused. She wanted to do good, she wanted to do right by her powers, but leave town? Leave Douglas? Her family and her job and her everything?
Sherif Mulaney sighed. “You’re doing great here, Sheila, but you’re not going anywhere.”
Sheila looked down at the papers again. Seeing her name in the sheriff’s scrawl and the new location.
“Why Opal City?”
Mulaney shrugged. “Central’s already got a pretty good force, and Starling’s got the Arrow. Hub is hopeless and Midway and Coast are too damn far for your folks to be comfortable.”
Made sense, in the simple back woods way that Sheila was used to thinking in. She’s only ever been to Opal City once before, for a fried trip to the museum when she was seven.
She nodded. Then scowled.
“You’re the one telling my folks.”
—-
Mr. Pennup cried and Guy gave her his old shot gun. Mrs. Pennup went to the library to look up apartments on the computers there until they found a cheap one bedroom near the station. Sheila moved there alone, all her meager belongings fitting into her old shitty truck and drove the four hours there alone.
—-
One week in they were calling we “Officer Pin-Up.”
Sheila rolled her eyes. She’s heard worse. At least no one in Opal knew about the whole alien thing.
A lot of the male officers comment on her looks. How she should wear more makeup or dress girlier, smile more. Sheila wore heels the next day. She ran down a perp in them then later beat the shooting high score at the practice range, beating every man in the station.
They stopped telling her how to dress after that.
At least her partner wasn’t completely ignorant. Just… very apathetic. Sargent Timmons was older, wiser, and never took anyone’s shit. He was known as “Sargent Dead-eyes”, since he never looked very focused and kinda hazy.
Whatever problems Sheila faced, she dealt with them by complaining to Timmons, who would say “sounds tough” and drink his coffee. He didn’t really care, Sheila knew, but at least he never told her to shut up.
She visited the museum often. Even after twenty years she remembered how to get there and all the displays. She went about every two weeks. Eventually Timmons asked why, and Sheila just shrugged, almost smirking. “I like the geology exhibit. Gemstones are cool.”
At the department Christmas party, Timmons have her a hunk of raw pink tourmaline. Maybe he wasn’t as apathetic as she thought.
Then came hell.
Central City had an explosion of some sort, that put the whole city on its ass. First two months were for rebuilding. Many Centralians moved to Opal in that time. Criminals included. There was a sudden burst in crime rates. Nothing that “Pin-Up and Dead-Eye” couldn’t handle. Sheila was good at handling robbers and cat burglars and thieves.
What the those robbers and burglars and thieves weren’t ready to handle was when they shot at Sheila, she’d turn into a diamond humanoid and scare most of them, literally, shitless.
That was fine. It was her job.
Then some super powered wackos came from Central to escape this “Blur/Streak” and then being a cop wasn’t enough. Wasn’t doing enough.
Moonlighting was surprisingly easy.
She already had the tracking gear, custody of the police station, and getting there before the others is no problem (it’s like ice skating, but freakishly faster).
The papers called her Diamond-Cutter.
The papers called her a hero.
Her boss called her a menace.
Sheila was fine with that.
Any costume villain didn’t stand a chance against her. Sure she was alone in all this, but maybe that was better, less collateral damage. Less chances of a friend getting hurt. That was good. Sheila, Diamond-Cutter, was supposed to protect people and the public properties. She couldn’t drag anyone into this.
Things were fine. Lonely but fine. Fine even after Captain Cold and Heatwave visited. Even after she arrested the curator. Even with the memory of Cold’s unreasonably heated gaze tickling her skin and making her stomach swoop and skin prickle during work whenever she recalled the incident.
Damn him and his… damn pretty face and drawl! Sheila had more important things to worry about then a cute thief who she met once, WHILE he was robbing her city. On a holiday no less!
(Sheila saw an unmarked van out front the museum and saw two figures moving around inside. She nearly let them go, it was her first day off in a year and she had to deal with a couple of idiots who had to rob the museum when every other, reasonable, criminal took the day off with the city? Not if she could help it. But she knew no one else would be back in time and honor and justice trumped her want for a blueberry muffin from Opal City Jitters and an easy morning).
Thing were not fine when someone put a hit on her.
Diamond-Cutter, not Sheila.
Someone had the bright idea that if they could kill her, they could hock her limbs for cash because she was made of precious stone.
It wasn’t really an issue until civilians became involved.
One hired gun corralled a whole tourist group in the park to lure Diamond-Cutter out. No one was harmed (save the fiend) but the hired gun wouldn’t give the name of his employer no matter what.
No one at the station even got to question him a second time since he swallowed a cyanide pill he had hidden in his person in the dead of night.
Sheila didn’t rest much that night. That was the first person to die because of her. It wasn’t a good feeling, guilt. It made her want to call her mother and spill her guts and never diamond up again. It made her curl up in her bed playing old episodes of Forensic Files and eat an ungodly amount of ice cream.
She went into work the next day suffering silently without anyone the wiser.
Sheila reminded herself that alone was better.
It was.
She couldn’t very well go to Timmons about it. What could he do against assassins hell bent on murdering his partner, who, not to his knowledge, was a freaking super hero!
Hell no. If Sheila was gonna drag anyone into this, it was going to be another super. But the only one she could think of was Flash (she personally likes Streak better). No offense to Green Arrow, but he seemed a bit more… killer-y than what she needed. She needed someone to find the person who ordered the hit on her and hep arrest him. No murder. Bloodshed was to be actively avoided.
So Sheila took the weekend down to Central, figured the Flash would be holed up in the abandoned STAR Labs (she was a decent cop, it wasn’t hard), then promptly ran into Barry Allen, a CSI who had no business being at STAR, which was decked out with a gnarly looking treadmill.
Allen looked at her, surprised.
Sheila raised a single eyebrow. “Flash, I presume?”
The man blundered, introduced himself as Barry Allen CSI (as the laminated tag on his shirt had read), then when off on how he couldn’t be the Flash, too late for everything and not taste for violence.
It sounded too rehearsed.
“And not to mention, I’m a cop, technically. We don’t approve of vigilantism-“
“I need your help.”
He looked at her warily.
Sheila sagged with stress. The last few weeks weighing Sheila down. “I don’t have for this, I need your help, Flash.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said stiffly.
Sheila gripped her hair in frustration before becoming Diamond-Cutter. Not-Flash-but-totally-Flash gasped, eyes wide and intrigued and... far too much Cold’s from those weeks prior. She remained diamonded. If she powered down, her body would begin to go back to being stressed (because holy shit someone was trying to kill her and use civilians against her and this never would have happened if she stayed in Douglas-)
“Someone is trying to kill me.” If she powered down, she would begin to cry. Totally not what you do the first time you meet another super hero. “I need the Flash’s help.”
Barry nodded sympathetically.
Sheila powered down and angry tears streamed from her eyes. After a deep breath, she finally introduced herself.
“My name is Sheila Pennup, Officer at Opal City Police Department.”
Barry cracked a smile. “I wonder how many other heroes are cops in disguise.”
Sheila huffed a laugh.
They talked first. Barry explained how he got his powers and some of his adventures, some of his villains.
“Then there’s Snart, but we call him Captain Cold-“
“Yeah, him I’ve met.”
Barry groaned. “Yeah, that was on the news about a month ago, wasn’t it? Man, I’m sorry about him.”
“I’m more upset he interrupted my day off, to be honest.”
Barry laughed out right. “Yeah, leave it to Len to be an inconvenience. He doesn’t even do much anymore except annoy me. And, well, you I guess.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah? I mean, he’s been asking about you, uh, Diamond-Cutter, I mean.” He corrected. “He even asked me if I knew you. Offered a whole month of inactivity if I gave him any info on you.”
Sheila laughed. Barry looked a little star struck by her. “What’s you do?”
Barry shrugged, blushing lightly. “I told him I didn’t know anything.”
The blonde woman smirked and leered playfully at the speedster. “You should’ve lied, just for the month off.”
Barry chuckled along with her.
After a long discussion about Sheila’s predicament, they decided that they needed someone who knew the criminal world better than anyone, and despite being a CSI and a cop, Barry and Sheila only no the criminal underground in a technical sense.
Barry groaned and rolled his neck. “I have a bad idea.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I know a guy who could run circles around any crime lord. But, man this plan. You might not like it.”
Sheila, in fact, did not like it.
—-
Snart threw a paper weight at her.
Well, Sheila had attractive men do worse to her.
Then he was all too close. Looking down at her with wide and searching eyes. As if trying to absorb her life story by looking at her skin.
He smelled nice. Freshly showered and clean. If Sheila wasn’t so used to her senses being hypersonic she might have been overwhelmed.
“Uh, Snart?”
Leonard turned quickly to his city’s hero.
“I don’t do anything for free, Scarlet.” The villain drawled, still to close to Sheila but finally facing away from her so she could release the breath she didn’t know she was holding.
Barry keened in frustration. “I don’t know what else to give you. I’ve wiped your records, I gave you a new cold gun, I can’t think-“
“I want some… alone time, with Opal City’s finest.”
Barry flushed.
So did Sheila, but her face was still practically pressed to the water resistant material of Snart’s navy parka and no one could see.
Barry began to stammer. Sheila couldn’t understand half of what was said but she could swear she heard the speedster say “pimp” five octaves higher than a normal person could.
Len rolled his eyes. “Nothing untoward. I just want to get to know her.” He stepped away and faced the female cop again. “What do you say, Miss Pennup? One evening of polite conversation, and I’ll deal with all those pesky hit-men for you.”
Sheila reactive instinctively. “No killing.” At Snart’s unamused face, she added “If necessary. One man already died because of me, I don’t intend on making that number any higher.”
Snart smirked vivaciously. It made Sheila squirm a bit under his gaze.
“Made of diamonds, heart of gold.” He murmured to himself. “You really are a treasure. No wonder why the citizens of Opal are so devoted to you.”
Barry seemed stressed in the center of the room. “Sheila, think.” He warned. “He always has another angle when it comes to his deals-“ Snart made an advance towards Barry, probably to physically intimidate him into shutting up.
Sheila liked how Barry was going to face the fire for her if it meant getting Snart to help. But this was her problem.
“One night?”
Snart looked positively thrilled at the question. Barry looked positively dreadful.
“A few hours of just you,” be stepped forward. “And me.” Another step. “And no one else to bother us.”
Geez, if Snart didn’t look so terrifying right now with the way the lights shadowed over the angles of his face, Sheila might have been excited at the prospect.
Sheila nodded to herself before speaking. “One night. Alone with me.” Barry looked pained. “If, and only if you can find out who placed the hit on me and help me take them down.”
Cold smirked. “So I get paid after services rendered? I don’t know, that’s not how I usually roll.”
The blonde huffed a bit. “I’m sure Green Arrow could help instead.”
Cold’s gaze became… well, cold.
“That’s low ball.” He drawled emotionlessly. He leaned forward suddenly, face to face with Sheila. “I like it.” He turned heel and made his way to one of the three desks in the room. “I’ll help you deal with your problem for one night of conversation.” At Sheila’s (probably wary) expression, he chuckled. “After I take care of everything.”
He sat down heavily in a chair and Barry joined his side. Sheila joined shortly.
Snart smirked at the reflection of Sheila on the monitor before starting up the computer. “This will be fun.”
Of all the guys to be unstressed in, Sheila had to pick the themed villain. Guy was gonna kill her.