I promised myself I wouldn't post this before next week but I came online earlier and saw all the wonderful reviews and I just couldn't help myself. So be happy I spent all day making a timeline for this story and writing this chapter. Also I've decided that I'm going to start using dates for what happens like they do in the show so it's easier to follow along in the time line(this is mostly for me so I'm not getting lost). It'll also usually only be if there is a significant change in time or place.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own YJ or any of the DC comics. However I do own Tori and by extension Spade. Steal them and I'll send Roy and Cheshire after you. They'd totally work together to get her back ;p
Star City
Tori's Apartment
July 30th 21:08 PDT
It was almost two months after Tori's first date with Roy and so far everything was great. They had set up dates for the first few weeks, always trying to juggle around each others busy schedules. Roy had no idea about Tori's 'second job' and she hoped it would stay that way. But aside from that she was very happy. She had had quite a few jobs over the last month which had left her tired but more jobs meant more money.
It was night time and Tori was just getting back from another outing with Roy. They had gone to middle class restaurant and she had gotten to meet Oliver Queen, Roy's foster father and the man's girlfriend Dinah Lance. Both were very kind and she enjoy their company, Dinah had even invited her to a girl's spa day sometime in the future so they could get to know each other better. Roy had not seemed so excited about this, he had told her that he and Oliver were having a hard time getting along lately but the blond man had conned him into the date so he could meet the girl his ward was with all the time.
Tori smiled as she unlocked her door and stepped into her apartment, it had been a good night but the smile slipped off of her face when she closed the door behind her and looked around the small living room. Something was wrong here, the atmosphere of the room felt different. Someone else was here with her. Her upbeat mood evaporated and she was immediately on guard. She threw her jacket off to the side stepping further into the room to investigate.
"How was your date?"
Tori jumped and spun on her heel to face Jade who was decked out in the attire of Cheshire, which meant she was just getting ready to go on a job.
"Jade! What the hell?" She snapped when her heart rate had resumed its regular pace. "Were you waiting for me here or something?"
"Of course I wanted to know how your date went. Have you kissed him yet?" Jade teased toying with the grinning cat mask in her hands.
Tori felt her face flush in embarrassment but she couldn't find it in herself to stay mad at her friend. She sighed, running a hand through her short black hair and sat in the arm chair across from Jade. "No Jade he did not kiss me." She said trying her best not to sound too disappointed. She hadn't been expecting him to, they had agreed to go slow with their relationship and to keep it low key so the press didn't get wind of it, that didn't mean she didn't want to kiss him though. They had a few times but it was not something that happened every time they saw one another. She knew she had strong feelings for the hot headed boy, even after only two months and the fact that he had been particularly moody since July, she could only hope he felt the same way and was just bad at expressing himself.
"Aw." Jade cooed. "And what about the rest of the date?" She seemed intent on getting details.
"It was nice. I met Oliver and his girlfriend and we all sat and talked over dinner." She gave Jade the brief version. She didn't like getting into too many details because she knew Jade would want to psycho analyze everything that was said.
Jade seemed disappointed with her friend's aversion to the topic but apparently decided she could wheedle information out of her later. She had other matters to attend to, she never came to Tori's apartment in full Cheshire garb just to gossip. Something was obviously up.
"I have another job for you."She said after a moment her tone casual and business like at the same time.
"I don't know Jade. I already have enough heat on me from the police as it is. Never mind the attention I'm getting from the Justice League. I've been drawing too much attention to myself lately, in the span of a couple of months I've faced down Canary twice and Green Arrow and his sidekick Speedy at least four times." Tori said rubbing her mechanical arm. There was a phantom pain there that bothered her every once in a while as it was now. She was still shaken up from her last encounter with Green Arrow a week ago. She had been lucky to get away.
"Look Tori, I know you've managed to keep your identity hidden from even the Shadows, but this isn't really an offer you can turn down. The Shadows have intel that Speedy's gone solo and Green Arrow and Canary are out of town. Now is prime time to do this."
"Since when has Speedy done anything solo?" She asked clearly surprised.
"On the fourth he was seen storming out of the hall of Justice, clearly someone was having a temper tantrum. He's been going by Red Arrow for the last few weeks." Jade told her with a flippant wave of her hand. "So are you in?"
Tori rubbed her head and went over to the window of her apartment to look out of it at the dirty streets below. It was later in the evening so the street lamps were flickering on as the city became darker. She crossed her arms over her chest and with a frown on her face she turned to her best friend.
"What do I have to do?"
~O~
A few hours later found Spade sitting on the roof of Star Labs, hidden away in the shadows while she waited for the last of the night shift to leave the building. Soon enough only the janitors would be left and she would be able to sneak in and get the information that the Shadows wanted her to gather.
This time the police had not been notified of the robbery because the information she was stealing needed to be kept as quiet as possible. This job did not need media attention and neither did she. She'd dealt with enough heroes and injuries in the last few months and she didn't want anymore.
When she was sure the building was empty she slipped into the building through the ventilation shaft on the roof and began navigating her way through the cramped space. She had managed to acquire a blue print of the building before she had come and had studied it until she had it memorized. Usually she had a few days to gather maps, memorize them and decide on the best route to take but today she had only had a few hours to prepare so she was acting on the fly.
Her target was in a lab on the thirty second floor, one of the floors that dealt with the engineering of new technologies. She wasn't sure what the Shadows wanted with the information, something about a robotics expert, but she didn't even need to know that. She just needed to get it and get out, no questions asked. When she arrived at the appropriate floor she peered out of a grate to make sure no one was in the room before she slipped out of it.
Spade pulled a small USB stick from her pocket as she strode over to the nearest computer and plugged it into the tower. All she would need to do was copy the entire hard drive which would bring along the rest of the information on the computer. The hard part was accessing the computer, which was encrypted. Spade was no hacker, so she pulled a small black disk like device from another pocket and placed it on the top of the tower. Several red lights appeared on it, flashing and one by one turning green in color. There was a slight beep when it was finished and the password screen vanished.
When all of the information had been copied onto the USB Spade pulled it out and pocketed both devices. She moved to turn off the computer when she heard a noise outside the door. Instead of letting the computer shut down manually she pulled the plug from the wall and ran for the vent. She made it half way across the room before the door creaked and she had to dive behind a desk to hide.
Footsteps approached her hiding spot slowly and she pressed herself closer against the wood, holding her breath as if it would help keep her hidden. Chancing a glance around the corner of the desk she had to immediately whip her head back, her heart hammering loudly in her chest.
Red Arrow stood not ten paces away from her hiding spot, bow drawn and ready as he looked around the room. Why was he even here! There was no way anyone could have known she was here, only Jade and the Shadows knew about this job. But if he was here someone had to have tipped him off because the security cameras had been disabled before she's entered the building. This meant one of two things A) Red was a metahuman with psychic powers of B)There was a snitch within the Shadows.
Spade grit her teeth and went through multiple escape scenarios in her head, none of which seemed to be effective or appealing. If she revealed herself she was caught, but if she waited much longer she would be caught anyway, and in a room with only one exit and no windows her chances of escape were slim. Even if she could get back to the vents before he caught her he would know she was in there and could cut her off or seal the vents so she couldn't get out. That left her with only one option, one she didn't even want to consider.
He was two steps closer now and Spade's heart was ready to leap out of her chest and onto the floor in front of her. She had never been cornered like this before, even when she had first started stealing. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled as quietly as she could, she knew her options and in six more paces she wouldn't have any. She had to act now.
Opening her eyes she took another deep breath and exhaled very slowly as she tucked herself further into the shadows that hid her. He was four paces away now and she focused solely on the darkness around her.
Three paces. She felt a tugging sensation in her gut and she could feel the blackness leaking over the whites of her eyes and even over the red tint of her contacts.
Two paces. The pulling in her stomach strengthened and the shadow she was in darkened as she began sinking through it. Just as the footsteps came level with her hiding spot she slipped entirely within the darkness.
She was only in the blackness for a short period of time, less than a minute before it practically spit her back out. She stumbled as she walked out of the shadow that was cast in the corner of her living room. Her eyes were back to normal but her skin had turned a sickly grey color.
Spade pulled her white wig off roughly and tossed it elsewhere as she hunched over holding onto her chest because it felt as if something were crushing her lungs. This was the unfortunate side effect of the power she held. She could transport herself and anything she touched through the shadows as well as manipulate them into weapons, but the use of the ability hurt like a bitch so she only used it sparingly.
Stumbling to the bathroom she wrenched open her medicine cabinet and fumbled with various bottles until she pulled out a small one from the back and opened it. Her hands were shaking and her lungs were burning as she shoved two of the pills into her mouth and swallowed without the assistance of a glass of water. Swallowing the pills proved to be a challenge but she managed it with a few coarse coughs that fleck her bathroom sink with spots of blood.
It took a few minutes for the medicine to take effect but when it did she sank to the floor on her knees, her hands still gripping the sides of the sink and she rested her head against the cool porcelain. The cool relief in her lungs was most welcome as she sat there on the floor with her eyes closed against the rest of the world.
Eventually she found the energy to make her way to her bedroom and pull of the remainder of her Spade costume. She also retrieved the wig and hid it all under a loose wooden panel in her closet, then she stowed the USB with the stolen information in her safe, she would deal with that later.
~O~
Tori was out of commission for the next few days, her body having reacted worse than usual to her use of shadow travel. She had never had such a bad reaction but then she had never used the ability so much as she had in the last month. She had had to use it on several situations in which she had had to use the ability. It didn't help that she had forgotten to take her medication earlier that day.
The medication certainly helped her condition, but only if she took it every day. And the medication itself was hard to find because nothing like it had existed before she had coerced a local doctor into making it for her. So not only was the drug illegal but it was also expensive because the man who made it for her wanted to be paid for his silence. There were some side effects to the medication and it didn't entirely stop the pain but at least it gave her some extra time.
When the pain of the illness had passed enough that she could function decently Tori started going back to work with the kids, who were simple ecstatic that she was back. As much as they loved the other workers, Tori was closest to them in age and took the most time to spend with them outside her work hours. She was happy to be at work again, this was her real job. She tried to distance herself from her career as Spade. So things seemed pretty good right now, but she knew it couldn't stay that way there was always something that happened to rain in her parade.
A bit shorter than I usually go for but it has all of the information that I wanted in there. I know that making her being a Meta kind of came out of left field there but I assure you that she was supposed to be one from the beginning. I also alluded to it in the last chapter when she was escaping from Canary if any of you guys noticed that. I bet you're wondering why she didn't use it in the first chapter to escape Speedy and GA too. Like I said, Tori tries not to use the ability if she can avoid it because it is the cause of a respiratory disease that kills her a little more every time she uses it. So instead she called Jade for a little help. Any questions about it just ask and I'll do my best to answer them.
Moving on~ I'd like to give a GREAT BIG HUG AND THANK YOU to cheshirecat900, Ghost, maryk, and MidnightRoulette for reviewing. it is because of you guys that I decided to post this just minutes after I finished writing it. And don't worry MidnightRoulette there is actually some Jade/Tori bonding time in the next chapter. Also there is some drama regarding Roy. But that's all I will say for now.
Please review lots guys! I love it when I see that you guys like the story! I write it for you (And a little for me) so I get discouraged when I don't see that anyone wants more! Remember reviews are love and cookies! OM NOM ROY COOKIES! ... I seriously have to go make some YJ and JL cookies now... while wearing my Batman shirt! XD.
~ Peter
