Tattoos on the sky

by Pernshinigami

Grimmjow knocks Ichigo and Yoruichi through dimensions, Ichigo to Metropolis, Yoruichi to Gotham. The gotei thirteen sends a chase team out to find them. Yoruichi hides in Wayne Manor in cat form to recover from her wounds, while Superman brings Ichigo to the watchtower to hide him from Grimmjow while he recovers. Can Ichigo and yoruichi fight off the Espada to get home?

10. All color but the white (Gaiden)

OMG GUYS I HAD WRITER'S BLOCK! this took months, mind you it was 57 pages long.

Flash found himself on a dream journey, hearing the thoughts and experiencing the memories of a child from his city named Alex.

I was born and raised in the home of the Flash, the most cheerful superhero ever. You'd think with a smile like this to guide them, people in Central City would be the happiest go luckiest people ever.

"FREAK!" the bible hit Alex in the side of the head. "you're a devil deluded freak! you're not a girl, here lemme show you!" Ricky, the kid determined to punish Alex every day just for who she was, punched Alex and tried to yank her skirt down. "you just gotta get your penis twisted hard enough."

Alex snarled, lifting her fist to punch the violent sadistic little brat only for him to be kicked in the ass, literally, by a girl with slightly darker blonde hair, vivid green eyes and a temper that reminded Flash so strongly of Wonder Woman. "LAY A FINGER ON MY COUSIN AGAIN EXCEPT TO COMPLIMENT HER LOOKS AND I SWEAR THE PARAMEDICS WILL BE PEALING YOU UP OFF THE PAVEMENT WITH A SPATULA YOU COWARDLY SPOILED BASTARD! DO YOU HEAR ME!?" The girl chased off the boy, smacking him repeatedly over the head with a leather backpack.

Yeah right. Just because I was born in the wrong gender body I get treated like I'm a freak. Why can't the entire city be as innocent as its protector?

A pair of brilliant scarlet birds with long necks and tails simply appeared by Alex's side, crooning happily.

"Bennu, Anasazi..." Alex hugged the birds, seeking comfort from their warm feathers.

The girl, Alex's cousin, Morgan, came back. "So... you were gonna show me around on the way to the clinic?"

"yeah..."

"Frankly I'm jealous I don't get them. It must be wonderful to be the fastest thing with wings in the world."

"Sometimes the Speed force scares me." Alex said quietly. "I can sense through the phoenixes that its so... deep... like a yawning maw that wants to swallow me up. Maybe its just that I'm borrowing their gift, rather than having it myself."

Still, I am grateful for their presence. Their warmth and light, something i never got from the townsfolk or the kids who threw things at me or the shopkeepers that wouldn't talk to me at the register.

Meanwhile Flash was showing Wonder Woman around. "I'm telling you princess, you don't know what you're missing. The ice cream parlor I really like is right up the block. They've got this gelato, and its flavored with /ginger./ Back when I first got my powers, the then Flash would take me here whenever I got motion sick."

"you?"

"Well as a newbie yeah. It was fun and I'd run and run till I couldn't keep my last meal down." Flash giggled.

"What was the Flash before you like?"

"A real good man Princess. I really miss him sometimes. I don't always think I could live up to his example but I try."

A boy ran past them. "Stupid bitch, why's she defend that fag? Thats not a girl its a thing!"

Diana grabbed the boy by the ear. "WATCH your language kid."

"yeah, who taught you those words, they're really mean you know." Flash bent down over the boy.

"Pfftt, I don't care, that Alexander kid is a freak! He's got a penis and doesn't even realize its /there./ And when I tried to show him that /he's not a girl/, his cousin started hitting me with her backpack and screaming at me."

"Thats because you called her cousin a freak." Wonder Woman scolded. "Mark my words Flash, we'll see this one in prison for assault someday. I'll be the first to say I told you so." Wonder woman glared balefully at the boy, who gulped. "Now are you going to apologize to this Alex kid?"

"pfftt, fuck no." the kid ran off, ducking when Wonder Woman tried to grab him again.

"Thats enough princess. I think I know what that kid's on about, the people here in town have been in an uproar over..." Pffffhhheewwwwwwww! A burst of brilliant light shot up into the sky, and the temperature shot up around them. "oh god damnit... Mirror Master did you have to test a super weapon /today/? c'mon Princess!"

He grabbed Wonder Woman by the hand and zipped off with her to go fight Mirror Master.

"oh no!" Alex cried, dragging Morgan into an alley. "Thats near the clinic! c'mon guys!" She thrust out her arms for her phoenix friends. They transformed into a sword and shield, one blazing with fire, the other sparking with lightning. "I... am... FLASH ANGEL!" Wings sprouted from her back, buzzing with speed force energy, six of them, glowing brightly with fire on the tips of one side and lightning on the tips of the other.

"Walk fearlessly in darkness, MORRIGAN!" Morgan drew her zanpakuto and used her shikai to transform into her alter ego "The Morrigan." "MODE CHANGE, EAGLE WARRIOR!" A huge black eagle shaped hood and cloak covered Morgan's face. Feathers hung from the cloak which pooled around her shihakusho like wings. Her zanpakuto, marked with a saguaro cactus flower mon and a cluster of crow feathers, transformed into an enormous golden hammer carved with her family's heraldic animals. At the end of the hammer's handle was a chakram on a chain, carved with her family's heraldry, a winged fox with a skull mask, a black jaguar, a coyote, a crow, and a white buffalo.

"CRAWWWW!" Morgan called out, taking to the air with the magic her zanpakuto gave to her. It animated her cloak so that it looked like she really did have wings. Alex shot out in front of her, making a beeline via the Speed force right for the enemy. "WAAAIIIT, COUSIN WAIT FOR ME!"

"no way in hell! What if he hurt Doctor Mitchel? you know she's got a weak leg! And Doctor McCallum's got a bad back!" Was the last Morgan heard of her cousin.

Flash and Mirror Master were already going at it when Alex grabbed the villain from behind and dragged him headlong into his own super weapon with a cry of... "ANGEL FLASH MACH 1!" Mirror Master crashed headlong into the side of the doom mirror thing he'd been testing, causing it to splinter. Alex had caught him so off guard he couldn't retreat into the mirror. He only sank into it slowly in a half daze till he was partially in, his legs and one arm sticking out.

Flash's head turned in super speed, watching as Alex wheeled, lightning and fire sparking from her feet and speed force sparking from her wings, as the girl came around again. "MACH 2!"

The fire and lightning was paler this time as huge, smouldering ruts appeared in Mirror Master's machine, throwing him free and backwards 50 feet into a parked car. "MACH 3!" Mirror Master was tossed a third time, this time back into the cockpit of his machine. At the same time hunks of sheet metal were ripped from the machine and pressed to the side of the Central City Specialized Medical Building. The morter was cracking, but Flash didn't think that was going to do the trick until. "MACH 4!" SCCHHHKKKKKKKK! With a flint sword covered in flames, Alex welded the sheet metal onto the building.

"HONESTLY!" A girl wearing a crow costume landed nearby and crawed. "Cousin couldn't you have waited for me... I could have watched your back." The cloak transformed into one resembling a coyote and giving off waves of frost and chilly fog.

"Naw, I'm like him only weaker." The angelic looking female Flash had finally slowed down enough for the normal ordinary Flash to get a good look at her, she was jerking her thumb at him, which made him chuckle. Only two of her six wings were solid at any given time, the other four phasing in and out of existance, vibrating with brilliant white lightning and flame. "And i can't be super fast on the ground. Gotta have the sky dude, I /love/ flying!"

"heh, I'll call you next time Captain Boomerang shows up then, he loves making these flying boomerangs that chase people and things through the air." Morrigan, aka Morgan, chuckled at Flash's amiable reply.

"Sooo much more talkative than Batman. He's a great defender for Gotham but sometimes his gruff public persona is quite annoying. Where's the food and cheer? The wine women and song? Life is a joyful festival! Why waste it brooding?"

Sirens could be heard as the cops moved in to arrest Mirror Master, who was lying half buried in his ruined super weapon, sparks coming off him and arms twitching comically. "how the hell did ya put me ouuuuttt kid?" He whined in pain.

Alex smiled nastily at Mirror Master. "my lightning isn't straight up lightning, it channels up and down the nerve pathways in the target's body. Your motor neurons are currently overloaded with a nasty mix of lightning and magic, so they can't clearly recieve signals from your brain. Have fun in PT." She said that last sentence with a sarcastically sweet voice.

Thud, thud, thud, thud... Mirror Master was struggling to get up and only managed to hit his head gently on the ground.

Morgan giggled. "I think we should go..."

"Hai, I've got to get some potion ingredients anyway." Alex grinned. "The way red squad keeps getting hurt. We're gonna need to heal a lot of wounds."

"What do you expect, they live in /metropolis/ after all. Where /all/ the bad guys hit as hard as the man of steel himself." the two of them leapt into the air and flew off, Alex at super speed force speed and Morgan with shunpo. Flash grinned. "C'mon Princess, the cops got Mirror Master." And off he zipped, dragging Wonder Woman behind him.

He finally found the two of them breathing a sigh of relief in a nearby alley. "Hey, you two left without introducing yourselves!" Flash grinned.

Alex jumped, blushing furiously. "Er... um well..."

"I was gonna see if you wanted to come to bob and terry's with me and Wonderwoman. That was a really nice takedown. But us speedsters sure use a lot of energy!"

In an instant the transformation reversed itself and two twittering phoenixes were literally begging Flash for Bob and Terry's ice cream.

"They're the ones using the energy. My familiars Bennu and Anasazi are the ones that use the Speed force. However, they regularly lend it to me in the form of "Flash Angel." I'll also be able to unlock a transformation above that one but that will take a lot of hard work."

Flash grinned as both girls revealed who was under their respective transformations. Both were girls, both blonde, both with green eyes though Morgan's were paler than Alex's. One wore a black witch's outfit with a crow feather cloak and a black kimono and hakama made from loose leather and linen. She had a crow belt buckle made from polished brass and a long white silk sash fastened by it. The girl also wore a witch's pointed, broad brimmed hat but modeled after a raven's head and streamlined to further the look. Her mask, surprise surprise, was a crow mask. The other, the one who'd used speed force power, wore a long white leather coat with a tear away back that could rip open to admit her wings and be fastened on again. The coat had a design painted on it's back, a saguaro cactus flower mon circled by a thunder bird and a phoenix. She wore indigo blue leather pants, a white blouse, a white belt with a red cross belt buckle, woven wool vest made in a navajo style of weaving that was sky blue and depicted saguaro cactus flowers, white leather boots with no heals, and a witch's hat similar to her cousin's only with a plume of phoenix feathers attached to the tip of the hat. Also, her hat was leather, the first girl, the one in black, had had a hat made from velvet.

"And when I call upon my living blade, I take up its mantle and become The Morrigan."

"We're cousins!" "And Spellcasters!" "She just moved here from Gotham!" "Fly like crow, sting like bat." The two giggled girlishly.

And the two phoenixes continued to beg for Bob and Terry's.

"oookay, I think this is best explained over ice cream." Flash grinned.

And Bennu and Anasazi the phoenixes chirped their agreement.

Once they were settled at Bob and Terry's, the two cousins eagerly sucked down gelato while Flash happily watched Wonder Woman get her first taste of ice cream. "mmmmm... now this is... cookies and cream you said?"

"Yep!" Flash shoved a spoonful of mint chocolate into his mouth and sucked down the cool sweetness. "mmmm"

The phoenixes excitedly downed two banana splits in a matter of seconds, superspeed pecking the damn things. "caw!" They exclaimed at once. The two birds began to sing happily, each one cheek rubbing Flash in happiness at the sweet treat.

"You're welcome." Flash got a goofy grin on his face. "I've never met animals gifted in the speed force before."

"Nor will you again. My clansmen breed animals for use in battle by super powered humans and create weapons and armaments for the super powered. Only classical ones though. The most recent thing we've ever made is a musket and bayonet. Its all chain mail, plate mail, scale mail, anything that will toughen a super powered hide and take a beating."

"No kidding, thats a tough job because almost every job you do has to be made custom." Flash ordered and paid for a gigantic milk shake. "Like this suit, its made of friction resistant material so it doesn't get all scorched when I turn up the juice. I can't just put on regular boots and still expect them to hold up. Believe me I've tried."

"The phoenixes are our only two of the sort, they've never had an egg that they didn't die to produce. We /have/ bred superpowered horses though, and dogs that can smell ghosts." Mused Morgan. "Never been able to produce a speedforce horse or dog. That would have been handy too."

"Cats too." Alex added. "Cats that can smell ghosts /and/ see them even if the humans nearby can't."

"Interesting... don't worry, all Flashes are happy accidents." Flash grinned. "And as we were created, so we live, happy live in the moment accidents."

"Thats fine if the moment you live in is a happy one." Alex growled, standing and striding out.

"Angel the tip!" Morgan called after her cousin.

"Fuckit." Alex called over her shoulder. "The owner doesn't give a shit, why should I?" She ripped a flier down from the bullitain board and threw it on the floor.

The phoenixes settled themselves next to Flash. Wonder Woman reached out to stroke one of their gorgeous scarlet necks. Flash stood, picking up the flier. "Protest to end sexual deviants... to meet at the special medical building to protest the treatment of transexuals at the above mentioned clinic. Bring wholesomeness back to our city." He read.

"What's that about?" Wonder woman didn't understand man's world entirely yet.

"It means we're gonna raise a ruckus until the city shuts down that den of vice." The owner growled.

"Its not a den of vice." Flash growled. "They treat children with gender dysphoria. Thats not a vice thats not even sexual."

"Those children are deviants destined to become nothing but prostitutes, thieves, child molesters and garbage!"

"They're only garbage if you throw them out!" Flash growled. "I won't have you talking like that about children in front of me or talking bad about the doctors there. I think the clinic is a good idea. Those kids get depressed because /you/ treat them like less than animals and they're at risk of suicide because of ignorant bastards like you!"

"Get out." The shop owner snarled. "OUUUUTTTT! Those operations KILL OUR KIDS and replace them!"

Flash stormed out as angrily as he could. Morrigan snatched the ice creams, noting that Flash had tossed his shake in the garbage on his way out. When she and wonder woman found him he was shaking in barely contained rage. "I knew that guy for years. The old Flash knew him before that. And he acts like such a pig..."

"Maybe you can explain to me what this is about, it seems to be a local controversy."

"About treating pediatric transexual cases." Morgan replied.

"A what?"

Flash sighed. "Man's world stuff Diana, transsexuals are people born in one gender body but have the mind, heart and spirit of the other gender. It comes out usually when they're kids but if they aren't treated at puberty transgender children are at risk of suicide or self mutilation. The clinic treats them by giving them hormones of the other gender so that they physically develop the body characteristics of their mental gender."

Diana head tilted. "Then why is this an issue?"

Morgan cut Flash off in answering. "Because its considered taboo in American society. For over two hundred years men and women were forced into destructive and rigid gender and sexual roles by the Christian church purely by societal pressure. Its origins are a very long story. Back during the days of rome thats how far back it goes. But what most modern die hard bible humpers take away from the bible is that sex is deviant if its done outside of marriage, abortion is murder and therefore women don't have a choice, and if you're fucking someone of the same gender you're doomed to burn in hell and therefore need to have your life made a living hell. Because they're too afraid to gain a deeper understanding of transexuality they lump it in with homosexuality and therefore transexuals must be sexual deviants that will corrupt the minds of american youth and are doomed to a life of criminal behavior. None of which, by the way, is true. But their treatment of the clinic, they treat it like it somehow affects their lives in someway or will result in the entire town being judged because it has one particular establishment. Its like calling the Mayans barbarians because they sacrificed the winning ball team to the gods. The Mayans weren't barbarians, but to an outsider witnessing such a spectacle they might as well be terrifying demons."

Wonder woman looked after Alex, in the direction she'd gone. "So she's..."

"yep, mentally a woman, physically a man. Wonder how Amazon code would deal with that." Flash smirked.

"I've honestly never seen something like that before. And I know for a fact we have nothing in our code that says anything about differentiating mental and physical genders." Wonder Woman mused.

"Yeah well, you know me and kids in trouble. And I've decided from day one to fight for that clinic to stay here." Flash told Wonder Woman. "Their only alternative site is in Gotham, and no offense to Batman but thats no city for kids with issues to go to for medical treatment."

"Then I will support you as a fellow Justice League member." Wonder woman smiled. "C'mon, lets see if we can get Alex to calm down."

"I'll do that, you've got robbers n' such to chase." Morgan told Wonderwoman with a smile. "Thanks for the Ice cream Furashu-san. It was delicious." And she turned and seemed to simply disappear.

---

"A man with the spirit of a woman?" Flash was listening as Wonder Woman made her evening call to her mother on Themyscyra, which had been a tradition ever since her exile. "i've never heard of such a thing." Hypolytta mused. "And people in man's world make a habit of treating such people as animals?"

"So I've been told mother. They claim it has to do with the religious book dominent in the region, but I've read said book cover to cover and there's no mention of homosexuality or transexuality as being a punishable sin. There aren't even any transexuals in there and their depiction of some of the Isrealite military leaders is far too simplistic to be more than a joke."

Hypolytta chuckled. "yes, I suspect old Abraham would have been upset at the state of man's world's religion."

"you knew him mother?"

"Amazons did not always stick to the island. It was our reaction to Alexander the great, we did not wish to be annexed, consulted the gods, and took their advice to withdraw from the world. From there our code was born."

"Interesting story Queen." Flash called out. "Tell me another one."

"Quit heckling." Wonder Woman hissed. "You always sit and listen and heckle on these conversations."

"Thats cause I think its wrong that you can't have these conversations face to face." Flash said stubbornly. "she's your mother for pete's sake."

"Flash we've had this conversation before, I refuse to break Amazon code." Wonder Woman replied. "Even if Mother decided to make me an exception I wouldn't go."

"You heard her Flash was it? let it drop then." Hypolytta smiled at him. "Diana is my daughter, i would never break off contact fully and I /am/ interested in her adventures in Man's world even if i think her presence there isn't necessary."

The glare Flash responded with would put Batman to shame, much like a younger brother sticking up for their older sibling.

The day before the protest Flash called the clinic's head and offered to run security for the patients. The clinic's head asked if he was sure. And Flash grinned. "i'm the flash, I'm /always/ sure. And I know for a fact treating these kids the way those people want them to be treated is cruel." And then he hung up.

---

Alex shook in fear the day the protestors stood outside the the clinic. This had to be the day of their appointment. Thrown objects mysteriously missed as her mother steered her into the clinic and kept her back between the protestors and her daughter. Magic came in handy in the most subtle of ways sometimes, in this case an inaccuracy charm. "Ah Muriel, right this way." Doctor McCallum smiled. "Flash was nice enough to run security for us today. Just in case things got out of hand." (1)

"No problem doc!" Flash grinned enormously as he simply appeared at Doctor McCallum's side.

"I'm quite grateful actually dear boy, you're bringing a lot of hope to these children that their town's hero has their backs. Several of my young female to male patients have been improving immensely in mood since you started visiting."

Alex sighed, walking towards the waiting room. "So Doctor, how exactly did an old fella like you get involved in transgender treatment?" Flash asked curiously. He'd never met Doctor McCallum face to face before though he spoke frequently with Doctor Mitchel, his daughter.

"Well, I began my career in unusual neurological disorders when I was in my twenties and encountered a patient with what we call Body Dysmorphic disorder. Back then they didn't know what it was, but it has to do with the parts of our brain responsible for body image and percieving ourselves and others of our species. People who have it frequently have the desire to cut off a specific limb, and their desire is so specific they can draw a line where they want it to be amputated. Other sufferers suffer under the uncontrollable belief that some part of their body is so hideously ugly that nobody would ever love them or want to be friends with them, and these sorts often try plastic surgery, to no effect. Then one day when I was studying these patients I met a young man named David who told me he wanted to be a woman and had since he was a boy. Oh he stood out immediately."

"He'll go on like that forever." Alex whispered to Flash. "you should excuse yourself and get back to securing. I think I hear a revival starting outside and that means somebody is gonna try to cast the demons out of us."

"I don't see any demons, just a kid with a problem." Flash said with a wink. "Still, i get your drift." then louder and to Doctor McCallum. "I thought i heard something outside. Gotta go take a look!" and darted off at super speed.

"Right Alex, this way for your next shot." Doctor McCallum grinned. "Ah for extended release hormone doses... the depo provera cause you any problems?"

"A couple of stomach problems but nothing major." Alex replied with a faint smile. "And its very convienant getting my hormones by shot rather than pill."

"oh of course, pills can get lost or damaged. Its why I use shots for our busier clients." The doctor quickly swabbed Alex's shoulder and in a matter of moments it was over. "And be sure to watch that shoulder soreness." Alex could already feel her left shoulder feeling as sore as if she'd lifted weights.

"Mum, can I... go out the back way?"

"of course dear."

Alex ran for the rooftop and called the phoenixes too her. A burst of lightning and flame and Flash angel took to the skies, swooping low and dipping her wings at Flash in greeting. She saw him waving goodbye at her and dipped again.

"Heh..." He grinned.

---

When Alex next saw the one called Flash he'd just finished up foiling a bank robbery, and she hurriedly hid in an alley and transformed, floating out to greet him. "OYE! Scarlet!" Flash looked up from where he'd gotten Captain Cold tied up and ready for the cops. Alex darted in and tapped him on the head. "TAG! YOU'RE IT!" And blasted off at super speed.

Flash heard the sirens coming and grinned hugely, dashing off after Alex. Alex giggled as she flew at top speed. "heeeeey, wait for me!" Flash teased, before pouncing. "haha! you're it now!"

Alex used up time in her turn, then she was tearing through the sky after the scarlet and gold streak ahead of her. Flash could hear the sullen spellcaster laughing as she tried to catch him. She was keeping fairly good pace actually, not fast enough to completely keep up with him. But also not faster than he was. Every so often he'd slow a bit and let her get close.

Next thing he knew the two of them were on the coast of friggin Labrador, hundreds of miles from Central City. "Wooooooooowww." Alex fell over onto the sand, laughing and panting in exhaustion.

"Aw you need to catch your breath? Cause I've still got junk in the trunk."

"Yeah but while I'm here I think I'm gonna do some foraging. Care to slow down for just a bit?"

"Sure why not... I've never been up here before."

"Really?" Alex asked. "then I guess its time for your first foraging lesson." She found a couple of sticks. "Use this for balence if the ground is ever shakey, and make sure to make noise with it, don't want to anger any bears."

After an hour, Flash could not believe the edibles that Alex had gathered and pried off the coastal rocks. Clams, greens, herbs, roots, and even some edible seaweeds. Before long she had a good campfire going, and a makeshift pot made from a piece of waterproof sheeting and a ditch. "Okay so this is how you cook with no pot." She set several stones in the fire. "The Iraqois did it way back when only they used treated buckskin. Its called a hot rock boil."

"really?"

"yep!" Alex grinned, waiting a few minutes and staring intently into the flames. "now watch." She called the phoenixes over, they ducked down towards the flames, grabbed the stones in their talons and threw them into the water. (2)

Almost instantly the water began to bubble and boil. "And now you add the nommies!" Alex dropped in the clams and greens they found.

The clams were the best Flash had ever tasted. And these had no butter, no pepper, no sauce of any kind. "oh my gooooooood!" Flash exclaimed in delight. "They're delicious!"

"And much more nutritious since they're fresh from the water."

"you... have /got/ to make these more often!" Flash grinned.

"Well I'll tell you what, we're both speedsters, so lets go have meals in the wilderness in the evenings." Alex suggested with a huge gleam on her face. "I'll teach you all I know about foraging for edible plants!"

"DEAL!" Flash was busy scarfing clams and boiled greens like they were going out of style.

---

By the time he got back to the watchtower, Flash had a smug look on his face and a piece of plastic filled with fresh clams. "Hey guys! I brought grub fresh from canada!"

"Whadja get?" Hawkgirl peered over a bank of monitors in the computer lab she was putting together.

"clams!" Flash grinned. "You aren't gonna believe this, but one of the meta humans in my city seems to be some kind of wilderness cooking geek! She promised to teach me her skills!"

"You mean Alex?" Wonder Woman came in then. "How's the work going Sheiyera?"

"Its gone better. J'onn's gone to check the circuit board something keeps shorting out anything plugged into that outlet over there." Sheiyera pointed to the faulty one.

"Yeah! She's just plain awesome at this stuff. Showed me about a dozen different edible plants and treated me to a clam dinner. Then we gathered some to take home."

"Good, I've heard about a dish with those I wanted to try, I think it was called "Clam Chowder?"" Wonder woman arched a brow.

"yep, thats the one!" Flash grinned. "C'mon ladies lets get cooking!"

"i'll keep working, you get this going." Sheiyera replied.

"Awww, but you're gonna miss the fun!"

"oh well..."

As they carried the clams up to the watchtower's kitchen, Static and Gear arrived for their evening training. "Oh... my god... turn up the heat I'm freeeezziiiiing!" Static shivered.

"What happened?"

"Cold snap over Dakota city, it got down to 20 degrees in august." Gear shuddered.

"Any idea if Bats has a case thats tropical we could get in on? Working someplace warm would be soooo much better." Static was nearly to the point of whining.

"Hey, I know what'll warm you up. C'mon I'll teach you how to make granny Flash's clam chowder." Flash grinned, giving each teen a hearty thump on the back. "C'mon, moving will help warm you up a bit."

"Easy for you to say mister moves faster than the eye can see." Static started after Flash and Gear followed Static.

"I seriously think we need winter versions of our uniforms." Gear told Static, shivering a bit as he started to warm up.

"Gee you think?"

It wasn't long before a delicious smell, almost more delicious than Seiji's curry, began to drift through the station. J'onn appeared in the kitchen, "good, you've got supper started. I'm chasing a short out on the lab deck, Static I could use a hand finding it and then Sheiyera will teach you some computer hardware assembly."

"But that's Gear's thing!" Protested Static.

"A hero never knows what non combat skills he'll need or when." J'onn told him. "Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."

"oh fine." Static complained. "Just as long as I get some of that stuff and it stays /warm/ wherever I'm working."

"I'll get you a space heater once you're working with Sheyeira. (3)" J'on told him with a small smile.

The chowder was easily the best soup any of them had tasted in a long time. Static gulped his eagerly. "Ah, here's the problem." Sheiyera grinned a couple yards to his right, pulling a dead, singed rat from the bulkhead. "This little guy must have stowed away on the javelin." Static made a disgusted face, suddenly less hungry.

"That /thing/ caused our short?"

"Sure did." Sheyeira shoved her head into the open hatch and pulled out a length of wire. She showed it to Static. "I've found these earth beasts tend to chew fluffy things and stringy things, looking for nesting material. They seem to be everywhere, smart enough to stow away on shuttles and boats of all kinds, /and/ they've outsmarted poisons I put down in my earth dwelling to kill them."

"Another rat?" J'onn poked his head in, he had a second one in a plastic bag. "We need to start screening our cargo, and we need to find a ratter."

"Lets ask Superman if his parents have a cat we can borrow to hunt the damn things." Sheyeira sighed. "After what they did to my last earth dwelling place I don't think poison is going to work."

"Agreed." (4)

"At least these are both female." Static was slowly turning greener and greener around the gills.

"How... can you tell... they're girls?" Static stammered.

Sheyeira made a face. "Do you want me to tell you that while you're eating?"

"no." (5) Static said in a very small voice.

He wobbled back up to the mess hall while Sheyeira and J'on stayed to assess the damage. Superman was enjoying his share of the meal. "Wow Flash I can't believe you actually dug these up. I didn't think you knew how to dig clams."

"Actually one of the local meta humans in central taught me this afternoon. Not bad for a first catch huh?"

"But central isn't on the shore."

"She's a speedster just like me, she's just got a few angst issues and a medical problem thats all."

"Ah."

"That and she can only use the speed force in the air... long story Supes."

"Another super teen? awesome." Static grinned, despite still feeling a little sickened.

"What's up with you? Not a milk person?" Flash asked, worried his cooking wasn't up to snuff.

"Naw thats not it, Sheyeira and J'on each found a dead rat. And their talking about ways to get rid of it nearly made me lose my appetite." Static muttered.

"I'd better see if my parents will let me borrow Bonnie." Muttered Superman.

"Bonnie?"

"Their barn cat. They've got a jack russel terrier too after their herding dog died. The both of them are a pretty mean team for killing vermin." Superman grinned.

"Don't tell me you're actually a farm boy under that cape." Static was slightly agape as he sat down.

"Not born, but definately raised one." Superman grinned. "Farm life is simple, but there's a lot of physical activity to be done around your average family farm. Animals to feed, hay to shovel, crops to check, tractors to fix, and believe it or not a fairly decent amount of paperwork for about a week or so every year." (6)

"Really?"

"Yeah, and its starting to be a hard time to be a farmer too." Superman sighed. "They're worried about a drought two states away spreading to the farm."

"oh." Static drooped a little. Still, growing up on a farm sounded like a lot of fun.

"Superman a minute if you don't mind." Sheyeira sighed, she had two dead rats in plastic bags and a very small living one in a cage.

"oh dear..." Superman picked up the cage and the bags and inspected them. "Two females and a six week old male."

"You're sure its six weeks?"

"Yeah... we've got a litter on here and this isn't going to be the only male if its a typical sized litter."

Static peered at the cage. "Can I see?"

"If you want." Superman handed him the cage.

The baby rat was actually kinda cute. He peered at Static through the plastic of the critter keeper shaking a bit, then started cleaning his nose and fingers, and they did look a lot like fingers. The tiny appendages seemed able to delicately and expertly smooth the rat's hair.

"Tell you what, there's a cage in the science lab Static, if we put this little guy in it he might call his friends." Superman grinned.

"Call?" Static head tilted cutely. Quietly though he was relieved the little rat didn't have to die.

"I've had to get rid of quite a few rat problems on the farm. They really liked dad's woodshed." Superman sighed. "They also squeak on the hypersonic frequency." He rubbed the inside of his ear with a finger. "That one's doing it right now, really annoying but he /is/ calming down a bit. Thats what I meant by calling his friends. I'm gonna go to my quarters, call mom and pop and see if they'll have Cara bring Bonnie up."

"Cara?" Static blinked.

"My cousin, Supergirl, that's her Kryptonian name." Superman replied.

"oh."

"You've never met Supergirl have you?" Superman grinned at Static.

"no." Static replied. "But if she's strong and a hero and your cousin something tells me she'd be worth getting to know."

Sheyeira laughed. "You're really gonna bring her up here? After the last mission she went on with us?"

"Now now, she's just got a lot of energy."

"Not energy, what she's got is a temper that would put Wonder Woman to shame." Hawkgirl sniggered. "If I were you, I'd send her to Batman for a couple of weeks of meditation and anger management training and if she gets impatient he's got bots she can bash on."

"And /training/ will help her grow up and even out." Superman replied, waving a good evening to Hawkgirl and heading to his quarters.

Static peered at the little rat. "Hmmm... you need a name..."

The rat squeaked, tilting his head.

"I know! I'll call you Roger!" Static grinned.

"Don't get too attached Static. We may end up releasing this little guy later on." Sheyeira snapped her fingers. "Humane bait traps! Thats what we forgot!" (7)

Static sighed and followed Sheyeira to the science lab to settle Roger Rat into his new cage.

---

A few days later, Flash and Static had just caught a thief specializing in gold when a delicious smell caught Flash's nose, cinnamon, nuts, sugar... "oh baby I think somebody's baking a cake." Flash grinned.

They were not baking a cake. A crowd in the park nearby was gathered around Flash Angel, who was making a show of her wilderness cooking skills. "And /that/ is how you make bannock on a stick. Its not a very fancy bread but it won't steer you wrong if there's a black out and all you've got to cook on is your grill."

The crowd applauded.

"I'll try some. I'll even pay you for it." Flash grinned.

"Now now Flash-sempai, the city's guardian deserves a free sample." She handed Flash and Static each one. "Got a trainee with you I see?"

"oh yeah this is Static, he's learning how to be a Super Hero with us for a bit. Gonna make a proper guardian out of him and by the time he gets back to Dakota city in the fall the bad guys there won't know what hit them."

There were words of welcome and good day uttered in Static's direction as the crowd started to disburse. Alex grinned, snatching her's from the grill while her phoenixes detached from their weapon forms and began to eat their share, rolling the stick between their beaks as they tore bits of bread off.

"Wooooow, actual phoenixes!"

"Told you she was cool. She's some kind of witch and her phoenixes use the speed force. They can lend it to her when she needs it so she's never gonna be as fast as I am, but she's plenty fast despite it all!"

"I've also got some great wilderness cooking skills." Flash angel grinned. "I'm the girl to call if you ever need someone who can get food and medicine from the forest."

"Wow really?"

"Uhuh, I know all about a lot of the dietary and medicinal perks of some plants. For example, cinnamon is an anti septic. But it burns so only use a small amount. If you get winter joint pains or migranes, some blackstrap mollassas in your morning coffee will fix that. Asthma? Local honey helps immensely but don't feed it to children under the age of one year." Alex grinned. "Bad teeth? Before brushing, rub ground nutmeg and baking soda on your gums."

"Woah, you're like a walking encyclopedia of home remedies." Static grinned.

"Yes well my squad and I do specialize in healing, cleansing and exorcism. A few of the ladies are gonna be joining me for..."

"Flash angel sweeetieee." An older teenage girl in a witch's costume landed, actually flying on a broom. "I found some great cat tail greens, a bit tough but we can cut those parts off or use them for weaving spells."

"Awesome."

"Do you know any way to get rid of rats too?" Static asked hopefully.

"Rats?" Flash angel blinked. "I've picked up a fair few tricks. Why?"

"Heh, because we could seriously use some help up at the watchtower thats why."

"Let me get through my meeting with the girls okay? You can meet my squad, Lilly, these are Flash and Static, Flash, Static, Lilly of the Valley, or Lilly for short."

"Aw shucks its so wonderful meeting our city's hero." Lilly shook Flash's hand. "Mind you, White Squad can fight, we just prefer to heal people in need and offer protections for houses rather than out and out fighting. We don't charge either. Won't take a cent."

Static grinned. Lilly was /gorgeous./ Long nut brown hair, deeply tanned skin, exotic dark eyes. A couple of others in their teens and one in her twenties swooped down on broomback. The oldest was Yarrowind, who was a premed student, the youngest was little Orchid, barely twelve years old, who happily stamped a blessing on Static's forehead in lieu of a handshake with a declaration. "Now you're lucky!" They were all witches, all of them ladies, and they all had healing abilities. But what's more, there were several Static wanted to ask out on a date. (8)

The girls quickly grabbed a stick of bannock, some kind of short bread without leavening wrapped around a stick, and downed their share. There was talk, and assignments as Alex told each of them which clinic to visit, which elders needed their joints looked after, "Lilly, you're my right hand girl. I need you to go to the Underbar Grodd maintains here in town, you're the oldest and strongest. See if there's anyone seriously injured. I'm not talking bruised egos and black eyes from fighting ole Scarlet here, I'm talking things like infections and bullet wounds. Grodd knows to look out for our squad and he may need a couple of his gorilla staff fixed up too so remember your vet training."

"Aw shucks boss, I'm flattered you trust me with the hard jobs."

"Not just trust, last time I offered to treat some of Grodd's customers it ended with my having to treat the bloody gash I left on his face."

The girls left and Static looked over at Alex. "Your squadmates even treat criminals?"

"Only ones who's lives are in danger from their wounds. Minimum requirement for our treatment is they've broken a bone. I actually get repeated calls from Blackgate up in Gotham for assistance after a riot. Stryker's in Metro too. They know minimum level of injury for me too."

"Ah." Static looked over at Flash.

"There's nothing in the Justice League rules that state a super powered medic can't treat criminals. We prefer them to face justice, /not/ the grim reaper." Flash told him. "Still, there's nothing about super powered medics in the rules at all." He looked kind of puzzled.

"Really?"

"Yeah, meta humans with healing powers are really rare. If you get one in Dakota treat him or her with real care and try to foster them to become a neutral force rather than one for good or evil."

"That important huh?"

"Uhuh." Alex told Static with a grin. "I've never regretted being born a healer, and besides, Bennu and Anasazi take care of a lot of my offensive power /and/ evasive needs." Alex grinned. "They were the product of a witch and wizard's love for each other. They placed their souls inside the phoenixes because one was immortal, and the other not, and they wanted to be together forever. They called upon the forces of the heavens to cement their love for all time, then disappeared from view in a bolt of lightning. When the glow cleared, Bennu and Anasazi stood where the lightning had struck, not even a body left behind to bury."

"woah, really?" Flash grinned. "What a coincidence, the previous Flash and I both got our powers from lightning."

"Mind you, its a family story passed down for 200 years." Alex told them.

"Hey, um... I noticed they all have flower names, but you're just Flash-chan to them. What's your flower nickname?" Static asked Alex curiously.

Alex turned so he could see the Saguaro blossom on her coat. "What do you think? Mine is Saguaro, that gorgeous cactus bloom that only shows its true beauty after a rain."

Flash grinned. "I rather like it, okay when bad guys are around and you aren't Flash Angel I'll just call you Saguaro."

Alex giggled. "Mkay. You should see Green Squad over in Coast city, they all have tree names, except the leader. Black Squad only uses names from famous ghost and monster stories. And Red Squad uses constellations for code names, except the leader."

"Really?"

"Yeah, all of us who lead a squad inherit the name from our ancestors. Because Bennu and Anasazi are phoenixes, they live for hundreds of years, even thousands, so there will always be a Flash Angel around. My mother had it before me, and my grandmother before her."

"But as a transsexual you won't be able to have kids when you have the operation so how will you..."

"My cousin Morrigan is the clan heiress, and she wants to have at least three kids, one of hers will inherit the phoenixes, another the clan leadership." Alex said serenely. "I don't mind, I might even adopt."

Static peered more curiously at Alex's figure now. "Man, its hard to believe you got the same parts I do under there. If Flash here hadn't said anything, I'da thought you were all lady under that dress." Static clapped his hands over his mouth, paling as he realized he might have said something that would upset her.

"Why thank you." Alex blushed. "Such a complement. I guess I do a fairly good tuck job then." She smirked.

"You're not mad at me? I opened my mouth without thinking I mean I."

Alex smirked at Static. "here. My pager number. Next time you get a major womping out in Dakota or a lot of civilians are badly hurt gimme a ring I do house calls."

"Er... sure." Static blinked in surprise.

"Anywhoooo..." She tapped Flash with a huge grin. "Tag, you're it! Race you to Yellowstone!"

"HA! YOU'RE ON!"

"WOOOOOOOO!" Alex called the phoenixes and took off. Static looked extremely disappointed.

---

"Antlers?" Wonder Woman peered at the find Flash had brought back with him from his afternoon trip.

"Uhuh, and she taught me how to make this awesome bread on a stick."

Flash and Alex had found two huuuugeee elk antlers from yellowstone, and had even heard the howls of a wolf pack and visited the brightly colored hot springs.

"sounds like your new friend likes the wilderness more than she likes central city." Wonder Woman chuckled.

"Yeah sounds like." Flash grinned. "you know she told me that whole park is an active volcano?"

"Really?"

"Yeah... the USGS is appearantly monitoring it for signs it could erupt, and if it did it would cause a huge famine."

"What would?" Batman came in from Seiji's training.

"Yellowstone, man Bats I never knew that place was a volcano."

"Actually, its one of the areas of the planet the League monitors for potential seismic and volcanic hazards. Other than some heaving and gas eruptions over the years Yellowstone hasn't shown any danger signs yet."

"Yet?" Wonder woman blinked.

"Although the park experiences hundreds of earthquakes in a year, none of them larger than a 4, the most prominent danger sign would be escalating quakes and harmonic tremor concentrated in one area. They aren't concentrated in one area, they're all over. Only two gas eruptions at opposite ends of the park consisting of carbon dioxide gas. However, should Yellowstone erupt, it would cover almost all of North America in ashes. Not to mention I once had to chase Rasch al Ghoul from the spot. He wanted to set it off." Batman shook his head. "That volcano caldera is trouble. Flash you should see the marks on the prehistoric skeletons unearthed from its eruptions. Nasty looking bone growth caused by Marie's disease and they've found such skeletons as far away as Kansas."

Flash stared blankly at Batman. "You lost me at skeletons."

Batman sighed. "its like this, volcanic ash isn't like ash from a campfire, its pulverized rock. When you breathe it in, it shreds your lungs. Its the same effect as breathing 50 years of coal dust in a coal mine in a matter of hours. That kind of exposure triggers out of control bone growth, called Marie's disease. It also ensures that animals caught by the blast die with lungs essentially full of liquid concrete."

Wonder woman shuddered. "And yellowstone could kill as far away as Kansas?"

"Yellowstone could kill all over the world, it would chill the climate /and/ kill off crops and livestock. Its one of America's natural wonders, but you have to respect it as a volcano. When you stand in that caldera, you're standing in the middle of the barrel of one of the world's biggest guns. Thats why the league monitors it."

"Amazing." Wonder woman frowned. "My mother's diaries tell of an eruption of a mountain called Theia, after the Titan, it crashed into the sea and devastated the mediterranian. But after that there were crop failures all over. She thought Demeter and Hades were fighting over Persephone again."

"Theia was one size down from a super volcano, a VEI 7." Batman told her.

"VEI?" Wonder Woman head tilted.

"Volcanic explosivity index." Batman smirked. He hadn't meant to end up giving Flash or Wonder Woman a science lesson, but Flash was hard to get interested in science related matters and Wonder Woman wanted to know more about the world outside of Themiscyra. So he didn't mind. "Each size eruption is ten times larger than the one that preceeded it. So a yellowstone eruption would be ten times the size of the Theia eruption Wonder Woman read about in her mother's records. Fortunately we have access to a lot of highly sensitive equipment. I can tell you for sure that yellowstone tends to rise and fall in height over the years. Its given vulcanologists a /real/ scare at least twice. But it hasn't blown. If it does, the seven of us will be working /overtime/. We have all the equipment necessary to protect lungs, eyes, and in the case of some of our cohorts wings, from the ashfall. But everything within a hundred miles of yellowstone would be dead and tens of millions would be next if they couldn't get to shelter."

"Wooooow. Its that dangerous Bats?" Flash's eyes were wide. That night Batman's talk actually inspired nightmares in Flash, of trying to speed his way through waist high ash beds and the coughing howls of wolves trying to sing though they were dying.

---

"Of course I knew it was dangerous." Alex told him two afternoons later. "Thats why I wanted to have a look around. Standing in the shadow of that volcano is really humbling." They'd gone to Choco Canyon and Alex was creating rubbings of the carvings there. "Check this out... see down there how there are rocks piled along the dried up river bed and dirt built up behind them?"

"Yeah, why?"

"That was a garden. The people here at Choco Canyon collected water in washes like this and they used runoff soils to grow their crops in. The only thing that really stopped them was a massive drought. The corn they grew? It would have been developed to the south by the Maya, who developed it with traditional horticultural techniques from a grass called teosinte." Alex grinned. "This whole canyon is a monument to people who had advanced agricultural knowledge, but no advanced technology or even the wheel."

"Woooaaaaaah." Flash looked out over the height, and in his mind, and his vivid imagination, he was seeing a teeming city in the cliffs with gardens of corn everywhere and happy families of native americans running around, dressing game, tending the crops... maybe even.

"Sempaaaai! Earth to Sempai!" Alex grinned. "I've got the herb samples and rubbings I need. I've just got one final stop to make fifty miles southwest of here. The weather channel said a rain went through there yesterday and that they've had unusual deluges once every month for the last three..."

---

"And when we got there, the saguaro cactuses had FRUIT growing all over them, and the desert was COVERED in flowers!" Flash told Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl and J'on that evening. Several aforementioned flowers were placed around the mess hall in vases and a basket of saguaro cactus fruit was laid out on the table along with some kind of crackery corn biscuit Alex had sent home with him.

"it sounds like you've found a teacher of nature." J'onn chuckled. "I heard you even listened to Batman's science talk last week."

"Fat lot of good it did me, gave me nightmares."

"so these biscuits are made from this corn stuff?" Hawkgirl munched on them contentedly. "They crunch so wonderfully in the mouth. You can tell this was made with a primative grinding method."

"Yeah, there's something she called quinoa and teosinte which is the ancestor of corn in there too." Flash told her. "And you are kinda right J'on I guess. I'm just not really a nature guy. But when she shows me all these wilderness type places, she also shows me what's edible there, and I think thats why I kinda got to like it. Its amazing eating food so fresh you just picked it, and the sky, J'onn the desert sky was so intensely blue." He picked up one of the fruits and took a huge bite. "You know one of the dead ones had rainwater in it. I wanted to drink it but she said I shouldn't unless I was going to die from dehydration. Something about the animals needed that water."

Hawkgirl sat there, listening to her friend's adventure with a smile on her face.

"What?" Flash blinked in surprise at her.

"I was just thinking, looks like you've found a little sister, at least in spirit." Hawkgirl grinned at him.

"You think so?"

"yeah, you know out west there's some spectacular mountain top views. Why don't you suggest a retreat spot. I reccomend Colorado, somewhere near the forests. Just watch out for bears and pumas." Sheyeira chuckled. "They made for good wrestling but you're a speedster, not a brawler like me and Diana."

"Mkay!" Flash said cheerfully.

It took Flash forever to find the right spot, and then after school hours he searched the city. Finding who he was looking for, Flash darted in and tagged Flash Angel on the shoulder. "Tag, you're it!" And dashed off towards Colorado. Sure enough, a blur of white, red and gold was following him. Flash grinned hugely and lead the way towards the mountain meadow he'd picked.

When he stopped Alex pounced him, giggling excitedly. "You picked a spot this time!"

"Yep! I even got a campsite going! Just the way you like we just have to start up the fire. I even brought marshmallows!" Flash grinned enormously.

Alex hopped up onto a large flat rock and grinned. "This is perfect for meditation." She sat down on the sun warmed rock face, took up a half lotus position, and began to chant.

Flash watched her for a couple of minutes. "What the heck is all that?"

Alex jumped. "Tibetan buddhist meditation. It helps me clear my mind and focus my magic if I do it daily."

"But I brought you here to /train!/"

"And we will, this is part of my training. Magic users generally have to do this."

Flash blinked, and Alex returned to her chanting. He zipped around the woods for a bit practicing the plant identification skills Alex had taught him, transported a lost pair of hikers to the nearby ranger station, took care of social pleasantries like "you're welcome" "be more careful next time" and "oh I was out here training with a friend, it really is pretty here. I totally get why you like this hiking thing!" and then zipped back after about half an hour to find Alex carefully stacking wood.

"Soooo, done now?"

"Yep... lets get to work. Sparring match?"

"Totally! I wanna see some of your magic at work. That angel flash technique, show me that!"

Alex transformed, and took off, it took some circling and when she leveled out. "ANGEL FLASH, MACH 1!" Lightning and fire cracked the sky forming a line, almost like a UFO track. "MACH 2!" She turned 180 degrees, though it was a wide 180 degrees, and accellerated with the lightning and fire turning paler in color. "MACH 3!" the same wide 180 degree turn, and then. "MACH 4!" The turn was shaved by about 10 degrees this time, the lightning and fire very pale and by the time Alex hit "MACH 5!" she broke the sound barrier, brilliant white lightning and fire jetting from her feet.

Flash sighed as Alex came back down. "First of all, your turns are too wide. One of the advantages to fighting at high speed is surprise. You have no idea how many sneak attacks I've been able to land on a careless criminal that way. The problem is a wide turn makes your back vulnerable to attack. I think we should work on developing a technique for you together that takes advantage of that ability we have as speedforce users to ambush our opponents."

Alex nodded slowly, gulping a bit.

"Just keep at it. You've got some good things going there."

"Mkay."

Over the next four hours, Flash identified a half dozen points in Alex's fighting form where her back was exposed. So they began to come up with ways to make her trajectory more random /and/ throw off anyone trying to take advantage of Alex's broad exposed back.

By the time they quit Alex was dripping sweat and exhausted. They cooked up the roots and greens that Flash had found while Alex was meditating with a hot rock boil. They ate every bite, and then Flash just shook his head. "After that training session i want more. What do you say we put out the fire and go get a burger and fries."

"Sure!" Alex pulled out a magic wand from her sleeve, waved it at the fire, and it went out. "C'mon!"

Their training sessions became more and more grueling, and over the next two months Flash noticed the forest service watching them on binoculars. So he started going out to forest service ranger stations to offer assistance a couple of times a week. They were always waiting with something hot to drink.

But then, reality, aka Wally West's life, intruded into the existance of the Flash. He came in one morning to find a letter in an evidence bag waiting for him to review. "What's up? New case?"

"yeah." his supervisor sighed. "Someone's mailed a bomb threat to that transexual clinic. We've got a hand writing and grammer analyist coming in. Print that sucker, swab anything suspicious, our mass spec is broken at the moment but we've got a new one on its way as well. It'll be here in a week."

"Swell, don't we have four drug cases and a possible blood smear that need that mass spec?"

"Yeah. This is gonna be some week huh?"

"I'll say."

"Well, we'd better get to work."

"This doesn't make any sense." The analyst was saying. "This note was written by at least two people. One English, the other Japanese."

"Really? How do you figure?" Flash leaned over the analyst's shoulder.

He sighed, pushing back pale blonde locks. "Inflection, tone... the wording of the letter alternates between english and kansai. And see this paragraph here? The L's are replaced with rs, there's no x's, there are no C's. This paragraph right here was written by someone who knows Japanese and english, but doesn't speak english well."

"Huh, haven't seen you around before, what's your name?" Wally asked curiously.

"Jim, Jim Uraimich. My ancestors were russians who really, really didn' like their name." The blonde man chuckled, "I have some... er... medical issues." Boy Flash could say. The man's hair was the only part of him that didn't appear to be albino. His skin was pale as a sheet of copy paper. His eyes were red, almond shaped, and fairly thin. He had high cheek bones, but not gaunt ones, the angle giving him a snake like or fox like expression. That, and Jim was unusually cold in expression almost all the time, even when he was chuckling.

"Heh, you /soooo/ look like an albino, cept for the hair. Did you dye that?"

"Yeah. I am actually completely white, I just didn't like the look. I have colored contacts too, nice baby blues."

"Cool, you should totally wear them tomorrow." Wally grinned. "I like blue eyes, and red is just... disturbing. With the shape of your face red eyes make you look snake like."

"Really? A colleague once said I resembled a snake as well. Though perhaps its because his sister was afraid of how I look."

"Really? Well, lets see if we can figure out how to make you look less scary hm?"

"I highly doubt you can do that. I'm used to it though." Something about Jim didn't feel right, and all day it bothered Flash.

---

When he got to the watchtower after his patrol, Flash noticed Wonder Woman and Morgan in the training room, working hard it looked like. Finding that Batman wasn't there he headed to the monitor womb to give the part timer a call and found J'on in his usual post. "you are troubled."

"I met someone today who gives me the creeps. And I /seriously/ mean the creeps." Flash replied. "His name's Jim, mind if I thumb through some of our files?"

"Go ahead."

Flash was still thumbing through criminal and supervillain profiles when Batman came in six hours later. "Hey Bats!"

"Profiles? Did a new case come in?"

"Naw, guy at work gave me the creeps."

"how fast did he give you the 'creeps?'" Asked Batman.

"Pretty quickly, why?"

"There are some psychologists who believe that your first impression is correct within the first 20 seconds of meeting a person." Batman replied. "Did you find him anywhere?"

"No. How long till Alex comes in?"

"She's already here, she, Static, Morgan and Seiji are practicing and Gear's doing some tech lessons with Hawkgirl."

"oh boy I'm late."

"don't worry about it, Superman is supervising them. He's pretty good at dealing with superpowered teens." Batman indicated that Flash should sit back down.

"We've got quite a group of trainees coming in."

"Yes, and I think I might have found another." Batman slipped a USB drive into his usual station and called up some data. "The scarab my old friend the Blue Beetle was taking care of has started showing signs of activity. Its very faint." Flash peered at the wavelengths of energy Batman had picked up.

"these scarabs choose teens?"

"Beetle was never able to figure out."

"Was?"

"He died some years ago. Ted was a good man, a lot like Barry. He was never able to unlock the Scarab's power fully. However... he was inspired. It lead him to create the amazing technology that created the Blue Beetle." Batman and Flash looked at each other.

"How long do you figure it'll take to wake up?"

"Couple of years if it is at all."

"Heh, at this rate we're gonna have a junior justice league." Flash giggled. "Aaah I remember my days in the Titans. Nightwing's grown up pretty good huh?"

"He's learned my lessons well." Batman said quietly.

"FLASH-SEMPAI FLASH SEMPAI! COME SEE WHAT I CAN DO!" there was a blur of fire and lightning and Alex was clinging to him happily.

"Alright I'm coming, race ya!"

"Awesome!" Alex giggled. She darted after Flash, doing a barrel roll through the turns of the corridor.

They got to the training area and Superman grinned at Flash. "She's real proud of this one. Go ahead Angel."

Alex took her position next to Static and concentrated as hard as she could. Static and Seiji had been sparring very hard, Static was covered in bruises and scrapes with a dopey grin on his face. Alex made a simple handsign with her fingers and lightning arched from herself to Static. His body glowed brilliant gold, and the bruises and scrapes healed right before Flash's eyes.

"SEEE? SEEEEEEE? MY LIGHTNING HEALS STATIC-KUN!" Alex bounced up and down eagerly.

"Someone needs to cut your sugar intake cousin." Seiji grinned.

"Aw shucks Nightrunner I'm just excited! That was a straight up lightning blast and Static's body used it to heal!"

"I'm pretty impressed! I think I'll definately take your squad up on the offer of assistance next time there's a crisis in Dakota city." Static grinned.

Alex blushed. "Awwww, shucks it was nothin." She gave him a kiss on the cheek, causing the young hero to blush furiously. There was an awkward moment as the two stared at each other.

"My turn my turn!" Morgan flounced into the training area on Wonder woman's heals, thankfully breaking the awkward silence. "Diana-sama taught me some of the Amazon strengthening spells! You know how much I suck at Melee Seiji-kun." She pounced Seiji and whirled him around eagerly. Then she scooped him up, threw him in the air and caught him.

Seiji shrieked. "how are you doing that?"

"The curse of hera! It triples your strength for a ten minute period. An Amazon spellcaster got the idea after she had a vision of Hera's anger at Zeus for his infidelities."

"his what?" Static headtilted.

"Static!" Gear hissed quietly. "Zeus would cheat on his wife all the time, how can you not know this we took latin last year?!"

"Dude my powers were acting up during the unit on the Olympians." Static looked sheepish. "I had a cold and every time I sneezed electricity would come sparking out of my hair! The only cold medicine that worked knocked me out like a light! Hell I slept through two bank robberies between the sneezing and coughing and the meds putting me to sleep like that."

"it may also be your DNA as a meta human reacts differently to the medicine." Superman pointed out. "Ma would give me benedryl for hayfever in the early summer, the apple trees really set me off, no other plant or dust or anything ever did. But I'd get so hyperactive from the stuff I'd have to fly off into the mountains to train or I'd end up wrecking the barn." Superman chuckled. "Eventually the solution we set on was raw milk from the cows and raw honey made by bees fed in our apple orchard. The apple blossom honey sure helped."

"What's raw milk got to do with it?"

Superman inclined his head at Alex. "Angel you're an herbalist do you know?"

"The probiotics in the raw milk boost the immune system. Since Superman is a Kryptonian, when he was small he would have had to have some of the gut bacteria humans have through probiotics or he might have had trouble digesting earth's foodcrops. Raw Milk has been implicated as having an effect on allergies and asthma but its fairly well restricted by the USDA. You can get it legally but its hard to find."

"But wouldn't regular milk help?"

"naw, pasturization would have killed all the probiotics." Alex explained. "Probiotic bacteria should be kept cool and sealed. They're very useful but they're very sensitive to heat and cold. So are yeasts."

"Talk of the farm reminds me... ma sent up some of her home made saurkraut /and/ half a dozen different kinds of pickled vegetables and fruits." Superman licked his lips eagerly. "I want some saurkraut on a hot dog and a burger with a pickled hot pepper. You in Flash?"

"For a taste of the cooking of the woman who raised Superman? You bet!" Flash grinned.

Over the general din of cooking tasks Alex brooded into her cutting board while she chopped vegetables for salad. "Penny for your thoughts?" Flash asked quietly, but with a charming smile on her face.

"I was just thinking of the bomb threat against the clinic. People are so cruel to things and people they don't understand! I hope whoever made that threat gets prostate cancer, and their prostate cancer gets AIDS!" Alex emphasized the last word with a resounding chop on the cutting board, sending the top of the carrot she was chopping flying onto the ground.

The others were too excited over the produce, cheese, honey, pickles, and other goodies the Kents had sent up to the station for their son and his "nice young students" to notice their conversation. Static was trying a pickled fiddlehead fern and trying not to make a face. Seiji was laughing at his expression and Morgan was rolling her eyes warning him not to eat too many as ferns contained a substance that tended to break down enzymes and too many would make him sick. Superman put in that most people tried pickled fiddlehead sprouts for the giggles that came out of eating something strange and Hawkgirl simply snatched one from the jar and popped it into her mouth with a satisfied "delicious."

"Heeey, don't be like that. For every person in Central City who's cruel and ignorant there are ten people who are good. Its worth taking all of that to protect them. Life is precious, all lives, even those of people who are well... less than stellar examples of human beings."

"I know they're just... their ignorance hurts, a /lot./" Alex said quietly. "I just want something to dull the pain and ignite a fire in my belly."

"Then how about this hot pepper relish on your dog huh?" Superman cut in, popping a plate with a hot dog and Ma Kent's famous home made condiments plus some garden fresh greens in front of Alex. "Huh? Smells good huh? C'mon grump, turn that glum look around." he patted Alex cheerfully on the shoulder.

Alex grinned. "Hai Kareru-sempai, Furashu-sempai."

Superman blinked at Alex's Japanese address.

"The Japanese have no Ls and Sempai means mentor." Batman supplied from the chicken and hardboiled eggs he was slicing onto his salad.

"ooooooooooooooh." In Flash and Superman's minds the rs were being scratched out and replaced with L's and the extra vowels deleted.

Batman seemed to almost smile, simply returning to piling as much protien as he could find in Ma Kent's goody baskets onto his salad. He didn't like raw greens when Alfred served them to him, and insisted, the fact that the treats came from Ma Kent didn't matter, and he didn't regret his choices as she seemed to be a master in seasoning meats. The chicken was delicious and moist and he sat there chewing over the matter of these squads popping up in his head while he ate, watching as Seiji, Tachi, Morgan, Alex, Static and Gear munched on the goodies and gossiped and wrestled. The four of them seemed to be unusually close, and from what he could learn from the gossip Morgan used to be in Seiji's squad. He still wasn't convinced they were human.

Flash glared at him. "I can hear the gears turning, what's up?"

"I'm missing something in this picture." Batman said quietly. "I see representatives of a militia, and no sieging army." He indicated, very small gesture, the quartet in black and white. "Thats no bunch of redcoats, thats a continental army."

"So if thats the resistance movement then who are their enemies?" Hawkgirl kept her voice low.

"Exactly." Batman said quietly.

Flash thought about that, their passion, their attitude, these odd squads that had appeared, they did seem to be more like a defensive force or a resistance unit. "White squad is a medical corps, or they act like it." Flash supplied.

"Thats unsettling." Hawkgirl shook her head. "Having a whole division devoted to field medicine implies they expect mass casualties of some kind or another."

"I agree, they aren't necessarily intending us ill, but they are hiding something that could cause a lot of trouble in our districts." Batman said quietly. "And I get the feeling when we find out what, we aren't going to like it."

Flash watched Alex and Morgan tease Seiji about how he was a man and cooked like a master grandmother. "I wonder... what kind of world do they see?"

Batman's eyes narrowed. "I've been trying to get Seiji to tell me what he's been trained to fight exactly. His parents keep interfering."

Hawkgirl just shook her head. "parents tend to be very protective. and isolated groups don't like to make friends if they think the new neighbors don't understand them. Its culture shock, or fear of it I think."

---

Jim continued to creep Flash out even after the letter yielded little in the way of clues. No fingerprints, the ink was sumi ink and the paper Japanese rice paper. "Hand made." Wally shook his head at the chief. "When's the last time we've seen hand made paper and ink? I'll bet he wrote this with an old fashioned brush too I found horsehair in the ink."

"Horsehair? as in a horsehair brush?" One of the deputies shook her head. "Those are fucking expensive." She set her box of evidence to be gone over with a fine tooth comb down. "Here's that human trafficking case, have fun."

Wally blinked, realizing way too late that he hadn't heard of this case yet. When he opened the top, and pulled out the first evidence bag...

"oh... my... god... I've seen too much." Wally looked really, really sick as he pulled a pair of fuzzy pink tiger stripe pattern handcuffs in an evidence bag from the box. His face turned a mixture of embarassed red and sickly green.

Jim just laughed. "Not touching that, and don't tell me what's in the report mate."

The cuffs were not the end of the embarassing paraphenalia Wally had to swab, inspect, fingerprint, and run samples from through the new mass spectrometer. No, other offending items that put unerasable mental images in his mind included a ball gag, a crack pipe, a bunny costume that had a hole in the bum that looked highly suspect to Wally, a flesh doll, three oversized dildos, two home made pornography tapes, a poster that read "kinky Russian brides, blue ray available behind counter", a skimpy french maid costume, five partially used bottles of lube, and... now Wally got mad, he found pictures of what looked like eastern european children, very young, and they looked very miserable.

They were dressed, this wasn't a child porn case thank god, one of those had actually made Wally hurl (and though he took pride in his job, the feds couldn't get to Central to take their evidence /nearly/ fast enough.) No, these pictures looked like they might either be leverage, or the women being trafficked kept pictures of their children hidden away.

Wally looked over at the file on the clinic bomb threat, maybe he could get Batman to lend the Flash a hand.

"Maybe, I'm more interested in this clinic bombing note."

---

"You were right, the paper's handmade, so's the ink. The thing is, the isotopes in the paper don't match any known geological configuration on the planet. Its Japanese paper and ink, made with materials consistant with ancient japan. But the isotopes are all wrong." Batman shook his head. "This looks very odd."

"Alright..." Flash watched as Alex got up to test her new technique, "angel flash: foo fighter!" This time Alex bounced around at random like a ping pong ball. The two of them watched the young heroine dart about the training area, body glowing a brilliant pale white. "God Bats I'm still feeling ill from the evidence in that human trafficking case."

"You'll be able to handle it. You've got a cheerful disposition that makes you better than I'd ever be at dealing with traumatized women who don't speak english being used for bondage porn."

"Being used for WHAT?" Wonder Woman came up behind them, horrified.

"Oh, princess, we were just discussing the human trafficking case that came up in Central."

"Tell me all about it." Wonder Woman got a grave look on her face. When Flash was done, however, gravity turned to rage. "Where's the punks..."

"Already in jail. If you want to help princess, you should try to bring comfort and relief to the victims. I suspect women would be more comforting to them in their situation than men."

"I'll come down with Morrigan. Her training with me is coming along nicely."

"So... we're going to investigate the clinic case?" Alex asked cheerfully.

"Yeah, the date for its getting close. In about two weeks it will be the date on the letter, and we can have a stake out."

---

"sooooooo..."

"So what?" Wally asked Jim the following night when he was staying late due to what seemed to be an enormous backlog of cases.

"lets have some fun." Jim smirked at him with a predatory grin.

Wally flushed, backing away. "I have to work." Something smelled wonderful, and it was making him sweat. Was that jasmine? Or roses? He couldn't think very well. It smelled... really good. Jim smelled really good.

"oh come on now." Jim's hot breath inched down the back of his neck. "maybe just a little bit...?"

Wally shuddered, Jim started licking at the side of his neck. He /wanted/ to throw the man off, he /felt/ like a rat being stalked by a cat, curious as much as he was afraid. When he turned around in his chair, Wally West got a lipfull of extremely eager, very effeminate man and despite Jim's effeminate form he was /oozing/ domination.

And Wally was rapidly losing his senses to whatever smell Jim was oozing. The next hour was a blur of heat, frenzied desperate need and arousal to the point of almost being painful. When the befuddling smell lifted and Wally's head cleared, he was sitting on the floor of the locker room shower, back to the wall, aching, naked, and desperately trying to clean himself off. Normally a cheerful, gregarious man, Wally West aka the Flash was stuck between a powerful desire to hurl and a powerful desire to blush furiously.

On the way home, trying to find /anything/ to distract him from what he was sure had occured, Flash caught sight of a brawl. Flash paused on the nearby rooftop, and saw Captain Boomerang on the street below. Behind him, a kid looking kind of beat up lay flat on his back. Facing him were two thugs, one had a gun in his back pocket.

"Hey! what's your beef with the kid?" Demanded one of them.

"This kid? got none mate, I just like fightin and I'm in a nasty mood." Captain Boomerang grinned, a slightly mean edge to it. He was armed with a giant boomerang the size of his body on a strap. It was ornately carved with aboriginal designs. "You get to see a treat too, Flash ain't even seen this beauty o a boomer yet. I rather like it, a friend back in oz made it for me. Thats Maori along the edge and aboriginal in tha middle." He pointed, the thugs stupidly leaned in to look more closely at the pretty pictures, and Captain Boomerang took that opportunity to deck both thugs in the face with the damn thing, good solid faceplant.

Thud. They doubled over rubbing their jaws.

The boy that had been injured stood and ran off. The thugs stood and yelled. "GET THE FAG, THERE HE GOES GET HIM!"

Only for them to be caught across the back with the slung boomerang. CRACK. They toppeled over and lay on the ground gripping their legs and wheezing. The kid was long gone. "I don't take kindly to gay bashers, my cousin's a drag queen ya know mate. You wanna be bigoted freakos then be bigoted freakos to a minority that I don't have a relative in. I believe you yanks use the slang "ya heard" right about here. So if you don't get out of my sight this beauty's gonna go upside yer heads instead of your knees."

The two thugs nodded and hobbled away as fast as their legs would take them.

"Wow..." Flash hopped down from where he'd been watching. "Did you mean that? your cousin's a drag queen?"

Captain Boomerang laughed, offering up a photo of a rather buxom drag queen wrapping an arm around his shoulder and offering a sassy wink to the camera. "I rather like her act. Got a flare for the dramatic Sheila-bear does!"

"Thats her stage name?" Flash chuckled.

"Oh yeah, Sheila-bear. Her very first contest she had to come up with a sexy animal costume, she dressed up as a koala bear, complete with nose! Anyway, lets have a go aye mate?"

"not in a very good mood Boomerang."

"Awwwww, but mate, yer the Flash, yer always in a good mood!" Captain Boomerang whined. "And me lil sister made this un just fer me." He showed off the giant boomerang. The carvings were beautiful. Personally Flash thought it was too beautiful to hit people with, the carvings must have taken weeks.

"I've had a pretty bad day."

"What for mate? That look on your face, I don't like it one bit and brawlin with those thugs put me in a fightin mood."

"None of your business."

"Suit yourself." Boomerang slung his weapon over his shoulder and headed off. "I think I'll be keepin this'un for a fightin weapon. I like it. Just remember, there's a few o us villains that have a higher tolerance for that sort of thing." He tilted his head in the direction the boy in his late teens had gone. "Waiter at a restehraunt that one is. Dances at a teen gay club once a week doin drag. Sheila-Bear's thing. I seen his performance he's got quite a voice on 'im."

Flash found it somewhat comforting that one of his rogues actually didn't mind gay folk or drag, even though he just needed to understand what had happened.

---

"What's wrong with you?" That was Batman's first question with Flash appeared late again.

"Stuff at my /other/ job."

"Care to share?"

"Maybe, if you can answer a question for me, and provide your opinion about what happened."

"I can as well." J'onn sighed, closing the door to the monitor womb behind him and locking it so they had privacy.

"Okay, well my question for you bats, do you know anything about Captain Boomerang's family? I mean I thought I knew his background pretty well, I've even seen his mother come up from australia on occasion. But I found out he's got a cousin who's a drag queen."

"Yes, Shiela Bear." Batman sniggered.

"So he wasn't lying."

"nope." Batman replied, looking smugger and smugger. "Shiela Bear is also a meta human, not a very strong one, but she's got senses of hearing and smell three times that of a normal human being and the sensory parts of her brain and her limbic system are unusually well developed. She councils gay, lesbian and transgender children and has turned Boomer over to the police twice after his robberies."

"you lost me at three times that of a normal human."

"Well, the human brain can't really grow in volume without increasing the volume of the skull right?" Batman tried to explain.

"Right."

"But what the brain can do is increase the number of connections between neurons. That means the brain can respond faster and more intelligently. People with high IQ's tend to have more connections between the neurons. But in Sheila Bear only the parts of the brain to do with her senses and balence are highly developed, not the parts to do with intellect. So she's got highly developed reflexes and sense of balence, and highly developed ability to process sensory information /and/ stronger senses. She's just lucky her mutation doesn't have to do with her eyes or she'd be forced to become nocturnal. There are only so many mutations that can enhance eye function and the most obvious ones, making the parts of the eye larger or smaller could render someone photophobic or blind." Batman mused. "Anyway, her meta mutation is a lot milder than the bang babies we encountered in Dakota city. Its barely noticable."

"Now are you going to tell us what happened?"

Flash flushed under his mask. "Jim seduced me."

"You or Wally."

"ME ME." Flash snapped. "And I'm not entirely sure I didn't want it."

"What happened?"

"He started touching me, and I could smell something wonderful oozing off of him, next thing I know the previous hour's a blur of the hottest sex I've experienced in my life and I'm lying on the floor of the locker room shower at work covered in sweat and fluids." Flash was oozing embarassment and confusion to J'onn.

"you /should/ have done something to save a sample." Batman criticized him. "It might give me a clue as to why, besides his body language, Jim creeps you out so badly."

"Don't bother, a swab of his nasal cavities will likely yield signs of pheromones." J'onn sighed. "Those things are powerfully potent, to the point where they can override both a person's self control /and/ their natural sexuality for a short time."

"how would /you/ know?" Flash demanded.

"Martians use pheromones to mate, ensuring their partner stays with them longer by triggering production of the hormones associated with pair bonding. It makes the partners less likely to leave each other. However, there are many ways to synthesize such a pheromone. We aren't the only ones who have it."

"Poison Ivy's done it numerous times." Batman added. "Its possible to create equally potent pheromones in a lab but the dose would have to be fairly high and output consistant to completely make someone lose their head. My advice is to avoid Jim and recuse Wally West from investigating the bomb threat to the treatment clinic."

"But..."

"There's no reason the Flash can't investigate." Batman pointed out. "But if Jim hasn't figured out you're the Flash by now, and I'm not sure how threatening he is or the odds of that without watching you interact, then recusing Wally West and avoiding contact should be sufficient to solve the issue. And Flash, you do /not/ want to continue contact with Jim if you can help it. I know he's trouble, I just don't know how much trouble he is and I can't without observing his behavior. That said, I /can/ have a camera sewn into Wally's labcoat, hidden from Jim's view and so thin it can be made to appear to blend into the fabric."

"Do it." Flash sighed in disgust. "This whole thing just freaks me out..."

"NO CARA DON'T DO..." zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztffffzzzlllllllt!

/That/ came from one of the internal monitors, Batman arched a brow as he looked at where Superman and Flash Angel were facepalming at Supergirl, the remains of a very overcooked rat at her feet. A large orange cat ran over and sniffed the charred rat, poking it with a paw and rowing in dismay.

"maaaaan!" Static could be heard off camera. "I was gonna name that one Rufus!"

Flash started laughing.

"excuse me i need to make sure an excitable rookie doesn't blow a hole in the hull." Batman stood up. "You'll have the work tomorrow morning. If I were you I'd sleep stationside." He hurried out of the room and Flash followed, eager to see what was going on.

"WE FOUND THEIR NEST!" Cara was standing with the orange cat Bonnie, Aki, and a large black cat with silver speckles at her feet, facing a nest full of tiny furry things with their eyes only just starting to open. The cats were eagerly meowing, trying to leap in and catch the baby rats. Then the mothers, four of them, came leaping out, squeaking and hissing angrily at the cats and a fight broke out.

"use that as a distraction." Hawkgirl came running over with a stack of six critter keepers (someone's TM: I no own!). "Flash there's a half a dozen more in the lab down the hall get them and help me put the litters in their cages. Static, Supergirl, start catching." Flash hurried to get the carriers, hearing Hawkgirl add. "And MAKE SURE you seperate them by gender! THEY'RE NEARLY old enough to breed themselves! We're lucky we caught them or we'd have had a really bad rat problem up here."

"They may not be the only litter." Superman massaged his temples trying to remember everything he'd ever been taught by his adopted parents about rat infestations. "Cara you be careful, I don't want to have to put together a rabies shot with a kryptonite needle."

"Like they could ever pierce my skin."

"rats teeth are sharp, and given that we have 10 pounds of kryptonite sealed in detainment that has to be disposed of still from the /last/ crazy scheme of Luthor's... I wouldn't be surprised if they'd slipped in and tried to gnaw their way in. Ma Kent always said never underestimate a rat."

"you really think they'd chew through lead?" Supergirl asked.

"rats can grind through things, although their teeth are sharp they tend to use them like grinding stones. The rubber seals on those caskets are the weak point." Batman sighed. "I'm going to go check them for chew marks." He hurried off down to the detention safe where they kept confiscated Kryptonite.

Flash Angel and Morrigan rounded the corner, jaw dropping at the sight of Supergirl's rat hunting attempts. "really Cara? heat vision... really? a hypersonic bait would have worked." Alex's jaw was agape.

"And blasted my ears!" Cara protested. "Those things are louuuud! Its the only reason I don't like rats, they hurt my ears. But they're o so cuuuuteee."

"Then get GLUEBOARDS." Alex snapped. "Please Cara..."

"Hey Angel." Flash came back with the remaining critter keepers and said quietly to Alex. "I'm gonna be busy for a few days. I'll call you with the communicator I gave you when we're ready to bust the clinic bomber okay?"

"Alright." Alex sighed.

"Just keep up with the training I gave you." Flash added quietly. "I know you got the right stuff."

Alex grinned at Supergirl and hurried back over to the rats. "Seeeeee?" Cara held up a finger with a baby rat's new teeth clamped down on it, the small brown creature's tail flailing as it tried to take hold of something. "Told you. Not even a pinch." She carefully prized the rat's jaw from her finger and checked under the tail. "Male." Supergirl sighed and put the baby rat in the carrier. "We /really/ need to get rid of the damn things."

"We'll let them go when they're weaned." Hawkgirl sighed. "I think Batman's got all the labrats he can use at the moment."

"But..." Static looked at the small squeaking wriggly things in his critter keeper.

"Static if you want a pet rat go to the pet store." Batman chastised him.

"He can't help the cuteness either." Cara teased, only to recieve a bat glare.

"No laughing matter, they carry diseases domestic rats don't have and unlike domestic rats they /will/ bite."

"oh okay. I didn't want to let Roger go." Static mumbled.

"don't worry, if you like rats that much I'll get you a new Roger." Superman laughed.

"They really are cool." hawkgirl sighed. "Remarkably crafty and persistant though."

"You wouldn't believe what they can do with a single amphora of grain." Wonderwoman was carrying paperwork and files up to the offices two decks up from the archives down the hall. "I doubt the gods have created anything better for surviving and traveling than the rat."

Superman did get Static his pet rat the next day, allowing Roger 2.0 the choice of a cage on the watchtower or a cage in Virgil's room. Static happily took his new pet home, knowing his sister would likely never intrude in his room /ever./ Alex and Morrigan took a couple hours a day out of their day to help Cara and the cats get the rodent problem under control. Sheiyera was grateful for their help. There were two burgleries to investigate and guard duty for a sexual assault trial so the days leading up to the real show were very very busy.

---

"You're what?"

"Recusing myself from the bombing case." Wally replied to his chief, feeling kind of silly. "Jim has been... well..."

"What?"

"Inappropriate around me in a way that makes me uncomfortable."

"Hmmm, alright. You /are/ gonna be on that sex toy sadist case. You are /not/ weasling out of that when the defendant is demanding an expedited trial."

"Yes sir." Although Wally was feeling green, he was glad to be rid of Jim /and/ have an excuse to avoid him. His boss never did pry.

---

Ring, ring, ring...

The phone woke Alex out of a sound sleep. "Hellooo?" She blinked in the Saturday morning light coming in her window.

"Alex, its Seiji, where's Saya?"

"Huuuuh? Seiji I just got up."

"Turn on the news, something has happened to our cousin! Where is Saya?"

"Like I know?"

"You don't understand me Alex, SOMEONE TOOK HER." Alex fumbled for her radio and found the news station.

"The tiger rose out of the Coast City harbor, said something in Japanese that we couldn't completely hear, and sank under the water again." A woman was saying. "We ran down to the beach and found the Green Lantern wounded and with no clue how he got there. A healing spell was already going to work on him, but its a real mystery to us. Someone must have messed with him."

"What the hell?" Alex demanded.

"our intelligence says that Hal Jordan woke up on the beach in coast city today with a fuzzy memory for the night before, fuzzy memories on and off for the last year, and no fucking clue how he got there. I'm really scared Alex."

"You think the cursed dragon is back?"

"Yeah."

"i've got a mission with Flash in a couple of days, keep me posted I have to keep practicing my technique. Call me tomorrow morning if you don't by noon I'll assume something happened to you."

Alex did not sleep well that night, she practiced her new technique till midnight and then slipped home via teleporter late at night. It was the very next day that, at noon, she checked her watch and excused herself. And she started calling from the school bathroom.

It was in last period somebody picked up. "Hello?" The accent was gothamite.

"Is Seiji there?"

"Who's speakin..." Yeah, definately gothamite.

"His adopted COUSIN! PUT SEIJI ON NOW!"

"Can't do dat, dis is detective Bullock, Seiji's missin. You got any beads on what he was doin?"

"i'm not sure." Alex said quietly. She gulped... this was Gotham she was thinking about. Cops were not only corrupt, but some were impersonated on occasion. "Hey, if you're really a cop what's your badge number?"

CLICK.

Alex cursed and since it was last period she quickly skipped class, grabbing her homework and hiding on the roof. "Watchtower, beam me up guys I got a problem and I need to talk to batman."

"Batman is currently in the infirmary, but he is talking, why?" J'on answered.

"I think something's happened to Seiji, he said if he didn't call my cellphone by noon to think something happened to him."

"I have some bad news, you may want to hear it from Batman."

Alex and Morgan gathered at the watchtower's infirmary. Batman was going through CT and PET scans as well as MRIs.

Static was unconscious in the medical chamber beyond the scanning area, so was Robin. "I don't understand it..." Hawkgirl was saying.

"Its fairly easy to understand, someone interferred with my brainwaves and I think we'll see the same pattern in Static and Robin. Plus, they left Catwoman, Twoface and Poison Ivy untouched along with witnesses at the Underbar fire. They all tell the same story, three intruders, one of which knocks me out and sets fire to the Underbar, the Supervillains try to retailiate, Two face is nearly strangled without even being touched, and Catwoman tried to get Static out of the way but got cut down. Static's pretty badly banged up... Alex can you..."

"Sure..." Alex hurried into the medical bay and quickly gave the electric user a jolt from Bennu and Anasazi. As she did, Flash came in and stood next to her. "I'm sorry... they took your cousin Saya and they took Seiji now too."

"Tell me... EVERYTHING." Alex growled as she started working on healing the two rookie heroes.

Flash began to explain, and when he got to the part about the amnesia Batman spoke up. "I think I can figure that out. Evidence shows this seiji person existed and did train up here but I have absolutely no memory of him."

"Really?" Alex's jaw dropped. "Lemme scan you for a head injury." She reached for the sides of Batman's cowl.

He pulled away. "Don't bother, all scans are clean for a head injury."

"Then what...?" Alex looked confused.

"Someone interferred with my brainwave patterns. I can't put down new memories of your cousin and I can't retrieve memories of him. The effect is strong enough that as soon as I don't have external stimuli that I can reference I'll probably forget him completely. I've given Alfred copies of some of the recipes and drawings Seiji left behind. J'on, I need you to make and hide backup copies of all files related to this case and the four squads. Do it now before this escalates and be ready to encrypt them."

"But how..."

"I found that whatever did this operates by cutting off the retrieval of sensory sensation related to certain memories. I don't remember your cousin's voice, or his face, or anything that my five senses could percieve about him. I believe thats the starting point for whatever did this."

"Any suspects?" Alex asked grimly as she finished healing Static and started working on Robin's burns. Second degree, minor smoke inhalation... "Get Robin more oxygen when I'm done with him, minor smoke inhalation and i'm not convinced you got all the chemicals that would have been in that smoke. It feels like he got a small dose of carbon monoxide. Not enough to be deadly but enough to make him /very/ /very/ sick."

As if to emphasize her statement Robin started coughing in his sleep. Alex turned to Batman. "I'll have the physical wounds on the road to recovery in a few minutes he'll need a week in bed. Static isn't as bad because he got away from the fire, but he's got lacerations, scrapes and a lot of wrenched muscles, whoever got him wasn't gentle. Its like he literally got grabbed by the arms and legs and tossed around and there are kick marks on his stomach, black and blue. There's nothing serious here but a lot thats painful."

"I'm very bad at saying thank you." Batman warned her. "Especially in a crisis."

Alex looked up at Batman with a sad smile. "Seiji loved hanging out with Static-kun and Robin-kun. He would have wanted me to help them. You think this amnesia thing is going to get worse?"

"yes." Batman replied. "I have no doubt. Someone is targeting your clan. But Seiji's parents wouldn't tell me anything."

"They're nobles, they aren't exactly open to begin with and likely will blame you for Seiji's disappearance. Speaking of which, do you know a "Detective Bullock?"

"Yes, why?"

"I tried to call Seiji's phone and he picked up."

"He's legit, but a bit bull headed." Batman replied. "I'll have a few words with him about this case."

"Alright." Alex said quietly. "Batman... there's... something you should hear. It might give you a suspect but I know our parents wouldn't have wanted to give details to the league, they trusted Hal, they don't know John, and they don't know /you/."

"go on."

"200 years ago, our ancestors fought a cursed dragon that consumed souls and lived to inflict despair on mortals. It made its first appearance on Oa, and it killed hundreds of lanterns. My ancestress, Michelle Argent the Second, she allowed the Guardians of Oa to use her as a channel to pool their powers in with hers. Michelle's health was slowly said to ail as a result, but the Guardians rewarded her for her efforts. The dragon... he was marked forever with the tears of the Green Lanterns he murdered. Cursed to cry for their pain for all eternity."

"Cry?"

"his mark." Alex said quietly. "He has two green tear streaks coming down from his eyes. Its a curse michelle put on him to mark his crimes. It looks like he's crying green."

Batman frowned considering the story. Alex wasn't telling the whole story. Humans were a rarity on Oa because so few of them ever made the green lantern corps. So how did a "witch" get to Oa? How did the other squads fit into this? There was green, white, red and black so will, life, anger, and death. Was that it? Were each of the squads copycat Lantern Corps?

Alex peered at Batman for a minute. "We aren't lackies of the Guardians you know. We're friendly to them but unless there's a ring on one of our fingers we don't answer to them." Alex said quietly. "our territory is much closer to home. Like any group in the stars, we do have members in the corps. We don't all answer to the guardians though."

"Like who?"

"Well... Saya... Masamune-sama, her father is a green lantern. He's very long lived, he has ten year periods of service and then ten years of leave. Like Persephone. He's even got artwork in Oa's museum."

"Really? What's his medium?" Batman asked. Details were missing from Saya's file. Like what her father did for a living or what exactly he was.

"arms and armor. He makes traditional weapons and armor. I've seen his works. He's done greek, roman, midevil european, chinese, and Japanese armors. He's made shields from six continents and 100 different cultures and swords from a period of over two thousand years of human history. He makes them in artistic interpretations."

"I see."

"When on leave he's known as the Woodland Weaponer, Masamune-sama. Masamune-sama, the one that disappeared, she's actually the third to carry the title."

"I see... and Mika's claim to be descended from Mike Fink?"

"Yes, she is. That's her great great grandfather's side."

"He also fight the cursed dragon?" Batman was trying to understand what was happening here. If their assailent were truely this cursed dragon and it took all the guardians to contain it the first time then Superman might be their only real chance among the fighters at hand.

"Oh all of our ancestors did. Michelle convinced them to help the Green Lanterns. You see, they were all marooned on Oa in the same incident as the dragon. Initially they were all from different sides. Human archers, immortal witches and mortal wizards, grim reapers and gifted humans who could control their spirit energy but weren't archers or magic users. And predictably, they fought each other. Michelle was a witch, immortal and gifted with both fortitude, wisdom, and the gift of prophecy. Even without using it, Michelle knew that they wouldn't survive if they kept up their conflict on the alien planet. She offered her aid to the corps and convinced the different sides to stop fighting and turn on the dragon. They did, helping the lanterns to fight.

"But the green lantern corps alone were not enough. Many lanterns died, and some of their rings went to the castaways, giving them a new home on Oa. Michelle allowed the Guardians to use her body to merge their powers into one with hers. Because Michelle was skilled in the art of exorcism, cleansing and blessing, she was able to tune the guardians' power to the right wavelength to turn against the dragon.

"The Cursed Dragon was obsessed with despair. The text says that it was the dragon's cause of death, whatever that meant. Despair can also be considered an enemy of will, just like fear. But it doesn't have the advantage that fear does. The dragon lost, and the guardians banished the beast as far away as they could manage. The guardians then returned Michelle and the other humans to Earth. Michelle gave the Guardians the means to contact her if the dragon ever returned, and information about her power to exorcise and cleanse in case as she put it 'some mortal punk gets lucky and kills me.'

"Then she founded us, as defenders for the planet. We are a militia, we work together for the planet because we /want/ to. Michelle organized the survivors into four squads. Green squad was strongly connected to nature, the forest, and foliage, but also to craftsmenship and blacksmithing. Their guardian spirit was Masamune, the Japanese blessed swordsman. Their guardian beasts were the Tengu and the Crow. All their masks are leaves. Green Squad specializes in inventing. The more creative you are the more likely you are to be in their squad. Their style is very group oriented, legend has it that Saya's father can combine the energy of over a hundred spiritually gifted fighters and get them to fight as one being.

"Black squad was made up of Grim reapers and humans who agreed to serve them. They fought the beasts that threaten human souls. If you harm the soul of a human being, they hunt you down and stop you. Their masks are all animal skulls. Their animal is the cat, and their mythical beast is the Nekomata. Their guardian spirit is Hekate, the Roman goddess of witchcraft who lights up the underworld so that heroes passing through it do not lose their way.

"Red Squad is a mixture of humans and reapers, each of whom attempts to train their physical prowess and control to frightening proportions. They are skilled in the ways of the ninja, and specialize in speed and stealth. There are a number of casters skilled in illusions in their employ. Their symbol is the eye, their masks are all wrappings with buddhist markings on them from varying cultures. They are very hard to earn the trust of. They all have star codenames or constellation codenames with the exception of the leader. Their mythical animal is the Nue, the Bee is their mundane animal.

"And finally there's us. White squad are the squad of Michelle. We specialize in healing, exorcism, cleansing, warding and other protective magical arts. We are the angels of mercy to Red Squad's ninja or black squad's reapers. That said, we can still fight if we wish to. But our role does not require that we fight. It requires that we protect. Even more so than the other four. We all protect, but we're more defensive and healing than anything I guess. Our animal is a winged fox. Our guardian animal is the phoenix or the thunderbird and we have flower names, with the exception of the leader. The leader is usually the clan's heiress, but Morrigan, Morgan, my cousin, her power didn't come out right to inherit Michelle's power so Squad leadership passed to me instead. She /is/ magically gifted. She's just... not gifted in a way that lets her handle the mark of the squad and clan leader. She can't juggle the phoenixes power and michelle's, and she can cleanse and exorcise but she can't heal, a power required of the clan leader."

"So the white squad leader is supposed to be the clan heiress and later leader?"

"eh, kinda." Alex said quietly. "White leads the clan. Its Michelle's squad, the one she founded. But Morgan is the future Clan Leader."

"I see." Batman wasn't sure where to start trying to figure this out. First of all, he was one hundred percent certain that this was just the public backstory. There was more to this, a /lot/ more. Although Alex's account was revealing, it wasn't everything and Batman didn't like people not telling him everything. "Listen to me... no matter what, don't go on the mission with Flash tomorrow night."

"I can't do that. Bat-sama you know I can't." Alex said quietly. "If somebody destroys that place I won't have a place to go for my hormones. I NEED those! My MENTAL health requir..."

"/I/ can have your hormones covered if the clinic goes down. You AREN'T going!" Alex groaned.

As Batman dropped Alex off that night, not Flash, he placed a large number of listening devices around the yard and house. He caught. "Sorry Flash-sensei... Bat-sama is right." Batman felt bad that the girl desperately wanted to stand up for her beliefs and couldn't. He'd make it up to her. But he HAD to make sure that the safety of any Justice League trainee came first. If this were Robin or Static or Gear in danger, Batman /knew/ he'd be reacting the same way.

"So mom, dad, looks like I've still got the hole you left behind..." Batman said quietly. His parents murderer had not only been caught, he'd paid for it. Yet for Batman, while satisfying, the victory hadn't fixed the pain.

The Dark Knight was settling in for a long night when Flash called him. "you grounded Angel huh?"

"I'd have done the same if it were Robin, and I would have done the same if it were Kid Flash, Nightwing, Static or any of the Titans. Hell, I'd even have done the same for about half of my rogue's gallery. This is a League affair. And i don't feel comfortable with letting people connected to us get abducted on our watch. Not without a fight."

He heard suddenly... "ik...sh...so..." POP both right tires on the bat mobile were punctured, the vehicle listing immediately.

Batman swore, firing up defense systems and leaping from the Batmobile.

There was nothing there... he could see nothing... but he was sure he heard it, and felt it... a creeping murderous energy that was stalking him.

And then the sensation of someone licking him up the side of the neck, and hands trying to grope him. "se...bla... ba... do... fere... ma... yo..." It was like static buzzing in his ears. He couldn't completely hear it. But his brain wanted to. Everything in Batman was feeling the chill of being stalked.

Standing completely still Batman felt the sensation of steel running up his throat when there was nothing there, pressing in a clear threat, and then easing away. As soon as the sensation was gone, Batman whirled.

All he could see were two slitted eyes at man height and a fuzzy silver shadow. But the eyes reminded him of a snake, and they were glowing blood red.

Then the eyes faded away, so did the shadow, and so did the creepy aura, and yet... it left Batman feeling slightly... soiled.

He went to the Batmobile and called the Batcave. "yes sir?"

"Meet me at the duplicate batcave. I need new tires and I think someone's tailing me."

"Very well sir... shall I step up the alert?"

"No." Batman replied. "If they are tailing me, I don't want to give them any sign I know. You'd be surprised what people reveal when they don't think anyone's watching them." After hanging up on Alfred, Batman hesitated and then rang Hawkgirl.

"Well this is a change, normally we call you."

"You offered a few months ago to try to track down some Nth metal for me next time you have some free time. You feel like doing it now?"

"Sure. What brought this change of heart on?"

"Flash isn't the only one who seems to have a stalker, at least he could see his clearly."

"And you couldn't?"

"no, he may have been a ghost, which is why I need Nth metal."

"Ah... I'll see what I can do. The stuff is rare, but not impossible to find. Harder to find than Kryptonite though." she sniggered at that. (9)

"what was the tally for tonnage?"

"two tons, we're gonna need a lot of acid." Hawkgirl sniggered. "When I gave him the report Superman turned almost as green as the Kryptonite is."

"I see..." Two tons? No wonder there was a black market for the stuff. Just how massive had Krypton been? He'd have to ask Superman. They needed to find where all this Kryptonite was coming from because the odds were barely any of it fell to earth naturally in a meteorite. It was more likely most of it had been smuggled in. Hal Jordan owed him a couple of favors, maybe he could cash them in for a little covert reconisseance.

But that would have to wait. Batman gunned the batmobile to the duplicate batcave. It was going down tonight, he could feel it.

Tonight, another potential Justice league protege was going to go missing.

---

Flash arrived at the site of the bomb threat set to go off that night. Only there was nobody there, not that he could see at least. And then...

Flash could hear two startled human cries, the sound of struggling, the sound of steel being drawn from a blade.

He dashed towards the sound and hauled Mirror Master and the ice cream parlor owner out of range of certain death. As he found a safe spot to put them down Wally could hear Mirror Master shouting. "hey! I want my payment! I did my share! YOU HEAR ME?"

Wally cuffed Mirror Master six blocks from the site, hands and feet, to a lightpole. Then he took some of that paracord rope Alex had given him and formed two slipknots hogtying Mirror Master thoroughly. Even if he could escape into a mirror, Mirror master would be unable to move. The more he struggled, the tighter the nooses around his wrists and ankles would become. Flash was certain that the only way out of that predicament was slow and painful.

He came back around and started searching for the bomb and any clue as to whom Mirror Master had been talking to, only for a familiar figure to step out of the shadows. "Hello Wally." Jim sniggered. His form melted away. "or should I say Flash. You're going to be very... very cooperative bait." Ulquiorra came out of the shadows behind Jim, pointing a gran rey cero beam at a nearby apartment building. "or all those people are going to die."

Ulquiorra peered at Flash. "My beef is with the Green Lantern corps, I don't care about this mook Gin."

"You'll do as you're told."

"Aizen said to take the girl and bash the hell out of the speedster, not use a mexican standoff." Grimmjow arrived then, reminding Gin.

"She's not here. We need a gun to the speedster's head. We'll use him as a hostage to get the girl."

"I wanted a fight tonight." Grimmjow and Ulquiorra looked at each other. "That batman guy was boring."

Gin looked to Ulquiorra, as if appealing to the other, quieter, arrancar to shut Grimmjow up.

Flash took that opportunity to run. Ulquiorra changed form, his sword and physical form blurring once, and then twice, each time changing. Until he resembled a demon, complete with horns and a barbed tail. The tail whipped out, cracking Flash across the cheek. "DAMNIT!" Flash yelled. He accelerated his healing factor, fixing the wound in seconds. It was a technique he wouldn't be using if it weren't a terribly, terribly dangerous situation. Other flashes had tried, and sacrificed months and sometimes years from their lives to do it.

He /had/ to get away, he was going to be used to trap Alex!

But this guy... and then Ulquiorra's tail wrapped around Wally's throat. He was viciously sent plummeting to earth. Wally tried to take off again only...

Grimmjow, Ulquiorra, and Gin released their reiatsus at once. The combined effect was like suddenly dialing up the gravity. Gin's gigai melted off. "By the way, my name isn't Jim, its Gin Ichimaru."

Flash's eyes widened as what had been a minor annoyance was suddenly a grave threat to his existance. Jim knew his secret identity, and had used it to plant evidence of a bomb threat to lure him here. Flash could /smell/ the pheromone on Gin's lips.

And then his vision blurred, Gin was there, his body was overheating, Gin was /ripping/ at his costume and dazed, Flash couldn't stop him. Gin was going to have a much, much less pleasant repeat of the last time. Flash did not want to be raped in the middle of battle, out in the open, or anywhere at all, and certainly not by Gin, who terrified him /normally./ You couldn't completely call the last time non consensual but this... Flash clenched his teeth while Gin groped parts of him becoming more sensitive by the moment.

"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Blessed be the Thenigarian that learned how to harness Nth Metal into weapons, for Hawkgirl's mace collided soundly with Gin's head.

Ulquiorra pulled up, watching Gin sway around, hit so hard he'd been made dizzy. "What the heck? How could such a weak combatant have landed a blow like that on Gin?" Grimmjow demanded.

Flash lay there, flat on the ground, fingers and toes twitching, a very uncomfortable bulge in his crotch and an even more uncomfortable feeling in his head. He shook his head out, trying to use speed force to force the drug out of his system. The bulge in his pants was going down, the fuzzy, dull knot in his brain wasn't. He /wanted/ he /needed/ relief. He shook his head out at super speed, trying to clear it. Hawkgirl stayed in a defensive stance while Flash struggled to regain function. His head was so disoriented. It wasn't terrible pain just... fuzz...

Unsure what to do, when Hawkgirl turned on the two arrancars, Ulquiorra swung out of the way of her blow. Grimmjow caught it however, and yelled in pain and fury. His hand came away bleeding profusely. "ghosts don't like my people, because we make weapons to /force/ them over to the other side, FOR GOOD." Hawkgirl smirked, spitting at the ground. "Our gods betrayed us, we are prey to no spirits or deities any longer." The two of them circled, Hawkgirl trying to get herself between Grimmjow and Flash. "This is Hawkgirl." She said into her communicator. "I've found them. Looks like your hunch was right on the money Batman, both your hunches. Have you found the gear I left for you?"

"yes I have." Batman replied into her com. "i'll be at your location in ten minutes."

"We may not have that amount of time, I caught Jim, if thats even his real name, trying to rape Wally. Got his attention really, really quick. I must imagine he's missing a few teeth from that snake smile."

"Did he use the pheromone?"

"yeah, Flash is dazed but on his feet, trying to clear his head and he looks really disoriented."

"J'onn thinks he's got something that can speed it out of Flash's system. But that stuff's devilish, he'll need to be brought up to the watchtower to fully scrub it from his endocrine system."

J'onn spoke up into the com. "Hawkgirl, be very careful, our scanners are detecting enormous amounts of soul energy coming from them. Each one of those two, the blue and green one, has enough power to equal Icthultu's compressed into a far smaller mass and you're facing two. Get Wally and get out of there."

Hawkgirl refocused her grip on her mace, taking a stance that was going to be more comfortable for fast combat, and charged. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" she roared.

This time Grimmjow caught her mace on his zanpakuto. "Grind, PANTERA!"

In all of that, wobbling crazidly, Wally got up and tried to charge Ulquiorra, only to recieve a vicious crack to the side of his head again.

"WALLY NO!" J'onn yelled into his com. "The pheromone messes up your equilibrium! Your accuracy is greatly diminished!"

Wally kept swinging, not really able to comprehend what J'onn was saying. So the Martian switched to Telepathy to try and calm him down and get him focused.

Wally's mind was full of pain, the sting of violation, the burn of anger, and all the disorientation that comes from being drugged and nearly raped. He shot up straight, spine arching when he felt J'onn's touch.

Suddenly the two of them were inside his head. J'onn held Wally tightly, resting his forehead against back of the speedster's head. "I feel your pain friend, but I am /trying/ to help you escape!"

"J'onn, I can't think clearly... I can barely see... I'm in so much pain and I'm burning up all over, anger, shame, and fever. Please... I have to help Sheiyera fight them. She came to save me." In his mind Wally was slowly becoming younger, smaller, slimmer, reflecting the man's feelings of helplessness as he morphed back into a child.

"You don't have to feel this way... i know you can't help it... please, let me SOOTHE you. I will guide your hands and feet friend. Just hang on tightly to me."

Flash's eyes glowed green, suddenly he regained his equilibrium and flung himself at full speed at Ulquiorra. Then it was on. Seriously on.

"J'onn... i need to trust you with something." Little Wally told the Martian.

"Hm?"

"Alex trusts me... I don't want her to go away... I don't want to let her down and I don't want to lose the memories I cherished of the little speedster. She's so... friendly... even after all she's been through... please... save my memories of Alex. I don't want to forget her, her pain or that of any of the kids at that clinic. Please J'onn."

Taken aback the Martian nodded. "This i will do... if you like, I can safe guard your memories of all of them."

"Please do, and thanks buddy. I needed to hear that. Now lets do this!" Wally literally crashed into ulquiorra, the two punching, roaring, kicking, Wally even bit Ulquiorra's arm, viciously vibrating his teeth to do extra damage. "Damn, can't do that again." Flash hopped back, rubbing his mouth. "That guy's skin, it was like biting iron."

"Thats because its just as dense." Ulquiorra said coldly. "Its called Hierro, or Iron skin, I use my energy to harden my skin to the same density and toughness as iron. Not even hard light can pierce it, believe me, the Green Lanterns corps have tried."

J'onn hmmmed, "I want to try something."

"What?"

The telekinetic burst short forth from wally's body. "Interesting, when we're mind merged like this, I can use your body to launch an attack even if I'm not physically in the area."

"COOL!"

Then the worst possible thing happened. "ANGEL FLASH, MACH 1!" a blur of lightning and wing rocketed down to hit Ulquiorra straight on.

"NO ANGEL DON'T!" Flash yelled. "DON'T DO IT!"

Ulquiorra caught Alex by the throat. The arrancar shifted so that he had his tail wrapped around her throat instead of his hands. "We have what we came for. Grimmjow, cover our retreat."

"My pleasure, Grind, PANTERA!" Grimmjow's form changed into a decidedly cat like form. He lunged at Hawkgirl, putting her head through a wooden fence before tearing off after Flash.

"SCREW THAT!" Flash yelled. He and J'onn using his senses to guide him, shot after Ulquiorra as he dragged Alex away.

Flash saw all his work on that clinic, all his fun times with Flash Angel, all the lovely meals Alex cooked for him so wonderfully. The crackling campfires, the peace of the woods. /J'onn... I don't... I don't want them to take this away... we both know what's coming next, somehow one of them makes me forget... but I don't want to. Alex was a troubled kid who needed help, and she got friends to help her./

/I can preserve your memories of her./ J'onn offered.

/Please... keep them safe... wherever they're taking her she needs us!/

The blade darted out of nowhere. It was Gin. "Ikure... SHINSO!"

At the same time Alex began to glow white... "I can't allow this to go on. I'm supposed to take over leadership of the squad from mum. I /refuse/..." She began to glow red, then yellow, then white, pure soft white.

Suddenly Ulquiorra's back was bleeding, covered in marks. The marks glowed pale blue. "Seal of Saint Michelle, revolution of souls, rise, rejoice, take your place in heaven. Consecration of tainted ground. Terror cleared from firey skies. Stand firm at your places... Silver cleansing art... SOUL REVOLT!"

Ulquiorra bucked, and several small blue orbs shot from the wounds in his back. They flew from Ulquiorra's back. And then a couple of green ones, just two. The blue ones never did anything. But the green ones, for a moment they flashed into ghosts... ghosts with a familiar, albeit pale, green uniform and alien body shapes. We're free! Thank you so much! Tell the Guardians we were honored to be in their service. The two ghosts flew off over Central city and disappeared.

"Was that..." Flash was side tracked. Alex was glowing white, and every hit she scored on Ulquiorra caused him to vomit up more souls, another green lantern ghost flew away, and a fourth, each one thanking her for their freedom.

/Amazing, they're ghosts of past green lanterns./ J'onn said quietly. /The memory copy is almost done, but I'm copying this as well. I will keep the memories partitioned away in my mind so that they do not leak into mine./

/thanks but how did they get here?/ Flash wondered. /And why is she hurting them so badly?/

/I don't know, but we need to take these back to the watchtower, perhaps, since she has met the god of death, Diana will know what to do with them./

Flash was stuck dodging Gin's blade, which seemed capable of extending a great distance. He couldn't get to Alex, who didn't stop hammering on Ulquiorra until... there was the sickening noise of gushing blood. Grimmjow had latched his fangs onto the transexual's hip, sinking them deep into flesh. Alex screamed in agony. Ulquiorra recovered sufficiently to aid Grimmjow. And still Alex struggled. She slashed Grimmjow, causing more souls to break free, this time from his body.

That had to be what they were, these small blue orbs, they littered the area, being scattered all over. Occasionally one came free and flew off as a ghost. But most just lay there.

Then Hawkgirl got loose from where she'd been shoved. The back of Grimmjow's head was suddenly covered in greeny black blood, and so was the end of her mace. But she seemed to dissolve into darkness when Grimmjow fought back, this time she went after Gin.

And his sword sliced the handle of her mace in half. There was a spray of blood from her wings. Gin viciously shoved her against the wall. Grimmjow and Ulquiorra were making headway with Alex.

"GO AFTER HER!" Hawkgirl yelled. "GO!"

"NO! HE'LL KILL YOU!" Gin's blade was raised, slashing viciously at Hawkgirl's wings, shallow cuts aimed at damaging muscle mass and messing up the aerodynamics of feather arrangement.

"Are are, I wonder, why so many supervillains just trapped you in a net." Gin grabbed her wing. "What they should have done was mutilate your wings. When I get done with you... BIRDY... you won't be flying for a long... long... LONG time..." he squeezed down on the wing.

"LET HER GO!" Heatvision hit Gin in the back. He turned, wincing in pain. "It barely did anything?" Superman's expression was mild shock.

"My will to kill is too strong, Kalel of Krypton. You're dealing with someone who's instinct and desire for sadism is far, far stronger than your loyalty to your friends." Gin slipped off his shirt, teasing Superman by showing him the burn marks. "See? Just blisters. I used my reiryoku, my spirit energy, to mitigate the damage. Sent it coursing through my skin." As he turned, Gin's eyes slowly opened. Flash knocked Superman aside just as the blade, Shinso, flashed out.

Then Gin darted out of sight. It was a feint! He flung glowing green dust up into Superman's face and then kneed him viciously in the diaphram. Flash knew what that dust was, Kryptonite. Superman's face, when he recovered, was covered in blisters. His right eye was bleeding from the particulates of kryptonite, sharp edged like volcanic ash, Gin had thrown into it. Then suddenly he swept out with a blade, the vicious spin causing Hawkgirl, Flash and Superman to duck for cover. Flash got it in the calves, a long shallow score that hurt like hell. Hawkgirl's knees and stomach got it, and Gin had used the spin to fling the blood of Superman's friends across his face.

Then the real trouble began... a brown haired man with glasses simply seemed to appear. "Having fun I see Gin?"

"Yeah, kinda. No clue why the Justice league doesn't seem able to beat me. Its three on one after all. Seriously, this is what their so called Supervillains aspire to beat? They don't even kill them either. Not directly, always laying their traps. I swear, nobody in this universe has the stones for /actual/ combat. Nor do any of them have the stones to kill."

Suddenly Flash was down. Just DOWN! He felt J'onn's presence leave his mind. Struggling under some invisible force, Hawkgirl yelled her rage. Superman's head jerked upwards, was J'onn doing something?

Then Grimmjow and Ulquiorra dragged Alex back. "Jeezus... two of us to take down one lousy human?"

"She's the descendant of a famous oracle and white witch. One who's body was able to withstand the Guardians' power and who was flexible enough to let them use her utterly as a channel for it." Ulquiorra said quietly. "her witch clan's specialty is in freeing souls that have been consumed from the body of whomever consumed them. Much to our detriment. Four hundred souls shook lose from my body. I've never taken that kind of damage. Vomiting blood, at my station."

"Kinda refreshing, the kid wasn't even aware of her full potential."

"Thats why they have to be out of the way." The brown haired man replied. "And why we need to establish a general power level assessment for the Justice League. People who volunteer to fight for a cause tend to be stronger than people who haven't. Simply because they're out to prove something. But in the end, no human being can stand against us."

Flash started to vibrate his arms into the pavement, it sent a spray of giant asphault chunks into the brown haired man's face and those of Grimmjow and Ulquiorra. "I beg to differ!" His follow up punch was caught expertly by the brown haired man. The man squeezed, the motion was barely visible, not due to speed, it was due to lack of effort.

Wonder woman is under attack. J'onn alerted the team. They are abducting two tonight! Superman you have to divert. Its getting vicious over there. They're fighting her and each other.

The brown haired man smirked as Superman flew off. "Be careful! I'll go make sure Diana's alright."

"Let me take over." The brown haired man said quietly, he smirked as Superman was forced to divert and try to prevent the other abduction. "Grimmjow, Ulquiorra, make the girl watch her friends be beaten." His head turned to Flash Angel. "you can stop this by going with us voluntarily."

Pain shot clean up Flash's arm. The man put a finger to Flash's forehead and flicked him. Flash was sent flying backwards.

"you lost that chance by sending the demon dragon after me. I know those marks on his eyes. He was cursed by the Guardians and my ancestress to wear those tears forever. They are the tears of the Green Lanterns who's souls he ate."

Flash went flying with a yell. Hawkgirl was suddenly up and lunged at him, mace raised high. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"you resisted Grimmjow's spirit force, good job. Too bad for you you aren't strong enough to wound me." Their assailent smiled. "hado 90, kurohitsugi." Hawkgirl was suddenly encased in a black box of energy.

It happened in an instant. Black spikes shot from the box and a white spot appeared on its side. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" A hole melted into the spell. White streaked from Hawkgirl's mace.

CRASH! A third arrancar arrived, blonde, skimpily clad, a shark's fins and tail made from bone adorned her. Her skin was deep, deep tan. Her hair was a gorgeous honey blond.

And if she didn't have a bound up Wonder Woman with her by the hair, and these were different circumstances, Flash would have done anything to get her to let him put his hands on that bust.

Above them Flash could hear heat vision going off, then some kind of spell. He looked up, Superman was fighting a dark skinned man with a visor and dreads who seemed extremely adept at magic use. There was no backup from that quarter, it was all he could do just to keep on his feet.

The woman grabbed Hawkgirl viciously by the wing and swung her. "I've found that winged things, tend to have very sensitive wings and yours are already wounded. Comes from having to guage the atmosphere correctly."

Hawkgirl went crashing into a nearby brick building. She lay there in the rubble, dazed.

"I see you accomplished your mission Halibel."

"you're LATE Halibel!" Grimmjow snapped. "I'm hacking up blood cause you took your sweet god damn time."

"My apologies, the woman was a formidable opponent. Gaining the clan heir's compliance took time."

Wonder Woman was covered in bruises and lacerations from head to toe. She was soaking wet and the look in her eyes promised hell to this "Halibel" woman if she could just get her hands on her. Wonder Woman was bound hand and foot, the heroine's one weakness. Flash had to get her free then get Hawkgirl out of there!

Flash circled warily, on the edge of his toes trying to get an opening to get Wonder Woman free. Then he charged, determined to try to get his comrade free. Halibel sent a torrent of water spraying at him. The water was a shock, increasing his alertness just in time for Flash to join Hawkgirl in the rubble.

---

"J'onn I want you to promise me that you'll find a place to hide from them." Batman said quietly over the radio. He was bringing a batplane load of emergency medical equipment from Gotham. "Alfred has a spot prepared but we /need/ the one person who can fix memory wiping on the team to be free of this."

"You're concerned all of our memories will be erased." J'onn was on com duty at the watch tower.

"Yeah, someone's got to remember this case. I left my files for it locked in an nth metal safe. The key is hidden in alfred's cottage. Remember him?"

"Yes, he's quite the pleasant character."

"The two of you are to keep guard over this case." Batman said with a quiet intensity. "My computer files weren't erased, which tells me the enemy isn't skilled in computers. Found the entire sad story." J'onn could hear a thud over the com. Batman had pounded the dashboard in frustration.

"I promise you Batman. I will keep these close, Flash already asked me to preserve his memories of Angel and White Squad. She's important to him. He hasn't had an apprentice yet. I think he wanted her as his."

"Alright." J'onn could hear reluctance in Batman's voice. He trusted no one by nature, and now he didn't have a choice. From what he could hear in the coms, Superman had been jumped by a magic user the instant he'd tried to help wonder woman.

---

Then Hawkgirl started to stir. Her head turned and Flash could see the green glow in her eyes that meant J'onn was in her head. /I'm trying to preserve as much of her memories of the children as I can./ J'onn told him telepathically. /I've been watching the fight, her mace is capable of wounding them. That means they have a weakness to Nth metal. And I'm sorry I had to leave, Wonder Woman and Morrigan were being attacked./

/I figured after that./ Flash struggled to his feet only to see the Alex being dragged kicking and screaming towards an open portal.

/We're going to lose this one!/

/Not if I can help it./ Flash replied, charging at Alex's captors. Alex's struggles became more violent than ever.

It happened in seconds. Pain seared through Flash's body. Gin's arms wrapped around Flash's waist and he hissed sensuously in his ear. "I hear guys like me find stabbing to be... arousing... but I don't know, you were pretty hot drugged out of yer gourd. Beggin me te cool yeh down." (10) Hands slinked their way to Flash's crotch, a huge blast of pheromones combined with the pain of the stabbing made the speedster's vision go white, and not in a good way.

Then Gin was walking away. Slowly, so slowly. Flash was falling to the ground. Why was the world so slow?

CRASH it seemed to echo through Flash's skull, he could see Halibel kicking Wonder Woman about the head. She was made of clay though, Diana was tough wasn't she?

The brown haired man swum into his vision. "Shatter, Kyoka Suigetsu."

Blackness. Blackness and his heart beating. The sadness, the hurt, the anguish.

I lost... I can't remember though, its fading... to white... everything is fading to white.

Flash's eyes cracked open, a witch in white and a woman with black hair in a black tuxedo were helping to load Flash into the javelin. He was on a stretcher, attached to the board. Batman was carrying emergency medical supplies from the batplane to the javelin.

Blackness again... I lost a fight... I know that, but this feels so much more devastating.

I wasn't just wounded, I didn't just lose a fight... I lost someone important. I was wounded in the heart. I wanted her... to wear...

The image went through Wally's head of his old uniform, the kid flash uniform he used to wear.

Had he... lost this? He didn't think so... but it had to do with it.

"He had his old uniform on him."

"I think he was going to ask her to wear it."

"To be his side kick? To leave white squad?"

"Lets get him into surgery, quickly."

now I remember, kinda... I found someone, to carry on the tradition, to be my Kid Flash. I was gonna ask her that night. A female kid flash, it wouldn't have been that bad.

And she would have learned, that even if some people aren't kind at all, there are some who are...

I wanted to show her... that cruelty, that blackness wasn't everywhere.

Someplaces, there's white...

Flash woke up in his bed on the watchtower screaming at the top of his lungs, seizing and thrashing fit to fall out of bed. Doctor Fate and J'onn ran into his quarters, quickly moving to turn him onto his side, help hold the twitching back.

"Its the same as the others."

"They're remembering, something is breaking the hypnosis. Whatever it is, it has to be very powerful."

"Could you get a lock?"

"No, but I thought I sensed a presence in Hawkgirl's quarters."

The thrashing stopped, Flash lay there, his breathing heavy as though he'd just run a mile. "Alex... she was... I wanted her to be my sidekick. I was gonna ask... that night..."

"Its alright... I understand." J'onn said quietly. "The others are remembering one by one. I'll have a few words with Alfred in the morning and have the case file delivered from his home."

"you kept your promise." Flash looked exhausted, and sounded bereft.

"Yes, I did. But I didn't trigger this, and I knew that if I forced you to remember, your body would remember that it had been almost fatally stabbed, which would almost certainly result in shock of some kind."

"How bad was it?" Wally put his face in his hands, trying to stop them from shaking.

"you nearly bled to death. The blade nicked your spleen." (11) J'onn said quietly. "I kept silent guard over your memories of Alex, but it seems someone or something caused you to remember the case on your own."

"They dragged her away... and erased my memories."

"I suspect it was his sword." J'onn said quietly. "He got Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman to forget before he did you. I was monitoring the minds of everyone there, trying to minimize the damage to our side and find the next movement of theirs. I did get a name."

"From him?"

"Yes, his name. Aizen." J'onn said quietly. "And the one who... took an unusual delight in tormenting you." That was said with a scowl. "Was Gin. The three most active combatants, Grimmjow, Ulquiorra and Halibel."

The three of them stood there. Then Doctor Fate said quietly. "I have some new contacts I need to speak with, Aquaman has seen similar creatures to the images of Grimmjow you showed me in your mind, but more animal like."

"Do it. This has remained a cold case for far too long."

"The whole thing... J'onn I think the whole clinic bombing was a trap for me."

"Yes, I agree."

"You have things in hand J'onn?" Fate asked.

"Yes, should they escalate, I will call for you."

"Hey J'onn, one more thing."

"Hm?"

"Everyone else is recovering their memories of the same set of events right?" Flash asked.

"It would seem so."

"So then Hawkgirl must have right?"

"Yes I just came from her quarters."

"How'd she escape getting stabbed by that big black energy box?" Flash asked eagerly.

J'onn hesitated, offering a hand to Flash, who nodded and took the martian's hand in his. The memory was transmitted into his head...

~flash~

"HAAAAAAAAAAA!" Flash was seeing through Hawkgirl's eyes as the black coffin snapped down. Hawkgirl was horizontal because she was in flight, and she corrected her angle as she shot into the attack. Sheiyera blazed through the narrow rectangle between the energy spears that pierced the coffin and smashed the other side with her mace over and over until the spell melted.

~end flashback~

Flash just started laughing. "Thats totally something she'd do!" He pounded his pillow with a fist. "its not funny but it is. I think the gamer slang I should use is... GG Hawkgirl, GG." (12)

---

1. BTW, doctor mccallum is inspired by ducky from NCIS and modeled physically and vocally on the actor who plays him, David McCallum.

2. Les stroud has demonstrated this skill in his series survivorman.

3. I always have soooo much trouble spelling her name. At first I tried Sheira, but that didn't seem right when I sounded it out. I tried Shiera, like Sierra, but no dice. Then I found the correct spelling in someone's fanfic. Thanks.

4. I have pet rats, I know more than anyone that if there's a way to get into something, rats will find it. Park the javelin in the wrong section of town, leave your lunch unsealed, and an unmeaning hero or heroine could end up with uninvited guests. Knowing his habits, Flash probably left his lunch out and they found the javelin by the smell.

5. Male rats have giant balls that are /veerrry/ visible.

6. Whatever methods they use, if a farm like the Kents wants to be certified organic, they'd actually have to go through a /lot/ of white paper to the point where it could get disruptive to their normal routine. See the documentary film "Farmageddon" for the debate on organic farming and regulation.

7. Frequently used to capture problem animals in urban areas or, if you live in a middle left state like I do, the only kind of trap you're allowed to use because all problem animals must be gently hugged while they're put to sleep rather than the reality of a snapped neck or a bullet to the brain. Am I against animal cruelty? you bet! but there's a difference between animal cruelty and defending your territory against pests that are ripping open your garbage and pissing off your landlord to the point where he threatens to summon you to court.

8. Typical teenage boy, meets a bunch of witches and cares more about dating them than that they're healing the poor.

9. Yeah... that's actually my reaction. You see bad guys with kryptonite every time a superman story comes up, yet its supposed to be rare. However, you hardley see any Nth metal and its not only more useful, its supposed to be more common.

10. There are some serial murderers who treat their knife like an extension of their penis. The stabbing is the sex act. Gin is sadistic, and a sword that extends as long as shinso is clearly a sex symbol. Psychologically, I happen to think that Gin would be "one of those guys."

11. The spleen is not a vital organ, but it cleans the blood and contains a reserve well of blood in case of serious illness or injury. But injuries to the spleen can cause a hemmorage.

12. G freakin G and get wrekt Aizen! :3 That slippery Hawkgirl! HAAAAAA!