"Y'know," Flash started, "It occurs to me that without the context of those silver eyes machina, the Grimm are actually intimidating."

"In fairness, when one of them gets beaten up by a dog without the in-universe superpowers, it does undermine the threat a bit." Jason pointed out, "It would be like if Alfred beat up one of Darkseid's Parademons without any enhancements like that super pill thing from the games."

"If you two could save this for when we're not hanging upside-down in these creepy goo-like cocoons, that would be fantastic." Gwen snarked.

"Hey! Babs is the one who wanted to study these things. So blame her!" Jason shot back.

"Ladies, you're both pretty. Now, do we have a plan or something?- Because last I checked, the Grimm don't take prisoners."

"Uh…"

"Hey! No spoilers." Wally called out, "I haven't been able to catch up."

"For the 'fastest being in the multiverse' you sure do seem to be late to a lot of things." Gwen observed.

"It's a trick I picked up from Barry. Nobody expects the fastest man alive to be late for everything." Wally pointed out, "Plus, the videos just take so long to buffer!"

"I'm sure that's relative." Jason muttered.

Meanwhile, the newest creatures to be terrorizing the city were a strange hybridization of the Grimm from the world of Remnant, and the Parasite X from Samus' world. The 'GrimmX' as it was called apparently could replicate any grimm it was aware of and could mimic their abilities. In this case, the Apathy.

And without an out-of-nowhere inadequately foreshadowed superpower that could wipe them out, the resident heroes were more or less screwed.

"So, now what?- Do we just wait for Lopez to come and rescue us?"

"What about Church or Tex?- They're robots too. They could help us." Gwen pointed out.

She was met with blank stares from the other two.

"Yeah yeah, realized the moment I said it."

"So… Are these things going to use us as food, or…" Jason asked before one of the GrimmX morphed into a large mammoth-like creature and started to make its way towards them. Picking up Wally, it prepared to eat him alive.

"Jason, if I die… I'm haunting you."

The other two struggled to break free to help out their friend, and much like all the other times they tried to break out, it was ultimately futile.

"Guys! If this thing eats me, it might get access to my Super Speed! If there's a plan or someone waiting to do a dramatic rescue, now would be the time!" He started panicking.

"Seriously! Does someone have some superpower that they can bust out at this point!?"

"Hey, my Symbiote's disabled because Barb wanted to study it." Gwen shrugged, "Then she made the oh-so brilliant decision to send me out on patrol to study these things."

"Yeah… She does take after the old man like that sometimes." Jason noted.

"Screech…"

"Does someone hear something?"

"GAMMA!"

A blast of sonic sound burst through the wall and rendered the parasitic polymorph to dust.

"Ugh, finally! We would've been here sooner if someone would have just stopped trying to demoralize Crona!"

"Oh, shut it Grif." Sarge replied, "I'm just saying that he-"

"They."

"Shouldn't be able to use the excuse of already being dead inside to be able to resist those grifims."

"Apathy."

"They make everyone as lazy as you, they're grimifs."

"You just said- Ugh, forget it." Grif sighed, "Why do I even bother? We could be back at the base playing Minecraft or something."

"Ow…" Wally grumbled, "WHY DO I HEAR RINGING?"

"And he's deaf again." Gwen muttered as the thing keeping her bound was weak enough for her to pull herself out of it, "Good grief, that was awful."

"WHAT?"

"I swear, if this becomes a running gag whenever Crona uses hi- their powers, I'm going to shoot someone."

"Well, hopefully we got all the data we need for Barbara. So let's go back to base." Gwen suggested.

"WHAT? WE GOT SALAD?- I ACTUALLY COULD USE SOME PROTEIN OR CARBS ACTUALLY!"

"This is going to get old."

Meanwhile, back at base…

"Oh you're back." Barbara said to the influx of heroes that were coming back from their mission, "So, how was the data collecting?"

"Wally got temporarily deafened and we all realized that Sarge isn't transphobic, he's just an idiot."

"So, explain it to me again. Crona's a what?"

"Non-binary person!" Grif groaned, "Seriously, if I can figure this out without a single problem, then I don't know why you would!"

"So… Crona's just not a robot? Is that what non-binocular means?"

"… You know what?- Just always refer to Crona as if you're talking about both them and Ragnarok." Grif sighed, "Think you can do that?"

"Yeah. I can refer to the the two of them as 'them.'" Sarge shrugged, "It's not like I can refer to two people as just a guy or a lady."

"Okay, problem solved. Christ, that was a headache."

"Heh… Sorry about that." Crona mentioned.

"Don't worry about it. It wasn't the loud noise. It was dealing with Sarge's inability to figure out the most basic of basic shit."

"That… doesn't help me with my research." Barbara pointed out, "But I'm glad that we finally got someone to stop misgendering Crona at least."

"Here's your freaking data!" Gwen handed the tablet over to the redhead, "I'm taking a shower! That was tough!"

"Seriously? An auraless dog took one out. What happened? How hard could they be?"

"The Apathy. The Apathy happened." Jason pointed out, "Turns out, having someone with an instant-kill button for those things is basically the only way to fight those slenderman wannabes off!"

"Oh… Huh, I guess they are tough when you put it like that." Barbara realized, "Hey, Wally. I got the newest episode ready for your high-speed viewing. Feel free to watch it."

"WHAT?"

"I thought that wore off?"

"I know. But after what we went through, I wanted to mess with her a bit."

"You realize I could make it play at normal speed for us right?" Barbara threatened.

"Yeesh! Sorry. Be the fun police out here…" he grumbled.

"I'll let that slide." she glared.

Wade: So… Things are going about as well as- Hey! Don't down-special me!

Dude: Not my fault that Amyr has Super Armor. Blame Sakurai.

Pinkie: Just get behind me, Wade. That move is powerless against the strength of my neutral special!

Dude: Ugh! Cheap! Cheap sauce!

Pinkie: You should've paid more attention to Sakurai. He did say to not use it against opponents with a counter!

Wade: Well coming from the Sheik player, I think it's cheap that you two have kill moves while I'm stuck just racking up damage with twenty hit combos.

Dude: Hey, we said to go with Fox or Falco, but you said "the ninja girl is always awesome!" So blame your own bad luck.

Pinkie: We could do random Smashdown after this.

Wade: That sounds like fun.