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Teen Titans

In Illumination
Issue Eight: Who is Cassie Sandsmark?
Originally posted January 2018
 
 
Blüdhaven wasn’t good for much. An old whaling town, the dirty, industrial cityscape was later transformed by wealthy, criminal investors, building its industrial district into a neon paradise, a city-sized casino idyllic as long as you never looked beneath the surface.
And though the Teen Titans were almost always preoccupied with minimising the rampaging of emerging metahumans, they would often strive to tackle the crime that lurked in the shadows cast by the neon lights. One such criminal was André LeBlanc.
See, the smarmy and greasy Angel Marin, one of the ‘philanthropists’ so cherished in Blüdhaven had held an exhibition to show off the depths of his riches, including his star piece: the Night Diamond, a priceless gemstone. This naturally presented a challenge for the self-styled ‘world's greatest jewel thief’ LeBlanc.
He was a wanted man internationally due to his masterful skills and cutting edge tactics, but targeting the home of such a dangerous man as Angel Marin, LeBlanc was - even to his own admission - pushing his luck.
The thief darted silently down the crime lord’s corridor, his footfalls suppressed by his rebalancing boots and his hi-tech jumpsuit hiding him from thermal sensors despite its garish white colour. On his cracked face sat a green monocle, which LeBlanc used to scan for traps in real time. As he ran, LeBlanc gripped the azure jewel tightly, the diamond no bigger than a golf ball despite its exorbitant worth. The man’s agility and resolve was unmatched for someone of his age, but unfortunately his resistance came in the form of three meddlesome teenagers.
Angel Marin slept soundly in his bed, LeBlanc having eluded all of his security, but the Teen Titans had already seen the thief’s approach. Thanks to a recent upgrade to Cyborg’s tech, the teen was able to piece together a wealth of technological information sources to track LeBlanc all the way from his previous heist, and now they were moments from thwarting him.
LeBlanc pushed into the drawing room, the window he had entered through still cracked open. But as the man emerged through the open doorway, the oak door immediately pushed shut. The thief turned back towards the door, drawing a glowing, white knife to slash out at whoever had pushed the door to, only to find an empty place. Furiously, he pivoted back toward the window, now to find the shadowy figure of the blue-clad vigilante blocking his path. Nightwing. LeBlanc threw his arm out, slashing at the slender assailant, only for Nightwing to strafe aside with a boastful cartwheel. “No thanks!” Nightwing spat, springing off of the ground and throwing himself at the thief. Quickly, he struck with his twin sticks, aiming to disarm the thief as well as snatch the stone from him in one fell swoop, but André wouldn’t unhand his prize so easily.
The thief swung out once more, with Nightwing this time much closer. Before the vigilante could bounce back, he cried as the searing hot blade streaked across his chest, cutting through his black-and-blue armour as if it were butter, exposing his pale and bleeding flesh.
“Heh.”
Recoiling, the vigilante brought his hand across his chest, wiping the blood aside before clutching at his sticks once again. Nightwing leapt vertically and hooked his sticks around the industrial-looking chandelier above, using it to fling himself across the room to intercept the white-clad thief who continued his way to the open window. He landed and - stick still in hand - threw a fist out, striking LeBlanc cleanly in the nose.
The thief staggered, dazed. He would have just shot the kid if he had even brought a gun, though in his line of work a firearm was such a clumsy weapon. Narrowing his gaze on the dark figure he faced, LeBlanc focused himself. How strong could one kid be? Arrogant as ever, he then threw his knife aside and slipped the Night Diamond into his white satchel. He brought up his fists, ready to exchange blows.
The two men clashed, and quickly LeBlanc began to impress Nightwing as he dealt fast and powerful strikes. As they traded attacks, blocking and leaping up and down, they almost seemed to dance with each other, with LeBlanc using his streamlined gauntlets to deflect strikes from Nightwing’s escrima sticks. But LeBlanc caught Nightwing off-guard when he delivered a spinning kick to the vigilante’s head, flooring him with a manoeuvre Nightwing never would have expected from a man approaching forty. Though as LeBlanc turned away with a sneer, seemingly having bested the Gotham crimefighter, he turned to find himself face-to-face with none other than a towering, green gorilla. With a single punch, he was out.
“You know, I don’t know why you didn’t just let me just punch him sooner,” Gar grinned, morphing back to human form. As he rose from the ground, Dick produced a pair of black boxer shorts from his belt compartment, unfurling them and throwing them the way of the nude, green child as if it were a regular occurrence (which, by this point, it was).
“That’ll be because we’re sitting in the house of a dangerous gangster,” Dick smiled coolly, his hand pouring over his throbbing head, “Ever heard of ‘lowkey’?”
“Ah, you got me there!” Gar exclaimed, slightly quieter this time, “I’m many things but lowkey isn’t one of them.”
“Nice work though,” Dick replied, before activating his communicator, “Cyborg: you still on overwatch?”
Beat.
“Cyborg?”
Vic spluttered, suddenly bursting in over comms, “Yeah. Of course, sorry just got distracted by… things...”
“Finlay,” Dick continued, “Of course. I’m sorry. Look, head back to the roof of Iris Cove Casino, and we’ll regroup with you there.”
“Got it.”
Since Dick had discovered that it was an associate of Vic’s father, Jacob Finlay, who was responsible for stealing the Cyborg blueprints, as well as springing the metahumans that almost killed Vic, he had wanted nothing less than see the crooked physicist see what was coming to him. But what he couldn’t have expected was for the doctor to turn up dead - his neck wrenched - in Gotham River. It was a tragedy, and not at all what the man deserved.
The Teen Titans had attempted to follow up on the death, but had found nothing. That was until Dick received a clandestine call from Silas Stone.
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
The fifteen-year-old Cassandra Sandsmark emerged from the Music Box Theatre wide-eyed, her mind blown. Growing up in Buckinghamshire, England, Cassie had always dreamed of seeing a Broadway show, and it was every bit as amazing as she had expected it to be.
Her mother was an archaeologist, and therefore was often away for long periods of time, and when Cassie wasn’t couped up at her boarding school, her grandparents were too old and untrusting - despite their riches - to fly her out to New York. And though Cassie had finally gotten her wish, it was through the most distressing of circumstances. Now, though Cassie was raised by a strictly Christian family, she always found difficulty in believing in a God for one reason or another, so imagine her surprise when she was visited by the image of what appeared to be an angel, imploring her to flee to New York City, of all places, that she was being hunted and would only be safe within the bounds of that city so far across the pond. No answers, only urgency.
And so, the Fear of God firmly instilled in her, the fifteen-year-old stole as much money as she could from her grandfather’s bank account and grabbed the first plane ticket to the United States.
Though Cassie honestly didn't know what to expect. Upon arriving in the ‘greatest city in the world’ she had heard nothing from the otherworldly figure that had addressed her before, and she quickly began to realise that she couldn't occupy herself in her hotel room for very long. And hence, she decided to indulge herself in an overpriced visit to Broadway, and it was worth every penny to the young girl.
But now Cassie was lost once again. Cars hurtled past her along the wide road, as monolithic buildings stretched high into the jet black sky. There wasn't a moment of silence, the city filled with a cacophony of noise, even at this hour. Quickly, she pushed over to the nearest taxi, pulling her red hoodie up tight over her slender shoulders to keep out the quickly emerging chill. As the driver rolled his window down, Cassie doubled over, peering through the window to address him.
“Hello? Do you go to the White Ram Hotel?” she chirped in a polite tone.
“Do I!?” the driver exclaimed. He was a middle aged man with olive skin and a sleazy black tracksuit. “This ain't the subway. I’ll take you anywhere you want, hot stuff!”
“Excuse me?!” Cassie cried, pulling herself up. Sure, she was more developed than other girls in her year at school, but she was only fifteen. Surely he could see that! Right?
“I love me a British accent,” the driver sneered, “Say somethin’ sexy and I’ll give you half fare!”
Cassie was flustered and infuriated. Slamming her foot down on the pavement, she pushed away. “I’ll think I’ll walk, thank you very much!!”
And so Cassie took off down the street, walking against the flow of heavy traffic, the sounds of the city growing more fierce. Quickly, the black of the night seemed to slowly seep in around her, the darkness consuming her, but Cassie kept plodding on towards the White Ram.
As Cassie walked, a enigmatic presence lurked in the distance, watching her; stalking her from the shadows. There was a quality to Cassie, something powerful that just made her unignorable, something that called to the presence in the dark.
Unbeknown to this, Cassie continued on, eventually coming to pass the exterior of an old Irish pub that stretched along the street. Nervously, Cassie pulled up the hood of her red hoodie and picked up her pace, the footfalls of her black Chucks growing heavier against the concrete sidewalk. Something she’d call the pavement.
Though Cassie wouldn’t get off so easy as from the pub, right as she passed its doors, emerged three men of varying levels of intoxication, all swaying with the breeze. They each looked around thirty and each similarly struggled to keep their balance as they poured out onto the street. Quickly, one caught a glimpse of the young girl attempting to hurriedly make away, catching the side of her face as she walked past. “Hey!” He blurted out, steadying his lacking weight on his friend’s shoulder, bottle in hand. “You’re very pretty!! You should be… v… very proud.”
She ignored him and continued down the street, still a while off the next corner.
“Hey–” he repeated before bursting into a cry, “I SAID HEY!!”
Cassie jolted, glancing over her shoulder for just half second, enough time for a few of the boys to catch her eye. She turned away and continued on.
“HEY!!” Another man called after Cassie, this time annoyed, “He’s talking to you!!”
“Fucking bitch…” the first man mumbled to himself.
“No!” the third man called out, pulling the first man forward and snapping him out of his sulk, “N– No she doesn’t get to ignore you like that!!”
The third took off in a sprint after Cassie, continuing to define call out, “My friend wants to talk to you!!”
The first and second men looked to each other, too drunk to roll their eyes, and began to stumble after their leading friend. Cassie looked over her shoulder once more to see the three men clambering towards her. But before she could run, the man threw himself in the way of her path.
“No need to be rude…” he grumbled, his friends then catching up behind.
None of the men were cruel, but all were plenty menacing as they surrounded the 15-year-old girl, who stood alone and afraid in a city mostly unknown to her.
“Get out of my way…” Cassie seethed, her breath unsteady as she pretended to be as tough as she could muster.
“Ah! British!” exclaimed the youngest of the men, the one who had first noticed Cassie, “I like British!”
He placed a hand forcefully on Cassie’s shoulder as she faced away from him, and pulled her around to face him. “C’mere.” Instinctually, Cassie reacted, flinging herself back, and crashed into the chest of the man who had first pursued her.
“We ain’t gonna hurt ya!” the crushing man cried, only for Cassie to react by delivering a swift kick to the man’s groin. He fell quickly, groaning in pain.
“What the fuck, lady!?”
The man behind her jostled Cassie’s shoulder, threatened and enraged. Taking no shit, Cassie turned socked the man in the jaw, causing him to stagger back.
“Stay away from me!!” she cried before punching him once again, unaware of the third man behind her as he drew a knife.
But as the man threw himself forward to slash out at the increasingly violent young girl, out of nowhere flew a glowing gold chain that seemed to magically wrap itself around the wrist of the man’s knife hand. And with one quick tug, the man went flying several feet. Though as Cassie turned to see just what had occurred behind her, she saw not the floor assailant, but a woman, tall and draped in black, her skin lightly tanned and her hair as dark as her plated armour. “You need to come with me.”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
The next morning, Dick Grayson pushed hurriedly through the S.T.A.R. Labs security checkpoint, already a registered visitor at this point. He didn’t know the cause of Silas summoning him, but he had guessed from the police cars lined up on the street outside that the scientist likely had information regarding Finlay’s death.
And as Dick entered the central lab, he was implicitly proved correct as he found Silas seated, the figure of a tall, muscular man in a beige coat and a black-banded, white cowboy hat. Immediately, Dick recognised the lone policeman as NYC Sheriff Saunders. It was rare that the man ever came out to investigate first hand since his election, and he and Dick had never crossed paths, especially while the latter was Nightwing.
“And… Dr Finlay: any reason to believe he had any enemies?” the Sheriff spoke in a gruff, deep tone, befitting of his fearsome silhouette and his fifty years of smoking. The man was no nonsense.
Silas took a second. A part of him wanted to pretend the man was a saint, but the truth was that he was far from it. Similarly Silas knew that what he had to said could incriminate himself, but was already worn down by the death of his coworker and his son shunning him for a second time. He had no time for lies.
“It was... I strongly suspect it was Finlay who allowed the meta thief - Selinda Flinders - to break into the lab. There, she not only freed her brother but also stole my blueprints for the cybernetics I used to treat my son from a safe that only myself and Finlay knew even existed.”
The Sheriff took a deep breath, still unaware of Dick standing in the doorway behind him. Carefully, he jotted down some notes in his small paper pad. “And what would Dr Finlay have wanted those… blueprints for? Industrial espionage?”
“No,” Silas sighed, “He wanted them so that he could save his brother the way I saved Victor, despite all my protests that the technology wasn’t ready.”
“His brother: This is Arthur Finlay, correct? Paralysed after a burglar attacked him in 2006.”
“That is correct.”
Saunders paused and took another long, deep breath, before launching into hurried speech. “Now it’s funny you should mention that as Arthur Finlay was nowhere to be found when we visited his estate earlier this week. Odd for a man who can't wipe his own ass.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s entirely possible that Dr Finlay– that Jacob succeeded in ‘fixing’ his brother.”
Beat.
The Sheriff smiled. “But that’s for me to chase up. Sorry, I shouldn’t have divulged that with you, - it’s as of current - entirely unfounded.”
“It’s fine.” Silas smiled tiredly, “We can all speculate. Now, if you don’t mind, I have another visitor.” Silas gestured graciously towards the door, where Dick Grayson was standing.
Sheriff Saunders looked across and his face immediately dropped, realising his mistake. “Ah, I see. Well, I won’t keep you then. Thank you for your insight, Dr Stone. We’ll be in touch.”
Quickly, the Sheriff wrapped up his notepad and made his way over to the door. As he exited, he tipped his hat towards the young spectator. “Nice to meet you, young man.”
And he was gone.
Silas stood, meeting Dick in the centre of the lab. “You know, I thought he’d never leave.”
“Was that it, Dr Stone?” Dick asked, perturbed, “You think Jacob’s brother killed him?”
Silas sighed. “That seems to be the leading theory, but no, that’s not why I called you.”
“Then what–”
“Christmas has come and passed, and this is the first year I’ve spent it without my Victor since he was born, the first year since my Elinore…”
Silas blinked.
“I wanted to give you a package. A gift. To give to Victor. A belated Christmas present.”
“He’s still not talking to you?”
Silas crawled along to his desk where, from a lower drawer, he produced a small purple box tied with a red bow, no bigger than a ring box. He held it out to Dick, his eyes so tired.
“Just please make sure Victor opens it,” he replied, “Won’t you do that for me, Richard?”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
Silently, a robed figure approached the derelict apartment block in Avalon, Blüdhaven. This was the only known address for the Teen Titan known as Cyborg, but clearly circumstances had forced him to move on. The figure sighed, shaking her head before moving on.
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
“It was like my nan always said: that someday I’d feel something, and all that crap about burning bushes and… the big man in the sky would just slip into place.”
As Cassie spoke in the relative warmth of the drab, grey squat, her words were lost on Donna, who - despite having developed more than adequate conversation skills - had no idea what the young girl was talking about after she had asked her why she had come to New York City.
Cassie grinned, sat on the only chair in the apartment, as she registered her saviour’s bemusement. “I had a vision. It sounds crazy I know, but some angel came down and told me that… I was being hunted… and that I’d only be safe if I came to New York.” Her eyes were wild, as if she were reliving those impossible moments as she told the tale, “She told me some monster wanted to kill me, that it was the plan of the Gods that I remained safe. Truth is, I struggled believing in one God, never mind plural!”
Donna was beginning to understand, but remained bemused as she looked up from the floor to the girl she had found herself driven to protect. The idea that anyone could believe in just one God perplexed her. Surely there would be too many responsibilities for just one God to handle.
Shaking off her confusion, Donna stood up from the floor and made her way to the open window. Behind her, Cassie sat by the breakfast bar, wrapped in a shawl Donna had found in the bedroom. Donna needed to understand the connection she shared with this girl. They had to be connected somehow, or else what would explain the otherworldly, gut-wrenching pull towards her that Donna had experienced as soon as Cassie had stepped within a thousand mile radius.
Who was Cassie Sandsmark? That’s what Donna kept asking herself. What did Cassie mean to her? Though Donna supposed that to answer that question, she’d have to figure out just who she was herself.
Cassie sat up quickly, shrugging off her trepidation for the thrill of the adventure. “So is that it then?” she asked. Donna moved away from the glass to face her. “Are you my guardian angel? The person the vision said would protect me?” “I…?” Donna honestly didn’t know.
“Come to think of it: why are you wearing battle armour?” Cassie’s eyes were wide as she looked upon her fearsome protector, stood against the New York City skyline through the thin glass, “Are you - like - one of those Amazons? Like Wonder Woman?”
“NO.” Donna spat, suddenly recoiling. Immediately, she realised her mistake as she watched Cassie flinch back. Calmly, she elaborated. “No. I’m nothing like… I’m not Wonder Woman…”
“Oh.”
“But I think I am supposed to keep you safe… from whatever monster is trying to harm you.”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
Vic fumbled with his keys, half distracted by his conversation with Gar as he stood in the hallway of his new apartment block on Payton Street, attempting to unlock the door. He’d gotten into his new place over Christmas, his last home desolated when Shimmer and Mammoth attacked him at his home.
“So the guy goes through all the trouble of hiring these supervillains to steal your… thing and then just mysteriously ends up dead?” Gar jested, his voice animated and non-serious.
Finally, Vic turned the key and the two entered into his new apartment. The place was much more spacious than Vic’s previous place, with a more open-planned layout which Gar definitely considered an upgrade. Though a winter chill emanated through the place, visually it was quite warm, the Christmas decorations still up and on full display almost a month later.
“The guy was my dad’s friend, Gar.” Vic replied, irritated. “If he weren’t such a jackass, he’d be like my uncle, so please take this seriously.”
Vic pushed forward, pulling off his thick, grey hoodie and laying it across the arm of his couch along with his keys.
“Dude, he tried to kill you!” exclaimed Gar, “That doesn’t exactly scream close family friend.”
“A man is dead!” Vic snapped, his tone now deadly serious, something entirely unheard by Gar until now from his usually somber but amicable friend, “Get a grip.”
Gar lingered in the doorway. He took a deep breath. Vic was right. “I– I’m sorry, man. I guess that’s just how I cope with... things. He was your friend, I get it.” He stepped forward, slowly pushing the door shut behind him.
Jacob Finlay wasn’t a friend of Victor’s. In fact, Vic could never stand the man. But it saddened Vic deeply to know that he was gone, even after all the hurt he had caused him.
Slowly, Vic made his way over to the fridge, feeling his stomach yearn for a snack. He opened the metallic white door and looked upon its contents with disappointment. He sighed.
“I know we just got in, but do you fancy heading back out for food?” Gar suggested earnestly, “I know a diner that’s cool with people like us in downtown Blüd.”
’People like us’. Vic was used to that meaning something else, but he supposed he did have that in common with his plucky, if not crass, young friend. They were both outcasts due to their appearance. Vic was half-metal, Gar was green. On the rare occasions Vic had left the house as himself (rather than the superhero Cyborg) he made sure to never stay too long in one place, as to avoid anyone noticing his horrific visage under his shadowy hood.
“How do you mean?”
“This old couple owns the place,” Gar explained, “Man’s blind and the lady’s… well, actually open-minded and reasonable.”
Vic froze, actually considering the proposal. It’d been a long time since he’d sat down in a restaurant - however fancy - and eaten out. He looked to the empty, open fridge and then back to his discarded hoodie. His eyes flashed.
“Sure,” he smiled, “You wanna grab your coat this time? You’ve been complaining about the cold all day!”
Gar grinned back at Vic, deeply pleased by his response. “Yeah, one sec!” He ran, bounding across the floor and over to the hat stand Vic rarely seemed to use. From there, Gar pulled down his orange-red Parka and pulled it on in one fluid motion. As he did, Vic made his way to the couch and slipped back into his hoodie, zipping it up slowly.
The two smiled at each other and Vic - now stood closer to the door - pushed forward, wrapping his metal grip around the door handle and pulled it down. As he swung the door open, there stood a startled Dick Grayson, moments from ringing the doorbell"
“Woah!” Dick jumped.
“Dick!” Gar exclaimed, “We’re heading out to eat, you coming?”
“You?” Dick replied, pleasantly surprised to see Vic trying something new. “Uh, yeah… sure!”
From the pocket of his black pea coat, Dick produced the purple box he’d been handed earlier, nervously fidgeting with it between his hands slightly as he glanced up and down from it to Vic. “Though, uh… I actually came to give you this, Vic.”
Dick held the box out. Vic looked open-eyed to Gar and then back to him. “Dick, you already got me a Christmas present,” he laughed, walking over and taking the purple-wrapped present, eyeing it curiously.
“No, it’s… it’s from your dad. Cos you missed Christmas.”
Beat.
Vic looked back up to Dick. “Dick, I missed Christmas cos I can’t stand the man. He made me into this… thing, and it was his lies that almost got me killed.” Without even looking, Vic tossed the box over his shoulder, it hitting the ceiling and ricocheting before landing between the couch and the television.
“Vic…” Gar moaned disappointedly.
“What?!” Vic cried, “He’s human garbage. Has that brilliant mind and uses it to constantly fuck with my life. I don't need him. He’d be better off dead.”
Dick and Gar both looked at him in stunned silence. Dick’s eyes flitted back and forth and his moved out of the doorway and into the apartment. He looked to Gar, an orphan like himself, and then to Vic. He nodded. “How about we go get that dinner?”
Vic took a breath, calming himself. He nodded reluctantly, his confidence shaken but determined not to let his dad ruin his victory. “Right, yeah. Sure!” he affirmed himself. “I– I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”
“It’s fine.” Dick smiled, turning to face the open doorway, “Let’s just g–”
Just as Dick had moved, replacing him in the doorway was a tall, hooded figure: one none of the teens had met before yet one that all three recognised.
“Holy fuck!” Gar exclaimed, “It’s Wonder Woman!”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
“I was speaking with my former teacher Athena after I sla–” “Wait, Athena?” Gar interrupted, starstruck, as if he were taking notes, “As in Popped Out of Zeus’ Forehead Athena?” Diana nodded solemnly. The Amazon sat on a kitchen chair, comfortably at a level to explain herself to the three young men, who each stood.
“Athena revealed to me a child of both Ares and Circe roamed the man’s world, that… an adversary of mine sought to hurt the child, for the misdoings Circe had committed against her.”
Diana told the tale, her eyes hollow as she seemed to hold back some inconvenient truths, something Dick picked up on easily, “I was told that I would find the child in New York City, and knew that Batman had established a strike team nearby. So here I am, hoping you can lend me your assistance.”
Dick sighed, running his hand through the front tuft of his dark hair. He’d never met the Amazon warrior before, but knew that she and Bruce were friendly, with Diana being part of his ‘Justice League’ initiative. But Dick was disappointed to hear how the Teen Titans were perceived by the older heroes. “Batman had nothing to do with it. I formed this team, uh… we formed this team. Together.”
Diana smiled. “Of course.”
“So that’s all you know?” Vic replied, addressing the matter at hand, “Some kid is in danger in New York City. No idea whereabouts?”
“That was where I was hoping that you could help me,” said Diana, addressing Vic directly.
Vic smiled softly to have garnered any sort of attention from somebody as powerful and well… beautiful as Wonder Woman. “Well I suppose we could tr–”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with that other Wonder Chick running about New York? Does it?” Gar interjected, perhaps a bit louder than he had intended.
Diana cocked her head, moving her vision away from Vic and towards Gar, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“This amazing, gorgeous warrior. Long, flowing black hair. This awesome armour, all jet black and mysterious. She looked a lot like you actually.”
Diana’s eyes darted open as she bolted to her feet. Could it be? The doppelganger she had faced in the Trials, who had fought with her own skill and ferocity.* Had Ares sent her here? It was more than possible that she was an emissary of Ares, posthumously working to secure Ares’ progeny.
It was as Athena had said to Diana: death was the only way to transfer the mantle of God of War.*
“Gods…” she groaned, “I’ve fought her before. She is far more dangerous than the woman I seek to stop. If she gets her hands on Ares’ daughter, the consequences could be dire. We need to find them both and pray that she hasn’t already found her.”
Dick stepped forward. “I’ve been trying to locate this black-armoured Amazon since Gar ran into her a couple months back. She’s been being very discrete. I’ve tried everything.”
Vic stepped forward. “I haven’t.”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
“Don’t you have any games? Or a telly or something?” Cassie sighed, stood peering out of the frosted window onto the New York skyline.
“Telly?” Donna asked, standing a few feet behind Cassie, surrounded by a whole load of nothing. “I’m afraid not. This place doesn’t have much outside of shelter, and sometimes warmth.”
“Then what do you do for fun?” Cassie had been cooped up in Donna’s squat for some time now and was beginning to grow restless. Despite the drab decor, the place was an improvement on sitting alone in her hotel room, but the boredom was killing her.
“I’ve found the city to be the best source of entertainment,” Donna explained very matter-of-factly, “Although I think it might be best for us to stay put until we know you are safe.”
“And when is that? When the thing hunting me gets bored? When I get a follow up message from the angel?”
“I don’t think that was an angel.”
“That isn’t the point!” Cassie groaned, frustrated. “I just wanna have some fun!”
Donna stopped. She thought for a moment and then nodded. “Alright.”
Donna couldn’t recall much of her past, but did remember one thing that she had always enjoyed: combat. She didn’t remember all the details, but Donna used to love sparring as a child, with Diana, the monster that now plagued her nightmares. It was always so exciting, and it really seemed to develop an interpersonal closeness between the combatants. She smiled before removing her silver gauntlets slowly.
“Here.”
“What?” Cassie asked.
“Take them.” Donna held the gauntlets out for Cassie, one in each hand. Carefully, the younger girl took them and slipped her wrists into them.
“They’re too big.”
Donna grinned as the gauntlets seemed to magically adjust, twisting and forming into a perfect fit around Cassie’s forearms. Donna then flicked her own wrist forward, causing a cloud of black smoke to erupt from the palm of her hand. Cassie recoiled, watching the black smoke move and stretch before giving way to the form of a solid, golden sword. Donna gripped the blade tightly and pointed it forward.
“Wait, what?”
“We shall fight?”
“Fight?!”
“Well, you won’t have a weapon, so it’s more like exchanging blows. I’ve found it quite enjoyable.”
“Right…” Cassie replied, reluctant, “So what’s gonna happen?”
“I will make an attack with my blade, and you shall bring up your gauntlets to intercept. You’ll find them more than capable of deflecting my attacks.”
“Like…?” Cassie practiced thrusting her arms back and forward, flashing the silver gauntlets as she moved.
“Exactly! We’ll start slow.”
And they did. Beat-by-beat, Donna would move the sword towards Cassie, giving her plenty of time to bring up her gauntlets to clink against the blade. One strike. Two strikes. Three strikes. Four. Gradually, Donna increased her speed, and with her Cassie would begin to move with increasing ease and agility. She was a natural.
As they grew more and more rapid, their movements also increased in intensity. Before they knew it, both began to shift their footing until they were dancing back and forth around the room, sparks flying each time Donna’s blade crashed against Cassie’s forearms. First, Cassie began to cackle with laughter, then allowing Donna to join with a more conservative chuckle. But all this ceased with a knock at the door.
They stopped. Cassie glanced over to the door first, then Donna. They weren’t expecting visitors. Donna flourished the blade in her hand, furrowing her brow and narrowing her gaze, ready to attack whatever came through.
And just as expected, the door came crashing, the wood obliterated into splinters. Through it leapt a fearsome warrior clad in red and gold, a beast of a woman, a terrifying figure. The demon Diana.
Nightwing had tried to knock, but the Amazon warrior wasn’t willing to wait. Bursting into the room, Diana charged at Ares’ puppet, seeing her with her blade drawn, the young Cassie Sandsmark terrified beside her.
Donna slashed out as Diana came crashing down on her, unarmed yet incredibly dangerous, but the strike was fruitless as Diana evaded with ease, delivering a mighty punch to the centre of Donna’s chest. Diana of Themyscira didn’t need a weapon.
Donna stumbled, kicking over a small coffee table as Cassie scrambled out of the way. The demon moved incredibly quickly, far faster than Donna could comfortably comprehend. She hadn’t been this fast when they’d fought before. First, another punch to the chest, then grabbing Donna by the arm - catching her sword strike - to pull her close, only to pound her back into the ground.
As Donna hit the ground, she skidded, whipping back around onto her feet, beaten but ready to persist. “Your master is dead,” Diana seethed, “And you shall fall with the rest of his forces!”
As the two warriors clashed, Cassie scurried away, ducking and running for the door. However, she found herself blocked by the bodies of three young men: one some kind of robot man, one green and the other clad in blue and black spandex. “Ack!”
“We’re not gonna hurt you!” Cyborg panicked, holding his large, cold hands up.
“Like shit you don’t!” Cassie spat, her teeth clenched, pivoting back around to watch her friend fight off the red-and-gold blur of a woman. Wait... That was Wonder Woman!
Donna grumbled, moving her sword arm back and shifting her off-hand forward. She then allowed her bronze shield to materialise magically in her grip with a flash of amber light. “I see you have new toys.” Diana smirked, her gaze as steely as her black-clad doppelganger.
She was right. Donna recalled easily that in their last encounter, the one that haunted her, she fought Diana unarmed. Now, Donna couldn’t recall how she came to wield the magic required to summon her weapons, but she was more than happy to use them if it meant having an edge over the tyrant that had previously terrorised her.
Donna didn’t reply. Instead, she threw herself forward, shifting her weight rapidly across the wooden floorboards, heaving the mass of her shield against Diana enough to stagger her, giving her an opening to strike with her blade. Diana cried out and kicked, colliding her leg into her adversary’s shield and dragging her strike to the right.
Donna saw through this trick immediately, it was an attempt to disarm; to wrench the shield right from her hand. It wouldn’t work. Not if Donna kept as best a grip as she could. However, Donna had underestimated the strength of her foe, and subsequently found herself launched across the room along with the shield, leaving her sword by her feet, crashing down on a pile of wood in the corner of the shabby apartment.
She attempted to pull herself up, but couldn’t, her armour too heavy on top of the weight of her aching bones. Diana persisted however. Breathing heavily, she pulled herself over to her floored quarry, scooping her foe’s blade off of the ground as she moved. Finally, she stopped. Planting her crimson boots into the wooden floor, Diana loomed over Donna, a relentless, fearsome monster.
Diana looked upon her quarry, this supposed emissary of Ares, deliberating over her fate. Perhaps she had overestimated her, for the puppet Diana had fought during the Trials fought with such ferocity and intensity that she now found entirely lacking. It was as if she was another soul inhabiting the body of that abomination.
But that moment of hesitation on Diana’s part was exactly what Donna need to act. In one fluid motion, Donna burst from her pile on the floor with new mobility. After delivering a kick to the monster’s head, Donna swung her empty hand out in a wide arc. Instantly, the sword vanished from Diana’s grip, reappearing in Donna’s own with a black flicker.
As Diana staggered, Donna let loose with slash after slash before finally winding up for an overhead attack, a killing blow. However–
“STOP!!”
A shock wave exploded through the room, launching its contents as well as the two combatants. Donna hit the ground and skidded once more. Bloodied, she looked up to see Cassie between her and Diana, her silver gauntlets glowing white hot, her face mortified.
“She doesn’t want to hurt you!” she screamed to Donna before turning to look upon Diana, scraping herself off of the floor, “You don’t want to hurt each other.”
Donna stood up uneasily, her eyes still wild, waiting for Diana to attack once again.
“I…” Diana mumbled, gripping her bloodied arm.
“You’re Wonder Woman. You save people.” Cassie explained, her voice compassionate yet quivering, “And I don’t need saving. Not from Donna. She’s my friend.”
Diana painted, finally looking upon her adversary with new eyes, “... Donna?”
Donna’s eyes flickered, filled with doubt. She looked to Cassie, then finally to Diana, and instead of a demon, saw an injured woman. She lowered her sword.
Diana saw this and recalled her parting words to the black-clad warrior, when Diana had pummeled her into the bloody waters during the Trials. 'Barely real and always a copy. What kind of emptiness must exist inside you?'
But when she focused on Donna’s eyes, those that so closely resembled her own, she saw not the rage she had seen during the Trials, but fear. Pure fear. There, she remembered.
“Great Hera, what have I done…” Diana groaned, looking upon her friend with a long forgotten familiarity. “Donna…”
But the moment wouldn’t last, for Gar was moments too late to cry out, warning them as a fearsome feline figure crashed through the window, emerging from the urban jungle of New York City’s skyline. There, the animal moved immediately for Diana, launching into an all out assault, no longer Dr Barbara Minerva, but The Cheetah.
 
 
Continued in Wonder Woman #21
 

The results are in for Match 2. The winner is…
Peter “Treagon” Bequasimodo, with a score of 68 to Markus Ness Mathison’s 60!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	Baker Street Rat Pack	16-14	Popularity was fairly even throughout the match, ultimately resolving just barely in Treagon’s favor.
Quality	Baker Street Rat Pack	20-18	Reasoning
JoJolity	Baker Street Rat Pack	22-18	Reasoning
Conduct	Tie	10-10

The Heartache Casino had been trashed. A mixture of water and soda syrup seemed to leak out of most of the machinery, the vast majority of screens in the building had been slashed open, and the air was hazy with smoke. It was almost unbearably hot due to the air conditioning having been down for quite a while. Over all of the damage and chaos stood Peter Bequasimodo, Markus having been forcibly escorted out by security at what the hacktivist had thought to be the deadline for some horrible event. Treagon was pretty sure the fish guy wasn’t the one who had lured him here, but by all means, it seemed the only disaster that had come of this place had been what they did to it.
As casino patrons continued to stream out of the front doors and employees frantically ran around, Peter noticed a garish gold mess in the shape of a thin, middle-aged white dude approaching him from the VIP stairs. He was sharp-faced and red-eyed, with neat but longish black hair, wearing a gold-yellow checker-patterned suit over white, and everything about the way he carried himself suggested that he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t go anywhere unless he were the constant center of attention. He looked like he wasn’t hot at all, despite what had happened to the air systems (maybe they had a separate one upstairs..?), and carried under his arm a sort of envelope, clapping as he did.
“Well done, Treagon, well done… That was absolute chaos, and my premiums are probably gonna go up, but hell, my guests loved the show, and that’s what really matters, yeah?” He held out his hand. “Tigran Sins, ‘Golden’ to friends, owner of this place you trashed, and you, I think, could make a wonderful friend.”
Peter raised an eye and looked over him, realizing what had come as a woman dressed like some kind of pirate was also forcibly escorted from the upstairs and tossed out on the streets, shouting all the while, “my best customer fucking ruined meeeeeeee!” For some reason, Peter presumed that may have been who that fish guy was trying to flush out, but paid it no mind.
Tigran rolled his eyes, chuckling and brushing her off. “I swear, upstarts get a taste of the good life, and then they always do this as soon as it all comes crashing down. Never gets old…” He sighed with some amusement, then moved to pull free the envelope. “Anyway, I have something one of my clients has asked to give to the w-”
A fist connected with the casino owner’s face, which quickly turned into a grasp at his hair, yanking him down to knee him into the dirtied floor, Peter following through by smoothly dusting off the new letter. “Endangering your customers and screwing with me to entertain a bunch of high-rollers while you sit in comfort and laugh at their misfortunes… You’re my least favorite kind of scumbag.”
“My face! My faaace!” Covering it and panicking, the owner ran away in alarm, and now it was Peter’s turn to give security the slip. When he was somewhere safer, he carefully opened the unmarked, finely-sealed envelope’s contents, finding the quality of the writing to be the same as the last, but this time, rather than an unsigned threat, the handwritten note had been much stranger, most curiously reading at the bottom:
For the Institute,
Oh No
Enjoy M2? Looking forward to M4 and beyond? In the meantime, when this goes live, you still have over a day to vote in M3, the bout featuring an Octopus-headed youth, a thief, a shapeshifter, and a child who controls ants, all duking it out over weird gross fish.
Scenario:
Downtown Los Fortuna - North Island: Within Sight of the Waterfront statues, Triskele and Cocytus.
Not quite evening.
The streets were busier than usual in the area for a variety of reasons. Roadwork was underway in more convenient places, for one thing. For another, people had been curious about a plane which performed a miracle landing just up North, and a local small-time reporter was trying yet again to cover some facets of the incident and reach another fleeting effort towards a big break, workers all the while meanwhile toiling to fish the plane out from between two art installations. Thirdly, and most significantly, an old man was delivering a speech before a canal dock, the campaign van he stood atop flanked by two large and unfurled Los Fortuna flags and a private security detail.
This man was Wedding March, and despite being a somewhat overweight, balding, middle-height man whose well-tailored white suit was soaked in sweat from the day’s sun, any who paid local politics attention could identify him as the chairman of the Los Fortuna Metropolitan Council -- little more than a ceremonial upgrade over a standard councilor position on paper, but becoming the popularly-elected face of the city council had perks of its own nonetheless.
“My fellow citizens of Los Fortuna,” March began, a certain commanding aura to the way he articulated, gestured, and generally carried himself, “we are living in interesting times once more, I am afraid to say. In recent months, all number of bizarre crimes have surged to a greater extent than ever before, and once again, it is only the efforts of the ordinary heroes of this city that have kept us from collapsing… This Metropolis’ wonderful police force, its defense forces, from the volunteer organizations of Aurelio to the men and women of Valkyrie, yes, but also, our rescue workers, doctors, the journalists who keep people like me honest, never letting me have a wink of sleep…”
The crowd which had gathered around him laughed at that final point, March giving a self-deprecating smile. From there, he segued into further praise. “And too many other persons to possibly list! Yet in the strange incidents of this city, the danger these persons face is unique as well! A dear friend of mine, one who drew the very flags I stand for, who thirty years ago aided this city in its hour of tragedy even as he mourned his flesh and blood, said that in times like these, the people need more than ever to know that there is a place to simply be good, to be inspiring, to be forthright and demonstrate agency! You may be quiet, Los Fortuna, but I can hear you calling! I will work myself to an early grave if it means my fellow councilors and I can do right by the safety and comfort every last one of you deserves!”
The man continued postulating about the safety of the city, and the crowd didn’t seem to be processing all of it, yet they cheered anyway when he paused or gestured to.
It all felt so smotheringly fake to Jacob Brown, having gotten curious about the crowd while on a stroll through the city, having before then been idly people-watching.
You use his name like a tool to make the people cheer… You say you were friends, but I sure never heard him talk about you! I think you might be lying and lying and peppering in platitudes, just like every other politician, Councilor!
For a brief, flashing moment, Jacob called the semi-tangible form of ‘Megalo Strike Back,’ only to stop himself, remembering.
“You all seem a good lot, creative, constructive, well of intent, so I must ask you all personally... Help me make this inevitable into something that is not a tragedy, when the time comes."
That Andrew Tiffany had asked that of them all, and Jacob had promised his help with all the rest. He had seemed so happy, so relieved, to know that he had allies in this fool’s errand of his, and even though he was dead, Jacob Brown was never one to defy a promise.
The speaker would live, and Megalo Strike Back would recede. Still, to calm his nerves, he walked away, trying to deftly make his way somewhere away from all the lies.
Maybe he could find his fun for the day somewhere quieter.
In an alleyway, South of the rally…
Richard Stone was thinking to himself, having had much the same people-watching plans as a youth not half his age, though his walk was a shorter one, himself more winded by what had come, not to mention what had distracted him.
This Downtown in particular, it had interested him… He remembered the words of that young woman who spoke of the place, how apparently it had once been devastated by an earthquake, and then from there rebuilt… A bit of a museum trek confirmed as such to him, too. Was this, then, the history of the city’s canals?
It truly was amazing, the decades of stories that could be told by just walking around.
There were a lot of police in the area, and earlier, a man had been trying to avoid them, but also looking quite nervous in his own right… He’d a feeling that he should paint the man, perhaps, but he had only seen him briefly enough to get a quick sketch, and had since become preoccupied by searching for that guy, whatever trouble he had gotten up to, instead of checking out that rally up by the water.
It was a pretty damn nice drawing for a sketch of a man at a glance, by any standards bar Richard’s own.
All this going around looking for some guy… I really need to do more cardio. At least it’s an absolutely lovely day, and being this far from that district locals call ‘The Earth,’ I’m bound to find some excitement just by walking around a bit! And if it’s the wrong kind, it’s nothing that my ‘Heavens’ can’t get me out of!
Not long after expressing that, Richard did, in fact, find some company; a teenager, by the looks of things, had entered the alley, looking as though he were hurriedly shuffling away from something.
“Good day!” Richard spoke, waving at the youth with a raised hand. Already, he could see dark energies from this young man, but this was hardly something to phase him, simply standing where he was, holding onto what he was. “You don’t happen to have seen a man who looks vaguely like this, have you?”
As he held out his sketch, the newcomer gave him a curious look, then began to close the distance between them quickly. Stopping a few meters away, then, he looked at the thing, then at the man, shaking his head. “I’m afraid not… Would this be a friend of yours?”
Richard shook his head, which seemed to satisfy the boy. “No, a complete stranger… He caught my eye, as people do sometimes. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there’s many people with strange abilities in this place, and I’ve developed, I think, a knack for feeling out where they’re active. I was hoping to track him down and paint him.”
“Most of our kind don’t speak so bluntly about Stands like that with total strangers,” this kid said, cutting through all the slight inclinations that he might be somewhat normal, then smiling, getting a little closer. “Someone with that layer of fearless honesty has some respect from me… You may not be so bad, Mister…”
“Stone,” he answered, “Richard Stone. I just wasn’t sure if you were one as well, so I didn’t want to confuse you, but I can see that’s not necessary! Tell me, though, what’s your name, since you now have mine?”
“Jacob Brown… I’m new here, you could say, and so I was people-watching… Happened to make my way here when the lies of that councilman became too much to bear.” The boy retracted a bit, then held his hands behind his back… Richard could tell he was up to something. “Tell me, though, Richard, do you think it’s dangerous to accost strangers in alleys?”
“I’ve been told,” he answered, “but sometimes, that’s where you meet the most interesting people, and I won’t flinch from that… Not all of the best stories parade through the streets, yeah?”
“I understand, and agree completely! That said, a fair warning, Richard, since you seem alright… you caught me in a really bad mood, and I just want to rip something open!”
Like that, he leapt forward, a knife now in his hands, bringing it with alarming speed towards his conversational partner. Richard, to his end… Simply stood and watched, and then, just before the blade could contact skin, stopped itself, Jacob pulling back and tilting his head. “You really aren’t afraid at all, then… Didn’t try to get away, nor summon up your own Stand to stop me.”
“You like to unnerve people and see how they react, is that it?” Richard asked, his answer implying the point of his inaction. “You’re honest, to a fault… If you were going through the trouble of announcing your bloodlust like that, I think you’d have told me you meant to gut me like a fish, or something else flavorful like that. Yet all you said was you wanted to do that to something. Not a lie, but a test. And lucky thing, too… If you’d actually meant to kill me, Jacob, right now you would certainly be dead.”
Jacob Brown started cracking up, then, hand moving to his forehead as he laughed and laughed, in a better mood than he had been since hearing that infernal speech. “You’re good… You really are good, Richard Stone! If you had recoiled or tried to run, acted afraid, that wouldn’t have reflected very well on your claimed interests in all kinds of people, and then maybe you would have become the ‘something’ after all. Talking to you has put me in such a better mood already… Is there some way I can repay you?”
“One,” Richard said, producing his art supplies once again with a nod, looking over his form. “Let me paint you?”
Not much later, that same day, that same alley…
The two fast acquaintances, not yet aware that they would soon come to blows, had a good time simply talking as the drawing ensued, and there was much to talk about… Both had quite dark, storied histories, and though both did value being forthright, some of what they got into utterly forbade it in function. It was nice, then, to frankly discuss matters such as the taking of lives and witnessing of violent, gruesome scenes.
All good things were bound to come to an end, though, as not long after the drawing had been complete, the hand of fate tossed with all its might something which would surely come between their new bond.
A violent crashing sound, followed by a mess of crimson liquid dancing in the air, surrounding the slumped, launching form of a man’s body, a flickering humanoid figure trying and failing to grasp at anything and everything before fading from existence, even Richard not quite able to make out what the mysterious person’s Stand was. Before either person could process anything, this anonymous Stand User had entered their eyesight by smashing headfirst against the brick wall of the alley directly between where they were standing.
“That’s…” Richard raised an eyebrow, noting the outfit and hair of what was once a man before them, now cut to shit and crushed up to boot. “I’m sure of it, that’s the man I was trying to follow.”
“Well,” Jacob said, moving to ineffectually, almost tongue-in-cheekily check the corpse’s pulse. “You’ve found him, I suppose. Might not be as easy to paint his face now, but…” He leaned in hard, squinting before pulling away. “The resemblance of your sketch seems to have been uncanny to what his face might have looked like unsmashed!”
“I’ll have to remember him, then… When I see a Stand User die, you know, I can always paint them perfectly from memory.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the chatter of a man on a radio, “yeah, got two men in an alleyway, right in front of a John Doe. Now approaching, over.”
“Oh…” Jacob said, slightly disappointed, “the police are here.”
“Looks like it,” Richard answered in a whisper, “play it cool, yeah? ”
Of course, both Richard and Jacob knew how horrible this looked right away, what with the officer drawing closer with a cold look on his lips, brow tensed and hands on his hips as he walked over to the scene, what he would be saying clear before he even came close.
Jacob, for a moment, was glanced at by the man, before he turned his head to Richard, getting closer to him. “Would either of you mind answering some questions for me?”
“Certainly, officer,” Jacob said, already feeling exhausted, “what about? Social studies? Pre-calculus? Ooh, I was always graded well in physical education, would that help?”
“You know that’s not what I meant…” That, then, earned an eyebrow raising from him, his tone growing concerned, rather than frustrated as he looked at Jacob and pointed at Richard. “Is he threatening you not to answer or something? You can trust me, young man, it’s like Councilor March said… It’s not just all these security companies, or those college boys in their ivory tower, or that fuckin’ Black Angel; police officers like me are doing our part too, and I say we’re doing the biggest part of all!”
That put Jacob in a bad mood, and Richard, noticing his new friend stiffen up, opted wisely to take over, “if I may, officer, I assure you this body literally just flew in out of nowhere while my friend and I were just talking here. We’re as confused as you are about this whole-”
“You expect me to believe that? Don’t make fun of me! North Island PD aren’t stupid, buddy!” Suddenly, the officer seized Richard’s hand, hard enough to actually make the weak older man wince, dropping the canvas upon which had been the sketch of the dead man - and immediately, the officer caught that. “If you’re not gonna cooperate, we’ll just have to bring you to the station and hear what you really know!”
And then, he held up the sketch of this person, glancing at it and chuckling, looking at the corpse. “Not a bad resemblance at all… You’re a half-decent artist, but a damned shitty liar. That’s settled now, you’re coming with me.”
The officer, then, dropped the canvas before reaching down for his handcuffs, occupied hand loosening in its grip on Richard without his notice, only for him to realize as he brought his arm back up that it wasn’t holding them… And that both of his wrists ended in grotesquely bleeding stumps, both of what they once connected to dropping uselessly to the floor.
Turning, slowly, in too much shock as he held up his stumps, he looked towards the boy off to the side, grinning with his mouth but looking at him with utter malice, hand formed as if it was holding something, but nothing appearing visible in the officer’s eyes.
“That’s not a term to toss around lightly, officer… I was in a wonderful mood until you went and ruined it, you know!” Jacob’s grin grew wider, then, and he stepped again and again on the lifeless fingers of the severed hand, the officer hearing them crack apart. There was almost a quality of laughter in his voice. “So run away now, little piggy, while I satisfy myself with this! This is one hundred percent your fault, you know, for trying to arrest an innocent man for telling the whole truth!”
Finally, the pain registered, and as he turned and ran with a look of utter inelegance, the officer screamed pathetically and bolted away, his expensive blue pants moist with an absolute sign of his fear as he tried and failed, again and again, to radio for help.
“I, uh… Appreciate the save.” Richard sighed, relieved on one hand, but otherwise, frowning with further thoughts as he picked up his canvases. “We need to get out of here, though… He’ll get help eventually, and then we are in serious trouble.”
“I concur… This way!”
The nearby streets, minutes later…
Jacob and Richard ran off, but sirens wailed in the distance, and both could see it with utter certainty… The officers in the area had been looking for an excuse to flex on someone, they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now, the situation had escalated even further.
Panting to catch their breaths, Richard looked to the younger criminal, speaking quite frankly to him. “You know, Jacob… There’s no way the cops are gonna stop until they have someone to pin this crime on, and we just gave them all the reason to make it one of us on a silver platter. There’s no reason for both of us to go down.”
“Yes I agree,” Jacob answered, bouncing from foot to foot, looking around, “much as I’ve enjoyed our chat, and don’t at all regret helping you back there, I don’t intend to actually go to jail for your sake. There’s far too much police could find if they looked into me, and I’ve made a promise to someone which would be in danger if I were ever in that hot water.”
“So we’re on the same page, then… I have every intent of being the one of us who walks away from this, even if it means they take you in. No hard feelings, yeah?”
Jacob, again, found the situation amusing, seeming to agree if only for the sheer honesty of saying that… It isn’t a deception or a betrayal if they totally understand where they are. “No hard feelings… If you survive this, though, I might save you a second time after all! I have connections at the Academy, yes, and I’m sure they won’t abide by an innocent Stand User facing charges, no! So try to live, and may the best man win!”
Without another word, Jacob bolted off, then, leaving Richard standing there, stretching, and shaking his head with bemusement. “‘If I survive this…’ This a game to him?” A sigh, shaking his head, then followed. “What a kid… Alright, then! Not gonna let myself get shown up here! I’ve been through worse scrapes than this before he was even alive, so it’s time to show him how it’s done!”
Open the Game!
Location: The streets in Downtown Los Fortuna’s north island. Fleeing from the police has forced the players away from all the art and history towards one of its more… Commercial subsections.
The area is shown here with each tile being 7.5 by 7.5 meters with a total length of 90 meters and width of 150 meters. The dark grey are each two lane roads, cars are parked and driving as normal here at around 30 miles per hour and the crosswalks are denoted by double white lines. The arrows show the direction of traffic. The players are represented by their respective tokens on the center crosswalks with Richard on the left and Jacob on the right side of the map.
The yellow circles represent cops, which focus on the character to whom they are closer in proximity. Though not marked on the map, there is steady foot traffic through the area and a regular flow of motorists, miraculously not killing anybody. At the start of the match, the flow of motor traffic is cutting the police off from the players’ initial positions.
The cream-colored tiles surrounding sets of buildings are sidewalks with general foot traffic, but not too busy. The inner light grey tiles are alleyways with the rectangles around them being various buildings or lots. The Orange rectangles (labeled “R”) are restaurants, the Blue rectangles are convenience stores (“C”), the Red rectangles (“F”) are fast food places, and the Grey rectangles are empty concrete lots that are fenced off by 2.5 meter tall fences (“L). The doors to each building are denoted by the yellow rectangles and the doors that lead to the alleyways are locked from the outside.
All of the above are currently open, and the things one might expect to find within them are, indeed, generally all there. They’re a little bit crowded in all of their cases, minus the empty lots, but easy enough for anyone to navigate. The paths from the sidewalk to the alleyways are blocked by 2.5 meter fences that are denoted by the bolded lines.
The top center area is a parking lot with the magenta being the entrance and the purple rectangles being the cars. The bottom center is a grassy park with trees denoted by the green circles.
Goal: Do not get caught by the police! The player that gets caught by the police first will be charged with Resisting Arrest, with more charges to come as the officers think them up, getting Retired as a result. Until one of them is, the police will literally stop at nothing to make it happen. No tactic is outright off-limits, but every possible course of action will have immediate consequences on the behavior of NPCs towards both characters. See below for details.
Additional Information:
Though it’s possible to leave any side of the map, these city streets all look so similar in this unfamiliar place… You get turned around way too easily! The map will effectively loop, in short. If you leave from the left side, like in a game of ‘Pac Man,’ you will find yourself on the right side, and so on. No NPC is capable of understanding or exploiting this phenomenon.
None of the police officers involved in this match are Stand Users, nor can they see Stand phenomena unless it’s a case where everyone can anyway.
The cops have 333 physicals, 3 in Cop (a competent enough but not particularly great shot with a standard-issue handgun, reasonably physically acute, can generally press civilians into showing them where they want to go), 5 in Slighted; basically, these guys are tenacious to a fault and will chase after players, but are also somewhat overconfident in their ability to handle this. They are armed with a baton, taser and pistol, and have hand-cuffs and a radio on their belt.
Police will chase the players they are following as best they can, and will not take their focus off their pursuit until someone they can arrest is sitting in police custody… In which case they will literally just sort of drop it instantly to focus on keeping him that way.
Officers will start off completely clueless to how both of you operate, but gradually learn the tactics of the player characters as the match goes on, so mixing up methods is important for outlasting them on a long-term basis.
The cops will not fire their guns on players unless they have a clear shot, and players have tried attacking them or committed any violent crimes during the match; that one dickhead in the writeup was a freebie. That said, the more aggressive players get with them, the more aggressive in turn the already disproportionate response will grow.
The longer the match goes on, the more cops will be chasing after each player; with each 5 minutes, a new cop will be on each player’s trail. One will also appear immediately from the opposite side of the map from the player if an officer is ever slain.
The civilians (222s with no relevant skills) will usually give you away to the cops if they know what direction you went or where you generally are, but being as indifferent as the average JoJo civilian, they need to be questioned for this to trigger.
Once 30 minutes have passed, each player will have a police helicopter begin to focus on them, relaying the player’s location information to the other cops if they can find them. If a player seems to be moving too quickly for cops to pin down, they will start coming in cop cars to chase them.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
Masters of Funky Action	Jacob Brown	“Go ahead, shoot me! But prepare yourself; the moment you pull that trigger, I’m going to break your finger like a matchstick!” These officers are really quite vexing, and you need to vent more. While completing your objective, find creative ways to antagonize your pursuers!
Black Hill Estate	Richard Stone	“Hm? You think I’m just running around not knowing where I’m going? I ran here so I can kill you!” These damned cops may have ruined your day and forced you out of one of the cooler parts of North Island, but you still have a day to seize. Make the most you can out of the places you visit on the map in your strategy!

Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
As always, if you would like to interact with the tournament community and be among the first to get updates for the tournament, please feel free to PM a member of our Judge staff for an invite to our Official Discord Server!

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Check out the new story directory for other stuff on Reddit Serials - there are tons of great fiction here, and you might find something you really like :)
If you don’t follow my main sub or just aren’t familiar - the end-of-life for all of my stories like this is publication as a novel on Amazon, and I’ve got six out to date :D This week, I did a relaunch on my space opera/scifi series! If that interests you, check out this thread for more information!
When we left off, Terra and Alice had just left Heracles behind in the alley. Despite attacking Terra, he seems oddly conflicted about her war with Gaia. With him fading into the distance, they set their sights toward Fortune and Fate.
I sighed. My hand stroked back and forth across the skin of my neck, trying to work some feeling back into it. Or to work some feeling into it besides pain, rather. I was feeling that just fine.
Alice hurried along at my side, clutching her clipboard and pen. One of her braids had fallen loose of its pins during the commotion of my encounter with Heracles. It dangled along her face, bouncing with every step. “You’re sure you’re all right, mistress?”
“I’m fine.”
“We could stop, return to Avani for a spell. You could rest. Heal your-”
“I’m fine, Alice,” I said, biting back something sharper. “We need to keep moving.”
Besides, the looming white glory of Fortune’s home was right there in front of us. Right there. If I had to turn around and leave it behind me, I might scream from the frustration.
I froze, my eyes widening. Something was close - something small, something marked by the tiny scritch-scratching of claws on stone. Something like-
Alice yelped as the tiny white shape shot from around a corner. Her hands pulled up, shielding her face from the new threat.
I laughed, steeling myself. Claws dug into my legs a second later.
And then the fox sat perched on my shoulder, its face a thin inch in front of mine.
You survived.
“Surprised?” I said, forcing myself to relax one muscle at a time.
We are. But Master is amused. He laughs.
“I’m glad to know I’m entertaining, at least.”
Alice shrank back, still looking decidedly unsure about our new companion. “Is that thing...coming with us?”
“If it wants,” I said, turning back for the building. “I’m assuming Inari’s going to show up at some point?”
Likely.
“Wonderful,” I muttered, screwing up my face at the thought of the god poking his nose into my business again.
More than just him, probably. Fortune seemed to be popular - or if not popular, at least needed. From what they’d told me back when I first signed Toby on, I needed the approval of Fortune and Fate to meddle in mortal lives. Or at least, their understanding.
They were aspects, anyway. Avani and Ebb had sequestered me away to keep me from interacting with other gods. Fortune probably wouldn’t do the same.
“Mistress?” Alice’s carefully measured voice slipped across the edge of my awareness. I’d stopped walking. Apparently, she’d finally noticed.
I kept twisting, ignoring her while I inspected the outfit Toby had devised for me. “I’m too conspicuous. I look like- like I just escaped from a-”
“Somehow, I suspect whatever you’re about to say will be wildly inappropriate for someone of your status,” Alice said, straightening her glasses.
I snorted. “Never stopped me before.”
“You never wanted favors from Fortune and Fate before.”
“I guess. I’m not going to stop being me, though.”
She sighed, wrinkling her nose and looking away. “You might try.”
“What was that?”
“Simply remember your manners, mistress,” Alice said. “I presume someone at least began teaching you those, before realizing it was an exercise in futility.”
“Fuck off,” I mumbled, turning my eyes back to my clothing. If we were going to be around other gods...this was a bit of a problem. I stuck out like a sore thumb, thanks to Toby’s creative tailoring.
I pursed my lips, holding my hands up ever so slightly. Everyone else seemed to have some level of control over themselves. Fortune was running around changing from man to woman, dammit. I wasn’t asking for much. It wasn’t like I wanted to eliminate all his hard work. Just...disguise it.
I breathed in slowly, still burning at the motion. Heracles really fucked me up. I’d have to find a way to get back at him for that. But for the time being, I put that aside, holding the image of myself in my mind. A cloak would be nice. But, at the same time, with everyone here taking on some sort of semblance of modern clothing…
A whisper of air danced against my skin. Fabric brushed my cheek, my hair. I opened my eyes.
Alice stood a few paces away, her eyes on me - and an amused, smug smile on her face.
Elation shot through me as I moved, feeling something move with me. There was a new addition to my wardrobe. If this had truly been some sort of fantasy realm, I’d have called it a ‘cowl’. Given that everyone was dressing closer to normal humans, ‘poncho’ was about as good as I could do. It draped across my shoulders, falling from neck to waist in drab brown waves that hid most of my cleavage and midsection.
“Better,” I said, satisfied, and reached up to pull the hood over my head. The fox squeaked in my ear, sliding under the fabric and slinging itself around my neck as usual. Part of me wondered how it had stayed put while another layer was added. Part of me didn’t really give a shit. The no-fucks-given part won handily.
“Feeling better?” Alice said, holding a hand out as I stumbled forward again.
These fucking feet. They were going to be the death of me. “I’m fine,” I said, waving her off. “We’re right here.”
The fact I’d already lengthened my feet helped, too. I didn’t have metal to work with, but ‘wood’ was a broad category. It had only been a few changes so far, but already, my steps were more sure, more confident. All I had to do was find the right mix, and maybe I’d be walking like a normal human being instead of an arthritic, amputee grandmother.
Alice let her hand fall as I passed, falling in alongside me.
The golden spire of Fortune’s home rose taller and taller, filling the sky until at last I turned a corner. Just like that, the alley opened up, stretching from side to side into a courtyard wrapping the building in cobblestone paths.
There were other gods here, too. Fucking wonderful. None of them were paying me the slightest mind, which probably had something to do with the fact that my tits weren’t hanging out anymore. So that was a plus. I crept forward, wishing I had a decent pair of pants to go along with the new shirt. The rest of me was normal enough, but the legs were weird.
“Slow and steady,” I whispered, trying to ignore the sweat rolling down the small of my back.
“Relax, mistress,” Alice said, leaning forward to smile at me. “You’re like...a dryad, really. It’s not all that unusual. The children of the forest dwell around some of the Earthmother’s lands.”
“A dryad? Well, that’s just great,” I muttered, hurrying my steps along. “How many dryads trip over their own feet?”
Alice didn’t reply. And even if I was sassing her, it did make me feel a little better to know I wasn’t a total oddity. Taking another deep breath, I forced my limbs to relax, my legs to stretch out more naturally.
Maybe it worked. Maybe I was just kidding myself. But no one stopped me as I slipped through the grand doors into Fortune’s temple and-
Stopped.
My eyes wide and round, I looked from side to side, drinking it all in. Her domain had been normal enough before. Gaudy, yes. Ostentatious, yes. But normal. This?
This was like a gambling addict’s dream, the physical embodiment of foolishness and greed. Lights hung from the ceiling in multicolored, garish waves. A bar pressed against one wall, the backstop covered in multicolored glass bottles and neon signs. The rest of the room was filled with machines pressed side by side, close enough a person would struggle to walk through them. A blackjack table sat in the corner, a deck of cards still waiting on the corner.
The only thing that seemed truly out of place was the chess board set up in the very center part of the room. Everything else looked like it’d been ripped straight out of a Hollywood casino set. That? No. That was different - even before you saw the rows of chairs set up reverently around it. But, well, these were the gods.
And this was why I was here. Maybe Fortune had known. Maybe this was all intentional. It seemed like the aspect’s style to toy with me.
“Back so soon?” With my scan of the room complete, I wasn’t surprised in the least to hear the voice cut across my senses - smooth, and female, and as rich as I’d ever heard. Fortune sauntered out from behind a slot machine, her hammered-brass eyes locked on mine and a grin plastered across her cherry-red lips. “I heard you died, darling.” She winked at me, her grin widening. “Oh, I knew better.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, feeling a blush spread across my cheeks as she stepped past. “Uh. Gaia really tried, but...it didn’t stick.”
“No, it did not,” Fortune said, taking a seat at the bar and leaning on one elbow. Her chin came to rest on her outstretched palm, her fingers tapping against her face. With a start, I realized that Fate stood in the shadows behind the counter. He just...waited, as somber and rigid as ever.
A pair of fingers snapped. I flinched, looking back to Fortune. She chuckled, low and soft. “Pay attention now, dear.” She tilted her head to one side, inspecting me. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon. I presumed you’d hide, rather than pay your debts.”
My bemusement at her appearance and the state of her temple vanished in an instant. “My debts? I don’t owe you, Fortune.”
“You toyed with the life of a mortal, minutes after awakening,” Fate said. His voice rolled across the gaudy room like the tolling of a bell. “There are consequences.”
“I picked a prophet,” I snapped. “That’s allowed. It has to be. It’s bullshit otherwise. Besides, Toby is mine now. How big of a deal can it possibly be that I needed to get his attention?”
Again, Alice quivered at my side, silent. I turned away, exasperated. She was perfectly happy to nitpick and meddle when it was me sitting around. Put her in front of any of the aspects, though, and she turned into a sniveling puddle of obedience. She was my arbiter, wasn’t she? Assigned to help me? Shouldn’t she actually make that a priority, instead of kowtowing to the arrogant asses?
“Yes, I’m sure you meant no harm,” Fortune said, watching me from across the room. “All the same.” She shrugged. “If you weren’t here for that, well. What can Fate and I help you with, Mistress Terra?”
I almost winced. Almost. I caught myself at the last moment, wrangling my face back to a neutral expression. There was a lot of weight in that name - and in the title she’d attached to it. A lot of obligation, and a lot of derision. It was all her way of letting me know she had the upper hand, I was sure.
So be it. I folded my hands in front of me, tucking the edge of my cowl against my palm and pulling it straight. “I’m here for your help, ma’am.” God, the word burned on my tongue. But beside me, Alice gave a tiny, approving nod. I turned slightly, pushing her from my field of view. “I know...we didn’t start off on the best of terms. But I’d like to make it up, and, well.” I shrugged. “I can’t do that if I’m dead.”
“I suppose you’re not incorrect,” Fortune said, raising one carefully sculpted eyebrow.
In other words, I was right. She could just say it. My fingernails dug into my palms, carving white lines against my flesh. “Helping me helps you,” I said instead, locking eyes and doing my best to stare her down. It...wasn’t really working. She hadn’t even blinked.
Inari’s fox whuffed gently in my ear, then scurried free of my hood. It leapt to the floor, dashing across the tile toward Fortune - and climbed straight up her dress.
She...smiled. Her expression softened a hair, and she held a hand out for the fox to climb onto. Idly, she scratched at its ears with her free hand, pulling it closer against herself. The damn thing whickered.
Traitor.
Its golden eyes glanced back to me, though, and I knew better. It was Inari’s, and that meant it was probably just as manipulative as Inari was. I was still expecting him to come strolling through the door at any second, ears pricked and ready to meddle. Maybe this was his way of apologizing for letting me get tortured nearly to death. In his own twisted mind, maybe this was just how he repaid that debt. The thought of trying to untangle what he was after was simply too much for my tired mind to process.
But Fortune was smiling. And I couldn’t waste the opportunity Inari had bought me.
“I want to deal,” I said. I stepped forward, steadier than I’d been since waking up, and let my hands fall to my sides. I held Fortune’s gaze with my own, setting my jaw stubbornly.
“I have a proposition for you.”
Part 29

So last weekend I was out to dinner and drinks to celebrate my friend getting his dream job. We went to a restaurant in an entertainment complex, it has a casino, restaurants, bars and a theatre. I drove with a friend and when we got there we both needed to use the restrooms before going to dinner. Girls always go to the toilet in pairs of course.
The restrooms we went to were just outside the theatre entrance, there was a show later that evening so there were a few people waiting ahead of us for a toilet. My friend went ahead of me, and I was the last person waiting when an older woman walked in. She was dressed extravagantly in a delightful sunny yellow tweed dress & jacket, strings of pearls, gemstone brooches, gravity defying beehive kind of hair do... Not sure if she was going to the theatre or dinner at the captain's table on the Titanic?
At the time I was dressed up in typical Saturday night attire, in a black cocktail dress, heels, with full hair and makeup and a sparkly clutch tucked under my arm. So I'm standing there waiting to pee when the older woman glides past me towards the stalls. She sees they are all full and stops, turns on her heels and addresses me:
Lady: They're occupied? Me: Yep. She cocks her head to the side and throws me the same look as Taylor Swift at the start of the Shake It Off video. You know the face, that Mmm-hmm face. Lady: Yes? I realise then that she was being a condescending bitch and correcting my grammar. Me: Uhhh, yes? Lady: Mmm.
Yeah lol ok. I kind of stand there dumbfounded and I'm sure I actually smirked to myself a bit. Random stranger throwing shade at me? This will be a fun take to tell at dinner! The woman steps back towards the sinks where I am standing and looks like she is about to set her handbag down on the counter. She sees that it is wet and stops and turns to me again.
Lady: These counter tops are wet. Me: Yes they are. Lady: I could have ruined my handbag if I had not noticed that puddle there! Me: Is it real leather? You know you can protect it against water and stains using leather protector spray that they sell at shoe stores? ... I used to work in a shoe store. I spray all my leather shoes and bags so I guess that's why it came to mind? I tried to match her condescending tone when I said it, she definitely noticed.
Lady: Excuse me? Me: Yesss? Lady: I do not appreciate your unsolicited advice, you need to stop talking and clean this up! Does your generation not understand how to respect others?
At this point most people would have put two and two together and realised she thought I was a toilet attendant, but I'd had a few cheeky wines before we left the house and I've never seen a toilet attendant outside of the movies, so that hadn't occured to me yet. So I just stood there with a bemused look on my face, trying to come up with a sassy response. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders at me, as if to say "well?". I had nothing, I was too amused. I just let out a little giggle.
Lady: Good lord what is the matter with you?! She stomps towards me and reaches for the paper towel dispenser on the wall behind me, dramatically pulls a sheet out, and stomps back to the counter to wipe it down. Lady (ranting to herself): Useless, absolutely useless. Ridiculous! Teenagers are getting lazier and lazier! (lol, I'm 26) This is [theatre] for heavens sake! What is your name? Me: Uhh... Why? Lady: Because I am reporting you to your management!
Ooohhhhhh I get it now! It was so funny and so absurd to me that I did this weird laugh / scoff thing and nearly choked on my words. At this point my friend is finally done and is walking towards us from her stall.
Me: Oh my god do you think I work in here, in the toilet? I'm just waiting to pee! Lady: ... Me: Do toilet attendants even exist anymore? Me (to me friend): Are they even still a thing? Friend just shrugged. The woman had nothing to say back to me. She opened her mouth to say something but instead did this big dramatic sigh and stomped past me to the now vacant toilet stall. Bitch stole my place in line! I couldn't help myself and I called out after her: "Is your generation not familiar with waiting in queues?" Nailed it.
I decided then to be the bigger person and not wait around for round 2. We headed off to the restaurant where I finally peed in the toilet there.

[Excerpt from the Mecetti Prime Gazette translated to Human units based on your location.]
Dear Readers, have you ever watched a disaster unfold right in front of your eyes? It really is a macabre sort of fascinating. You can’t help but stare entranced, unable to look away; the whole time wondering how bad is this going to get and how you are going to survive. Such was my bewilderment as I set my gaze upon the unbelievable Human activity that is Revolution.
A revolution, you ask? Yes, dear readers a revolution: a large systematic rebuke of civil law, the anger of the masses come to a boil against society itself. And Humans are really, scarily, good at it. “But Hal’Tol!” you exclaim, “Everything you’ve written about Humans so far has led me to believe that these Humans live in a wonderful societal utopia, not entirely dissimilar to our Greater Galactic Core! How could you have misled me so?” And to that, I reply simply: what in the names of the great and many heavens led you to believe that a species that throws themselves out of flying airships for fun would have a grand, stable, and unified system of governance across their many scores of independent colonies?
Humans are apparently biologically incapable of agreeing on how to govern themselves. Just about the only thing they do agree on is the idea that they will never agree on anything political. Unlike some species that biologically organize into hives or others that have mostly just wandered into one fashion or another and stuck with it; Humans more or less said ‘literally everyone else is wrong, this is how it’s done’ and then forcibly took power, and ruled until the next bunch of Humans comes along, which is probably sometime next [week]. In summary: some systems last for longer than others, and some seem to only inspire a never-ending cycle of violent succession. Yours truly happened to find a front-row seat to one such less-than-peaceful event.
And before you skip to the end of the article looking for helpful tips, my advice to anyone in a similar situation is simple: Get. Off. Planet.
Out of the sector is better.
Moving from story to story I had taken up the practice of hanging around the different popular gathering locations in the city or station I was currently in after work. It’s nice to get to talk with people outside of a formal context and it gives me a great perspective on exactly how diverse Humanity can be. One [week] I’ll be exploring a casino with a millionaire and the next I will find myself in the only tavern in a mining station. In this instance, it happened to be one of those that got me in trouble.
Dmitri Korda owned a large stake of a recently developed asteroid mining operation in the outer reaches of Jebscort II, a Human territory that consisted of nothing but metal-rich asteroids and far from anyone else, which was exactly how Dmitri wanted it. We were currently discussing the current commodities market for heavy metals as Dmitri showed me around the largest gambling establishment I’d ever seen on Greenford, one of the more populous and prosperous of the Human colonies and was located no where near Jebscort II. The Borgata on Greenford was a truly enormous establishment, and was truly extravagant. But I could not appreciate any of the lavish beauty, because Dmitri had insisted that we both get our species’ respective versions of heavily intoxicated, and I was focusing intently on not falling over.
Sloshed, limp-jawed, pissed, three sheets to the wind, I don’t care what you call it – Dmitri and I were well and truly in our cups as he threw money around that building. It seemed that for every fistful of money he lost at the tables he downed another cocktail of alcohol. And he was very insistent that I keep up, he gave me enough spoonfuls of Yyidcri Fruit to make the colored lights in that building drip down the walls. This was all well and good; some simple harmless fun watching a new friend drink their wealth away, that is until Dmitri answered his phone, downed one last drink and promptly led me to the roof of the building where we entered a private shuttle bound for orbit. At this point I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was no longer on the shuttle. I was on a bed, a very soft and very short bed. An excellently furnished stateroom designed for Humans, then; I realized as I sat up and immediately watched the world explode into a rainbow of pain. Headaches, joint aches, stomach aches, every part of my body was the living definition of agony. So I bravely passed out and slept some more.
Eventually, after who knows how much time, Dmitri had one of his butlers come and roust me from my unconsciousness. Food and water helped what remained of the hangovers fade into painful memory and I began to feel like myself again. I was then brought to Dmitri’s lounge on what I was beginning to realize was an extremely large private yacht. “Hal’Tol! You look much better now that you’ve slept like the dead. How do you feel?” I explained that I felt well enough to never have another bite of Yyidcri Fruit again and he merely laughed.
The leisurely life of the ultra-rich is a fascinating thing, dear readers. Dmitri would spend [hours] on end laying about, relaxing, napping, eating, or simply doing nothing. His business mostly ran itself and his ‘work’ (if it can be called that) consisted mostly of talking to lawyers over the phone for a few minutes each day. Then he would congratulate himself on a job well done, have a drink and retire to his master suite with one or more of the female butlers he employed. Just watching him work so hard at doing so little made me exhausted.
We arrived after a mind-numbing amount of time at Oppetav, a water world. Only Humans would establish permanent settlement on a world with no land. Taking a private shuttle down to the largest city on the planet it occurred to me that I never asked what we were doing on Oppetav in the first place or why Dmitri had left so suddenly. “We are going to visit my sister, Alexi Korda.” He explained casually before laying down for a nap.
A quick search of my files told me that Alexi Korda was the iron-fisted dictator of the planet Oppetav and its surrounding colonies. The material wealth that the water world hid underneath its vast oceans fueled her wealth and military power. Her rise to power had been accomplished by the violent takeover of the previous, laissez faire democracy that had resisted extensive mining. The people had wanted a more industrious leader and Alexi gave that to them; now the planet was wealthy but the people were still poor. More than one or two whispers of revolution had managed to reach the Gazette’s files on the place, so I began to worry about how safe this little vacation really was.
Very rarely does one get to land on a private landing platform, step out of a private shuttle and walk into a palace, greeted by immaculately dressed servants. For all their wild and wandering ways, Humans can put on a very tight show when the occasion calls. I suppose if you’re a dictator, the occasion is always calling. Alexi greeted us briefly in a cavernous hall and then escorted Dmitri to a private study where they could discuss ‘family matters.’ In the few moments I was near her I was immediately terrified of her. Where Dmitri was certainly slovenly and boorish, he was friendly in his own way and had little care for business or work. He could always be counted on for a jesting comment or a winning smile. Alexi, to my eye, seemed the complete opposite. She said not two sentences to Dmitri as she pulled him away, and her eyes bored into you with a predatory stare that reminded me more of a soldier than a politician. And if she was capable of smiling I was sure it could only be a smile of cruelty, probably as she put pins into calculated positions on some small furry creature. The woman was just scary. Watching the two walk away was like watching the night and the day – one casually dressed in a soft robe, the other sternly marching in full military dress. A servant then showed me to my suite. It’s no wonder the wealthiest Humans are all thin, they get all their exercise simply walking around their houses!
Not only did I get tired walking to the wing where my suite was located, I actually got lost once I was inside it. A modest palace all to itself my new accommodations consisted of an anti-chamber, hall, living room, dining room, study, and a bedroom that sprawled through three sets of doors; not to mention the closets larger than my house on Mecetti Prime and bathrooms that were closer to spas than any water closet I’d encountered previously. Of course, being on a world mostly made of water the local style of high-end decoration was with tasteful waterfalls gently slipping down the marble walls with no discernable sound. I busied myself with answering mail for business and when that was over I sat around and watched some Human television.
Eventually someone came to fetch me for dinner, whereupon Alexi treated Dmitri and me, along with several other apparently important oligarchs and world leaders to a magnificent dinner of local seafood along with delicacies from the Greater Galactic Core. I remarked to Alexi that she must have a classically trained Parltrix master on her kitchen staff, such was the craftsmanship of the Core’s dishes and she replied that her head chef Joshua had studied in the GGC for several years before she insisted that he leave his restaurant and cook for her exclusively. I didn’t bother to ask how she had insisted this upon him. Small talk was made, excellent food was had and refreshments were served. I alternated my time between putting on a good face of enjoying Alexi’s sorties, chatting pleasantly with some of the less overbearing guests and generally orbiting around Dmitri, the only one I considered a friend at the dinner and the one least likely to imprison me indefinitely.
But eventually, Dmitri broke out the cards and the liquor. So I retired to my suite for the evening, the whole time wondering what in the world I was doing here with these people. My editor was clamoring for a new article, and this trip had detained me for so long that I needed to start immediately on something. The next morning I asked Dmitri and Alexi for permission to go exploring the city beyond the palace to find a quick little story so I could keep my job. More bemused than anything else they said that ‘of course I had free leave of the grounds’ and ‘whatever made you think otherwise?’ I refrained from mentioning the imposing [seven meter] wall around the entire complex and the guards that topped it.
The city (officially and subtly called Korda City) was very interesting. Arranged like an upside-down J with the palace at the North end and the city sprawling away to the Southeast, the buildings became less and less well-kept the further from the palace you went. I realized as I walked that if you weren’t within sight of the palace you were basically guaranteed to be destitute. This wasn’t a hard realization to come by; there was literally a second wall somewhere along the curve of the city that marked the ‘middle quarter’ from the rest of the city, and beyond that wall was poverty.
I began a routine: wake up in Palace Korda, entertain breakfast with my hosts and talk briefly with the other guests, then go out into the city and walk or take public transit further Southwest than I’d been the day before. This probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I was desperate for a story, and interesting characters make interesting articles. It took four days for me to reach the southernmost tip of the city, and the view from the harbor key at the tip was staggering. Hundreds of ships, each larger than the last queued up to unload their ores and minerals lined the horizon from edge to edge. I sat with a foreman over lunch and asked about the operation.
“Each ship there comes from a different mine, each a small city in its own right.” The heavily tanned man told me between bites of his dripping sandwich. “From there we unload the contents into prefab containers and load those containers onto the elevator where they get sorted and shipped up in orbit.” The space elevator of Korda was the only one on the planet and it only handled unpressurized materials, no passengers were ever transported on it. I suspected that this was a security measure and also a way of keeping people from fleeing off world.
In actuality, the only visible signs of the government being oppressive was the heavily militarized and highly visible police force, and the extremely low wages mandated by the government, which held de facto control over nearly all aspects of the economy. No one seemed willing to talk to me expressly about the situation when I asked, except for that foreman. “It’s downright criminal. You haven’t been here long enough to see the things they done to us. The secret police storming houses in the night, the random searches on the street. They think that because they have the guns they can keep all us down. We outnumber them by seven thousand to one. It’s not going to stand for long. Keep that in mind as you go back to that palace tonight, buddy.”
And with those ominous words I went back to Palace Korda. Two trains, one falling apart at the axles and one brand new took me to the steps of the massive building. Inside, preparations were well underway for the ball Alexi was throwing for her guests, and it was looking to be the largest such event I’d seen at the palace, or anywhere else for that matter. Hundreds of wealthy, rich, or merely important individuals were flocking to the palace from all over the sector in expensive cars, private shuttles, and even showing off their wealth on a planet with no terra firma by arriving in carriages drawn by dray animals. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be a more extravagantly dressed couple than the last and works of art on prominent display were each more priceless than the last.
The feast was historic, the liquor flowed like water from the walls, and everywhere you looked indulgence was the game of the hour. Dmitri introduced me to no less than seven of his cousins each the owner of a different asteroid claim somewhere, room after room of industry barons and oligarchs, a sheikh, four dukes, three duchesses, more princesses than I can remember, two prime ministers, one extra prime minister that was so drunk she forgot her own title and introduced herself as president, and even the head of a theocracy were shown to me throughout the evening. People got roaring drunk, dresses tore, punches were thrown and then forgiven, the whole event was a bigger, more out of control mess than I could have imagined. I personally walked in on eight couples and one group of five in the midst of … intimate moments over the course of the evening while searching for an unoccupied room to get some peace and quiet. One couple even asked me to join them! (I politely declined.) Humans don’t often cut completely loose and they rarely have the resources to do so with such vigor, but when they do I suggest you stay sober and far away.
So it went, and just as everything started to settle a little the whole world came crashing down around me. I was somewhere on the third floor, on a balcony getting some air when out in the harbor in front of me one of the large water borne yachts launched an enormous greed flare. Everyone, myself included, mistook this for a firework (a large pyrotechnic explosion intended for entertainment) at first, but slowly word got around that there was no fireworks display planned for the evening, and I started to get suspicious. My suspicion was confirmed when, as I walked around the party looking for Dmitri I instead found Alexi, completely sober somehow talking very urgently to her head of security. Then they both disappeared into her villa. Right at that moment, as the doors to her rooms were closing I had the most perfect view of the landing platform as every single shuttle on it fell away into the sea as the platform sheered off from the rest of the city in a series of dull thumps and bright flashes.
From the top of the stairs I had no idea what was happening out front of the party, but it must have been something terrible because waves of people were pressing in towards main hall from the front doors as the people who had just witnessed the demolition of the shuttle pad started to run forward. These two great masses of people collided on a dance floor and complete panicked chaos was unleashed upon the party. Seeing how the only sensible thing would be to move away from the crowd of dangerous, terrified, drunks I ran to the windows that overlooked the front of the building.
To say that a mob had formed would be an understatement. This was not your run-of-the-mill gathering of angry people. If there was a person living in Korda City that was not rioting and carrying some heavy object I would be very surprised. The crowd was at an angry stand off with a giant line of armed police forces, somehow already mobilized and ready to fend off the mob. On the top of the walls were even more troops, each with a few different weapons at their disposal. Right now they were launching chemical smoke deep into the crowd, and even from behind inside the house I could smell the sting in the air.
Further in the distance it looked like there was less control of the crowd than I had first guessed. Once you saw past the organized and stalwart front lines that occupied the square the city proper was a different story. Bonfires raged in streets, houses burned, and looting the nicer homes seemed to be more the point than any political statement. A group smaller in number than the large force out front of the palace, but better armed, was climbing the walls of the relatively undefended statehouse and launching flaming bottles at windows. It was then I realized what my problem was: I was inside the palace, where the angry mob wanted to be and once they were in there was no way to protect myself.
Just as panic gripped me I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. “Hal’Tol! Get away from the window, man!” Dmitri yelled as he dragged me back into the corridor, as streams of screaming partygoers ran past in every direction. He bundled me down the stairs, across halls and through the guests, sometimes using force to get them out of our way, always moving us to the eastward wing. Somewhere in the distance the sound of rifle fire sounded in jagged bursts and a monumental roar came up from outside. People inside the building were going absolutely crazy, grabbing art, food, drugs, and other people even as they scattered, panicking. There was really no place for them to run, the palace was built on the far end of the city, and there was only one land entrance and it was blocked by the mob. Dmitri didn’t seem too concerned, however and as the last bits of rifle fire sputtered to a halt he stopped at an unassuming door. He opened it, via some sort of DNA lock, and stepped inside, pulling me with him. As he was about to close the door behind us I caught a glimpse out the front windows, now being shattered by the horde of people. Uprooted paving stones came through the glass, followed by people waving heavy pipes or stolen rifles. One woman in an impractical ball gown tripped and fell crying at the entrance to our room, begging for a place to hide. Dmitri took one look at her made a face and slammed the door closed, only hear a scream as her hand blocked the door with a crunch. Dmitri kicked at her broken hand until she recoiled in pain and he could finally close it.
“What was that? What are you doing? What are we doing?” I shouted at him, completely certain that my life was going to end any second now. He ignored me and angrily closed three locks on the door. Somewhere above our heads some giant gun started firing, the deafening buzz audibly chewing through the structure of the palace. Someone was banging on the door to the room, and then nearby gunshots silence the knocking. When I looked away from the door, Dmitri was preparing a small speedboat for launch from some sort of mechanized floor built into the room. The floor opened underneath the boat and he moved over to the edge. I started to move to the boat too but Dmitri angrily threw me to the ground. “Family only! Just stay in the safe room! You’ll be fine!” He shouted, one fist raised threateningly. I stayed on the ground as he jumped in the boat, and I didn’t move as metal cables lowered it into the ocean before separating and spinning back up. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that someone had drilled holes in the bottom of his fancy escape boat.
I lay on the ground for a while longer, listening to the enormous gun continue to chew away upstairs. After several moments there was a loud pounding at the door, and on the third hit the locks came out of the wood and the door flew open. Three angry, blood spattered Humans with rags over their faces each brandishing stolen police rifles. They paused when they found no cowering rich people in the room and seemed to be puzzled by the sight of one very tired alien reporter on the floor and a large rectangular hole in the floor. A forth Human came through the door hefting the homemade battering ram that had opened it. He looked at me and laughed then pulled the mask down off his bearded face.
“No, no, no.” The dock foreman shook his head as he chuckled to himself. “What in the world are you doing, buddy?” I simply looked up at him and shrugged. He leaned over the hole in the floor. “Is that Dmitri Korda down there, knee deep in that sinking boat with no power?” “Yes it is. He’s the one who put me in this room.” The foreman laughed to himself, “No one will find him. And serves him right for the way he’s treating those miners out there on Jebscort.” The foreman stepped away from the edge and offered me his hand, which I took because there were no other options that I could see. He hauled me up to my feet and motioned the small group out of the room and into the chaos. “Stay close to me, buddy! He said as we emerged into the fight.
If I thought the mansion was nigh on a disaster area before I entered the room, it was surely one now. Entire walls were demolished. The bodies of rich and poor alike lay all over, some still rolling and moaning and bleeding. Occasional bursts of heavy fire from three stories up would crash through the ceiling sending friend and foe alike scattering for cover, not that the wielder seemed to care about either. Groups of rebels huddled together in corners away from the sight of the military and police forces that had taken up residence in some of the rooms and halls. Screams still echoed down the halls, but they were shorter solo performances rather than the chorus of voices that filled the halls not even an [hour] ago. “We’re going out a side entrance for you, buddy. We want to stay away from crazy Alexi and her 30 cal. upstairs.” The foreman said as we moved down the hall quickly to a side window against a garden. Individual scenes of revolution were visible even outside the building as we dropped out a window. People chased each other in ones or twos and a small firefight had broken out in a far corner of the property between a few teenagers and an elderly man with huge grey whiskers and a left breast full of medals.
From there we went out a gate in the wall, which turned out to be surprisingly easy to do in the correct company. The foreman took me over the transit station, where the train was still running despite the chaos. As we boarded the otherwise empty rail car he relaxed a little and sat down to watch the chaos in the palace across the square. Someone had gotten fed up and set fire to the west wing of the house, and it wouldn’t be too long before the rest went up too. When the train pulled away he spoke again, softer now that were away from the fighting, “I know that you don’t have all the information about all the things they did to us, so I’m not going to ask you to write about our cause or why what we did was right¹ .” I didn’t say anything as we passed over burning houses and looted stores. “I don’t even want you to write about any of this, to be honest. But I know you have to write something, and this is certainly a story. So, I’ll just ask you to keep in mind that we think we’re doing the right thing in all this. And yes, terrible things happened – murder and rape and all the other atrocities of revolution.” He waved his hand as if dismissing these things as merely part of the process. “But I think it’s worth it. To rid the worlds of those monsters, I’ll gladly blacken my soul if it means my children will never know their kind.” He meant it too, that much was obvious, and not just from the blood on his clothes and hands. I just sort of half-heartedly agreed and looked out the window.
When we transferred trains he commented, “you know the really ironic thing is that they forced us to build our homes with cheap materials – metal, pre-fab stuff. But their homes with the fancy wood and glass are the ones burning. We’ve got nothing to fear from the fires. I guess that’s irony, anyway. Never went to school.”
Eventually we reached the space elevator and he had some guys put me into a custom-made pressurized cargo box that they were using to smuggle high priority revolutionaries on and off world, and they sent me up to the station in orbit. From there I paid my way back to the more developed Human sectors on a cargo vessel. As we started accelerating out of the gravity well of Oppetav a few [days] later, well after the last of the old governments had been found and ended (including Alexi and her machine gun), and I had read up properly on all the terrible things that had been committed over the past [decade] by those people, I looked down at the planet and saw the still burning outline of Korda City against the inky black ocean and I knew that somewhere in that cold sea, Dmitri’s body was unrecovered somewhere. Then I closed the shade over the window and I smiled a sad little smile and had just one spoonful of Yyidcri Fruit in the memory of a monster.
May your futures be brighter than each yesterday, dear readers.
-Hal’Tol Valkin, Xeno Culture Correspondent, Mecetti Prime Gazette

• 1: For a full summary of the rights violations committed by the collective parties ousted from power during the Oppetav Revolution see the Sosa-Faulkner Commission’s 2,782-page report.

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Teen Titans #8 - Who is Cassie Sandsmark?

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Author: AdamantAce
Book: Teen Titans
Arc: Illumination
Event: Who is Donna Troy?
Set: 20
 
 
Blüdhaven wasn’t good for much. An old whaling town, the dirty, industrial cityscape was later transformed by wealthy, criminal investors, building its industrial district into a neon paradise, a city-sized casino idyllic as long as you never looked beneath the surface.
And though the Teen Titans were almost always preoccupied with minimising the rampaging of emerging metahumans, they would often strive to tackle the crime that lurked in the shadows cast by the neon lights. One such criminal was André LeBlanc.
See, the smarmy and greasy Angel Marin, one of the ‘philanthropists’ so cherished in Blüdhaven had held an exhibition to show off the depths of his riches, including his star piece: the Night Diamond, a priceless gemstone. This naturally presented a challenge for the self-styled ‘world's greatest jewel thief’ LeBlanc.
He was a wanted man internationally due to his masterful skills and cutting edge tactics, but targeting the home of such a dangerous man as Angel Marin, LeBlanc was - even to his own admission - pushing his luck.
The thief darted silently down the crime lord’s corridor, his footfalls suppressed by his rebalancing boots and his hi-tech jumpsuit hiding him from thermal sensors despite its garish white colour. On his cracked face sat a green monocle, which LeBlanc used to scan for traps in real time. As he ran, LeBlanc gripped the azure jewel tightly, the diamond no bigger than a golf ball despite its exorbitant worth. The man’s agility and resolve was unmatched for someone of his age, but unfortunately his resistance came in the form of three meddlesome teenagers.
Angel Marin slept soundly in his bed, LeBlanc having eluded all of his security, but the Teen Titans had already seen the thief’s approach. Thanks to a recent upgrade to Cyborg’s tech, the teen was able to piece together a wealth of technological information sources to track LeBlanc all the way from his previous heist, and now they were moments from thwarting him.
LeBlanc pushed into the drawing room, the window he had entered through still cracked open. But as the man emerged through the open doorway, the oak door immediately pushed shut. The thief turned back towards the door, drawing a glowing, white knife to slash out at whoever had pushed the door to, only to find an empty place. Furiously, he pivoted back toward the window, now to find the shadowy figure of the blue-clad vigilante blocking his path. Nightwing. LeBlanc threw his arm out, slashing at the slender assailant, only for Nightwing to strafe aside with a boastful cartwheel. “No thanks!” Nightwing spat, springing off of the ground and throwing himself at the thief. Quickly, he struck with his twin sticks, aiming to disarm the thief as well as snatch the stone from him in one fell swoop, but André wouldn’t unhand his prize so easily.
The thief swung out once more, with Nightwing this time much closer. Before the vigilante could bounce back, he cried as the searing hot blade streaked across his chest, cutting through his black-and-blue armour as if it were butter, exposing his pale and bleeding flesh.
“Heh.”
Recoiling, the vigilante brought his hand across his chest, wiping the blood aside before clutching at his sticks once again. Nightwing leapt vertically and hooked his sticks around the industrial-looking chandelier above, using it to fling himself across the room to intercept the white-clad thief who continued his way to the open window. He landed and - stick still in hand - threw a fist out, striking LeBlanc cleanly in the nose.
The thief staggered, dazed. He would have just shot the kid if he had even brought a gun, though in his line of work a firearm was such a clumsy weapon. Narrowing his gaze on the dark figure he faced, LeBlanc focused himself. How strong could one kid be? Arrogant as ever, he then threw his knife aside and slipped the Night Diamond into his white satchel. He brought up his fists, ready to exchange blows.
The two men clashed, and quickly LeBlanc began to impress Nightwing as he dealt fast and powerful strikes. As they traded attacks, blocking and leaping up and down, they almost seemed to dance with each other, with LeBlanc using his streamlined gauntlets to deflect strikes from Nightwing’s escrima sticks. But LeBlanc caught Nightwing off-guard when he delivered a spinning kick to the vigilante’s head, flooring him with a manoeuvre Nightwing never would have expected from a man approaching forty. Though as LeBlanc turned away with a sneer, seemingly having bested the Gotham crimefighter, he turned to find himself face-to-face with none other than a towering, green gorilla. With a single punch, he was out.
“You know, I don’t know why you didn’t just let me just punch him sooner,” Gar grinned, morphing back to human form. As he rose from the ground, Dick produced a pair of black boxer shorts from his belt compartment, unfurling them and throwing them the way of the nude, green child as if it were a regular occurrence (which, by this point, it was).
“That’ll be because we’re sitting in the house of a dangerous gangster,” Dick smiled coolly, his hand pouring over his throbbing head, “Ever heard of ‘lowkey’?”
“Ah, you got me there!” Gar exclaimed, slightly quieter this time, “I’m many things but lowkey isn’t one of them.”
“Nice work though,” Dick replied, before activating his communicator, “Cyborg: you still on overwatch?”
Beat.
“Cyborg?”
Vic spluttered, suddenly bursting in over comms, “Yeah. Of course, sorry just got distracted by… things...”
“Finlay,” Dick continued, “Of course. I’m sorry. Look, head back to the roof of Iris Cove Casino, and we’ll regroup with you there.”
“Got it.”
Since Dick had discovered that it was an associate of Vic’s father, Jacob Finlay, who was responsible for stealing the Cyborg blueprints, as well as springing the metahumans that almost killed Vic, he had wanted nothing less than see the crooked physicist see what was coming to him. But what he couldn’t have expected was for the doctor to turn up dead - his neck wrenched - in Gotham River. It was a tragedy, and not at all what the man deserved.
The Teen Titans had attempted to follow up on the death, but had found nothing. That was until Dick received a clandestine call from Silas Stone.
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
The fifteen-year-old Cassandra Sandsmark emerged from the Music Box Theatre wide-eyed, her mind blown. Growing up in Buckinghamshire, England, Cassie had always dreamed of seeing a Broadway show, and it was every bit as amazing as she had expected it to be.
Her mother was an archaeologist, and therefore was often away for long periods of time, and when Cassie wasn’t couped up at her boarding school, her grandparents were too old and untrusting - despite their riches - to fly her out to New York. And though Cassie had finally gotten her wish, it was through the most distressing of circumstances. Now, though Cassie was raised by a strictly Christian family, she always found difficulty in believing in a God for one reason or another, so imagine her surprise when she was visited by the image of what appeared to be an angel, imploring her to flee to New York City, of all places, that she was being hunted and would only be safe within the bounds of that city so far across the pond. No answers, only urgency.
And so, the Fear of God firmly instilled in her, the fifteen-year-old stole as much money as she could from her grandfather’s bank account and grabbed the first plane ticket to the United States.
Though Cassie honestly didn't know what to expect. Upon arriving in the ‘greatest city in the world’ she had heard nothing from the otherworldly figure that had addressed her before, and she quickly began to realise that she couldn't occupy herself in her hotel room for very long. And hence, she decided to indulge herself in an overpriced visit to Broadway, and it was worth every penny to the young girl.
But now Cassie was lost once again. Cars hurtled past her along the wide road, as monolithic buildings stretched high into the jet black sky. There wasn't a moment of silence, the city filled with a cacophony of noise, even at this hour. Quickly, she pushed over to the nearest taxi, pulling her red hoodie up tight over her slender shoulders to keep out the quickly emerging chill. As the driver rolled his window down, Cassie doubled over, peering through the window to address him.
“Hello? Do you go to the White Ram Hotel?” she chirped in a polite tone.
“Do I!?” the driver exclaimed. He was a middle aged man with olive skin and a sleazy black tracksuit. “This ain't the subway. I’ll take you anywhere you want, hot stuff!”
“Excuse me?!” Cassie cried, pulling herself up. Sure, she was more developed than other girls in her year at school, but she was only fifteen. Surely he could see that! Right?
“I love me a British accent,” the driver sneered, “Say somethin’ sexy and I’ll give you half fare!”
Cassie was flustered and infuriated. Slamming her foot down on the pavement, she pushed away. “I’ll think I’ll walk, thank you very much!!”
And so Cassie took off down the street, walking against the flow of heavy traffic, the sounds of the city growing more fierce. Quickly, the black of the night seemed to slowly seep in around her, the darkness consuming her, but Cassie kept plodding on towards the White Ram.
As Cassie walked, a enigmatic presence lurked in the distance, watching her; stalking her from the shadows. There was a quality to Cassie, something powerful that just made her unignorable, something that called to the presence in the dark.
Unbeknown to this, Cassie continued on, eventually coming to pass the exterior of an old Irish pub that stretched along the street. Nervously, Cassie pulled up the hood of her red hoodie and picked up her pace, the footfalls of her black Chucks growing heavier against the concrete sidewalk. Something she’d call the pavement.
Though Cassie wouldn’t get off so easy as from the pub, right as she passed its doors, emerged three men of varying levels of intoxication, all swaying with the breeze. They each looked around thirty and each similarly struggled to keep their balance as they poured out onto the street. Quickly, one caught a glimpse of the young girl attempting to hurriedly make away, catching the side of her face as she walked past. “Hey!” He blurted out, steadying his lacking weight on his friend’s shoulder, bottle in hand. “You’re very pretty!! You should be… v… very proud.”
She ignored him and continued down the street, still a while off the next corner.
“Hey–” he repeated before bursting into a cry, “I SAID HEY!!”
Cassie jolted, glancing over her shoulder for just half second, enough time for a few of the boys to catch her eye. She turned away and continued on.
“HEY!!” Another man called after Cassie, this time annoyed, “He’s talking to you!!”
“Fucking bitch…” the first man mumbled to himself.
“No!” the third man called out, pulling the first man forward and snapping him out of his sulk, “N– No she doesn’t get to ignore you like that!!”
The third took off in a sprint after Cassie, continuing to define call out, “My friend wants to talk to you!!”
The first and second men looked to each other, too drunk to roll their eyes, and began to stumble after their leading friend. Cassie looked over her shoulder once more to see the three men clambering towards her. But before she could run, the man threw himself in the way of her path.
“No need to be rude…” he grumbled, his friends then catching up behind.
None of the men were cruel, but all were plenty menacing as they surrounded the 15-year-old girl, who stood alone and afraid in a city mostly unknown to her.
“Get out of my way…” Cassie seethed, her breath unsteady as she pretended to be as tough as she could muster.
“Ah! British!” exclaimed the youngest of the men, the one who had first noticed Cassie, “I like British!”
He placed a hand forcefully on Cassie’s shoulder as she faced away from him, and pulled her around to face him. “C’mere.” Instinctually, Cassie reacted, flinging herself back, and crashed into the chest of the man who had first pursued her.
“We ain’t gonna hurt ya!” the crushing man cried, only for Cassie to react by delivering a swift kick to the man’s groin. He fell quickly, groaning in pain.
“What the fuck, lady!?”
The man behind her jostled Cassie’s shoulder, threatened and enraged. Taking no shit, Cassie turned socked the man in the jaw, causing him to stagger back.
“Stay away from me!!” she cried before punching him once again, unaware of the third man behind her as he drew a knife.
But as the man threw himself forward to slash out at the increasingly violent young girl, out of nowhere flew a glowing gold chain that seemed to magically wrap itself around the wrist of the man’s knife hand. And with one quick tug, the man went flying several feet. Though as Cassie turned to see just what had occurred behind her, she saw not the floor assailant, but a woman, tall and draped in black, her skin lightly tanned and her hair as dark as her plated armour. “You need to come with me.”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
The next morning, Dick Grayson pushed hurriedly through the S.T.A.R. Labs security checkpoint, already a registered visitor at this point. He didn’t know the cause of Silas summoning him, but he had guessed from the police cars lined up on the street outside that the scientist likely had information regarding Finlay’s death.
And as Dick entered the central lab, he was implicitly proved correct as he found Silas seated, the figure of a tall, muscular man in a beige coat and a black-banded, white cowboy hat. Immediately, Dick recognised the lone policeman as NYC Sheriff Saunders. It was rare that the man ever came out to investigate first hand since his election, and he and Dick had never crossed paths, especially while the latter was Nightwing.
“And… Dr Finlay: any reason to believe he had any enemies?” the Sheriff spoke in a gruff, deep tone, befitting of his fearsome silhouette and his fifty years of smoking. The man was no nonsense.
Silas took a second. A part of him wanted to pretend the man was a saint, but the truth was that he was far from it. Similarly Silas knew that what he had to said could incriminate himself, but was already worn down by the death of his coworker and his son shunning him for a second time. He had no time for lies.
“It was... I strongly suspect it was Finlay who allowed the meta thief - Selinda Flinders - to break into the lab. There, she not only freed her brother but also stole my blueprints for the cybernetics I used to treat my son from a safe that only myself and Finlay knew even existed.”
The Sheriff took a deep breath, still unaware of Dick standing in the doorway behind him. Carefully, he jotted down some notes in his small paper pad. “And what would Dr Finlay have wanted those… blueprints for? Industrial espionage?”
“No,” Silas sighed, “He wanted them so that he could save his brother the way I saved Victor, despite all my protests that the technology wasn’t ready.”
“His brother: This is Arthur Finlay, correct? Paralysed after a burglar attacked him in 2006.”
“That is correct.”
Saunders paused and took another long, deep breath, before launching into hurried speech. “Now it’s funny you should mention that as Arthur Finlay was nowhere to be found when we visited his estate earlier this week. Odd for a man who can't wipe his own ass.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s entirely possible that Dr Finlay– that Jacob succeeded in ‘fixing’ his brother.”
Beat.
The Sheriff smiled. “But that’s for me to chase up. Sorry, I shouldn’t have divulged that with you, - it’s as of current - entirely unfounded.”
“It’s fine.” Silas smiled tiredly, “We can all speculate. Now, if you don’t mind, I have another visitor.” Silas gestured graciously towards the door, where Dick Grayson was standing.
Sheriff Saunders looked across and his face immediately dropped, realising his mistake. “Ah, I see. Well, I won’t keep you then. Thank you for your insight, Dr Stone. We’ll be in touch.”
Quickly, the Sheriff wrapped up his notepad and made his way over to the door. As he exited, he tipped his hat towards the young spectator. “Nice to meet you, young man.”
And he was gone.
Silas stood, meeting Dick in the centre of the lab. “You know, I thought he’d never leave.”
“Was that it, Dr Stone?” Dick asked, perturbed, “You think Jacob’s brother killed him?”
Silas sighed. “That seems to be the leading theory, but no, that’s not why I called you.”
“Then what–”
“Christmas has come and passed, and this is the first year I’ve spent it without my Victor since he was born, the first year since my Elinore…”
Silas blinked.
“I wanted to give you a package. A gift. To give to Victor. A belated Christmas present.”
“He’s still not talking to you?”
Silas crawled along to his desk where, from a lower drawer, he produced a small purple box tied with a red bow, no bigger than a ring box. He held it out to Dick, his eyes so tired.
“Just please make sure Victor opens it,” he replied, “Won’t you do that for me, Richard?”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
Silently, a robed figure approached the derelict apartment block in Avalon, Blüdhaven. This was the only known address for the Teen Titan known as Cyborg, but clearly circumstances had forced him to move on. The figure sighed, shaking her head before moving on.
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
“It was like my nan always said: that someday I’d feel something, and all that crap about burning bushes and… the big man in the sky would just slip into place.”
As Cassie spoke in the relative warmth of the drab, grey squat, her words were lost on Donna, who - despite having developed more than adequate conversation skills - had no idea what the young girl was talking about after she had asked her why she had come to New York City.
Cassie grinned, sat on the only chair in the apartment, as she registered her saviour’s bemusement. “I had a vision. It sounds crazy I know, but some angel came down and told me that… I was being hunted… and that I’d only be safe if I came to New York.” Her eyes were wild, as if she were reliving those impossible moments as she told the tale, “She told me some monster wanted to kill me, that it was the plan of the Gods that I remained safe. Truth is, I struggled believing in one God, never mind plural!”
Donna was beginning to understand, but remained bemused as she looked up from the floor to the girl she had found herself driven to protect. The idea that anyone could believe in just one God perplexed her. Surely there would be too many responsibilities for just one God to handle.
Shaking off her confusion, Donna stood up from the floor and made her way to the open window. Behind her, Cassie sat by the breakfast bar, wrapped in a shawl Donna had found in the bedroom. Donna needed to understand the connection she shared with this girl. They had to be connected somehow, or else what would explain the otherworldly, gut-wrenching pull towards her that Donna had experienced as soon as Cassie had stepped within a thousand mile radius.
Who was Cassie Sandsmark? That’s what Donna kept asking herself. What did Cassie mean to her? Though Donna supposed that to answer that question, she’d have to figure out just who she was herself.
Cassie sat up quickly, shrugging off her trepidation for the thrill of the adventure. “So is that it then?” she asked. Donna moved away from the glass to face her. “Are you my guardian angel? The person the vision said would protect me?” “I…?” Donna honestly didn’t know.
“Come to think of it: why are you wearing battle armour?” Cassie’s eyes were wide as she looked upon her fearsome protector, stood against the New York City skyline through the thin glass, “Are you - like - one of those Amazons? Like Wonder Woman?”
“NO.” Donna spat, suddenly recoiling. Immediately, she realised her mistake as she watched Cassie flinch back. Calmly, she elaborated. “No. I’m nothing like… I’m not Wonder Woman…”
“Oh.”
“But I think I am supposed to keep you safe… from whatever monster is trying to harm you.”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
Vic fumbled with his keys, half distracted by his conversation with Gar as he stood in the hallway of his new apartment block on Payton Street, attempting to unlock the door. He’d gotten into his new place over Christmas, his last home desolated when Shimmer and Mammoth attacked him at his home.
“So the guy goes through all the trouble of hiring these supervillains to steal your… thing and then just mysteriously ends up dead?” Gar jested, his voice animated and non-serious.
Finally, Vic turned the key and the two entered into his new apartment. The place was much more spacious than Vic’s previous place, with a more open-planned layout which Gar definitely considered an upgrade. Though a winter chill emanated through the place, visually it was quite warm, the Christmas decorations still up and on full display almost a month later.
“The guy was my dad’s friend, Gar.” Vic replied, irritated. “If he weren’t such a jackass, he’d be like my uncle, so please take this seriously.”
Vic pushed forward, pulling off his thick, grey hoodie and laying it across the arm of his couch along with his keys.
“Dude, he tried to kill you!” exclaimed Gar, “That doesn’t exactly scream close family friend.”
“A man is dead!” Vic snapped, his tone now deadly serious, something entirely unheard by Gar until now from his usually somber but amicable friend, “Get a grip.”
Gar lingered in the doorway. He took a deep breath. Vic was right. “I– I’m sorry, man. I guess that’s just how I cope with... things. He was your friend, I get it.” He stepped forward, slowly pushing the door shut behind him.
Jacob Finlay wasn’t a friend of Victor’s. In fact, Vic could never stand the man. But it saddened Vic deeply to know that he was gone, even after all the hurt he had caused him.
Slowly, Vic made his way over to the fridge, feeling his stomach yearn for a snack. He opened the metallic white door and looked upon its contents with disappointment. He sighed.
“I know we just got in, but do you fancy heading back out for food?” Gar suggested earnestly, “I know a diner that’s cool with people like us in downtown Blüd.”
’People like us’. Vic was used to that meaning something else, but he supposed he did have that in common with his plucky, if not crass, young friend. They were both outcasts due to their appearance. Vic was half-metal, Gar was green. On the rare occasions Vic had left the house as himself (rather than the superhero Cyborg) he made sure to never stay too long in one place, as to avoid anyone noticing his horrific visage under his shadowy hood.
“How do you mean?”
“This old couple owns the place,” Gar explained, “Man’s blind and the lady’s… well, actually open-minded and reasonable.”
Vic froze, actually considering the proposal. It’d been a long time since he’d sat down in a restaurant - however fancy - and eaten out. He looked to the empty, open fridge and then back to his discarded hoodie. His eyes flashed.
“Sure,” he smiled, “You wanna grab your coat this time? You’ve been complaining about the cold all day!”
Gar grinned back at Vic, deeply pleased by his response. “Yeah, one sec!” He ran, bounding across the floor and over to the hat stand Vic rarely seemed to use. From there, Gar pulled down his orange-red Parka and pulled it on in one fluid motion. As he did, Vic made his way to the couch and slipped back into his hoodie, zipping it up slowly.
The two smiled at each other and Vic - now stood closer to the door - pushed forward, wrapping his metal grip around the door handle and pulled it down. As he swung the door open, there stood a startled Dick Grayson, moments from ringing the doorbell"
“Woah!” Dick jumped.
“Dick!” Gar exclaimed, “We’re heading out to eat, you coming?”
“You?” Dick replied, pleasantly surprised to see Vic trying something new. “Uh, yeah… sure!”
From the pocket of his black pea coat, Dick produced the purple box he’d been handed earlier, nervously fidgeting with it between his hands slightly as he glanced up and down from it to Vic. “Though, uh… I actually came to give you this, Vic.”
Dick held the box out. Vic looked open-eyed to Gar and then back to him. “Dick, you already got me a Christmas present,” he laughed, walking over and taking the purple-wrapped present, eyeing it curiously.
“No, it’s… it’s from your dad. Cos you missed Christmas.”
Beat.
Vic looked back up to Dick. “Dick, I missed Christmas cos I can’t stand the man. He made me into this… thing, and it was his lies that almost got me killed.” Without even looking, Vic tossed the box over his shoulder, it hitting the ceiling and ricocheting before landing between the couch and the television.
“Vic…” Gar moaned disappointedly.
“What?!” Vic cried, “He’s human garbage. Has that brilliant mind and uses it to constantly fuck with my life. I don't need him. He’d be better off dead.”
Dick and Gar both looked at him in stunned silence. Dick’s eyes flitted back and forth and his moved out of the doorway and into the apartment. He looked to Gar, an orphan like himself, and then to Vic. He nodded. “How about we go get that dinner?”
Vic took a breath, calming himself. He nodded reluctantly, his confidence shaken but determined not to let his dad ruin his victory. “Right, yeah. Sure!” he affirmed himself. “I– I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”
“It’s fine.” Dick smiled, turning to face the open doorway, “Let’s just g–”
Just as Dick had moved, replacing him in the doorway was a tall, hooded figure: one none of the teens had met before yet one that all three recognised.
“Holy fuck!” Gar exclaimed, “It’s Wonder Woman!”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
“I was speaking with my former teacher Athena after I sla–” “Wait, Athena?” Gar interrupted, starstruck, as if he were taking notes, “As in Popped Out of Zeus’ Forehead Athena?” Diana nodded solemnly. The Amazon sat on a kitchen chair, comfortably at a level to explain herself to the three young men, who each stood.
“Athena revealed to me a child of both Ares and Circe roamed the man’s world, that… an adversary of mine sought to hurt the child, for the misdoings Circe had committed against her.”
Diana told the tale, her eyes hollow as she seemed to hold back some inconvenient truths, something Dick picked up on easily, “I was told that I would find the child in New York City, and knew that Batman had established a strike team nearby. So here I am, hoping you can lend me your assistance.”
Dick sighed, running his hand through the front tuft of his dark hair. He’d never met the Amazon warrior before, but knew that she and Bruce were friendly, with Diana being part of his ‘Justice League’ initiative. But Dick was disappointed to hear how the Teen Titans were perceived by the older heroes. “Batman had nothing to do with it. I formed this team, uh… we formed this team. Together.”
Diana smiled. “Of course.”
“So that’s all you know?” Vic replied, addressing the matter at hand, “Some kid is in danger in New York City. No idea whereabouts?”
“That was where I was hoping that you could help me,” said Diana, addressing Vic directly.
Vic smiled softly to have garnered any sort of attention from somebody as powerful and well… beautiful as Wonder Woman. “Well I suppose we could tr–”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with that other Wonder Chick running about New York? Does it?” Gar interjected, perhaps a bit louder than he had intended.
Diana cocked her head, moving her vision away from Vic and towards Gar, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“This amazing, gorgeous warrior. Long, flowing black hair. This awesome armour, all jet black and mysterious. She looked a lot like you actually.”
Diana’s eyes darted open as she bolted to her feet. Could it be? The doppelganger she had faced in the Trials, who had fought with her own skill and ferocity.* Had Ares sent her here? It was more than possible that she was an emissary of Ares, posthumously working to secure Ares’ progeny.
It was as Athena had said to Diana: death was the only way to transfer the mantle of God of War.*
“Gods…” she groaned, “I’ve fought her before. She is far more dangerous than the woman I seek to stop. If she gets her hands on Ares’ daughter, the consequences could be dire. We need to find them both and pray that she hasn’t already found her.”
Dick stepped forward. “I’ve been trying to locate this black-armoured Amazon since Gar ran into her a couple months back. She’s been being very discrete. I’ve tried everything.”
Vic stepped forward. “I haven’t.”
 
♦ ♦ T ♦ ♦
 
“Don’t you have any games? Or a telly or something?” Cassie sighed, stood peering out of the frosted window onto the New York skyline.
“Telly?” Donna asked, standing a few feet behind Cassie, surrounded by a whole load of nothing. “I’m afraid not. This place doesn’t have much outside of shelter, and sometimes warmth.”
“Then what do you do for fun?” Cassie had been cooped up in Donna’s squat for some time now and was beginning to grow restless. Despite the drab decor, the place was an improvement on sitting alone in her hotel room, but the boredom was killing her.
“I’ve found the city to be the best source of entertainment,” Donna explained very matter-of-factly, “Although I think it might be best for us to stay put until we know you are safe.”
“And when is that? When the thing hunting me gets bored? When I get a follow up message from the angel?”
“I don’t think that was an angel.”
“That isn’t the point!” Cassie groaned, frustrated. “I just wanna have some fun!”
Donna stopped. She thought for a moment and then nodded. “Alright.”
Donna couldn’t recall much of her past, but did remember one thing that she had always enjoyed: combat. She didn’t remember all the details, but Donna used to love sparring as a child, with Diana, the monster that now plagued her nightmares. It was always so exciting, and it really seemed to develop an interpersonal closeness between the combatants. She smiled before removing her silver gauntlets slowly.
“Here.”
“What?” Cassie asked.
“Take them.” Donna held the gauntlets out for Cassie, one in each hand. Carefully, the younger girl took them and slipped her wrists into them.
“They’re too big.”
Donna grinned as the gauntlets seemed to magically adjust, twisting and forming into a perfect fit around Cassie’s forearms. Donna then flicked her own wrist forward, causing a cloud of black smoke to erupt from the palm of her hand. Cassie recoiled, watching the black smoke move and stretch before giving way to the form of a solid, golden sword. Donna gripped the blade tightly and pointed it forward.
“Wait, what?”
“We shall fight?”
“Fight?!”
“Well, you won’t have a weapon, so it’s more like exchanging blows. I’ve found it quite enjoyable.”
“Right…” Cassie replied, reluctant, “So what’s gonna happen?”
“I will make an attack with my blade, and you shall bring up your gauntlets to intercept. You’ll find them more than capable of deflecting my attacks.”
“Like…?” Cassie practiced thrusting her arms back and forward, flashing the silver gauntlets as she moved.
“Exactly! We’ll start slow.”
And they did. Beat-by-beat, Donna would move the sword towards Cassie, giving her plenty of time to bring up her gauntlets to clink against the blade. One strike. Two strikes. Three strikes. Four. Gradually, Donna increased her speed, and with her Cassie would begin to move with increasing ease and agility. She was a natural.
As they grew more and more rapid, their movements also increased in intensity. Before they knew it, both began to shift their footing until they were dancing back and forth around the room, sparks flying each time Donna’s blade crashed against Cassie’s forearms. First, Cassie began to cackle with laughter, then allowing Donna to join with a more conservative chuckle. But all this ceased with a knock at the door.
They stopped. Cassie glanced over to the door first, then Donna. They weren’t expecting visitors. Donna flourished the blade in her hand, furrowing her brow and narrowing her gaze, ready to attack whatever came through.
And just as expected, the door came crashing, the wood obliterated into splinters. Through it leapt a fearsome warrior clad in red and gold, a beast of a woman, a terrifying figure. The demon Diana.
Nightwing had tried to knock, but the Amazon warrior wasn’t willing to wait. Bursting into the room, Diana charged at Ares’ puppet, seeing her with her blade drawn, the young Cassie Sandsmark terrified beside her.
Donna slashed out as Diana came crashing down on her, unarmed yet incredibly dangerous, but the strike was fruitless as Diana evaded with ease, delivering a mighty punch to the centre of Donna’s chest. Diana of Themyscira didn’t need a weapon.
Donna stumbled, kicking over a small coffee table as Cassie scrambled out of the way. The demon moved incredibly quickly, far faster than Donna could comfortably comprehend. She hadn’t been this fast when they’d fought before. First, another punch to the chest, then grabbing Donna by the arm - catching her sword strike - to pull her close, only to pound her back into the ground.
As Donna hit the ground, she skidded, whipping back around onto her feet, beaten but ready to persist. “Your master is dead,” Diana seethed, “And you shall fall with the rest of his forces!”
As the two warriors clashed, Cassie scurried away, ducking and running for the door. However, she found herself blocked by the bodies of three young men: one some kind of robot man, one green and the other clad in blue and black spandex. “Ack!”
“We’re not gonna hurt you!” Cyborg panicked, holding his large, cold hands up.
“Like shit you don’t!” Cassie spat, her teeth clenched, pivoting back around to watch her friend fight off the red-and-gold blur of a woman. Wait... That was Wonder Woman!
Donna grumbled, moving her sword arm back and shifting her off-hand forward. She then allowed her bronze shield to materialise magically in her grip with a flash of amber light. “I see you have new toys.” Diana smirked, her gaze as steely as her black-clad doppelganger.
She was right. Donna recalled easily that in their last encounter, the one that haunted her, she fought Diana unarmed. Now, Donna couldn’t recall how she came to wield the magic required to summon her weapons, but she was more than happy to use them if it meant having an edge over the tyrant that had previously terrorised her.
Donna didn’t reply. Instead, she threw herself forward, shifting her weight rapidly across the wooden floorboards, heaving the mass of her shield against Diana enough to stagger her, giving her an opening to strike with her blade. Diana cried out and kicked, colliding her leg into her adversary’s shield and dragging her strike to the right.
Donna saw through this trick immediately, it was an attempt to disarm; to wrench the shield right from her hand. It wouldn’t work. Not if Donna kept as best a grip as she could. However, Donna had underestimated the strength of her foe, and subsequently found herself launched across the room along with the shield, leaving her sword by her feet, crashing down on a pile of wood in the corner of the shabby apartment.
She attempted to pull herself up, but couldn’t, her armour too heavy on top of the weight of her aching bones. Diana persisted however. Breathing heavily, she pulled herself over to her floored quarry, scooping her foe’s blade off of the ground as she moved. Finally, she stopped. Planting her crimson boots into the wooden floor, Diana loomed over Donna, a relentless, fearsome monster.
Diana looked upon her quarry, this supposed emissary of Ares, deliberating over her fate. Perhaps she had overestimated her, for the puppet Diana had fought during the Trials fought with such ferocity and intensity that she now found entirely lacking. It was as if she was another soul inhabiting the body of that abomination.
But that moment of hesitation on Diana’s part was exactly what Donna need to act. In one fluid motion, Donna burst from her pile on the floor with new mobility. After delivering a kick to the monster’s head, Donna swung her empty hand out in a wide arc. Instantly, the sword vanished from Diana’s grip, reappearing in Donna’s own with a black flicker.
As Diana staggered, Donna let loose with slash after slash before finally winding up for an overhead attack, a killing blow. However–
“STOP!!”
A shock wave exploded through the room, launching its contents as well as the two combatants. Donna hit the ground and skidded once more. Bloodied, she looked up to see Cassie between her and Diana, her silver gauntlets glowing white hot, her face mortified.
“She doesn’t want to hurt you!” she screamed to Donna before turning to look upon Diana, scraping herself off of the floor, “You don’t want to hurt each other.”
Donna stood up uneasily, her eyes still wild, waiting for Diana to attack once again.
“I…” Diana mumbled, gripping her bloodied arm.
“You’re Wonder Woman. You save people.” Cassie explained, her voice compassionate yet quivering, “And I don’t need saving. Not from Donna. She’s my friend.”
Diana painted, finally looking upon her adversary with new eyes, “... Donna?”
Donna’s eyes flickered, filled with doubt. She looked to Cassie, then finally to Diana, and instead of a demon, saw an injured woman. She lowered her sword.
Diana saw this and recalled her parting words to the black-clad warrior, when Diana had pummeled her into the bloody waters during the Trials. 'Barely real and always a copy. What kind of emptiness must exist inside you?'
But when she focused on Donna’s eyes, those that so closely resembled her own, she saw not the rage she had seen during the Trials, but fear. Pure fear. There, she remembered.
“Great Hera, what have I done…” Diana groaned, looking upon her friend with a long forgotten familiarity. “Donna…”
But the moment wouldn’t last, for Gar was moments too late to cry out, warning them as a fearsome feline figure crashed through the window, emerging from the urban jungle of New York City’s skyline. There, the animal moved immediately for Diana, launching into an all out assault, no longer Dr Barbara Minerva, but The Cheetah.
 
 
Next: The Party is Divided in Wonder Woman #21