Scott buttoned his shirt up over his undershirt as he led Zatanna inside. She was dressed similar to him… white buttondown shirt, brown leather jacket, and jeans… although he doubted he would have looked as good in the spaghetti strap sandals.

"I always thought that superhero meetings traditionally began with a misunderstanding and a bout of wrestling," Scott said.

"If you're dead-set on it, we could always wrestle later."

"Are you flirting with me?"

Zatanna smiled slyly. "Good, you noticed."

The house was gearing up for the semi-annual clean-a-thon, i.e., in a state of complete and utter disarray. Scott kicked old pizza boxes and magazines out of the way as they made their way to the dining room. Ted and Oberon were sitting at the card table in folding chairs. The larger, wooden dining room table was floating above them on aero-disks, leaving plenty of room for the cigar smoke circling around the ceiling and the shenanigans below.

"Zatanna, these are the guys," Scott introduced. "Ted Brown, my manager, and Oberon, my assistant."

She shook both of their hands.

"Enchanted," Ted said.

"Pleased to meet you," Oberon said.

"The famous Oberon. At last we meet. My father told me a lot about you. Said you were one of the best in the business, although with magicians like the ones you assist, not like you have to exert yourself."

Scott pulled up a chair for her, staking it into the ground behind her. "Don't be fooled by how easy I make it look. Oberon helps me rig everything right. Keeps the show on an even keel. Ain't that right, Obi?"

Oberon chomped down on his cigar. "This kid listened to me, he'd live a whole lot longer. What little has sunken through that thick bedrock skull of his, that's kept him alive so far."

"If I had listened to you, we would never have more than two nickels to rub together." Scott sat down next to Zatanna. "The guy got all skittish about a Chinese Water Torture Cell."

"A Chinese Water Torture Cell?"

"A Chinese Water Torture Cell."

"Immersion stunts are amateur stuff," Zatanna said. "Any magician worth his salt can do one."

Scott gestured out at Oberon with an open hand. "You see? You see? Zatanna said that. Are you going to argue with Zatanna?"

Ted was taking a swig of beer. "So, we gonna play cards or what? Not that you aren't fascinating." He smiled at Zatanna. "But I really do have to win some of my money back."

"The guys are teaching me poker," Scott explained. "Apparently, this is an extremely important part of day-to-day living on Earth."

"Of course it is! You ever seen Casino Royale?"

"Oberon is our reigning champion." Scott smiled. "We could always leave these two to go fish if you want to get on with the interview…"

"Interview?" Oberon repeated dully.

"Scott here is being considered for membership in the Justice League," Zatanna said, sounding a little proud of him.

As if she had anything to do with it.

It was happening again. Oberon could sense it, like he had an ear to the railroad tracks. Fame and fortune and cocksure magicians getting in over their head. Same thing happened to Thaddeus. Arrogance and women… that'll do anyone in, superhero or not. Oberon rolled his cigar to the corner of his mouth.

"Awright!" Ted said, putting a hand up for the high five. Scott stared at it for a minute, realized, said "oh!", and then gave him five.

"Mind if I deal?" Zatanna asked as she crossed one long leg over the other. "What? You think I'm just going to let you boys have all the fun?"

"Go ahead," Oberon said magnanimously.

Okay, maybe it was petty of him, but when trouble came along wearing fishnets with a siren song of fortune and glory, the prospect of kicking her ass at cards filled his heart with a very masculine glee.

Zatanna held up her hand and the cards from all over the table flew into her hand as if drawn by a magnet. She began shuffling them expertly. Ted, who believed in reincarnation, started to wonder if she had been a Vegas card shark in a past life.

"So, you guys got anything to eat?"

Scott gestured to some greasy cardboard boxes. "We have pizza and we have pizza with lots of vegetables on it. My apologies for the spread. I've been living on delivery for a while now."

"Then allow me to deliver. Rennir si devres."

In the center of the table, a feast worthy of a king packed itself together, nearly overflowing the table… and it did, in octopus tentacles that stretched past the four poker players, reaching out onto new food stands that appeared out of nowhere.

Oberon accepted a hot dog from a New York street vendor who thought for sure he had played Portal one too many times. He still didn't like her.

"That's a nice trick," Ted said, already buttering some toast that had shot out of the join in the folding table.

"It's no trick. Real magic." Zatanna began dealing the cards out. "So, Scott…" A notepad and pen levitated out of her jacket and stood at the ready. "Where were you born?"

"Apokolips, Despairville. A town so small we didn't have a village idiot, we all took turns."

The pen scribbled of its own accord.

"And your parents?"

"Deceased. Killed for crimes against the state. I don't even remember them."

"I'm sorry," Zatanna said. She finished dealing the cards and squeezed his shoulder. Oberon rolled his eyes. "Powers?" she asked hesitantly.

"I know my way around a pair of handcuffs." His tone had never changed. "I was given aerotrooper training. Hand-to-hand, energy weapons, aero-disk flight… the usual."

"I'll put down 'technical expertise, Apokoliptian'." Zatanna pulled a crisp, clean hundred dollar bill from her sleeve and snapped it before throwing it in the pot. "I raise."

"How do we know you aren't keeping cards up there?" Oberon challenged.

"You don't. Scott, arch-nemesis?"

The poker game was well underway, but Scott only had eyes for Zatanna. His hand wasn't that good anyway, but he'd parroted glories to Darkseid enough times to have faith in his poker face.

"I don't have one. Unless you count Granny Goodness. She's not a big fan. And Steel Hand, but he's doing thirty-to-life. Don't think he'll be much trouble."

"You'd be surprised."

"Granny Goodness?" Ted guffawed. "Name like that, how much trouble can she be?"

"You'd be surprised. I call." Scott slapped down two fifties. "Obi?"

Oberon hated nicknames. "Damn right I call." Five twenties.

"I call too," Ted said.

"You don't have enough."

"I'd accept a cigar," Zatanna said mischievously.

"Oberon," Ted said.

"These are my cigars…"

"Oberon, you've been like an uncle to me…"

Grumbling, Oberon gave a cigar to Ted, who promptly threw it in the pot.

"Base of operations?" Zatanna asked, eying the cigar.

"Shouldn't you be showing us your hand?"

"You first."

"Base of operations…" Scott said as he laid out two pair. "You're sitting it in. Islington, New Hampshire, if you must insist."

"Oh, I must, I must."

"You were bluffing with two pair?" Oberon laughed and hit the table with a full house. "Ted, embarrass yourself."

Ted dropped his hand onto the table. "Three of a kind. Scott, I could've taken you…"

"Sorry."

Oberon rounded up the pot. "Zee, there's no shame in defeat."

"That's good." Zatanna dropped four of a kind on the table, one by one. She picked the cigar out of the pot first. "Anyone got a light?"

Scott pulled a lighter from his pocket. When he lit it, it shot out a blowtorch flame before settling to a normal fire.

"Much obliged." Zatanna leaned back in her chair, gesturing the pot onto her side of the table with two fingers. "So, what's say we make this interesting, boys? Strip poker?"

"Scott, an advance on next week's check?" Ted pleaded.

"I spoil you," Scott said as he peeled the money from his billfold and passed it to Ted.

Zatanna took a whiff of Scott's shirt as she carried it out the door. "Smells summer-fresh! You have got to tell me what laundry detergent you use."

"Ancient Apokoliptian secret," Scott said, trying not to feel self-conscious about standing in the doorway wearing nothing but his boxers.

"Scott, we need more Calgon!" Oberon yelled from the laundry room, having a pressing need for clean clothes.

"Ancient Apokoliptian secret, huh?" Zatanna smirked.

"Am I going to get those pants back or not?"

Zatanna shifted the pile of clothes so that she was holding it under one arm, then closed her free hand into a fist. When she opened it, a white card was lying in her palm. She handed it to him.

"If you want 'em, you know where to find me."

Scott checked out the card. It read:

Zatanna
Mistress of Magic

He looked up at her. "Simple sleight of hand."

"Really?" Zatanna grinned. "Look again."

Scott did, and found a dove perched on his finger. He shook it off and it flew to Zatanna's shoulder.

"See you around, Scott Free."

"Not if I see you first," Scott said, watching her walk to the car. Then quickly closing the door before the neighbors could see him.

It was a bright Sunday morning when Barda came to Earth. The first thing she noticed about Earth was that it was loud. The second thing she noticed was the eighteen-wheeler bearing down on her. Her split-second reflexes carried her into a defensive posture. The grille of the truck shattered against her should like a wave against a rocky shore.

The driver hadn't been wearing a seatbelt. He was catapulted through the windshield, flying over the hood until Barda caught him. And shook him threateningly. "Watch where you're going, hunger dog!"

Around her, Times Square had ground to a halt. Barda looked at her surroundings, feeling thousands of eyes on her. Millions, as a camera crew broadcast the truck footage as breaking news. Coincidentally, the live footage was plastered onto the Times Square Jumbotron, mirroring her every move.

"You all saw it, he attacked me!" She shook the truck driver for emphasis.

In the movies, the aliens always invaded from the skies and the resistance was always underground. In reality, aliens could come from just about anywhere and the resistance was in space.

Superman was on monitor duty. He looked up from the truck footage and out the window as if he could make out the details through the void of space. See all the way to the busy street an Apokoliptian invader had just attacked. And perhaps he could, for his deep blue eyes narrowed in anger.

"Justice League, form up on New York. We've got a problem."

Barda set the petrified driver down. Brushed fragments of his windshield off his clothes. The truck driver cringed.

"I'll let you off with a warning," Barda said. Then her scowl softened. "Be more careful in the future."

"We're all take care," Superman said as his team assembled in the skies of Manhattan. "We'll take care of you."

Barda slid her Mega-Rod out of its holster. The crowd of New Yorkers pulled back, but not far enough to lose sight of the action.

"Take care of me," she repeated as the trucker driver ran. She humored him. "I'm looking for a man named Scott Free."

"Bounty hunter," Green Lantern grunted.

"Or an assassin." Superman X-rayed her weapon. He knew enough science to realize the technology inside was superior to Krypton's. "I doubt he'll want to see you."

"And I doubt you speak for him! Take me to Scott! Now!!"

Green Arrow already had a boxing glove arrow nocked. "I'm not letting some outer-space fascist bimbo dictate terms!"

He fired with a sharp twang just as Dinah shouted out a Canary Cry. Barda's helmet canceled out the sonic attack. She grabbed the arrow as easily as one would pluck a fruit from a low-hanging branch. Stared at it, a bit of graffiti staining her perspective.

"Are you mentally deficient?" she asked as he fumbled for another arrow. "You go into battle with primitive weaponry accessorized by handwear. You insult me with your mere presence on the battlefield."

Just as Ollie drew back his bow again, Barda threw the arrow into his face, knocking him clean out. It ricocheted into Dinah, sending her wig spinning. They both fell on the ground, a goose egg already swelling under Ollie's right eye.

"Anyone else want some?"

The curtains parted and Zatanna came out to the usual, intoxicating rush of applause and catcalls from the audience. So what if some of it was for her costume rather than her? She acknowledged the fact with a scandalously flirtatious smile. It was a nice big amphitheater, lots of lights, lots of seats. Just like she liked it. David Copperfield couldn't get this big a spread.

She was dressed mock-formally to fit the high-class evening venue, instead of one of her more flamboyant outfits. A black bow tie around her swan-like throat, a tight white shirt under a jacket that was as satin as her bow-tie and as dark as her long hair, satiny bikini panties to match. Her shirt was tucked into it, the long tails of her jacket covering her ass. Not that she had anything to be ashamed of, but she believed there was a fine line between classy and trashy. Fishnet stockings were not necessarily trashy.

A particularly loud wolf-whistle snatched her attention to the front row. Scott Free, large as life and grinning like he knew it. Shaken, she went through her monologue. Wonders of magic, power of belief, lame jokes, yadda yadda.

A water tank was wheeled on stage. One of her beefcake assistants held out a straitjacket like a coat.

"I know you folks have seen Chinese Water Torture Cells before – heck, some of you have probably done them!"

She winked at Scott. His grin went wide when he saw it was directed at him.

Zatanna took off her black jacket, leaving her in her white tuxedo shirt. Half the audience had come to see what was straining against her silken dickey and dark waistcoat. She lavished them with the latter's unbuttoning.

"I'm sure you'd all like to see something more interesting than me getting dunked in there," she said, rich with irony as she gestured to the 'inescapable' water tank.

Scott was on the edge of his seat.

Zatanna handed her waistcoat and jacket to her assistant, who looked good enough for the cover of a Harley Quinn romance novel ("Batman-on-man: Behind Caved Doors."). Then she let him help her into the straitjacket. Scott gave her an exaggerated pout to go with the audience's groan of disappointment. Bondage and fishnets… she was hitting all the kinks tonight. Hopefully Scott didn't have a macrophilia fetish. Zatanna had lost enough men to that skank Giganta.

"The fastest escape artist in the world can do this in thirty seconds. Tonight, I will either break that record or die trying."

The himbo gave her a last-minute check-over – the air tube in her collar, the lockpick sewn into the jacket – before he began chaining her up. Her equal-opportunity cheesecake assistant manacled her feet together. Bending forward at the waist, Zatanna doffed her hat to Misty for safekeeping. For a moment of levity, Misty dumped a rabbit and (Misty was still only an apprentice) some rabbit pellets out of the hat. Laughs all around.

"Now perhaps one of you kind gentlemen would like to assist me?"

Scott had made the plant in the audience the moment he'd entered the auditorium. The plant was halfway out of his seat before Zatanna called on Scott.

"You there. Come on up here, cutie. Help me show these people magic is real."

A spotlight landed on Scott with blinding force. Shielding his eyes, he walked up on stage.

"Hello, stranger," Zatanna greeted drolly. "Tell these nice folks your name."

"Scott."

"Scott," Zatanna repeated breathily. Seduction in front of a thousand-strong audience. Why'd he always attract the exhibitionists? "What do you do, Scott?"

"Actually I'm interviewing for a job now; security."

"So you know your way around a pair of handcuffs."

Scott blushed. "You could say that."

"You're blushing, we haven't embarrassed you, have we?"

The last of her locks being clicked into place punctuated the sentence. A few titters from the audience. Scott held up his thumb and forefinger, ye apart. "Little bit."

"Scott, could you test these chains?"

He did. Tugged on them with all his might. Even a Female Fury would be hard-pressed to break them. He knelt down to rattle her leg irons and tried not to notice the view.

"People get killed doing this, you know," he whispered to her. Not a stage whisper either.

"Don't be such a worrywart."

"I am." He looked up at her. "I'm worried about you. I lost a woman I cared about once. It's not an experience I wish to repeat."

She smiled, supremely confident. "If it comes to that, at least you're good at rescues."

Scott hung around while an assistant attaching a crane hook to Zatanna's leg irons, although Zatanna's eyes were frantically shooing him off. "Have fun getting wet," he mouthed.

"Always do," she replied as she was hoisted up into the air and then down into the tank.

Twelve seconds. A new world record.

After the applause and the drying with towels and more tricks and more applause but no more drying with towels, Zatanna took her final curtain call and then returned to her dressing room. Scott joined the throng of male humanity beating its way there for an autograph or (more optimistically) a phone number. He didn't get in until he shouted through the closed door "There isn't a Mrs. Miracle!"

The door opened and Zatanna beckoned him inside.

He was a little anxious to find how what a real, Earth magician's dressing room looked like. It had a lot of clothes in it, for one, none of which seemed to fit Zatanna as well as her fishnets and tuxedo (although they were all her size). Zatanna leaned back in her chair and regarded him coolly, appraisingly. They watched each other as Zatanna eased first one stocking off, then the other. Her legs were perfect. She was perfect.

Thin, not as full-figured or built as Barda (damnit, stop thinking about her, this is getting ridiculous!), but not one of those stick insects the Earthlings liked to sexualize either. Just… right, for her slight frame and regular exercise. Normal.

"Twelve seconds," he said first. "Congratulations."

"This is a celebration then? Ngiapmahc, dellihc."

An ice bucket appeared with a bottle of champaign cradled inside. Scott picked the champaign out of the ice.

"I was going to fix some tea," Zatanna said. "Cliché, I know, but it really is good."

"Maybe later." Scott pulled the cork out with his mouth, which spurted a little foam past his shoulder. Zatanna giggled.

"Thoughts on the show?" she asked, the ice thoroughly broken.

Scott poured for them both into little teacups. "I wasn't able to tell where your stagecraft ended and the real magic began."

"Highest praise I can get."

"But what was up with the himbo assistants?"

"Gender inversion. It's the feminist in me."

Scott snapped his fingers as he recalled the word. "Oh, like those rogue amazons that wanted to turn the world into dick chicks?"

"A little less hermaphroditic," Zatanna chuckled.

She gestured for Scott to sit. He sat.

"Ah. We don't have that on Apokolips. There, men and women are equally worthless before Darkseid."

"It must've been terrible," she said seriously.

"There were bright spots…"

"So, why are you here? Couldn't wait to see my face again?"

"And I wanted to let you see me in action."

He pulled an envelope from his inside pocket. It was tiny, just about the size of a greeting card. Zatanna passed her finger an inch above the seam, which undid itself as evenly as any letter-opener ever could. She slipped the card out and looked at it.

Mr. Miracle
Super Escape Artist
Invites You To Witness Feets of Derring-do And Spectacle
May 15th

"I know, I know, they misspelled 'feats'. But they give me that every show and I have no one to give them to but Oberon and Ted. And Oberon's in the show." Inarticulately, Scott paused, lips somewhat pursed. "I don't have your sex appeal, but I think you'll enjoy the show."

"And I think you have more sex appeal than you credit yourself with. Men in chains… men in masks… you hit a lot of kinks."

"I'll take your word for it."

They clinked glasses and drank. May 15th. It was a date.

As Black Canary tended to Ollie, Green Lantern was throwing up a forcefield around Barda. It shone green, buffeting her away from its edges with the sheer force that it imposed on the physical world. Barda's hand curled around the Mega-Rod. Her comrade, her lover, her protector. It fit her hand as surely as a glove.

"A Green Lantern," she sniffed disdainfully. "Your power does not come from within, but from jewelry. Did your Oan masters ever tell you that they tried to impose their order on Apokolips once? We 'took care' of them… like so!"

The key to defeating Green Lanterns was will. She focused all of hers into the hammer-blow against the forcefield. It was unexpected. It was strategic. But most of all, it was powerful. The forcefield bulged and shattered with the same momentum, breaking the muted din with the sound of crystal-death. Hal screamed as his ring sparked with feedback. Barda clubbed a streetlight, which landed squarely on his head. He fell over, concussed.

Dinah moved from her lover to her lover's best friend with the same amount of disbelief, too shocked for it to actually grow. Hal getting conked on the noggin was nothing new, but something powerful enough to defy his power ring? She wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't happened.

No longer stunned, the rest of the Justice League attacked at once. Superman, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl mobbed Barda. They tackled her into a shopping mall which was long since evacuated. The four of them traded blows, Barda's Mega-Rod waving to stave off the onslaught. Flash grabbed her from behind and tried to vibrate her into submission. The other three Leaguers compassionately backed off to see if the attack would work. That was their undoing. Barda's hand swooped up then down, taking hold of Hawkgirl by a single gigantic wing. Shayera squawked at being manhandled. Her body was flung around helter-skelter, batting off the Leaguers. They backed away lest her body break against one of them. Finally, Barda delivered the coup de grace, hammering Shayera into the ground so hard that her helmet cracked the tile.

Again surprising them with her speed, Barda backflipped over a glass safety railing and down to a lower level of the mall, where she landed in a cat-like crouch, her Mega-Rod grasped tightly in her hand. Superman didn't waste time following her that way, he just drilled through the floor and out the roof. Barda was waiting for him. A thrown "YOU ARE HERE" display kiosk knocked him through the sprinkler system, setting off an artificial rain.

Hawkman swooped down to Barda's level and dove for her like a hawk. His nth-metal mace glowed with force, as if his rage were given form. Sparks hissed from it as it met her Mega-Rod. The sheer momentum of the attack drove Barda back, some particularly hard blows staking her into the ground before she pulls her feet clear. Hawkman having the upper ground wherever he went put Barda at a clear disadvantage.

By this time, Flash had arrived on scene. He waited, not wanting to get in the way of the enraged Hawkman.

Hawkman swung the mace down once more and Barda caught it with her bare hand. Her palm bled around its spikes, but she held it firmly. The Mega-Rod speared into Hawkman's gut, causing him to release his hold on the mace. Barda flipped it over, caught it by the handle, and used it to brain him. Hawkman's avian helmet was the only thing that saved him from an untimely end. He unspooled onto the ground, wings draped over his body.

Barry had seen enough to know that trying to take the warrior woman in hand-to-hand combat would be suicide… or at least a fast-acting cure for insomnia. Instead, the Flash began to literally run circles around her. At Mach 5, he cut her off from doing further damage to Hawkman. In the eye of the human storm, Barda was forced away from the Thanagarian. The fierce winds of the Flash's passage were ramming into her far more forcefully than Green Lantern's power ring had. Every swing she took fell short. The deafening roar of the Flash's speed had been muted… a sure sign of the air being sucked out of her imprisoning vortex.

Barda's face was turning blue. With her thumb, she toggled the Mega-Rod to Speed Force setting. Pressed the trigger stud. Instantaneously, an artificial derivative of Darkseid's Omega Force exploded out of the Mega-Rod's tip. It zig-zagged into Flash's body, hitting him so hard he careened into a revolving door. Barda watched as the revolving door turned into a whirlpool of red and gold before finally breaking free of its frame. It spun to a stop, a top out of inertia, and fell to the side. Its glass doors shattered around Barry Allen.

"Pah."

The floor shook as Superman landed. His eyes burnt with the struggle to stop his heatvision from incinerating her. His teeth unclenched.

"I don't want to fight."

"I do," she answered.

Scott's show had more… showmanship than Barda. Armed guards, their eyes hidden behind mirrored shades, cordoned off an area of the Central City Park. Workers moved fast out of SUVs, assembling a stage in a clearing. Audience members, charged admission to get past the cordon, sat down on the ground or brought chairs. Scott's fanbase was young and dedicated. Some came miles to see him before. Others, through state lines.

Zatanna folded her legs and Indian-sat atop a picnic blanket she summoned. She could've brought in a tent, but there was no reason to upstage Mr. Miracle. She did raise an eyebrow when a water tank was brought out. It too had a tarp over it, but there was an ominous bubbling coming from within.

"It's been said that the best escape artist in the world can do escape the Chinese Water Torture Cell in twelve seconds…" As if he had been standing there all along, Mr. Miracle was there. His cape hovered behind him as he walked to the makeshift stage. "Well, they must not be here, because I can do it in five."

Zatanna crossed her arms, her face reading "oh really?"

"But where's the fun in that?" Scott asked as he circled the water tank. "Why not make things a little more interesting?"

He whipped the tarp off the water tank. The crowd gasped. Inside was a school of piranhas, their smushed-in faces and demonic teeth gleaming at the audience. Scott tapped the tank. The piranhas snapped at his fingers, their teeth clinking against the glass.

"And just to demonstrate how vicious my little pets can be?"

Oberon came out of an SUV, a spare rib thrown over his shoulder. It was so large that the end of it dragged on the ground… not that the piranhas minded. As soon as the meat was in the water, they devoured it in a storm of teeth and blood. The tinted water settled.

"Five seconds, ladies and gentlemen," Scott said, putting on a straitjacket that Oberon buckled. "If any among you have stopwatches, put them at the ready."

With a single leap, he was atop the water tank, a lintel spanning the open top. He looked at the audience, winked, then let himself drop in.

Through the haze of bloody water, Zatanna watched (and gritted her teeth a little in fright) as Scott's body nudged the ravenous piranhas out of the way. Scott wiggled a little, almost casually, and then shed the straitjacket. It billowed in the water and Scott pulled himself out, settling atop the water tank, his legs dangling down the sides.

The applause was deafening.

"Sedatives in the meat," Zatanna said afterward in Scott's tour bus, watching him towel off. "That's how you got the piranhas."

Scott tapped his temple. "A magician never reveals his secrets."

Zatanna grinned at his antics. Scott finished drying off his bare upper body, then put the towel down on a couch and sat down on it. Small pools formed as water dripped off his feet.

"Awfully presumptuous, don't you think, inviting me to watch you break my record?"

Scott was finger-combing his wet hair straight. "You're just going to figure out a way to do it in three seconds."

"You act like I haven't already."

"This isn't going to end up like The Prestige, is it?"

"Can't." Zatanna sat down next to him. "You don't have a Mrs. Miracle for me to drown."

"And there's no Mr. Zatara for me to drown." Scott leaned back. "You're a very hard woman to feud with."

"How about we settle it the old-fashioned way?"

"I'm new around here," Scott said apologetically.

"You find your best traps, I'll bring mine… whoever can't escape is the loser."

"No trap can hold me," Scott huffed, not feeling self-important in the least.

"Me either." She smiled. "Things should get interesting, then."

Superman had blocked the hammer of Thor with an Amazonian shield. He'd felt the burst of heatvision from Ultraman, his evil counterpart from another dimension. He'd even been reduced to mortality and kicked by Batman, cracking a rib.

Barda's Mega-Rod was right up there.

He caught it and tried not to think about the cracking noise in his wrist.

"Don't tell me it never gets to you," he gritted out as he tried to hold the club at bay. "The fighting, the constant warfare! No one should live like that! It tears souls apart!"

"It does." She added her other hand to the Mega-Rod, pressing its now-fanged head down towards Clark.

"Then stop! Right now. I can protect you from Darkseid."

"I'm not afraid of him."

Superman's brow furrowed. "Then why are you doing this?"

Barda ripped the Mega-Rod away, leaving Superman off-balance. She didn't press the attack. "Hard as it may be for you to understand, not all of us are… bad. Some of us want more. Tell me where Scott is."

"Not until I know you can be trusted."

Barda nodded. "You know, Kryptonians have always been a problem for Darkseid. Your forefathers repelled an attack from our armada. Although you were too isolationist to ever join with the New Gods in an alliance, we prepared a weapon against you nonetheless. Fragments of your world's unique mantle, subjected to the fiercest radiation."

She opened a lead compartment on her Mega-Rod. A sliver of sickly green light show out, emitted from the chip of Kryptonite inside. Just as Superman felt that familiar, evil twinge Barda was in motion. She swung from the hip and hit Superman below the arm with all her strength.

He crashed out the wall of the shopping mall, traveling upward and outward until he hit the Time Square Jumbotron from the side. He cut a swath halfway through it before all his inertia had bled away. His body hung half-in the sparking, static-ridden screen, cape falling under him like dripping blood. Barda's hawk-like eyes ascertained his unconsciousness, then looked down from the hole in the wall to a camera crew two stories below, on the street. She fired a few light pulse blasts from her Mega-Rod, cracking the pavement around them. They promptly lost their powers of locomotion.

"You there! I am looking for Scott Free! He may be using an alias. Who is this world's greatest escape artist?"

"Why don't you Google him?" the cameraman stutteringly suggested, his livelihood jittering in his hands.

Barda scowled. "Why don't you 'Google' yourself!?"

She fired another shot, this one aimed at his annoying camera, but it bounced off… nothing at all. Barda followed the scorch mark that hung in mid-air along a heat ripple that had no source to a woman who had not been there a second ago, one sitting on nothing and wearing somewhat more than nothing.

The woman in the next-to-nothing pressed a button which Barda also couldn't see. A moment later, something had hit her in the chest and was carrying her backwards, blowing her out the other end of the mall.

"Thank you, Wonder Woman!" the cameraman cried, and the Amazon saluted him before angling her invisible jet around for another pass.

"Are you stalking me?" Zatanna joked when Scott showed up on her doorstep, despite the fact that she didn't recall giving him her home address. "Because that would be nice, so long as you're not a demon."

"Not for a while. Can I come in?"

"Make yourself at home," Zatanna said, stepping aside to usher him in. Out of his sight, she tightened the belt on her bathrobe, thought about it, then loosened it so that her robe hung open a little.

Scott was nearly unrecognizable inside his suit. It fit him well, and yet he seemed so out-of-place in it. The skinny tie and the too-short sleeves gave her the impression of a child playing dress-up in his father's clothes… she couldn't say why.

Zatanna's house was wizardly enough… bigger on the outside than it was on the inside, with all sorts of spiraling staircases and portraits of glowering old necromancers and relics that were older than he was. Scott did a double-take when he saw a Pearl Jam poster wedged between a (closed) portal to the Demon Dimension and a living portrait of Solomon the All-Changing.

"I was a rambunctious child," Zatanna explained. "And their music was good."

"I wouldn't know."

"I'll play you some later. Follow me and don't wander off the carpet."

"Dangerous?" Scott asked, interest piped.

"Depends. Spring cleaning."

"Ah."

She picked up a candelabra whose wicks snapped into flame the moment her hand wrapped around the candlestick. Holding it as a torch, she led Scott through an endless hall of doors that turned out to be reflected in a window that could have really used some Windex. Zatanna wrinkled her noise at her reflection and finger-combed her hair with her free hand when Scott wasn't looking. Then just went for broke and dressed herself with magic. The fishnet-fetish outfit. God, she was shameless. Together, they went into the library.

In the center of the monstrously tall room, a steampunk staircase hinged like an arm at several places to reach any of the skyscraper bookshelves. Zatanna walked past it to the one door free of cobwebs and took him into the parlor, where there was a cot in the corner, a laptop on the table, and a dresser overflowing with clothes barricaded a door with seven locks. Occasionally, something bumped against the other side, rattling the very mundane knick-knacks atop the dresser… like a Gotham City snowglobe with a miniature Batsignal inside. Under it, a pantleg was sticking out of a mostly-closed drawer.

"Are those my jeans?" Scott asked, examining the cuff.

"They're very comfortable loungewear. Shall we?"

Zatanna was gesturing to a ornate dining table, which her laptop was at the head of. In the middle, like a demented centerpiece, a coffin laid.

"The old buried alive trick, eh?"

Zatanna threw open the coffin. "Not quite."

It was an iron maiden.

"I got it from Hawkman. Don't ask me why he hung onto it so long."

"Nostalgia?" Scott suggested, pricking his finger on one of the spikes. "You don't play around, do you?"

"Oh, I play… just rough."

"Right."

Scott leaped up and hopped inside. He craned his head to look at the spikes that lined the door, ready to bleed him dry.

"So, this is it? Nothing set on fire, no ticking time bombs?"

"I thought the torture implement was sufficient."

"Shows what you know." He wiggled a bit. "Compared to Apokolips, this is downright comfy. You going to close that?"

Zatanna took hold of the lid. "You're crazy."

"Yeah."

She closed the lid. Immediately, the bottom dropped out of the iron maiden and the table and Scott fell to the floor. He rolled out from under the table. Aside from a few beads of blood dotting his chest and face, he was fine.

"How'd you do that?" Zatanna demanded, hands planted at her hips.

"A magician never reveals his secrets. Now, I was going to see if I could trap you?"

Zatanna held out her hands, miming a suspect about to be cuffed. "I'm all yours."

Scott looked her over with plain hunger in his eyes, before he made eye contact. "I was hoping we could continue this at my place."

One Boomtube later, they were inside. Scott threw Oberon a fifty and told him to take Ted to the movies. Zatanna had a pretty good idea what he had in mind, but then she had practically put the thought in his head with the iron maiden. Danger was a better aphrodisiac than any spell.

He led her upstairs, loosening his tie in an automatic at-home gesture. She followed him into his bedroom, where he took off his jacket. Outside the bulky thing, he instantly seemed more muscular. She wondered what he'd look like without pants… purely academically, of course.

"A security company contacted me to develop handcuffs for them. I'm a part-time inventor, with a little help from Oberon." He held up two complicated, futuristic strips of metal. "Lay down over there," he said, indicating the bed.

"Subtle," she said, but flopped down on her back. She tossed her top hat aside.

"My intentions are totally honorable."

"Shame," she said, and took hold of the bedposts. "I suppose you'll want my hands here?"

"Uh-huh."

He handcuffed her wrist to the appropriate bedpost. She cooed when the lock clicked. Totally gratuitous, but it had the desired effect. His tie brushed over her nose as he locked up her other hand. She jangled the chains in appropriate prisoner manner.

"Leaving my legs free?"

He rested a hand on her thigh. The fishnet tickled at his palm. "Why would I ever want to keep those legs from moving?"

"Oh, I don't know…"

She bent up at the waist, curling until she was nearly fetal, then touching the handcuffs with her toes. Scott was boggled by her flexibility. He touched her thighs again, squeezing them as he pressed them back down against the bed.

"Did I mention? While you're trying to escape, I'll be distracting you."

"Really?" Finally. Not that she wasn't a good sport, but the double innuendo was getting really boring.

"Yes…" His hand brushed up her thigh to reach her garter belt, where his fingernail cut into her flesh. She bit her lip at the pain. "Seeing a woman who looks like you in a predicament like this… it gives a man ideas."

"I'd love to hear them," Zatanna said, and wasn't the least bit surprised when Scott's lips went to her ear and began telling her exactly what he would like to do to her.

In turn, she told him how much she would enjoy it.

The missile hadn't been Earth tech, at least not mainstream. The damn thing wasn't an explosive device at all, but some sort of plasma projectile. Not that she was surprised, considering how many of the JLA were aliens or alien-empowered, but none of the species she'd heard of hit that hard.

Then she fully regained her senses and felt a not-unpleasant tingle around her ankle. She looked down to see something golden wrapped around it, a rope, coiled at her feet. And rapidly unspooling.

Barda looked up and saw the bright exhaust of a jet engine as it pulled the horizon closer.

The rope ran out.

"Darkseid's eyes," she swore, as the rope picked her up and dragged her through the air behind an invisible jet.

She must've hit every chimney, billboard, and TV aerial in New York before the jet went into a steep climb. Barda felt the blood rushing to her head. She still had Hawkman's mace and her own Mega-Rod in hand, but the G-force was pressing down on her too hard. She had no leverage to fight it. The blue skies parted to wink stars at her, then she was cut loose. Barda felt the heat of re-entry scorch her, with about as much pain as a bad sunburn, before she hit water.

Mini-tidal waves lapped at the shore of the East River.

Barda pulled herself ashore onto an artificial island, mere hundreds of feet in diameter. Jagged rocks cut against her flesh and were blunted by impenetrable skin. She took back her footing and looked at her surroundings. Deserted. Surrounded on all sides by murky water, the same stuff that was dripping off her. As she spat some out, the pilot landed.

Themysciran armor gleamed over her body. An aegis was worn on one arm, a sword clutched in the other. Barda almost licked her lips. At last, a warrior instead of a constable.

"You came here looking for a fight?" Wonder Woman said. It wasn't a question. "You found one."