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The work/life balance of a full time superhero is an odd thing, particularly for one such as myself. I don't have to balance my heroing against the scheduling and deception of having a secret identity (something I was happy to go without), but I was basically watching for any incident that would require the Titans' attention at all times. And considering I was connected to the internet along with several other systems on a near spiritual level, I had developed a habit of casually searching for superhero-level threats. It was like doom-scrolling social media, except you were looking for things to fix rather than feel helpless anxiety.

It was such that I sometimes caught myself doing it even when I had a spare moment during missions. "I think I need to start delegating this, if only so I don't go nuts," I muttered to myself, leaning back in my chair. The space around me was a warehouse that had been converted into a makeshift base of operations, with crates full of supplies around a large table covered in plans. Said plans detailed a series of attacks at certain points around a city, which in the end were distractions to their true aim: making a trap for a certain speedster. Even at a glance I could see the cleverness and care the people who made these put into their wicked designs.

It was almost a shame that said speedster was busy with family at the moment. So these ne'er-do-wells were dealing with the Titans.

The team was already out handling them, and I was set up and waiting for the last step of our own plan. Since that left me some spare moments to myself, I decided to go over the latest sensor readings from the Watchtower. The League had sent it my way for processing and to see if I could narrow down the location the readings were coming from. I was almost finished when I heard several people walking into the main room of the warehouse along with some grumbling. "Well that was a bloody mess, now wasn't it?" said a male voice with an Australian accent. "It's not right, goin' through all that work to set a trap, and the bloomin' man doesn't even show up!"

"And the ones that did show up were not fun to fight," A female voice added, her tone filled with exasperation. "I was prepared to fight a speedster, not some chick who could fly and throw cars at me!"

"Yeah, that should have been me!" A third voice, male and high pitched, yelled before he giggled. "I know how to entertain the ladies, but the fish boy had no sense of humor." A sighed. "I tell you, these substitutes have a lot to learn."

I hope people don't think we're just substitutes for the League, I mulled, remaining still in my seat even as they approached. I already had stealth drones positioned around the room to keep an eye on the three, and I wanted them to get a little closer first.

The woman snapped at the second man "Oh don't complain, you had one of the easy ones. I could have danced circles around him, along with most of those kids. I just got unlucky with my partner."

The Australian snorted. "Don't get too full of yer'self, birdie. We brought you on cause your brother's still in the clink. That don't mean you've got the skills to run with the Rogues."

"Oh please, what I've seen of you 'Rogues' hasn't impressed me either. A few technical failures and some unexpected heroes and you guys fall apart and retreat." She looked around. "Where are the other two anyway? They should be here by now."

"Not Weather Wizard," The man shook his head. "He got pinched by that Superman wannabe after his machine went on the fritz."

"Hey, a lot of guys his age have problems keeping their Wand functional," The other man tittered. "Still, it's not like Mirror Master not to show at all..."

That's as good a cue as any, I thought before I said out loud "I'm afraid Mirror Master is a little… tied up at the moment." I slowly turned my high back chair around to face them, a hologram appearing next to me to show Mirror Master bound and gagged in a dark closet. He had been the first to get back to base, and as I was already there waiting for him, it was easy to get the drop on the villain.

In the present, I got a good look at the three villains before me, who drew weapons at my appearance. Captain Boomerang was dressed in his blue longcoat and black beret, holster full of boomerangs across his front. Trickster wore a messy black and yellow patterned jester costume with a simple domino mask and cape, and was pointing a scepter at me. Golden Glider was a lithe blonde woman in a flowing golden dress, and she had flipped the controls for her air skates into her palms.

There was a moment's silence before the Trickster burst out laughing and clapped his hands (awkwardly, considering the scepter he held). "Fantastic! Perfect timing, swivel speed, and intonation! Pun's a little overused, but acceptable. 9 out of 10!" A beat. "Also, who are you?"

"Machina. I'm with the team that just handed your asses to you."

Using the hand that didn't hold a boomerang, Captain Boomerang rubbed his chin. "Right, right, you're one of them newblood Titans. How'd you find our hideaway?"

I started to answer before I thought better of it, and simply said "I mean, when supervillains get together, they do it in a warehouse. I just had to look until I got lucky." In truth, I had found their base due to Weather Wizard. The villain needed some pretty extensive machinery to manipulate weather on a citywide scale. And if you have access to enough realtime meteorological data over a wide area, you can trace the source of the abnormal weather patterns.

I was a little surprised when it turned out that the weather manipulation technology he used was actually well studied by the scientific community. And quite thoroughly illegal to use, as it had a lot of second order effects. In short, make it rain in one place, you'll cause a drought in another. And that was just the predictable results. You could try to account for it, but the problem was woefully complex, and the villain never really cared about accounting for collateral weather patterns..

Back in the present, the villains in front of me eyed one another, and I could tell they had come to a silent agreement. "Ah, I guess that's the problem with bein' in the business so long. You start to get predict-," Captain Boomerang started to drawl, before in a blink he hurled the boomerang in his hand at me. At the same time, Golden Glider activated her air skates and started to move, and Trickster's scepter split apart into several prongs crackling with electricity.

Of course, these three tech-based villains had been standing right in front of me for a bit, so that was as far as they got.

I caught the boomerang in my hand, having long disarmed the explosive inside it beforehand. I shut off the air skates, causing Glider to fall flat on her face. And I created a mechanical failure in Trickster's scepter, causing it to completely fall apart in an instant. The latter villain made a sad trombone noise when he saw that.

I didn't leave them time to recover either, as an instant later the Circuit Sand I had hidden among the crates burst forth and moved to restrain the three. Within seconds Captain Boomerang and Golden Glider had their arms and legs bound and they collapsed to the ground.

Amazingly, Trickster somehow sensed what was about to happen and twisted out of the way. The sand failed to find purchase, and Trickster bounded for the door. "Maybe next time, substitute!" he called back behind him. Unfortunately for him, that moment he spent looking back at me meant he didn't see me maneuver a drone carrying a piece of his own equipment directly in his path. He turned forward just in time to see the hydraulic spring loaded boxing glove shoot forward and nail him right in the face.

He was bound up a moment later, and I got up from my seat. "I've got the last three, mission accomplished." I commed to the rest of the team. It was going to be a shame when tech villains learned that I could do this.

As always, there was some clean up to be done after the fighting was finished. Some of it is the literal clean up of collateral damage, but there was also contacting police and emergency services to make sure they knew everything that had happened. In this case there was also the need to watch over the various bits of supertech the villains had used until they could be secured. I was not going to have another Calculator situation where someone with sticky fingers wandered in after the fact. Fortunately for me I had already spent some time shifting through the bureaucracy to know who to contact and for what, so it wasn't that long before I was watching trucks haul away Weather Wizards machines. Like most of the Rogues' gear, I had a decent enough idea of how it worked and didn't feel the need to take it for myself. With one exception.

Going to spend a lot of time studying this, I thought as I turned Mirror Master's gun over in my hands. There was a lot of use I could get out of something that could access a whole other dimension, but I would hold back from integrating it into my arsenal for a while. Quite simply, given how much the Mirror Dimension could do and how it didn't fit with any of the physics I currently knew, I just didn't trust it yet. I also recalled from the comics that you could only access the Mirror Dimension from Earth, which just increased my vague suspicions. Maybe it was just me being paranoid, but I was going to make sure there was nothing hiding in that dimension before I started driving trucks through it.

I put the gun away as my team joined me on the warehouse roof one by one. "The local authorities have just about taken control of the situation," I told them. "They're used to the Rogue's antics by now, so they know what to do."

"And that's another win for the Titans!" Kid Flash pumped his fist in the air. "I mean, it's not the first time I've taken those guys on, but it's the first time I did it without the Flash. And we nailed it!"

"Is it weird to hope we get our own villains at some point, though?" Artemis asked. "I mean, ones that aren't eldritch abominations or shadowy cabals. Just some good old fashioned crazies in spandex."

"Considering we are still going to be fighting the previous two things, yes." Aqaulad remarked. "We have enough work ahead of us that we don't need to wish for more."

"Ah, lighten up Kaldur," Kid Flash hooked an arm around his shoulders. "It's all part of the superhero life. You know you've made it when you have someone cursing your name as they haul them away."

Robin, on the other hand, grunted from his seat atop an air conditioner. "I'm going to have to agree with Aqualad here. We can't be distracted from the guys who targeted us with that smear package." Robin pointed out. "Or did you forget they're working with alien despots?"

"Well if that's what you're looking for, I've got good news then," I said. "We got a hit on our Apokoliptian detection system."

The Watchtower already had sensors that could detect a wide spectrum of exotic energy signatures (which is how we found out about Rommie in Bialya all those months ago), but with the information I had gotten from Motherbox I was able to improve them. Specifically, the data on Apokoliptian technology let me refine the sensors to detect even smaller bursts of energy. It was my hope that we could use it to pinpoint any Boom Tubes that opened up on the planet. It still needed some refinement, but I was sure I could manage it with enough data.

Robin grinned and hopped down from his perch. "Great, what are we waiting for?"

I held up a hand. "There's just one problem. It's in Spain. Barcelona, to be specific."

Kid Flash shrugged. "Yeah, so what? It's not like we haven't jetted halfway across the world for a mission before. Let's pile into Moya and go!"

Artemis frowned at him. "That was before we were the Titans, idiot. We're not a covert team anymore, and we don't have the authority to go wherever we want."

Kid Flash wasn't deterred. "Again, so what? I'm sure the Spanish will love the Titans just as much as they love us here."

"The people, maybe. The government… not so much. If we intend to do some superheroing in their country that is." I pointed out. The Titans' status as a superhero team was a messy thing, at least compared to the Justice League. We were ostensibly an American based team, and given the U.S. 's generally pro-superhero stance, that gave us free reign to operate anywhere else in the country. Beyond that though, things got tricky. There were a lot of laws and procedures superheroes had to follow if they wanted to operate on foreign soil, and said laws were not all uniform between countries.

Now, the Justice League got to step around all those problems due to their UN Charter. I had made a few subtle inquiries about the Titans getting a similar arrangement, but the response back made it seem unlikely. The UN didn't like the idea of giving multiple organizations that sort of carte blanche, particularly if they operated independently of one another. To them, if we wanted to have the same privileges as the League, we should just join them.

"Alright, if we can't handle it, what about the League?" Donna pointed out. "Spain's part of the U.N. so they won't have a problem trying to investigate."

"Two problems with that," I replied. "The first is that the League is not exactly subtle. Kinda the reason they brought us together in the first place. It's probable that if they go anywhere near the city, the criminals will just go underground and stop operations."

"And what's the other reason?"

I gestured, and a few holographic screens appeared around me. The images showed parts of the port city that were in disarray and ruin. "Barcelona managed to get hit during the tail end of the Deep Night, and since no one expected the Deep Ones to go that far past the Strait of Gibraltar they had no one to defend them. And the recovery efforts haven't been going great either. Economically the city is falling behind, and for whatever reason it's not getting a lot of governmental aid. Their shipping industry is in shambles. Civil unrest is boiling over into riots as people are losing their jobs. The League is worried that having several 'internationally empowered' superheroes showing up to such a volatile situation will make things worse."

"But, that doesn't describe us, does it?" Starfire asked. "What if we simply asked the Spanish government if we could work within their country?"

"Well… maybe." I said hesitantly. "We're popular right now, and if we ask to be part of disaster relief I think we could legally qualify as an NGO. But I don't know if that's enough. Remember, we'd still essentially be foreign agents, and a government calling those in to solve their problems is never a good look. And if we get involved in another country's civil unrest, it will be a political nightmare."

Superboy groaned. "Are we really going to have to start worrying about politics now? Part of the reason we formed the Titans was because it was dragging the League down so much."

Starfire shook her head. "As regrettable as it is, you can only avoid the games of those in power so much before they find you and drag you down with them. These villains need to be stopped, but we can't just ignore the world in the process."

"So, I guess we're asking for permission then?" Artemis asked. "It's super lame, but it's still better than doing nothing,"She pointed out.

I sighed. "Yeah, but it would really help if we had a different reason to be there. Even if it was just anyone other than the government wanting us there, it could give us some cover to work more covertly."

"Do we know anyone like that?"

"Not anyone already in Spain. It'd have to be someone who was going there and wanted to… invite us for..." I trailed off, an idea forming in my mind. "Hmm. Hmmmm."

"Wait, do you actually know someone?"

"Not personally," I said slowly, a small grin crossing my face. "But considering I recently helped them ship another million albums, they might be willing to do me a favor."

I had a hard time describing Parc del Fòrum. To me it was something of a cross between an industrial park and an art exhibit. The whole park was a mostly level concrete plaza, with a bunch of modern architecture buildings scattered about. It was positioned right next to the waterfront, so you could get a great view of the Mediterranean from most points. It was something of an all-purpose venue that Barcelona used for events, from things like festivals and conventions.

At the moment though, it had crews of people and vehicles working together to build a large music stage. Hi-tech lighting and sound equipment were expertly being assembled, and I could already tell that once it was done it the whole space would turn into a living music visualizer Which may have been something I had a hand in.

Standing right in front of the stage as I was, someone managed to walk up behind me. "Ah, excuse me," I turned to see Mr. Garnier standing behind me. He was the band's manager, and the person I had been talking to the most aside from the pair for the past few days. "While you may be a… guest of honor for the upcoming performance, I'm going to have to ask you to leave during setup."

I gestured to the stage. "Actually, the guys asked me to help with the tech check." I looked towards the stage and shouted "Hey, you guys still want me to do the check, right?" The two men behind the center counter of the stage gave me the thumbs up. While they were currently dressed in casual shirts and jeans, they still wore their iconic robot helmets in public. Daft Punk had an image to uphold after all.

The two had been pretty excited to meet me and learn more about the robots that had helped save New York. And considering a few members of the Silver had gotten a taste for their music, I had a feeling they would get involved with us when the time came. But in the present, they had agreed to my proposal of having a charity concert in Barcelona, as well as my request to pretend that they had invited the Titans entirely of their own initiative. The pair was smart enough to realize something was up, but they were willing to go along with it.

The manager frowned slightly, but he schooled his features. "I see… well as long as you're here I should let you know that someone from the government came around."

"Any problems?"

"No, just some very pointed questions about what you and your friends are doing here." Not too surprising. I had already informed the Spanish government about our presence, but it made sense they would ask around as well. "I… may share a few of their concerns that you'll be a disruptive influence during the concert."

I held up my hands to forestall him. "Don't worry, we plan on staying back in the VIP area. We have no intention of drawing attention to ourselves. This is sort of our vacation."

The manager seemed mollified by this. "Well, if that's the case… I suppose I'll leave you to it then." The man turned and left, letting me get back to managing the speakers. I got the impression he was intimidated by me. Honestly I would have been fine staying completely out of sight, but I did need to reassure the government I was where I said I was.

Well, technically the same could be said of the whole team. But hologram drones helped fix that problem. While half the team was hanging out with the backstage crew, the other half were getting to work.

I got most of the way through setting up the sound system when I heard Artemis's voice on comms. "Machina, head to my position. I'm playing overwatch for Robin."

I made sure one of the engineers knew how to finish what I started and took off, making sure eyes were off me before I cloaked and took to the air. I didn't have to travel far, only a few blocks along the coast before I landed on a rooftop. I decloaked, and Artemis looked back at me from her perch before she made a small motion with her head and I hustled over to her. As I took up position next to her she said "Tell me what you see."

Given the direction we were facing, it wasn't hard to guess what she was talking about. "Looks like the union strike is underway." I remarked. Across the street from our position was one of the main entrances to the city's docks, and in front of it was a large crowd of irate dockworkers. They were mulling about along with holding up signs and shouting, mostly generic things about fair hours and pay. I knew that with the damages the docks suffered they hadn't been able to employ everyone, but it seemed they still weren't handling it well.

"Really? Because to me it looks like we're about 5 minutes away from a riot." Artemis said back. I looked at her questioningly, and she continued "My dad took me to see the sanitation strike in Gotham a while back. Said it was part of my 'education'. I know what a group of guys about to start some shit looks like."

I considered that for a moment before I opened the comms. "Robin, there may be some trouble in a moment. How are things on your end?"

"I'm wrapping things up," The Boy Wonder commed back. "And I can hear the crowd from here." I swept my gaze towards one of the few completely undamaged buildings in the docks, to where I knew he was. The dock foreman's office wasn't right next to the street, but it was close enough.

"Just stay on your toes, we're all strangers to this city. And this time we don't have a local contact to help us." We knew that the Apokoliptian energy signals came from somewhere in the city, but without anything more specific to go on, the Titans had some groundwork to do. I had started trolling the local networks as soon as I could, but Kyoto had taught me that they could hide things from me. It would take a while before I could spot the holes. In the meantime Robin was taking a more old fashioned approach: snooping in the offices of important people.

"Come on Machina, I've been at this for years," He replied. "And experience has taught me that if a city has them, there's always something shady going on at the docks. If our bad guys moved equipment into the city, it would probably be through here."

I frowned. "It's possible the people we're up against have free use of Boom Tubes, in which case they're not going to need to bother with normal logistics." And that was a problem I had been mulling over ever since I had gotten back from New Genesis. A criminal organization that could make portals on demand was going to be a nightmare to pin down. Hopefully the recent sensor improvement would help, but that didn't mean our enemies couldn't get clever with them.

What I really wanted was a way to completely shut them down, but that was a whole different beast. Apparently you needed a machine the size and complexity of Supertown to generate a decent interdiction field. Motherbox didn't know of any other way to manage it, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to try to find one. If nothing else, I'd like to stop my targets from teleporting away if I had eyes on them.

But that was a problem for later; we needed to find these people first, along with whatever it is there were up to. "Did you find anything unusual in the shipping records?"

"Not exactly… Shipping's still heavily reduced, and nothing about the few imports in the past month stick out. But I also came across some emails between the Chamber of Commerce and the union rep, and they don't make much sense. They seem to be completely talking past each other for most of the back and forth before things get personal and they start hurling insults."

Artemis interjected "And that's weird? What if the two just hated each other?"

"My gut says something else is going on here… I'm also finding a lot of reports on the reconstruction efforts, and there are way too many setbacks and missing materials to be just accidents. I think something is intentionally hindering them."

I thought about that for a moment before I opened the comm to the rest of the team. "Titans, Robin just found some evidence that there may be external forces halting the reconstruction efforts."

There was a few seconds of silence before Starfire replied "That does make sense. You did say that a favored tactic of Apokolips is to covertly destabilize populations, correct?"

"Assuming this is their work," Donna pointed out. "But it does fit."

"And yet the time frame still feels too short for this," I gestured to the crowd below us. "I mean, tensions have only seemed to boil over like this over the past week. Miss Martian, have you managed to find anything in your sweep?"

It was Starfire who replied "Miss Martian… hasn't been feeling well, so she's been resting."

That sounded concerning. I mean, the girl wasn't immune to being tired or down, but I resolved to follow up on that to be sure. In the meantime, I said "Alright, we still got some leads from this. We can check out the Chamber of Commerce and the unions, see if they've had any contact with shady figures. For now, we should probably get out of here."

"But what about them?" Artemis asked, pointing to the increasingly loud crowd.

I shook my head. "The cops are already on the way, I think they were expecting this too. We can't intervene because-"

"I know, I know," the girl grumbled. "If the Spanish government sees us putting down a riot they'll get huffy. Still doesn't sit right with me though."

"Me neither." I said. "We have to remember, we're still on a razor's edge here. We get caught doing something we shouldn't and our rep might never recover. And even if we avoid that, we can't rely on friendly musicians to invite us to foreign countries on demand. We need to find and expose the collaborators here, and let the world know exactly what's happening. That's the only way we get a chance at working internally against these guys in the future." Publicly, at least.

Starfire spoke up "Let's just focus on helping the city as much as we can. Maybe the concert itself will help turn things around. All the techs here are pretty excited about the modifications you've made at least."

"I did what I could, though I had to hold back a bit, of course." I replied, while Artemis and I started to move out. "Put a little too much mojo into the base, and suddenly you have mass depantsification everywhere. Donna knows what I've talking about"

I heard Donna groan. "Artemis, I'm several blocks away, could you…?"

"I've got you, girl." Artemis said, before she reached out and slapped me upside the head.

"Ow!"

"Thank you, Artemis."

"You're welcome, hon."

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A/N: Admittedly the SI probably wouldn't know the term 'doom scrolling' since he came from 2016, but it felt correct.