"I have come to a decision." Kori finally said
I stopped my work to look at the woman sitting in front of me, though she remained facing away from me. "And what's that?"
"As team leader, I am ordering that we never go into the sewers again." She said firmly.
I smiled a little as I went back to combing the kinks out of her hair. "Is this decision based on a tactical reason or a more personal one?"
"It is based on team morale." she insisted. "Given the deleterious effects the sewers had on the team's emotional wellbeing, it is only wise that we avoid the location at all costs."
I had to stifle a laugh. The team's latest mission had dragged them into the sewers and it had gone… poorly. A certain old enemy of Batman's (though new to this universe it would seem) had shown up and trashed a gala Bruce Wayne had been holding before escaping. Naturally he then contacted the team to track the villain, and filth ensued. Luck for me I actually missed most of the mission; I had finally gotten permission to tinker around with the Psion ship I had come to Earth in, and was up on the Watchtower when the call went out. I showed up in time to wrap things up.
But the rest of the team had all been tossed around by their opponent, and Kori herself had been thrown into some sludge. She had cleaned herself as best she could, but her hair was being troublesome. It certainly could have been worse though, as Kori hair was actually much easier to maintain than its length would indicate. The plasma flow that runs through it naturally keeps it clear of detritus and prevented from developing tangles. Well, mostly prevented. Turns out whatever was in that sewer causes some problems when it dries out.
Which is why she had asked me to help sort it out for her, and why we were sitting on the couch in the common room with her facing away from me. Well, she had actually gone to M'gann first, but the Martian had apparently been busy and redirected her in my direction. "But what if criminals go down there? Isn't it our duty to follow them and stop them?"
She was silent for a long more before she replied "New order. We must defeat all crime everywhere. If there are no criminals, then there will be no one we will have to pursue into the sewers."
This time I did laugh. "I'll get started on turning the world into a utopia right away, leader." She… probably wasn't being serious, but Kori had a tendency to get carried away when she got emotional. Either way it was in everyone's best interest to get her back into a good mood.
She grumbled a little before she turned her head back towards me. "Thank you for this, by the way."
I smiled back at her. "It's no problem. Besides, it's good practice." I said as I held up my hair filled hands. All four of them.
While two of my arms were human, the other two were more mechanical looking and ended in comb-like structures. Seeing as how I didn't like reverting from my human form whenever possible, I had gotten into the habit of forming mechadendrite limbs whenever I needed something my shapeshifting could solve. When I got rid of them I would have a pair misshapen spots underneath my shoulder blades for a few hours, but I thought it was a decent compromise.
And besides, I really needed the extra limbs. My god, how does she manage this with only two limbs and backwards? I thought to myself as I shifted through the mass of hair. As it was I was four elbows deep into the red strands trying to carefully untangle a particularly large snare. As I worked I asked "So, is the team really in that bad of a mood?"
She sighed. "To be serious, it is more of our collective failure than the filth. We could not track the creature without being seen, and we could not subdue it when we confronted it. That we didn't know its capabilities is moot. I believe we could have rallied, but then you arrived and took care of it."
"Ah… sorry."
Kori waved her hand at me without looking. "No need to be sorry, you did what you should have. Still, since you managed it alone, the rest of the team did not get to share in the victory. Still, they will recover from the loss." She hesitated. "I… am worried about Artemis, though. She was just starting to open up, but since the incident with Fate she has been more reserved."
Ah yes, the 'incident' was one way to put it, and it still rankled me quite a bit. After we had made it back to Tower, Fate had been… reluctant to give up Artemis's body. Before things could get nasty though he was convinced to let her go by, apparently, Kent Nelson's ghost. According to Artemis the former Sorcerer Supreme used a final spell to put himself in the Helmet, riding shotgun as it were. He couldn't do anything other than talk to the wearer and Nabu, but it was enough to get Artemis free, under the condition that she would look for someone else to take up the mantle of Fate. She… was not enthused, but let it slide for the time being.
I had spoken with Red Tornado about it when we returned, and he agreed that Fate's behavior was concerning, but not completely unexpected. The android remarked that over the years after the Second World War, the Lord of Order had become more and more demanding of Nelson's time and body. It had gotten so bad that Nelson simply became fed up and quit wearing the Helmet altogether, opting to his own power to fulfill the role of Sorcerer Supreme.
And that was sixty years ago.
Regardless, there was little Red Tornado could do until someone put the Helmet on, so for the time being we were keeping the thing in the Mountain (I had suggested that we leave it in the heavily fortified Tower of Fate, but Kaldur pointed out that no one alive knew enough about the place to not get lost in/killed by it). Wally had wanted to put the Helmet on his trophy shelf before I shot it down, instead placing it inside a secret room accessible by the air vents. I did put a replica of the Helmet on Wally's shelf though, for appearances sake..
I hesitated before I went a little deeper into the knot I was working on. "Artemis… well, I get the impression that she's used to keeping things close to the chest. I don't think being direct with her about it will help." In absence of any meta-knowledge about the girl, I suspected that Artemis came from a criminal background. Nothing serious, I doubted that Batman would let her on the team otherwise, but she probably had a rough upbringing. I wouldn't have been surprised if the girl had learned to be cautious when it came to personal matters because of it.
Kori frowned a little before she turned her head back towards me. "Perhaps you could help? You are much better at speaking indirectly and the 'sass'."
I shrugged. "I'll see what I can do." I wasn't confident that I'd be able to get the heart of whatever issues she might have, but I might be able to get her to loosen up a bit for the others. In the meantime, I shifted focus. "That aside, how about you? Is being team leader treating you well?"
"It is fine." After a second she seemed to realize what she said and turned to look back at me. She didn't say anything, just stared at me with a stern expression on her face, as if daring me to insist otherwise. I simply raised my human arms in surrender, and she huffed before turning back forward. "I am proud that I have been given the chance to lead this team, though sometimes I am… uncertain of where my responsibilities begin and end."
"What do you mean?"
"I was under the impression that we were essentially a branch of the Justice League, but we do not have much interaction with the League proper. They do provide training, this mountain, and missions, but otherwise very little direct support. They certainly don't provide as much information as I would like, and they have a tendency to either leave us on our own or take over an operation entirely." She groused. "Just how independent is this team from the League? Am I supposed to entirely rely on them for direction and support, or should I be looking into that myself?"
That… was a good question, and one I didn't have a good answer to. As far as I knew this was the first time the Justice League (of this world anyway) had tried to manage a sub-team, so I guess it was no surprise that things weren't perfect. I thought about it for a moment before I responded "I'm not sure, but for the moment it might be best to start shifting towards being more logistically independent. Find a way to handle our own resources and information gathering."
Kori nodded. "Agreed. Your planet is a wonderful place, but it is also very chaotic. I feel that to lead this team properly I need to keep aware of threats that we could run into, such as Kobra and the League of Shadows." A pause. "You heard about the organization being declared a Global Threat?"
I responded with something between a grunt and a sigh. I wasn't sure what was more terrifying about Robin's last outing with Batman, what he prevented or how casually he explained it. It turned out that Ra's al Ghul was on the more extreme end of the well-meaning extremist scale in this world, and had tried to launch an orbital laser satellite that could kill cities. With the intent of wiping out 90% of the human population. All in the name of environmentalism.
I just… god, I wasn't even sure how to parse that. I may have been in a comic book universe for a few months, but the idea that someone actually had the resources and will to destroy a city was terrifying to me. All the more so by how fucking stupid the reason and long term plan was. Even if he managed to launch the satellite, did Ra's forget that Batman had Superman and Green Lantern on speed dial?
Either way, Batman had recorded Ra's entire doomsday monologue and had handed it over to the U.N. The League of Shadows had always been a problem for the various governments of the world, but now that had proof that the leader of the League was planning genocide, they had been declared a Global Threat. An evolution of the old naval concept 'Enemy of All Mankind', it meant that the organization or individual was such a large threat to global peace and existence that unilateral measures were allowed against them. The Justice League (and some other organizations) could engage them anywhere and anytime regardless of the sovereignty of the soil they were fighting on.
It wasn't quite the same thing as, say, a kill order, but there was a lot more leniency in that regard.
"To be honest, given how long they've supposedly been at this, I'm surprised it took as long as it did." I finished my work on her hair before I gathered it up and lifted the mass off the couch, pointing the end upwards. "Pulse."
A moment later a short burst of fire traveled down her hair and out the tip, clearing out the remnants of the tangles. I wasn't completely insensitive to heat, but normal level heat sensation still eluded me. The threshold for me to actually feel heat was much higher than what Kori's hair was generating, and then it's rather painful as at that point it causes damage to my body. This time though...
Both as the plasma passed through my hands, and as my hand brushed her shoulder as I it set it back down, I felt a sort of warm, electric tingle. Experimenting with the various Psion sensors had finally started to yield results, or at least give me a clue as to what they were for. The one I got the handle on the quickest was an electromagnetic field sensor, one meant to detect very novel manifestations. The interesting thing was that while I hadn't intended for it to work this way, the sensor translated its data into my sense of 'touch'. Even more interesting was how strongly it reacted to Kori. If I touched her I could actually 'feel' the energy moving beneath her skin.
It also worked on Superboy too, although it was more difficult to pick up. With him it felt more like a single, large source rather than numerous flowing streams.
A sound then echoed through the Mountain speakers, a soft beeping noise. Kori perked up. "It seems someone is calling the Mountain." She moved to get up, no doubt intending to head to the central room.
I stopped her though. "Hold on, I've got this." I held one of my mechanical arms out to the side and morphed it into a holographic projector. Then I concentrated, as the next part was still a little tricky for me. I still hadn't overcome my software problem, but I had been practicing with my ability to connect to devices that I had gained from Ted's box. It was still a little slow and awkward, but as long as I wasn't trying to directly process information, I did figure out how to pass it along. Basically, the Mountain's computer was still the terminal for the call, but I had just turned my arm into the monitor.
A second later the holographic screen came to life over my limb, and when I saw who it was I smiled. "Diana. Good to see you."
Wonder Woman smiled back and opened her mouth to say something but hesitated, looking between the two of us and how I had my hands buried in Kori's hair. "Am I interrupting something?"
I frowned at the amusement in her voice, but Kori simple said "Not as such, merely dealing with the fallout of our last mission. Batman sent us to Gotham to deal with some sort of clay monster that appeared. We tracked him into the sewers before he realized we were following and fought us. He was unfortunately more resilient than I anticipated, and he could shapeshift to resemble members of the team. Things became… messy very quickly, and he managed to escape us once again."
"I see..." Diana said dryly. "I had heard that 'Clayface' had been successfully captured though. So, how did you defeat it?"
"Well, it was at this point that I showed up." I said. "I entered the sewers and moved to rendezvous with my team, but Clayface found me first. Thing was, he tried to impersonate Kori to get me off my guard."
"How did you know it was not her?"
"He couldn't match her natural radiance. I mean, literally, he couldn't mimic the low level ultraviolet patterns her skin gives off." He also screwed up the heat map too, considering people are not near uniform in temperature. "Since I knew what I was facing right away, all I had to do was play along a little until I got him to look away for a moment. Then I hit him with a freeze ray, which completely neutralized him."
Diana's hologram gave me a questioning look at that last bit. "...I was not aware the team had engaged an ice villain recently. Last I was aware all the major ice villains are current locked away in Belle Reve."
"We didn't." I said as I sat up a bit straighter and smiled. "I made it myself, reverse engineered from the scans of Captain Cold's gun we have in lockup." After two months of study and practice I had finally gotten skilled enough to start building my own gear, and the freeze ray was the first bit of super-tech I had made on my own.
As I had thought, the parts and design weren't that complicated and could in fact be gotten in any high end hardware store (on this Earth anyway). It was the exact process of assembly that was the tricky bit. You had to get the compressors cycling at a specific frequency as you attached the field modulators, and that was all while trying to keep the amperage down as low as possible. And even if you do all that the resulting device was very fragile and prone to emitting spontaneous bursts of alpha particles. As such I had spent the time refining the design to a much more stable one before I assimilated it.
Diana's eyebrows rose. "That is impressive. You've progressed very quickly."
I shrugged. "Not having to sleep does have it's advantages." It was a good thing I had gotten it done too. Otherwise I would have tried using microwaves to dry Clayface out, and microwaving clay can go… poorly. As in, hardened, on fire exterior combined with a molten boiling interior.
The woman merely hummed at that before she continued "Well, in any case, I apologize for doing this so soon after your last assignment but the reason I called is that I have something I would like you to look into. It shouldn't be too involved, it is just that the League is stretched thin at the moment."
Kori and I looked at each other before she turned back to Diana's image. "What do you need of us?"
"We've been getting reports of an increase in missing persons all along the east coast. These people are vagrants, homeless, runaways, those that are unfortunately often the targets of this sort of thing. I am ashamed to say that we may not have noticed it if Batman had not already been investigating a Gotham crime syndicate that deals in human trafficking. The catch is that this particular organization is not the one responsible. This is someone new."
Oh, this is going to be all rainbows and sunshine, isn't it? I thought. "This sounds pretty heavy. How is what we're going to be doing not 'too involved'?"
"At this point we are still trying to gather information." Diana said. "What I need you two to do is go to one of the locations we've gotten these reports from and investigate, ask around and see how many people have disappeared and when."
Kori frowned. "This is sounding more and more like a mission for the whole team. And a discreet one at that."
However, Diana shook her head. "No, I actually want you to be seen. Specifically you two and not the rest of the team." We gave her an odd look and she continued. "The League is setting up surveillance so that we can, as the Flash put it, 'see what bugs scurry away when the rock is flipped over'. We want to keep the team out of sight, but you two are already publicly known, so that makes you the best choice." She gave a small smile. "As well, it is always good to let people see us looking out for them."
After a moment I nodded. "Sounds reasonable enough. Where are we headed?"
"Troy, New York."
I blinked. "Oh. Ah, right. Got it."
Diana looked at me for a moment and looked like she was about to say something, but changed her mind and looked back at Kori. "So, do you think you can handle this?"
She nodded with a smile. "Of course. After the last mission I look forward to something simple."
"I blame you for this!" I yelled at Starfire over the coms as I held back a pair of men who were trying to claw my throat out, their mouths foaming and their eyes wild and bloodshot.
It had started out easy enough. Starfire and I had gone to the local police and they filled us in on the disappearances and where they were happening the most. We ended up in one of the more densely populated parts of the city, asking around if anyone knew anything. Since we were being obvious about it, we didn't get a lot of information until we ran into a particularly nervous homeless man. He said that he personally knew one of the men that had disappeared, and moreover had seen some shady activity at an abandoned building he used to squat near (He left shortly thereafter). It was longshot if it was connected or even anything at all, but Starfire and I decided to check it out anyway. Discreetly.
We were not discreet enough.
I tried shocking the two men in my grip, but the normal level of voltage I used was not enough, the men simply powering through it while grabbing for my face. I wasn't in any danger, but I was started to get worried about how much force I would need to take these men down. And the fact that the squalid apartment was starting to fill with smoke wasn't helping either. I growled in frustration as a third man came running at me. "Screw it." I pulled the two men in my grip apart before slamming them together, the third man caught in the middle.
This stunned the lot of them, but it took a few more blows before the fight finally left them and they all collapsed. I checked them over quickly and nothing seemed to be too damaged, but I would need to get them medical care as soon as possible to be sure. Given that they were wearing something akin to hospital gowns though, I had the feeling they had been on the wrong side of said care lately. I contacted Starfire over coms. "Starfire, did you light the building on fire? Because I'm not sure if that would be better or worse than if you didn't."
"It was not I." She replied. "I believe that there was some kind of lab in the basement, but everything is slagged and burning now. It is a mixed blessing that these men are escaping the blaze, but… by X'Hal, what is wrong with them?"
"I don't know..." I said as gathered the men up with mechadendrite limbs. "They're most likely on some kind of drug. Maybe something new?" My first thought had been Venom, but I discarded it quickly. These people weren't superhumanly strong or tough. They were just… well, feral. They attacked instantly and without thought, trying to bite, scratch and rip. If it was a drug what was the point of making the user a raving berserker without giving any superhuman abilities?
At a guess, I probably wasn't looking at an end product; I was looking at lab rats. Someone wanted to make something new, and needed test subjects. But with disappearances happening across multiple states, that mean this was way bigger than one guy in his basement. "Wait, Starfire, what do you mean escaping?"
"I mean they are escaping the building!" she said frantically. "Given the state they are in, we have to stop them. Do you know how many civilians are around this area?"
"I don't know, it's been years since I've been to this- never mind. We just have to get out there and take down any we see. I'm sure they won't be hard to spot."
Men in my grip, I opted for the quick way out of the building and jumped through the window, dropping a few stories before I landed with a heavy thud. I placed the unconscious men on the ground and looked around, gritting my teeth at the number of people who had gathered around to watch the spectacle. They shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here. Closest group was about a block away, and they-
Wait, one in the back-
No. No, I have to focus on these feral men, I can't deal with that right now.
I briefly saw Starfire fly overhead before she moved around to the other side of the building, following a sudden burst of screaming. I left her to that as I focused on the street in front of me, as sure enough there was plenty for me to deal with. I spotted a man and woman in hospital gowns tearing out of the building away from me, screaming as they awkwardly ran. I fired a pair of grapple lines at them, and when they hit I channeled a fair amount of electricity down the lines and into their bodies. Even as I reeled them in I had to shock them a few more times before they went still.
I tried to scream at the civilians to get back, but as I did I was forced to get out of the way of one of the victims trying to jump on my back. I roughly smashed him into the ground and shocked him. Then there were another three trying to run away I was forced to grapple. And then more tried to come at me directly, and some of the ones I had put down earlier were starting to get back up…
On and on it went as I frantically tried to keep control of the situation without hurting anyone. But I couldn't quite do it. I felt bones breaks under my hands, and flesh burned when I put too much power into my shock. I started freezing people's legs to the ground, and that finally gave me the breathing room I needed. After a while there was no long anyone attacking me or running. I was fine. I was-
A new set of screams brought my attention back to group I had seen earlier, and the feral man that was almost on top of them. This one was apparently aware enough to have picked up a pipe and was brandishing it at the poor people. They stampeded as they tried to get out of the way, and one in the back was knocked down. The man with the pipe went after-
Panic filled me and I bolted forward, clearing the distance in a matter of seconds. The feral man's pipe was just coming down as I grabbed him and threw him to the side. The man flew across the street and smashed into a parked car, denting the vehicle before he collapsed to the ground.
I was still for a long moment before I slowly looked at the person I saved. The man shakily got to his feet before he turned to look at me. He was an older man, with male pattern baldness and white hair peppered with black. His eyes were still wide, but he managed to get control of himself as he said "Ah, wow, I, thank you. Oh, that is more excitement than is good for me." I said nothing, just looked back at him. After a moment he continued. "Oh, where are my manners?" He extended his hand out to me. "I'm George, pleasure to meet you. Sorry I don't recognize you, but you are?"
I…
I…
"I have to go."
I stumbled back as I shifted into my flight form and took off. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't care that people were shouting at me.
I couldn't be there.
The woods around me were quiet. I didn't know if anything lived around here, but it didn't matter. The wide, smoldering crater I had made where I was standing had likely scared off anything that might have been around. Everything was still. I was still. There wasn't a point to doing anything else. It simply didn't help at this point.
Time passed, I don't know how much. Eventually, she landed behind me. She didn't say anything at first, simply looking around at the space around us. I spoke. "It only works to a point. Cathartic things, like smashing things. Burning things. Breathing."
"Jacob… what happened? What is wrong?"
It was a moment before I responded. "The first time I ever felt homesick is when I first came home from college. 12 weeks away and I felt fine, but when I came home and saw how my old room had become a guest room, I realized that it wasn't mine any more. That the place I called home didn't quite exist anymore."
"I don't understand."
I continued looking ahead. "I… don't know that man. I never met before today. But I knew of him, I looked him up. I knew I could never met him. Or his wife, or his sons. Because then I would have to admit it."
I heard her take in a breath behind me, and I kept talking. "It doesn't matter how good I get at this superhero thing, doesn't matter what tech I consume. I've gotten no closer to it than when I first got here, and nothing I've seen or done has helped."
Kori stepped in front of me and I finally moved, turning slightly to look at her. "... I'm never going home again, am I?"
She said nothing, only staring sorrowfully back at me. Then, she slowly moved towards me, wrapping her arms around me and pressing her forehead to mine. Eventually, I wrapped my arms around her as well.
I didn't breakdown.
But only because I couldn't.