The Essence wasn't sure what to think of the presence of Jason Todd and his band of misfits in her All-Caste. On the one hand, help was needed where it could be found, as she was unable to leave the sanctuary she occupied, and the order's numbers were dwindling. On the other hand, she could sense that though each member of the Twice-Born's trio was strong, they were lacking in direction, and by racing to the All-Caste immediately after dispensing with one of its enemies, could lead those enemies to return and destroy the floundering remains of the order.
But, she admitted to herself, it was too late to do much about that last bit.
"Since you've likely got no idea what you're up against, allow me to explain," she began, purposefully "forgetting" to invite them to sit down. "Two from the untitled order are dead, leaving five to contend with. This is good, excepting that the powers formerly possessed by the deceased untitled remain within the order, strengthening those remaining. Though not as strong as it once was, their control over mankind's states of being is formidable as well as unstable. It seems likely they will attempt to replace the two missing from their number soon – as the next convergence is swiftly approaching – and restore their balance by convincing two of my mother's students to join them. They'll kill the rest and destroy this place, then go on to seek the Lazarus Pit."
The three mortals blinked.
"Why, though?" the one with the robotic arm asked.
If the Essence had a soul, she would've been sure she had felt it leave her body for a moment in frustration.
"Excuse me?" she asked, after having regained some composure.
He crossed his arms. "Why do they want all this power? What are they even doing with it?"
She hoped the Twice-Born would take some initiative toward educating the mortals he'd brought to the sanctuary, but he just kinda stood there.
"Those who seek power," she replied, "often seek it for no other reason than because they enjoy having it. The superiority they feel in having it is often enough to justify whatever they did to receive it."
She waited for one of them to make a joke about politicians or somesuch, but none of them did. Instead, the alien woman nodded and asked, "How do we defeat them?"
The Essence almost smiled. This one had potential.
"You'll want to meet with Siaru, the Archivist," she said. "He can help you find any answers you would waste my time searching for."
"Archives are this way," Jason said, indicating one of the most battle-damaged temple/cave combinations. He strode toward the half-collapsed entrance with the confidence of a captain who knew his brigade would follow.
It was funny, Kori thought. As much of a free agent as Jason was, he also had the bearing of a leader. The real kind, who fought beside their troops in whatever theatre the war took them to. Dick and Tim had similar qualities, but fighting beside Jason would be nothing like fighting beside his brothers. Though there was a familial resemblance, he fought dirty as well.
As Kori's eyes adjusted to the dim lighting inside the archive building, she could've sworn she saw a child attending the desk.
"Siaru," Jason addressed the child, "we need access to the archives."
The child looked up at him from the parchment he'd been writing on with an eyebrow raised.
"Excuse me?" he asked, voice dry and annoyed.
Jason narrowed his eyes and glared for a moment, then sighed.
"Master Siaru," he corrected, "my company and I humbly request admittance to the archives, as we are in need of the knowledge contained therein."
"Better," the child conceded. "Are you willing to pay the price of admittance?"
"Are you kidding me?" Roy mumbled under his breath. "What is this, college?"
The child glared at him.
"If you have a problem, you are welcome to wait outside," he snapped. "Though I might recommend avoiding direct sunlight. You are incredibly pale."
"Thanks. I kinda spent the last of my money on impulse-buying drugs, so I guess I'll be finding a tree to sit under. That's free, right?"
Kori sucked in a breath. This was not going at all well.
Siaru looked a bit disgusted, but clarified, "The price has nothing to do with money. What use is that? Entrance to the archives will cost each of you one memory, which will most likely be returned anyway. You do still have memories, right?"
"For the love of X'Hal! Leave him alone," Kori said, stepping forward. She'd made her decision. With how many memories she was already missing, of what consequence was forfeiting one more? "I, for one, am willing to lend you a memory. How do I… go about that?"
The child held out a hand and made a beckoning gesture.
"Come forward."
Kori did, and the child placed a hand on her forehead. She felt a cold tingling for a moment, then the child pulled away a ball of light. Everyone watched as he swirled it around in his fingers for a moment, then stuffed it into a clay jar. Kori didn't feel different at all. And though she did wonder what memory had been taken, she couldn't figure out how to figure that out.
"Next?"
Jason stepped forward and, as though he had done it hundreds of times, bowed his head and let Siaru draw a memory out. For a moment, Kori thought she'd seen his skin glow. She tucked the thought away for later.
"And how about you?" Siaru asked, looking at Roy after stuffing Jason's memory into a bottle. "Will you be joining them? Lately, the trees seem to have accrued an unfortunate beetle infestation."
"Of course they have," Roy said. He stepped forward. "Do it."
Siaru pulled a memory from Roy, then waved the three of them toward a doorway behind him.
"Enjoy!" he said in a way that was most likely mocking before putting Roy's memory into a container.
Jason silently took the lead again. The passage beyond the doorway was lit by gaslights that cast their dim glow down a staircase cut from stone. The only sound was three sets of footsteps descending that staircase. The All-Caste was still holding its breath.
And then Roy started humming. Jason and Kori both froze, then turned to look at him.
"What?" Roy asked with a shrug. "It's a little too intense down here."
Jason gave him a pointed look, but said nothing and continued walking. A few moments later, however, she heard him singing along to the tune Roy had been humming.
"Never took this road before," he was mumbling, "destination unknown."
It was a little bit cute. Cute enough that Kori was caught completely off guard when a dragon lunged up at them from the bottom of the stairs.
Her starbolts blazed up from within her, ready for a fight, while Roy stumbled backwards, a mechanism within his prosthetic arm making a whirring noise.
Jason, however, stepped forward, took a deep breath, and held out one hand. Within the space of a breath, a sword appeared in his hand from the far reaches of absolutely nowhere. And Jason was definitely glowing this time. He presented the sword to the dragon, holding it horizontally in front of him with the blade pointed downward, and bowed.
The dragon nodded once, then moved aside.
"Don't worry about the intern," Jason said as he stepped into the room and the sword disappeared from his hand. "She's probably a little worried still after the attack, but now she knows you're with me."
Kori willed the energy clenched in her fists back into her soul, feeling more than a little disappointed. She had really thought she would've gotten to fight something by that point.
"Now are we going to learn how to defeat your untitled monsters?" she asked.
A soft, blue-green glow filled the space. It seemed to flow toward the center of the room, where it coalesced into the form of an elderly Asian woman. She was small, round, and withered, but graceful as well; the cane she leaned on seemed more an accessory than an aid. Not one pale hair was out of place in the bun on her head, and her robes looked as though they didn't know the meaning of the word "wrinkled." Her shoulders were straight, her eyes were sharp, and one hand rested firmly on her hip.
"You bet your golden ass you are," she replied.
Siaru examined the golden woman's memory first. Out of the three of them, she seemed the most likely to have something useful in her head.
He released the glowing ball of thought from its container and gazed into it until it began to open, the light changing colors and taking forms more rapidly until it absorbed him into the scenario.
He was rocketing toward Earth in an escape pod, desperate, terrified, and angry. Gordanian drone cruisers were pursuing close behind. The pod was going as fast as it could, and all that could be done was to send prayers to X'Hal, the Living Goddess.
The pod crashed into the alien world and Siaru – or, technically, the woman in the memory – immediately took flight. The buildings were as tall as the coliseums of Okaara, yet inorganic as Psion spacecraft. Could this place provide refuge? The explosive arrivals of the cruisers seemed to say no.
But then, like a miracle from the Goddess herself, a band of Earth warriors attired in regalia of every conceivable color appeared, leaping into combat against the drones. Their leaders wore red and gold and battled the hardest of them all, shouting things in Earth tongues. One of them, a tall, nearly statuesque warrior with bronze skin and long, dark hair directed a query toward Siaru/the gold woman, but they were unable to understand, and merely shot Sun fire at the Gordanian troops. The tall warrior turned to the other warriors and shouted something affirming before snaring one of the drones in a golden lasso, then tossing that one into an oncoming (though rather poorly organized) phalanx.
As though they had come to their senses for the first time in the entire history of their species, the Gordanians retreated. They took to the skies thoroughly humiliated, and the rush of victory from the winning side was intoxicating.
The second leader, who wore a gold cloak and had as much green as red in their outfit, touched Siaru/the gold woman on the arm, and said something that sounded somewhat demanding, yet also somewhat concerned.
Siaru/the golden woman felt an incredible frustration at not being able to understand what was being said, but such great relief at being safe that without hesitation, they gathered the Earth warrior into their arms and kissed them deeply, feeling a connection form to the planet itself as they did so.
"Greetings or hello!" they said in the same Earth language they'd been unable to understand only moments before, now absorbed by contact with one of the Earth's inhabitants. "I am Princess Koriand'r of the planet Tamaran! Thank you for saving my life!"
Siaru was pulled from the memory. It was interesting, he decided, but not particularly helpful.
Jason still remembered the first time he saw one of the "ghosts" of the All-Caste. Seeing Ducra as one of those ghosts was even stranger than the ghosts themselves. Yet there she was, leaning on her staff, staring him down with her amused half-smile on her face, no shits given about the strangeness of her very existence.
"So it seems you have friends now," she observed, looking at Roy and Kori, then looking back at him.
"Not really," Roy replied. Which was fair.
Ducra barked a laugh.
"Snarky! Like sure seems to attract like, doesn't it?" she cackled. "You want my advice on how to stop the world domination squad? Learn to work together. You can start, Jason, by explaining how the archives work, because I know you haven't."
So, dying hadn't changed Ducra at all, it seemed. Jason always knew she was too mean to die properly.
"The archives are full of the knowledge and memories of the fallen warriors who have chosen to be buried here," he explained. "The Archivists preserve them, and then they can be accessed when the knowledge is needed. This way, if something like what did happen to the teachers were to happen, their knowledge can still be passed down."
Roy nodded along like he cared, while Kori's eyes widened and her hair flared brighter.
"This is brilliant!" she gushed, then turned to Ducra. "May I please be interred here when I die?"
Ducra's smile became genuine.
"Now this one has potential, Jason! Space Girl, we'd be glad to have you. Ask the intern if you need any help."
Jason rolled his eyes and strolled over to the intern.
"Can you help us find the best way to take down the Untitled Order?" he asked her. She stirred, stretched, then trotted around the room until she found the vault she was looking for and pointed to it with one wing.
"Thanks!"
He had to concentrate to remember the summoning, but calling the ghost forward was easy once he did. And somehow, a nineteenth-century German gentleman being the one to stroll through the wall shouldn't have surprised him, but it still did.
"Ja?" the ghost asked, yawning and stretching. "Was ist?"
"We need to know the best way to take down the Untitled Order," Jason replied in English, not one to waste time with arbitrary things like politeness. "Permanently."
The ghost thought for a moment.
"Hmm," he mused, this time in English. "You will be wanting to bring them into a confrontation with the keepers of the Lazarus Pits, and then be getting far out of the way. Let them destroy each other."
He yawned again, then returned to his vault.
"'The keepers of the Lazarus Pits?'" Kori repeated. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"The League of Assassins," Jason and Roy answered in unison.
"That crazy bastard wants us to trick the League and the Order into fighting," Jason finished.
"Because sure! Why not?" Roy added.
The Twice-Born's memory was even less helpful than the gold woman's; just a faded glimpse of him as a child with the flu, curled up against a man in bat-themed armor and watching an insipid film about "true love" and stars who were also people. Disgusting.
Which left the rude one with the metal arm. Siaru released his memory from its jar and waited for it to expand.
"Stupid bow!" a little girl cursed, glaring at an arrow she'd apparently fired into a tree three feet to the right of the actual target.
"Seriously?" he heard himself reply. "Lian, the bow can't be stupid, it's an inanimate object."
The girl tossed her pink, child-sized longbow onto the ground, where it lay forlornly on the grass.
"You called the cable box stupid last night."
"But…" he hedged, "but I was referring to the people who work for the cable company. It's different."
The girl scrunched her tiny nose.
"But I can't do it," she complained. "I missed every time."
He picked up the bow and placed it back in her hand. "Remember when you couldn't even pull the string back? And now, look how far you can shoot them! You're doing great."
The girl contemplated the bow in her hand.
"Why can't I just use the crossbow?" she asked. "It's way easier."
"It's not about what's easy," he replied. "It's about learning new skills, not relying on what you can do already. Just like in school."
He paused for a moment, then said, "Speaking of which, you need to finish getting ready."
Now, the child seemed disappointed to have to quit.
"Come on," she pleaded, "just a few more. Please, please, please!"
"Later," he replied firmly. "Now go brush your teeth."
Siaru extracted himself from the memory at the sound of the three mortals shuffling back up the stairs. It had been fairly useless anyway, full of nasty things like feelings and nostalgia.
"Take your memories back," he addressed the mortals. "They proved quite useless to me."
He released the shining orbs of thought from their containers and watched them flutter back into their owners' heads like moths drawn to bitchiness. Each of them looked sad for a moment, remembering. Then the gold woman strode purposefully toward him.
"Are you able to restore memories you haven't taken?" she asked. "Because I've… misplaced some. And I need to remember."
Siaru sighed.
"I'm an archivist," he replied. "I only deal in memories that are freely given to me. If you've 'lost' your memories, then you can find them again. Search within yourself, I suppose. There's no such thing as losing a memory."
Predictably, the gold woman looked disappointed.
"Oh," she said.
"I'm not going with you," Roy said. They'd returned to the transport after the – pretty contrived, in Roy's opinion – chat with the ghosts inside the mountain. The whole thing was really more Connor's scene than his.
Jason just shrugged. "I know. Didn't expect you to."
For some reason, Roy couldn't decide whether to feel relieved or hurt. It wasn't so much that he wanted to be involved (he didn't,) moreso, it was that he didn't want to be written off.
"It was an accident," he repeated for what seemed like the fifth time once the Khandaqi nurse had left. "I thought it was water and wasn't paying attention."
He struggled to sit up on the (ridiculously squishy) hospital bed so he could carry on the conversation like an adult.
Joey leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees.
"Roy, I lied to the personnel here," he said. "I didn't leave any paint thinner out. The only way you could've swallowed any is if you'd gotten it straight from the clearly labeled bottle yourself. You can't do this to me."
Roy wanted to disappear under the stupid, thin blanket. It had been an accident, no matter the evidence to the contrary. He'd only been looking to make the pain stop; to get buzzed, or drunk, or high – but not to kill himself.
He sighed. "We didn't have any real booze handy and the memories… they wouldn't stop. I'm sorry."
Joey looked at him with warmth in his green eyes and held out a hand, which Roy took without (too much) hesitation, and Joey gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.
"We're in this together, remember?" he said. It was not the same as an, "I trust you."
"The way I see it," Jason continued rambling, "the convergence thing won't be on us for a while yet, so we can take a more chill approach to this bullshit and get back to the more down-to-earth stuff. Disemboweling rapists, helping Kori with her thing, that kind of stuff."
Kori cheered, her hair flaring a little brighter.
"Not for nothing," she said, "but I much prefer the 'down-to-Earth stuff' lately."
Admittedly, "down-to-earth" didn't sound terrible.
"Now," Jason announced, "speaking of 'down-to-earth,' let's fly this spaceship back to the secret island hideout and fight some pirates or something!"
Roy tried not to crack a smile.
"That's funny," Jason explained to him, "because it sounds like something out of a children's fantasy novel, but it's actually real life."
Roy held up the middle finger of his prosthetic arm.
"Don't patronize me, Birdman."
Jason smirked. "That might've been your worst nickname attempt yet."
"It'll come to me," Roy threatened, "and it will be devastating."
They were both thrown off their feet toward the rear of the cabin when Kori took off without warning.
"Oh!" Kori exclaimed in response to their groans of pain, "I am sorry! I thought you two were ready."
Whether that was pointed sarcasm or not, Roy couldn't tell.
"This bucket really wasn't made for more than one person, was it?" he asked.
Getting slammed into a wall hadn't been on Jason's agenda for the day, but when did life ever follow the agenda?
"Why are you still here?" Roy hissed in his face, holding his jacket prisoner in his clenched fists.
Jason raised an eyebrow. "Well, you see, my boat is stranded in Maine, which is on the opposite end of the country, and while I'm a great swimmer, I'm not that –"
"I mean, what are your intentions?" Roy clarified through clenched teeth.
"My intentions?" Jason pretended to think for a minute. "Probably to kick some ass, take some names, be the change I wish to see in the world and all that."
"WHY DID YOU SAVE ME?" Roy shouted. "WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?"
Jason shook loose of Roy's grip and began walking down the hallway, backwards, so he could still face Roy, but also distance himself enough to clean up the truth with a little of his trademark snark.
"I saved you because I owed Kori a favor in return for saving me," he said. "I'm still here because I don't have anywhere better to be. Not to mention things in Gotham have been a little NSFJ - Not Safe For Jason - ever since I broke out of Arkham. There are enough escaped Arkham patients in Gotham, I don't need the 'good guys' trying to chase me down too."
"Really?" Roy persisted, surprisingly not taking the opportunity to throw Jason's "literal escaped mental patient" status back in his face. "Because, while I'm not clear on what happened in Maine, I'm pretty sure Kori could've handled it herself, yet when I woke up, there you were!"
Jason rolled his eyes and narrowly avoided running into the doorway he was trying to go through.
"Kori would've caused a bigger scene than needed. She's the knockdown, drag out, boss battle type."
It was Roy's turn to raise an eyebrow. "And you're not that dramatic?"
Rude.
"Look, if you think I'm waiting for an opportunity to give you the same chat I gave baby sis, that's not what this is. You already know how hopeless the 'light side' approach is. I just genuinely have nothing better to do."
And also, I really do care, he didn't say.
"Nothing makes sense anymore," Roy muttered.
"Things used to make sense?"
Roy clenched his fists, but cracked a slight smile. "Get back here so I can deck you."
Instead, Jason ran.
He hurled himself into the chair in front of Kori's computer console and shouted over his shoulder, "You can't deck a guy while he's on monitor duty!"
"Sure you can!" Roy shouted back as he raced into the room. "How do you think I lost my arm?"
Jason sucked in a breath and was half sincere when he said, "Ooh, ouch."
The half-insincere part of him was busy pulling up headlines. Nothing seemed relevant, until his own name jumped out at him.
"WHITE VS. RED," was the main headline, followed by the subheading, "China White issues a challenge to the Red Hood"
Jason banged his face on the desk. This was not a great development.
He clicked on the headline, which led to a video. Because of course it wasn't something he could just read. It had to be Cat Grant in front of a camera, taking her own sweet time. He drummed his fingers on the desk as he hit play.
"After sustaining multiple gunshot wounds in a shootout in Japan, notorious drug lord Chien Na Wei, better known as China White, was transferred to Gotham General Hospital," Cat was saying. "Early sources indicated that Gotham was likely chosen due to its distance from Star City – home of White's longtime foe, Green Arrow – but a recent video message by White's personnel would indicate that Gotham was also a strategic choice due to the city being the base of operations for the vigilante known as the Red Hood. Stay tuned, we'll have that footage for you right after this message from our sponsor!"
The ad filter cut out whatever "message" the channel's sponsors had, and the studio camera footage cut to cellphone camera footage of Wei sitting serenely in a hospital bed, flanked by her grunts and the remains of dead security guards.
"Hi," she began. "I'm on a lot of painkillers right now, but just know that I am dead serious when I say that in twenty-four hours, I am going to burn this place to the ground, starting with the pediatric ward, if the Red Hood doesn't show his pathetic face for a rematch. And if anyone else shows up, even the goddamn Batman himself, the entire building will explode. This is between the two of us. Come defend your city, Red Cockroach. I'm waiting."
The cellphone footage ended there and switched back to Cat Grant, still as poised as if she was reporting on a minor traffic delay.
"More on this story as it develops! I'm Cat Grant, and this is-"
Jason closed the video, cutting off the rest of her spiel. This was beyond bad. She was right, he should've killed her.
Roy came up behind him, eyes fixed on the screen.
"This one," he said, "I'm all in for."
Jason opened his mouth to ask what changed Roy's mind, but the pieces fell into place on their own. Wei was an opioid manufacturer and dealer who usually fought Green Arrow when she failed to evade confrontations completely. The first time Green Arrow left Star City for a significant time, drug traffic spiked higher than ever before, Green Arrow's teenage sidekick was left as the first line of defense, and, being a kid, the kid got in too deep. It was the original cautionary tale told to keep good little sidekicks everywhere in line.
"She was the first one to make it personal, wasn't she?" Jason asked. "The first face you ever put on what you were fighting against."
"I guess so," Roy said, shrugging. "Deep, profound reasoning or not, I just wanna kick her ass."
A/N:
Shoutout to MissGeek! I love reading your comments!This chapter was actually earlier than I thought it would be! I was planning to do some more moving, but a coolant hose exploded in my car right before I was going to leave! So I didn't go anywhere, and I'll be hauling a carload of my crap around until next weekend! But the car was fixed pretty easy, so At Least There's That.
-Foreshadowing? Haven't decided yet.
-The Essence is 1000 years old and 2000% Done.
-In my opinion, Jason could be a good leader if he wanted to be. He's certainly not a follower.
-I think in the original comics, Siaru was supposed to be an immortal who only looks like a child, but like, why? For what purpose? How? Screw that. My take is that children are trained as Archivists because one, sending kids into battle is dumb, and two, children are less likely to have the dangerous ambitions adults have and would have more respect for the information they guard. They would be less likely to misuse the archived information for personal gain. And when they start to come of age, they train their replacement, then take up battle training with the rest of the adults.
-Both of the dudes have definitely seen Top Gun. Convince me otherwise.
-Why fight dragons when you can friend dragons?
-Kori's memory is pulled pretty much straight from canon, but this time from her point of view.
-"She's too mean to die," is one of my favorite Dad-isms and I use it everywhere.
-The "ghosts" are really more like remixed memories. The longer they've been dead, the less they can interact with their surroundings, but they still serve as good recordings of knowledge.
-Foreshadowing!
-The movie referenced in Jason's memory is Stardust (2007) and is one of the greatest movies ever made. I'm gonna say Jason is about ten or eleven in the flashback, so it's from before he became Robin and he is very small.
-Roy's memory is pulled straight from Titans (2008) #19! Lian is too cute.
-FORESHADOWING!
-The hospital flashback is one I made up, and for those of you who aren't from the Midwestern United States, where there is Nothing But Corn, teenagers supposedly will drink lacquer thinner (or, more commonly, lighter fluid) in lieu of alcohol. I say supposedly because I've never met anyone dumb or desperate enough to try it, but I'm guessing it would land you in the hospital. But hey, lacquer thinner and Southern Comfort smell exactly the same, and when one is shacking up with an artist, the former is probably more readily available than the latter.
-"See, That's Funny Because..." is an excellent game that might also get you punched in the face.
-I really love Calista Flockhart's portrayal of Cat Grant in the first season of Supergirl, but endearingly oblivious comics!Cat is fun as well. I genuinely don't know why.
-China White has only ever appeared in Green Arrow: Year One as far as I know, but she has potential, so I will be giving her somewhat of a backstory eventually!
That's all for now! I haven't decided whether I'll post another bio between now and the next chapter, but you can read Crux's bio on the blog! Thanks for reading, and please leave me comments! Please. My wife is pregnant.