The Cat-teen's back on another Job y'all! Trouble was, I had to get this written before Dark Kamikaze attempted to force it out of me (jk.) Ever wonder what became of Daimen? Still stuck in Stonegate? Now come on, y'all didn't really believe that, did you? Well, check out Dark Kamikaze's fic Escape to find out how he managed to get out. Enjoy!

Prologue

My name is Syren O'Malley, but screw that. I don't use it. I'm the Dark Syren. They say that Gotham is over-populated with heroes, and okay, so maybe it is. But with the Bat taking care of the mad ones, the Birds of Prey on his side, and the Triquetra taking care of the younger villains, who is there to go for the real underdog? The thugs and back street gangsters who are going to be a problem to any of those eventually? I'll tell you. There's me. That's where I come in.

I first came to this God-forsaken city from Ireland when I was sixteen. I was coming to live with my brother Daly. He was on the police force here, ironically. But when I arrived at the airport, he wasn't there to meet me like he'd said. So I tried his phone and his pager and tried his home line and everything, but no answer, so I just kind of hung a round for a couple of hours. That was before I got worried and called a cab to take me to his apartment. But when noone came to the door, it was a sickly, rancid smell that met me. I knew I had the address right, so I picked the lock, knowing there was something wrong. But sometimes I wish I'd just stayed on the plane and gone back home. What I saw, I will never forget.

Daly... dead... Slashed to pieces like a slab of meat. The first thing I remember is being violently sick, then screaming for help, and then calling the police. My first frigging day in Gotham was the worst day of my life. The next couple of weeks are a bit of a blur looking back, but eventually, the police were able to tell me he had been murdered by thugs. However, they wouldn't tell me who they were working for at the time. Something to do with a lack of evidence, if memory serves me. Eventually, however, I managed to drag a suspicion from some of his friends.

Maybe vigilantism wasn't the smartest idea that popped into my head at the time, but in this town, the black mask and dagger approach seemed a lot more reasonable than it would in Dublin. So that's what I did. Having all Daly's old police connections didn't hurt, but after a lot of work I managed to find out that the gangster to be held responsible for my brother's brutal murder was also into illegal gambling. It's strange, but I think it was a form of mourning. It was like I was doing exactly what he had tried to do by shutting the guy down.

It wasn't much, and it wasn't hard, but I know I shouldn't have done it. It was an old wooden building, hovering on the end of a pier on the waterfront. All it took was one pretty little match in the right place, and within minutes the entire building was in flames. Of course, Ace Memphis, the lord of the establishment, took the time to try and save his precious money, so I found him in a frenzy by his makeshift vault. I practically jumped him with a dagger in each hand.

He gabbled like an idiot until I rolled one of the blades in against my arm and slapped him in the face with the hilt. "Get up," I instructed him. It had to be a strange sight. Me, being a lithe teenage redhead, leading a muscular, blithering moron in a sharply cut suit through the flames until he was safely on solid ground.

"Who are you?" he asked, in obvious, grateful awe.

A second later, my fist was in his stomach and my knee below his chin. And with him knocked out, I managed (with great difficulty because of his size) to tie him up and roll him off the dock onto the silt shore beneath. All I had to do was tip the police off and get out of there before anyone arrived. I believe it was the simplicity of it all that brought me out into the streets at night after that, hunting down others like Memphis, avoiding the more established heroes and learning to live in the mask. There was no vengeance, no motive, no code of honour... just something to do in a city that had nothing else for me and didn't want to know me.

And then there was Daimen... Daimen had been double-crossed by his partner and trapped in Stonegate's maximum-security wing by the sadistic bitch. How was I supposed to know he was an over powerful git of a bad guy? How was I supposed to know his partner had been one of the Triquetra in disguise, trying to divert the Gothamite Missile Crisis? How was I supposed to know he was using me?

I wasn't!

Which is why I never got Teleka's reaction, but that part comes later.

I met him one night after a particularly long fight. He'd been watching the entire time, or so he claimed, so naturally I was annoyed he hadn't jumped in to play the knight in shining armour (I'm a hopeless romantic, so sue me.) But after a while, after I'd heard the butchered version of his story we got to talking, and we stayed to talking until the next morning. How was I supposed to know he was reading my mind for topics? Again, I wasn't!

The worst was a few days later on really. We were passing Triquetra Headquarters and I swear, if you'd seen the look on his face. He looked like he was about to explode, and then it just... disappeared, just like that. And he says to me, "Could you do me a favour?" and I say something like whatever or something and then I see his hand going into his coat and I'm getting just a little anxious, and then, before I can even see it, there's a katana through my stomach. And he says thanks and walked away, just like that. So there I am with this sword through me and blood pouring out in all directions and I know I'm going to black out anyways. I was about to scream at him, but he was gone, like he'd just vanished into thin air.

I knew I'd never make it as far as the hospital, and I couldn't think of anywhere else, so I managed to drag myself up the path to Triquetra HQ and all I can think of is finding someone who can get this bloody thing out of me. So it's Venom who comes to meet me at the door and he takes me inside. And that's where I blacked out. I guess this was where it all started up...

Chapter One: Games

Three hours later, the stranger was lying stabilised on a makeshift pallet in Teleka's workshop. She was deeply unconscious, but there was nothing more to do at this stage. "Ven, did you get anything on file?"

"About seventeen people fitting the description, Telly. Sorry."

"We'll have to get her when she wakes up. Blue, check your lie detector powers."

"I'm at full power, as you know fine well, which is why I picked up a half-lie on that last sentence."

"Good. We only have to wait now. Coffee anyone?" she offered, setting up a camera to watch the recovering girl when she left the room.

"Why do even offer when you know I hate the stuff?" Blue Moon told her incredulously.

"I'm going to crossref with the Titans' files. No thanks Telly." Both Venom and Blue Moon left the basement workshop shortly while Teleka occupied herself at a desk nearby. As soon as the other two were gone, she glanced quickly around the room, her eyes resting on the girl's backpack where it had been discarded in the corner. She roughly shoved everything to the back of the desk and called the bag to her hand with her powers, emptying the contents onto the surface.

"Sorry about this, hon. The other two don't approve of invasion of privacy. I, however, approve of doing whatever it takes," she apologized to the silent stranger. First to catch her eye was the simple, black mask. "Very Lone Ranger... You in our line of work?" she continued, not at all uncomfortable talking to an unconscious person. She continued to rifle through, eventually coming across two black daggers and a collapsible crossbow, all of which were elaborately carved with black onyx roses. "Heavy weapons..." she murmured. "You're either a merc or the next generation of Huntress, friend. Who else bothers to go out without a wallet these days?" She sighed and scooped the items back into the bag; "I seriously need that coffee now."

O'Malley woke up slowly, still faint and groggy from the blood loss. She was suddenly alert however when she didn't recognize her surroundings. A lot of the last day or so blurred away from her grasp as she tried to remember. The sharp pain in her abdomen when she tried to sit up reminded her she had been wounded, but with no idea why, she forced herself to straighten. The tight bandages cut into her slightly as she pulled her top down to cover them and swung her legs sideways from the pallet. Her bag and long coat were on opposite sides of the room, and as she gathered them up, she noticed the camera keenly following her every move from the table. Cautiously, without moving further, her hand went to the side pocket of her pack, finding her daggers in completely the wrong place. She leapt forward and drove it through the machine, instantly feeling the pain in her stomach.

She dropped against the wall, wishing to God she's stayed in the pallet.

Footsteps... above her... Frantically, Syren glanced around. She seemed to be in a basement, no windows being apparent and a set of stairs at the widest end of the long triangular room. She scrabbled for a hiding place behind one of the many desks. A wide drawer lay open in front of her, a file laying half open against it's neighbour. And inside, at the top of the thick typed dossier, was a small passport sized picture. "Daimen," she breathed, never losing sight of the possible imminent danger she was in. She snatched the file and folded herself around the edge of the table, hidden behind the deep drawer. The footsteps were on the stairs now, coming closer to her every minute, but Syren was lost in reading the file. Eventually, she found a stack of photographs, obviously taken from the CCTV cameras around the city. The quality was terrible, but most of the main characters were partially visible. Among them, two of the Triquetra and Daimen... She continued to flick through, finally coming to the last shot, a glorious full colour shot of Daimen floating paralysed in the tank he had been trapped in at Stonegate prison, and Teleka playfully giving the peace sign into the camera with a blonde wig in her hand.

Confusion did not begin to cover the range of emotions in Syren's head. Hadn't Daimen told her he'd been betrayed? She flicked back through the photographs. The girl with the blonde hair... none of the pictures were clear enough to see her features, but Syren was now convinced that it was definitely Teleka beside Daimen. Of course this only added to her bewilderment. Suddenly, in a rush like the mother of all headaches, the feeling of the searing blade of the katana sliding through her skin like a butcher's knife through tender meat returned to her. She was a message... Pain forced her to gasp out, revealing herself to the wary Teleka who stood at the foot of the stairs in silence.

"You shouldn't have moved," she stated sympathetically, helping Syren to her feet.

"I forgot where I was. Have I out stayed my welcome?"

"You're not leaving yet," smile Teleka, with a hint of threat that made Syren keep one of her daggers safely in her boot.

"Shit!" Teleka screamed, half an hour later as soon as the word Daimen had entered the conversation. She tipped her chair backwards and landed in the window seat, her head buried in the cushions while she shrieked. Simultaneously, Blue Moon leapt into the air and hovered there in a protective ball, while Venom's head dropped into his hands before hitting the table with a loud clunk.

"Something I said?" Syren asked, already knowing the answer.

"Look up the term, 'hateful, insanely powerful, overly confident, demon git' in the dictionary and there's a picture of Daimen beside it," Venom explained, resisting the urge to laugh at the forlorn, faraway look on Teleka's face as she gazed mournfully in middle-distance, and at Blue Moon, who seemed to quiver at the thought of facing Daimen again.

"I had an idea," she replied. "It's so weird, he seemed really nice... for about a week. Then we were just walking and we passed this place. Next thing I knew there was a bloody katana through me. Some scary crap, I'm tellin' ye." Syren's hands subconsciously went to the bandage on her stomach as she spoke, her thick brogue lilting her words.

"Yeah, he'll do that to ya," Teleka told her listlessly, composing herself enough to return to the table, righting Blue's chair as she went.

"He never sold Nocturne out," Blue Moon jabbed playfully, glancing sideways at Teleka as she dropped into her seat, only to find it pulled out from beneath her just as she sat. "Mainly because she got to him first," she finished sullenly.

"Blue. Please shut up, go down and get the files. Venom, get on the computer and call up everything we have on Daimen. Syren, come with me, I'm going to help you remember what happened exactly. The message he was talking about... it might be in your mind." The other two left dutifully, leaving only Syren and Teleka in the room. "Are you sure that's all you remember?" she asked, her voice cold and interrogative.

"Yes." Syren's answer was clipped and short as she looked at Teleka through narrowed eyes. "What did you mean by 'in my mind'?"

"Daimen carries a huge arsenal of ESP powers. He told you that you were a message. I don't doubt him. Follow me." Teleka spoke tersely, standing and walking purposefully from the room. To her surprise, Syren had no problem keeping up. Somewhere in her third of headquarters, Teleka knocked open a door and stepped back to allow Syren ahead of her. The room inside was completely white, and bare but for a wide, flat mattress, raised from the floor on a utilitarian frame. "Just lie down and try to relax. Standard psychic rescue stuff," she explained, not at all reassuringly.

"Well, if I come out with a hatchet in my back..."

"I'm sorry if I come over as cold. I don't want to be monotonous, but it was standard interrogation stuff." Syren smiled and allowed herself to be helped on to the pallet.

"You're not going to mess about up there are you?" she asked warily, tapping the side of her head.

"I'll try not to." Teleka placed one of her hands on either temple and breathed deeply. "By the way, if there's anything you'd really rather forget, I can scramble it while I'm inside."

"How about the last week?"

"That's the bit you need to remember."

"Damn..." Syren twitched slightly as Teleka's consciousness faded into her own, and the redhead's body fell limply to the floor.

Syren's mind took on the form of a lush, autumnal forest, something she probably had never seen herself until Teleka awakened it. "Fields of Home?" she asked quietly.

"Maybe so." Syren's reply came from all directions, echoing through the trees as Teleka looked for the abnormalities that represented the parts of the mind a human used. "Strange I never knew what my mind looked like..."

"Not really. It's mostly precogs and psychics who've seen the more sophisticated version of the mind. And monks. Lots and lots of monks." Syren laughed a little, but Teleka managed to pick up the sound of a river. She stumbled on the steep bank, and tripped, but managed to jump forward and land on the rocks at the waters edge. "Something's hiding down here..." she murmured. She took a tentative step into the water, barely even touching the surface, but felt herself pulled away downstream by currents. She cried out in shock and fear until she dropped over a precipice into a still pool.

"Are you okay?" Syren asked worriedly as Teleka observed her surroundings, a dark cave made of stone that shimmered with rainbows.

"I've lived through worse. Help me out, are you feeling anything helpful down here?"

"My head hurts, that's about it."

"Then something's really hiding. I hate to say it, but prepare yourself for a wicked migraine." Teleka waded through the knee-deep water and shook herself off on the shore. The cave stretched on as a narrow tunnel in only one direction, forcing her to crawl through the rock to follow the course. However it only seemed to get narrower and narrower until she was forced to push the stone ahead of her with her powers. She broke through into another, smaller cave, bleeding from the numerous scratches she had borne from the jagged stone.

"I knew you'd find me." She snapped her head upwards from the neck, hearing the tiny cracks of her stiffened bones.

"Heya D," she said, maintaining a bored, cool tone.

"Don't be coquettish. I suppose you know."

"Know...?"

Immediately, a projection appeared. A car... slamming into something in a red glow... "Remember that?"

"I don't know, I've done that a few times."

"You only did it once with my fiancée in the car." Teleka raised a single eyebrow, knowing well she always thoroughly checked telepathically for life signs before even so much as touching a possible projectile.

"This is the basis of your revenge gig? Even you're better than that. And a better liar too."

"You think this is a joke? You killed her! And not forgetting the matter of a girl called Nocturne."

"If I said that was research for a movie role as a bad guy, would you believe me?"

"You wouldn't need to practice for that. This was really just let you know I'm back. And to give you fair warning."

"Good to know even the evil have some sporting spirit."

"Well I never hit a woman unless I've told her first."

"What a warped moral. I guess it was the best I could have hoped for."

"Just remember. I'm inside her head. I see what she sees, I hear what she hears."

"You bluff when she bluffs."

"You still think I'm joking? Can you afford to test that out?"

"Once I've taken out the trash, yes," Teleka snarled with finality, thrusting her hand forward in his direction to channel her telekinesis. Daimen flew backwards, taken by surprise and crashed through the stone wall, allowing the light from outside to stream through, nearly blinding Teleka.

"Are you okay?!" Syren repeated, showing more obvious concern. Teleka simply nodded, about to stand up before falling to the floor again and rolling over on her back.

"What about you? Was the blast too harsh?"

"Is he gone? 'Cause if he is then it only really tickled. If not then I have an unnecessary headache."

"I think so. There's still something dark in here, but it's probably just the other parts of you. I'm coming out now, and I'm going to lie, it'll hurt like hell."

"It can't get any worse," Syren told her perkily but Teleka simply muttered something implausible and extracted herself from Syren's mind. Both of the girls felt a feral scream of pain rip their throats, but never heard it, immediately falling unconscious again.

"Where the 'ell is she?" Blue Moon cried indignantly after half an hour of strained silence studying the files. "I mean, she tells us to go and get this stuff and then she forgets all about us!"

"Relax Blue. She hates the psychic rescue stuff. Says it hurts too much. Believe me it's true."

"When'd she ever do it on you?"

"Remember a friend of ours named the Scarecrow? You had it too."

"Oh yeah... Christ, it is sore, isn't it?" Just at that moment, before Venom's patience for Blue's constant chattering was further tested, both Syren and Teleka staggered in, each trying to ease the lasting pain from the internal struggle.

"Psychic rescue, V? You sure that's what it was?" Blue Moon joked. "Looks to me like the two of 'em's hungover." She laughed garishly until she felt the bone of Teleka's elbow at the back of her head. "That was uncalled for, mate." She spun her chair to hand Teleka the files and immediately felt a swell of pity. Her head was rested on her arms morosely and she had lapsed into staring into space again. It had to be that she blamed herself for Daimen's escape from Stonegate, for not taking in the factor that his ESP might allow him to break through the barriers. She slid the files playfully into her nose, slightly put down when Teleka simply batted them away.

"Didn't you know who you were getting in with?" she asked suddenly, directing her question at Syren, whose head was carelessly buried in a cushion. She looked up with clear confusion at Teleka's sharp tone. "Didn't it occur to you that maybe you should find out what side he was on before you became the best of friends?"

"It wasn't the first thing to cross my mind, no. I'll admit, it was a stupid mistake, but he was convincing," she snapped back in her thick accent.

"Teleka, drop it," Venom told her warningly. "What did you find out?"

"Daimen had himself in her head. I think I got him out."

"You think?" the other three asked in incredulous unison.

"If he wanted to stay, he's more than capable of hiding. Which is why I wanted to ask Syren to leave." Immediately, all heads turned towards Syren, bar the astute Venom, who heard something on the edge of Teleka's voice, which even Blue Moon hadn't picked up.

Syren simply tossed her head in reply. "No. I want to help. I'm staying. If there's something in my head I'll sense it."

"It's not an option," Teleka told her, leaving no room for argument. "I'm not cutting you out entirely, but it's too dangerous to have you around headquarters. We do need to keep in touch however." She rifled through the drawer at the side of the table and pulled out one of the extra communicators they always kept spare. "Hold on to that. If we need you, we'll call."

"And vice-versa?" Teleka nodded before returning her head to her arms. Venom stood to lead her out, but she simply shook her head again. "I'll show myself out. I'll let you know if I find anything."

So... review worthy, right? Free Triquetra Plushies for every review!