[I do not own Teen Titans, The Suicide Squad, or any characters mentioned in this story. This chapter is mainly dialogue and very angsty KF again.]
Inside the bar, the villains celebrated in finding the one place in the dumpster fire city that didn't look completely demolished.
"C'mon Mammoth." Jericho said to get the man's attention away from the fish tank.
"It's the end of the world, have a drink with us." The blonde continued to persuade.
"Beer." Mammoth said simply as he continued to eye the fish in the tank.
"C'mon Ares, give the man a beer." Rocket teased as he downed a whole can in one go.
Jericho was almost a natural at bartending it seemed.
"How about you hot stuff?" Jericho asked with his always charming smile to Hot Spot.
"Uh...water." Hot Spot answered with much hesitation and a look like he'd only just realized how insane Jericho was.
"Y'know what? That's a good idea, honey." Jericho commented as he patted Hot Spot on the head, now realizing the outcome of a fire based metahuman and alcohol.
"Ninja? You want some saki?" Jericho teased at Rose, who'd once again put her mask back on.
"Whiskey." She said simply as she awaited her drink.
"What am I, twelve?" Grant said as he pointed as his empty shot glass and gestured for more, which Jericho easily granted.
"Here's to honor among thieves." Grant said as he raised his shot glass up to everyone else's.
"I'm not a thief." Rose said lowly as she strode away from the group with her glass in tow.
"Oh, she's not a thief." Grant repeated with a smile as he clinked his glass to everyone else's.
"I actually prefer to think of myself as a tool to chaos, or like an asset relocation specialist." Rocket said with a smile as he looked down at his already empty three cans of beer.
"Well, we almost pulled it off, despite what everybody thought." Grant said with pride, only to be interrupted by Hot Spot's sage advice of the day.
"We weren't paid to succeed, you know that right? We were all chosen to fail." Hot Spot said darkly as he rubbed his hands together.
"Yeah, I know. The worst part of it is, they're gonna blame us for the whole thing. Y'know, they can't have people knowing the truth." Grant said solemnly.
"Don't forget, we're the bad guys." Grant finished, turning and raising his glass to where Rose was sitting and reevaluating how badly she thought of all the so called 'criminals' sitting in the room with her.
"So are you gonna tell us now, what your big deal with Flash was?" Jericho asked, twirling a mini umbrella in his hands.
"Same thing Waller offered me to kill you. The chance to be a person. The chance to have a life where I wasn't born into the shadows." Grant said with a sick smile before Hot Spot went off.
"Flash had you chasing a carrot on a stick, you mean - you don't know that?" Hot Spot yelled as he threw down his glass and glared at the blonde sitting next to him.
"I love this guy." Jericho said smirking as he sipped from his girlish martini like he was watching reality TV.
"You played yourself, man." Hot Spot continued.
"Bitch, I'm having a drink...I'm breathing fresh air. For two sweet seconds, I had hope." Grant answered.
"You had hope, huh? Hope don't stop the world from turning my brother." Hot Spot said quieter.
"What, your preaching?" Grant said with a scoff.
"It's coming back around for you, Grant. How many people have you killed man?" Hot Spot said with a serious face.
"...You don't ask anybody a question like that hot shot." Grant responded.
"You haven't ever gunned down any women, no kids?" Hot Spot asked.
"I don't kill women or children." Grant said simply.
"I do." Hot Spot said simply, gathering both Rocket and Ravager to look at him in both awe, fear, and revoltion.
"I was born with the devil's gift. It's a gift I hated most of my life. But the older I got, the stronger I got. So I started using it, to help people y'know? The more power and respect on the street I got the more firepower I got, like that shit went hand in hand. One was feeding the other. Nobody could tell me no." Hot Spot said before he started getting trapped in his own little world.
"Y'see I used to have this girl, and she'd pray for me. She gave me the strength and the hope to think that I could use my powers for good - and so I did. Nothing like that lasts though. I'm a demon who was in love with a witch - wasn't no way either of us could stay heroes forever." Hot Spot continued, letting the image of a pale black and red haired girl join his thoughts.
"God didn't give me this, so why the hell should he take it away?" Hot Spot continued, summoning a flame that danced like a person.
"I started setting fire to the buildings I was saving people from, whole civilians would burn to ashes in my arms without me thinking. I didn't know what to do and neither did she. Y'see, after a few years we had kids. We were too young, of course. Kids we had to provide for, and I didn't want my kids going on TV and seeing that their daddy was murdering people in his bare hands and didn't have anything say about it." Hot Spot said.
"After a while, Argent told me she was taking out kids somewhere else, somewhere safe - she told me she was leaving me. Y'see when I get mad, I - I don't know what I do." Hot Spot said in finality.
"Their tale is done." Hot Spot finished sadly as he placed a glass over the fiery person, the woman choking and spitting out like a flame without oxygen does.
Everyone stared at the boy they once thought was weak and useless. Voiceless at the tale of sorrow and death.
"...and the kids?" Rocket asked with false hope and a broken expression.
"...He killed them." Jericho answered with a wavering voice.
"...Own that shit. Own it." Jericho said softly, his voice steadily rising as Hot Spot looked up at him.
"What did you think was gonna happen, huh? What, that you were gonna have a happy family, and coach little leagues, and make car payments? Normals are sitting up higher, people like us, we don't get normal!" Jericho yelled at the boy before Rocket interrupted her.
"Why is it always a knife fight every single time you open your mouth?" Rocket yelled at the blonde.
"Y'know outside, you're amazing. But inside...you're ugly." Rocket whispered to the criminal.
"We all are. We all are! Except for him." Jericho said before he pointed at Mammoth who was still sitting in the back and had apparently snuck a fish out of the tank to put in his glass.
"He's the only person here who's pretty on the inside." Jericho finished proudly.
"Nah. I'm beautiful outside too." Mammoth said with a grin as Jericho chuckled at him.
And then suddenly, the entire room was filled with a dark aura because Kid Flash himself walked in and sat right in the middle of the group.
"...We don't want you here." Jericho said in a wavering voice.
"...Did you get to the part in that binder saying I was sleeping with him?" Kid Flash asked mainly to Grant.
"I've never been with a witch before, what's that like?...Apparently that's why the creatures chase him all the time, cause uh, the witch is scared of him." Grant explained to the group.
"...The only person I've ever cared about it trapped inside that monster." Kid Flash elaborated with just a hint of a sob in his voice.
"If I don't stop the witch, it's over. Everything is over. Everything." Kid Flash said before he ripped off the screen on his wrist and cracked it in half on the counter.
"You're free to go." He said simply.
Almost immediately, Jericho looked at his neck in the mirror to see if anything would happen. Rocket grabbed all eight of his empty cans of beer and halled ass out of the bar. And then slowly, Flash slid a pile of letters over to Grant.
"Your mom writes you every day - every single day." He said with a frown as Grant almost started crying.
Kid Flash grabbed his gun and got up to leave, but was halted by Grant standing up and punching him in the chest.
"You had these the whole time? You had letters from my momma the whole time?" Grant asked pitifully. Grant sneered at the smaller boy.
"I'm gonna get you there, and you're gonna end this. I'm gonna carry your ass if I have to. This shit right here's about to be a chapter in the bible. And everybody's gonna know what we did. And my mother is gonna know that her son is a goddamn hero. That her son didn't grow up to be another fucking disappointment, another piece of shit." Grant preached before he shoved his way past Kid Flash and toward the swirling machine in the sky. There was a moment of silence in the room.
"I'll come." Jericho said as he picked up his bat and followed after Grant.
"What? You douchebags got something better to do? C'mon." Jericho said as he urged the others to follow him.
"...Pussies." Jericho insulted, knowing it would be the last straw for Mammoth and Hot Spot to follow him.
[Read and Review! I really liked this scene a lot!]