Outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A/N: The team is on a stake out around a warehouse and is taking cover on a cliff and in the woods and stuff so they have the place surrounded.
'Stake outs take forever.' Kid Flash complained. 'Why are we here? I forgot.'
'We are here to be sure of the Leagues suspicions of an illegal alien weapons trade. We did not get a time frame just a date, so we are to stay here until we see any suspicious activity.' Aqualad reminded him.
'This sucks.' Artemis complained as she moved silently toward where the others were gathering for dinner, at midnight, which Kid Flash had just gotten back from getting. 'Lucky we're so close to the city.'
'Yeah, I'm starving what did you get, Kid Flash?' Zatanna asked, getting there last.
'Burger King, of course!' Kid Flash and Robin thought, digging through the bags.
'Unhealthy amount of mustard, Starfire.'
'Thank you, Friend.' She resisted the urge to giggle aloud, reminding herself they were supposed to be silent.
'Double Whopper with Bacon for Supey. This one's Miss M's…Ahah! Mine! Pass me my fries and drink.' Kid Flash said, eating the fries that were handed to him, and sipping happily at his drink. Then, he unwrapped his BK Carolina Special, mouth watering at the meal to come. When he bit into it, he frowned as if something bothered him.
'Dude, burgers taste way better with bacon and barbeque sauce, don't they?' Robin asked the team.
'What!' Kid Flash mentally yelled. 'No!' he dramatically looked to the sky, shaking both fists at the sky, and slumping forward on the ground.
'What's wrong?' Miss Martian asked.
'Rob has my food!' he responded.
'When?' Rob asked, looking at KF's burger to see it was a regular whopper with cheese. 'I thought we all had the same thing, y'know, a regular whopper.'
'Dude, I can see the bacon from here!' Kid Flash pouted.
'Yeah, there's a lot of bacon, too! Like, quadruple bacon! Four layers of bacon! It's awesome!' Robin teased his friend.
'Do you want some of my bacon?' Superboy asked the speedster, holding out a couple pieces of his own bacon.
'Thanks, but no thanks, Supey, it won't be the same.' Kid Flash picked up his whopper and took a bite.
'That's why it took you so long, huh, Kid Flash? You had to instruct them on how to make your burger!' Artemis said, wiping crumbs off her top.
'All you guys suck.' Kid Flash ate his burger quickly, instead of taking his time to savor the experience like he had intended when he ordered his burger.
'I hear some vehicles approaching.' Superboy thought.
The team immediately went silently to their posts to get a view of all sides of the building.
'Cargo trucks approaching.' Robin thought looking through a pair of hi-tech binoculars.\
'Noted.' Aqualad thought. "We have movement at our location." He whispered into a comm in his ear.
"Do not engage, we don't want any mistakes this time." Batmans voice said in Aqualads ear.
From Kid Flash's point of view he could see a black limousine pull up. Raising his own binoculars, he saw a man with white hair get out of the back. 'I don't recognize that guy.' Kid Flash thought, taking in the details of the man for future reference. The man turned to speak to someone inside the vehicle, then closed the door. He then walked around to the other side of the building out of Kid's view. 'I lost the old guy.' He thought.
'I see him.' Aqualad said.
'Was there anyone else with him?' Superboy asked.
'Yeah, but I don't know who, whoever it is won't leave the limo.' Kid Flash answered, keeping steady vigil of the limo, should the guest decide to get some air.
'You want me to go check it out?' Miss Martian asked.
'No. We do not go any nearer unless we have reason to.' Aqualad stopped any thoughts of going over there. They could not afford to make a mistake, should these men be the ones they were after.
'It doesn't look like they're bringing anything out.' Robin stated.
'Well, you don't make a weapons deal without seeing the merchandise, so why aren't they checking it out?' Zatanna said.
'Superboy, look at the cars, see what's in them.' Artemis said calmly.
'I don't have x-ray vision!' Superboy snapped at the archer.
'Friend, do you not have the vision enabling you to see heat?' Starfire asked.
'Yes.' Superboy said bluntly.
'The technology that is to be traded is made of materials that give off a small amount of heat.' Starfire said.
Superboy focused his vision on the trucks. He could see nothing that gave off heat except the people below. 'Aqualad, this is the decoy meeting spot!' he said hurriedly.
"Primary location is a decoy, proceed with the plan." Aqualad said into the comm.
"Good work, get out of there, make sure you aren't seen, and head to the Cave." Aqualad relayed Batman's instructions to the Team.
'So, we were just here to babysit this place?' Kid Flash complained again.
'Hello, Baywatch! Batman told us that! We were supposed to make sure their suspicions were right, that this wasn't the planned meeting spot, just the decoy!' Artemis said, sounding exasperated.
'Really?' Kid Flash and Superboy asked.
'Weren't you two paying attention?' Zatanna asked.
'Not really.' They both said.
'Team, regroup at the BioShip.' Aqualad said.
Kid Flash stood, watching the white haired man in an expensive suit get in the limo. When the limo drove off, the ground underneath Kid Flash crumbled. Before he could react, he started to fall.
'Gotcha!' Artemis' hand shot out to grab Kid Flash's, and she helped him up. 'Wow, you have really bad luck.' She said to him when he draped his arm lazily around her shoulders.
'I'm sayin'! Kid Flash agreed. 'First, I have to go get food, then my burger gets eaten-'
'I'm still hearing about the burger?' Robin interrupted.
'Then the ground tries to off me.' Kid Flash continued as though Robin hadn't spoken.
'Off you?' Miss Martian asked, half confused, half amused.
'Someone's been reading way too much Harry Potter.' Zatanna laughed.
'Harry Potter is a fascinating series! It mixes magic and science! You should read it, Z!' Kid Flash thought as he and Artemis boarded the ship.
"How does it mix magic and science?" Zatanna asked aloud.
"Well, the example that comes to mind is in the last book when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are on the run trying to find and destroy the rest of the Horcruxes. Hermione doesn't have much of a selection to choose from for their meals, but she does her best. Ron asks her one day why she can't just make a whole five course meal appear out of thin air like his mom does all the time, and she tells him she can't unless she has all the ingredients on hand to make it, and you can't just make something out of nothing. Which is so true, I mean, Hermione is so smart, she's hot. I can see why Ron wants to date her. Of course, he should've just told her that when he got really jealous of Krum and with the whole deal with him almost dying, well Ron is just an idiot like that. Maybe she should've just given him a love potion from the Weasley shop, but then again maybe-"
"Dude, what are you talking about?" Robin asked, the rest just as confused as he was.
"I don't know. I don't know, really." Kid Flash said leaning back as the BioShip took them back to the Cave.
"So, let me get this straight. You will read and memorize a made up fairy tale, but you won't believe in real magic in real life?" Zatanna asked.
"Harry Potter is real life, and real life is Harry Potter." Kid Flash said, refusing to budge on his belief.
"The League has caught the criminals that were trading the illegal weapons." Aqualad informed the team.
"Glorious news!" Starfire said as the others cheered while Aqualad listened to whatever Batman was saying on the other end of the comm link.
"Interesting…this 'source' should be looked into…of course…understood." Aqualad shut off the comm link, removing the small bud from his ear and sighing heavily.
"What'd Batman say?" Robin asked.
Aqualad waited a moment before answering, "The men they questioned said there was no decoy location."
"How do they know those men aren't lying?" Superboy asked.
"Martian Manhunter is the one who obtained this information from the man's own mind. He suspected the man would lie about it, so he read his thoughts during Batman's interrogation." Aqualad said.
"So, we just let some potential criminals make a potentially illegal weapons deal that could potentially come back to kick our butts in the potentially near future?" Robin asked.
"That is correct." Aqualad said.
"Great." Kid Flash said, crossing his arms.
"I am suddenly feeling an immense amount of the dread." Starfire said.
"Everyone else is, too, Star." Robin said.
"How could we let this happen?" Artemis said after a few minutes of silence.
"It is not our fault. We could not have known what was going to transpire tonight." Aqualad said in a calm voice.
"What are we to do? Those men must be stopped!" Starfire said, just as angry as everyone else.
"I agree." Aqualad said simply.
"Then we must turn around! We must-"
"What?" Robin asked, "What must we do-what can we do?" The Boy Wonder slumped in his chair behind Starfire, crossing his arms. "Those guys are long gone by now, Star."
"What we must do, is get some rest. We will begin our search when our minds have had time to process the night's events, and we are able to think objectively." Aqualad said.
"Approaching Mt. Justice. Opening hanger door." Miss Martian said.
When the Team exited the BioShip, Batman and Black Canary were waiting for them. "Good job, team." Batman said.
"Good job! We let an illegal weapons trade go down right in front of us and we did nothing! That's not a good job!" Robin said, fuming.
"Your mission was not to stop the trade, but to make sure it was not alien technology. You were told not to engage. You followed orders and got back safely. That's the only thing we asked you to do." Batman put a hand on Robin's shoulder, trying to calm him.
"Your new mission, starting tomorrow, is to find out who you saw making that trade, illegal weapons or otherwise, and what they were trading." Black Canary said, silently dismissing them to bed.
"What are you guys gonna do?" Kid Flash asked.
"We have other business to take care of." Batman said as the two left toward the Zeta tubes.
Next Morning
"Please, Friend Robin, what are you trying to accomplish?" Starfire asked.
Currently, Robin was typing away furiously at the computer in the Cave. He had picked up a hidden frequency, disguised as a radio signal on his laptop glove. He hadn't realized it until he was fiddling with it this morning. It wasn't a signal he knew of. Not off the top of his head at any rate. It was frustrating him to no end as he could find no devices in the system that used this frequency. If he was being honest with himself, he was fairly flummoxed.
When Robin didn't answer, Starfire assumed he wanted to be left alone. She went to where Wally was sitting with Megan. They were sketching the man Wally had seen, trying to get a good enough angle to put through the facial recognition software.
"May I be of assistance?" Starfire asked.
"Not really. We're making a sketch of the guy I saw last night." Wally said dismissively.
Starfire wandered over to where Kaldur and Artemis were.
"Friends, please, may I assist you in your endeavor?" she asked. The two were bent over some papers, talking quietly. Apparently, they also did not need her assistance. She did not know where Zatanna and Connor had gone, or if she could even help them. She could be of no assistance to any of her friends.
Starfire sighed lightly. Walking out of the cave, she noticed the sun was in the middle of the sky. She floated lazily up to the plateau she had found on her first morning in the Cave. Star sat down and brought her knees to her chest, hugging them to her. Usually, feeling the suns heat on her skin would delight her, now it made her feel lonely. As if the sun was the only thing that was happy to see her. She had thought Robin would at least acknowledge her.
'Maybe my friends no longer have use for me.' She thought, her mood going even more sour.
'Don't think like that.' She heard Megan say in her head. Looking to her left, Starfire saw that the Martian was hovering about ten feet from her.
"I did not hear you approach me. Please, would you like to join me?" Starfire tried to feign happiness, but Megan was a telepathic Martian who knew what a mask looked like.
"Starfire, are you sad?" Megan asked, sitting next to her friend.
Starfire did not answer immediately, but instead thought over whether or not to lie to a telepath. "Yes. I am sad that I cannot be of assistance to my friends. I am sad I am being ignored. I am feeling very lonely. I am feeling a slight sickness for my home. I do not feel as if I have a place on this team anymore. I feel-" Starfire could not say anything without catching her breath. "I feel as though I am…not wanted." She said looking out over the water.
"Well, I want you here." Megan said in a serious tone.
"You do?" Starfire looked to the girl, who had turned from a Caucasian skin tone to green.
"Yes." M'gann said. "Everyone else does too. The fact that you can't help with anything right now won't be a onetime thing. There will be missions where you're the center of attention, and doing all the work, because that is the stuff you do. But there will also be missions where you can't do anything, because you don't have any knowledge of what we're dealing with. Do you know what you do then?" M'gann asked.
"No, I do not." Starfire frowned.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. The best thing to do when you don't know what to do is to do nothing. By nothing, I mean you could lift weights like Connor, or read like Zatanna, or cook lunch like what I was going to ask you to help me with." M'gann said, a small smile coming to her lips.
"I would be pleased to be of assistance to you, Friend!" Starfire said, smiling. It wasn't the fake smile she sometimes caught on her face, but the genuine one she saw most often.
"Starfire." M'gann said as they floated down to the cave entrance.
"Yes?"
"You can tell us when you're sad." Was all M'gann said on the subject.
After lunch, Starfire helped clean the kitchen. She was about to ask Connor if he wanted to lif weights with her when the computer alerted the Team.
"Match found."
Robin typed a few keys and the picture of the man from the previous night showed on the screen. Next to the picture was his name.
"John Doe? Seriously?" Wally and Artemis said in unison.
"Hold on, there's a list of aliases." Robin said, smirking at the ingenious idea of using John Doe.
"Brother Blood, Jonathon Blood, John Smith, seriously?" Wally said looking at the ridiculously long list of A.K.A.'s.
"Recognize Batman 02."
The Dark Knight glided, cuz that was what it looked like to Wally, over to the computer.
"Did you get a message or something saying we found something?" Wally asked, backing away from Robin's side so Batman could stand there. When he caught the beginnings of a Batglare being directed at him, he put up his hands in surrender. "I get it, you're just that good. But I have to ask," He leaned so he was looking at Batman's face, "what do you eat to get so good looking?"
"I eat my vegetables and get a good nights sleep." He said, shocking them all. They had expected him to roll his eyes or completely ignore the speedster. They hadn't expected him to say something at all. And was that sarcasm they heard? Or was he telling the truth? It was so hard to tell, but Wally looked as though he were giving it some serious thought.
"Alright," Robin said, not fazed by The Bat's answer, "So this guy pulls up in a limo, gets out and comes over to some other guys. We've ruled out the possibility of it being a weapons deal. The guy these thugs work for deals in synthetic metals. He makes whatever you want, with a hefty price. The price for the merchandise varies, presumably by mass and whether it's a custom order, but there's also the price of the whole moving this stuff cross country." Robin paused. "I don't know what that price is, but it's not electronic funds like the other half of the deal. All bank transactions are legit. But the part of the deal that's dealt under the table is confusing, to say the least." Robin concluded.
"Since we can't get them on illegal transactions, what can we get them on?" Batman said, more to himself than anything.
"We will alert you of any new developments." Kaldur said.
"Yes, in the meantime, I have other matters to attend to." With that he left.
"Recognize Batman 02."
12 Hours Earlier
"Why do we have to sit in the stinkin' car?" a small boy in green said.
"Blood said to scan for those Justice Rejects." A girl in dark clothes replied harshly.
"Blood just doesn't want us to meet his new friends." Said a tall, lean boy in red with a thick country accent.
"I spy with my big ol' eye," a boy in a white and green suit cackled lightly, "A Justice Reject, oh, two!" the boy kept counting, spinning in his seat, till he got to seven. "They got us surrounded." He cackled again, obviously finding something funny about that fact. "Looks like they got the green one!" He said, cackling.
"Hey, See-More, cut the laughing, I'm trying to concentrate." The first boy said, typing on a small laptop.
"What'cha workin' on, Gizmo?" The boy in red asked.
"Billy, you know better than to ask him that, you never understand him anyway." Said the girl.
"Oh, it's cool." Was all Gizmo said.
"Kyd, we need a shield, we don't want the telepath to know we're here." The girl nodded to a dark boy to her left. He was outfitted similarly to the Batman, except he had gray skin and completely red eyes. He nodded back to her, not saying anything. "What's taking so long?" the girl said to Gizmo.
"Quit your rushin', Jinx, I'm almost done." Gizmo glared slightly at Jinx.
She just tilted her head to the right, and gave a toothy grin that would have made The Joker proud. See-More cackled again when Gizmo put his laptop away, his grin matching Jinx's. Billy Numerous crossed his arms in triumph, "I love when we get to do something sneaky and underhanded." Kyd Wykkyd, just sitting there, grinned a sharp-toothed, evil grin.
The car door opened and Brother Blood sat in the middle of the seat, looking at his students. "I hope you children weren't playing nice with the Team. I would be very disappointed." He motioned the driver to start the engine.
"Of course not." Jinx's eyes glowed a dangerous pink, the sound of ground crumbling reaching their ears as they drove away.
A/N: ok so I really liked writing this chapter and I couldn't really find a good place to leave you or this chapter would be shorter but I don't think any one will complain. A couple notes about this chapter.
The thing about rob accidentally taking wally's burger happened to my dad and his friend. His friend specially ordered and Carolina special and through a little confusion my dad ended up eating his burger.
The thing that wally said about hp being real life and etc is a revelation my little brother had about skyrim. My dad and was looking around the front yard saying stuff like "blue mountain flower, purple mountain flower, etc.
That was the Hive Five at the end if you don't know already I hope you like the way I portrayed them
Batman may have been a little ooc with his comment to wally but he did that on purpose. He likes to keep the team on their toes. And he gets to laugh about it with other leaguers.
So any way I will work on the next chapter and post asap read and I would love it if you reviewed thanks