"But you've been in a COMA for almost five years!" Sterling wailed. "Your muscles should have atrophied! Not GROWN BACK! You didn't have a penis when we brought you in!"

Itachi's hands went up to his face. "Not little blue!!"

"It's FINE. I just need to carve some scar tissue off it..."

Itachi paused, head tilting. ".... can I help?"

"No. I'm mad at you for giving up on life," came the almost hoarse response.

"And WHAT did he paint all over the skin we put on him!"

"But you weren't there!" Itachi said, almost keening.

The sound gave Tim a head ache.

"They're called seals," the hulking man said. Where the skin, the cadaver skin hung off his, blue and red shone through. The sword rattled on the bed.

"But we have to run TESTS! We have so many questions!" She wailed.

"I'll leave the sword. It should stop robbing you of life now," the man said. "I won't even charge you that much to rent it."

Sterling blinked. "Charge?"

"Yeah. You know. Dollars, right? I've been listening really GOOD for the last three years. Listening is all I've been ABLE to do..." He picked up a scalpel and eyed it. Brought it to his side and cut away the sloughing off pink. Red welled underneath it. There was a strange sucking noise.

Tim just stared and waited. It was what you DID with these people after all. They started to do something strange and your options were to sit on your thumb and wait or try to knock them out as quickly as you could and talk to them when they came to. After you'd made ample use of several rolls of duct tape to get their damn hands still. When a wet noise marked the meeting of flesh and floor, he wasn't that surprised to see blue skin and gills.

The blue skin was bleeding in the same lacy pattern as the ink and blood Itachi'd frantically scrawled all over the flesh mummy.

Tim wondered how many years past the proper training age he was to learn how to cure full body third degree burns with finger painting.

The process was repeated, peeling away.

Sterling was flailing a little. "Some one tell me the camera's are working! Please, PLEASE let us put you in the mri? Just for a while? An hour or two!?"

"Maybe for money," The man said. "I'm gonna need some of that, after all."

"Do you want to go to the village?" Tim asked. He tried not to look at the shed skin. Or the very BLUE naked man that Itachi was petting in little spurts, bandaged hands absorbing blood.

"I don't know. Do I?"

Itachi's shoulders twitched in what might have been a shrug. "Go. Say hi. Then we'll go somewhere."

"You pick a place already?"

"Of course. It's somewhere waarrrrm, Kisame," Itachi said.

Kisame nodded. "Whatever makes you happy."

"A blood sample," Sterling went on. "Just one more, to see if it's different now!"

"Mother's above, woman didn't you stick me with enough needles?"

"But you weren't UPRIGHT then!"

"Get me clothes, and I'll let you do three tests," Kisame said. "Three short ones."

Sterling ran off. Then ran back. "I need to measure you."

"That's test one then."

Tim noted that the scars were layered. Almost like lace. The still red pattern of whatever Itachi'd done over the wax like haze of the burns, over faint scars that you'd think the fire would have eradicated.

These people seemed to accumulate the idea of scars more than real scars. A normal human'd have thick twisting ropes of scar tissue from the damage they seemed to be able to take, judging from Kiba's descriptions of the wounds that gave him his marks. THEY just had the impression of scars. Raised patterns, discolored area's like tattoos.

Kisame had scars that seemed to indicate a normal human would be DEAD.

"You were the first one we found alive," Tim said as Sterling skittered off. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Vaugly," Kisame said, without elaboration.

Tim sighed. He hadn't really expected a explanation. Most of the villagers hadn't been near the epicenter, and the ones that possibly might have been all had a great, convenient gaping hole in their memories about it.

It was the sort of memory lapse that Batman tended to cure with a few blows to the gut, followed by a visit to one of the taller sky scrapers in Gotham. Superman used a similar method, only he didn't need to find a sky scraper first.

But you could not DO that to these people. Hauling someone five hundred feet up after they'd survived a fall through the atmosphere usually just resulted in them looking around, going 'ah, hey, I can see my house from here' which wasn't the same as a deeply heartfelt rattling off of the truth.

"What.. did his brother do?" Tim asked, finally, looking at Itachi, who was now sitting next to the large sword and petting it like he'd just been reunited with his puppy.

The blue man had a very grim sort of smile that didn't show teeth. "The inevitable, I suppose."

Click. Click.

The the domino's kept falling, little ones, big ones.

It would be nearly impossible to describe them all. Counter productive, certainly. That would bring us too close to Sterlings world view, with god lodged neatly in the details.

God is IN the details, of course.

Many gods are. There is a lot of space in the details after all.

But if every god is in every detail then, as any artist will tell you, god is certainly also in the big picture. Much the same way the color of the paper shows in a water color. Or black pigment in the jar you clean your brushes in.

So we leave the dominoes a moment to pull back. Farther back.

Time goes faster from back here.

The idea of strangers from another universe is depressingly normal to most of the world.

The idea of refugee's is a bit novel, though. Nami as the cover girl for the new wave of inhabitant's was a bit on the scandalous side but her utter un-interest in meddling in things that didn't really directly affect her and her tendency NOT to do utterly outrageous things other than occasionally wear mens shirts without buttons meant that while she had a sort of celebrity to her, she didn't dominate headlines for long.

The nickname 'Fallen One's' caught on, though.

And so, six months from Itachi's three hour phone call, the big picture doesn't appear to have changed. Until you hold it right up against a snapshot of before.

And if you held it up, right up, just right in the light, you would see the long thing strands of new thread in the tapestry. Metallic. Not gold, maybe. Steel. Perhaps.

The domino's are fallen. The dice are cast.

Now we move back in.

*************

Six months later, and Batman was still frigid about the whole thing.

Tim, Robin, at the moment, wasn't that surprised. It'd be strange, really, if the man let it go. And why should he let it go. He hadn't stumbled

upon a global plot, he'd had it explained. With slides. But it was the sort of global plan you couldn't do much about.

Like Mormon missionaries, who were blatantly out there to save people from their own immorality and convert them to a new immorality.

There wasn't any rule against that. You could, in theory, get them all for false ID's... But if they kicked the villagers out, other nations would LEAP at the chance to have the tricky bastards working for them, and would give them proper paperwork.

So THAT was out. They just had to wait and see if they did anything really, truly illegal other than plan to take over the world.

Robin put his gloved finger on a bit of peeling tar paper that had fallen off the roof to sit on this ledge.

When he lifted his hand, the tar paper stuck as if it'd been glued. Robin smiled. It was getting easier. He hadn't stopped practicing, only now he did it in and out of costume.

"Very good!" Said a encouraging voice right behind him that was both familiar and unexpected.

Robin, for the very first time in quite a while, nearly fell off the building without anyone tossing or kicking him or anything blowing up.

Kiba grabbed his cape and tugged him back. "Oh, I've showered! Don't smell so bad you have to jump, see?"

Robin tried to hit him on principle and was so startled when his fist connected that he almost fell off again.

Kiba righted him again and rubbed his jaw ruefully. "Sorry I didn't get a chance to visit sooner," he said, sheepishly.

"What are you doing here?" Robin asked, but even as the words slid out he had a good guess.

Kiba grinned like he was reading Robin's mind.

Robin glared.

*****

He didn't tell Batman about it, for a few reasons.

One, Kiba wasn't going to do anything to the left or to the right of the line the Batman had in the sand of the city. Except possibly give Robin a very big headache. But lots of people gave Robin head aches, and at least Kiba wasn't using a lead pipe.

Two, telling Batman about it would require the sentence 'Kiba wanted to bed me' in it. And that would lean to explaining that sentence. And. Really. No. Just. No. It wasn't like...

Just. No.

Third, it was mildly flattering and Batman would pick up on that and maybe that tied into point two..

Fourth, Kiba had come to see him. Not Batman. It was therefore, not Batman's business. Sorta. Well, everything in Gotham was Batman's business, but this wasn't, urgent business.

Fifth, it didn't occur to him to exactly call the man up and give him an update while Kiba was all but producing essays and photos on why they should have sex.

"What if I just say no?" Robin asked.

Kiba grinned. Beamed, really. "I don't think you'll just say no. You haven't yet, after all. You sorta try to talk me out of it, but I think it's more you trying to talk yourself out of it, see? Cause you can't think of a really good reason why you shouldn't sleep with me."

"I can too!"

"And it is?"

"I... I don't really want too!"

Kiba pouted a little. "Are you sure? I'm very good in bed, you know. And I'm in good shape. I promise I don't make funny noises when I come. Well, maybe funny but not like, weird or off putting."

Robin felt his cheeks and face get so hot he thought the spirit gum that helped hold the mask in place was going to fall off. Burn off.

"But, since I'm here to train you," Kiba said, and then Robin brain kicked back in with a sharp, "What?"

Kiba smiled. "I'm here to train you We agreed to give you enough training to let you reach whatever potential you had, and we're damn well going to do it. Well. I am. On behalf of the village."

Robin blinked. "... If I sleep with you would you just go away?"

Kiba smiled. "You want to do it and find out?"

"I want an answer to my question!"

"If you slept with me you'd totally get an answer," Kiba said.

Robin noted, uncomfortably, how damn close the man was. "You wouldn't go anywhere. Not until you'd trained me." He winced because telling that phrase to such a genuine dog person had some subtext that he was going to stop thinking about NOW.

Or NOW.

God dammit.

"That's true," Kiba said, humming. "I'd stay at least that long, welcomed or not."

And then, while Robin was still in a sort of stupor, Kiba leaned in and kissed his cheek.

It was a weirdly chaste kiss, considering the blatent nature of the man.

Robin tried to punch him for it. But Kiba dodged that blow easily. "Why did you let me hit you last time then?"

"Because it took me too long to catchup with you again. And I didn't say goodby last time. I owed you a hit. See?" Kiba smiled. "When do you want to meet to start training?"

"You don't want to start now?"

"I thought you'd be more interested in the car thieves," Kiba said, face earnest. "That were trying to take one of the Ferrari's from the showroom down on eight."

Robin's teeth gritted and he left the ledge in a hurry.

**********

The next day at six pm, just as Robin was deciding he probably, really should, inform Batman of the encounter (in a way that was more like 'I saw Kiba' not 'Kiba came to see me'), Kiba showed up.

With coffee.

"Here. One's got lots of cream and sugar, and one doesn't. I figured we could mix them until you liked one?"

Robin stared.

"I also have cookies."

Robin took a cookie and the coffee that was plain.

"And a calender. When do you want to train?"

He did have a calender at hand. It was black leather, plain and filled with little notes and appointments until Kiba found today's date. It was blank after that point. Except for a note that said 'pay rent' and another for grooming that seemed to take up all of Saturday.

Robin caught all that in a glance. And stared at Kiba, who had a pen now and was waiting.

"Thursday..." He said finally. "At. Four pm."

Kiba wrote it down. "It's definite," he said. "I will see you then."

And then he was gone in a puff of slightly tangy smoke.

Robin glared at the smoke. A time but no location?

He didn't like that.

.... he still didn't tell Batman.

But after the car thieves were dealt with, he took out his phone. Dialed a number.

Got voice mail.

Tim glared at the phone. Grayson was a BASTARD.

I really need more friends I can talk too, he thought, sulkily.

******

But there wasn't anyone, really. Who did you talk to about that sort of thing?

Tim didn't know. Other than Grayson...

He stared at the phone. Maybe Barbara?

... She'd laugh a lot. But, Grayson had already done that, right?

... But then she'd ask questions.

Tim didn't like questions he didn't know the answers too, but in this case, since he presumably knew the answers on some level....

At four pm that Thursday, he still didn't have an answer.

But Kiba wasn't asking questions. He seemed more content to try to work Robin to DEATH with a thick journal outlining a training regime.

"I thought you were gonna take the opportunity to grope me," Tim said, rubbing his ass as he stood up.

"Oh, I still want to bed you, no doubt. But, Training is important, especially here. I want you to learn and develop so that you live long enough to realize how good it'd be for you."

Tim glared.

*************

"It's not," G.J. Doe said, patiently, "As if we are forcibly recruiting."

Superman would have said something but the thin woman holding her child on one hip said something sharply.

"She says unless you are going to feed her and give her daughter a safe education, she'd like to talk to me," the short, green eyed man said seriously.

Superman sighed. "Your people said we'd be kept in the loop?"

"It's not a very complicated loop here," GJ Doe said. "We've established a safe zone, and a base here. We've dug our own diamond mine and the workers are paid in a percentage of the profits. You can check, be sure we're not gouging them. And when children under three are brought in, we take them in to train. Their parents are hired in the mines or for other jobs." He shrugged. "It's easy."

"Food?"

"We have ways of talking the plants into providing amply. And insects are high in protein."

"Miner safety?"

"They're pit mines...." Was the bland reply. "And I don't let them cave in."

"You don't, let them?" Superman said dubiously, then was suddenly aware that sand had gripped his feet. Tightly. "Ah. I see."

"I never sleep either," GJ Doe said, with a smile.

Maybe, Superman thought as he flew away, It's not just their goal that makes us uneasy, but the fact they seem to be reaching it in their little planned increments.

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Author's note: Reviews are still appreciated. I'm aware of how very weird this crossover is, and how narrow the overlap on the venn diagram must be. Geekish is such a colorful language.

Standard attention whoring goes here. Rah. Rah. We're coming up on my personal favorite pairing soon. Any guesses who they are? :D