The best one could say about the classroom they were holing up in, was that it was quiet. When they weren't eating or preparing to defend themselves, they had a lot of downtime. The students spent most of it staring into space, daydreaming of better times. Others had hushed, desperate conversations in the room's four corners.
The students who helped them, who didn't run away, had quietly led them down the hallways, through twists and turns, into a barricaded part of the school. The Team saw some more students there.
And so for a while now they've stayed there, nursing Wally's wounds, with the axe-wielding girl's tacit permission.
Wally, for his part, sat against the wall, groaning.
"Aww man, getting injured twice in a row like that, is going to totally ruin my hero rep, man…" he complained, as Ms. Martian wrapped his arm in a cast.
"Wally, nobody's going to begrudge you just because you got injured on the job." replied the Martian girl.
"In fact, I know quite a few people for whom that would be a turn-on." quipped Artemis.
"Plus, nobody's gonna hear of your exploits anyway, what with us being a highly confidential team and all." Robin said, kneeling next to him. "KF, your arm's feeling okay?"
"... Yeah. But I'm definitely not going back into the fight again anytime soon, huh?"
"As of now, you're utmost duty is to heal well, so you may rejoin us as strong as you ever were…" said Aqualad, smiling. "For now, let the rest of us carry the load."
"Your words fill me with great Determination, oh dear leader, I will certainly cherish them for the rest of my life." Wally half-jokingly said, before going quiet.
He turned his head at the grey crystal, still embedded in his shoulder.
"..."
The Team were debating whether to pull out the foreign object, but ultimately decided against it. If he didn't bleed out first, he would almost certainly get infected. This school had quite a few useful scavengable objects, but disinfectants were no longer one of them.
So, they had to leave it there, like a gaping tumour that was growing out of his flesh.
"Great Sar'Vosh the Sorceror, I didn't sign up for this…" said M'gann, holding a hand to her forehead.
"You didn't expect that people would get hurt during our missions?" Artemis said.
"What? No, I'm not some naive little girl!" M'gann said in frustration. "But even in those days, where things got really bad, at least we still had a home base to retreat to. At least we could ask for help from our mentors, the Justice League, or even civilians! But I think this is the first time where… where..."
"Where there's no place to retreat to." Kal'dur replied. "We are in a strange place now, and enemies surround us like silt in a muddy river."
"I've been in a few undercover missions." said Robin. "I know the feeling."
Artemis stayed silent.
Meanwhile, Wally fell asleep, still groaning.
"..."
They had to bring him to a Doctor, and they had to bring him now.
The noble kids went away, but predictably, not for long.
Zima and Robin were walking through the former school canteen, hoping to search the kitchen for any remaining cans that somehow remained untouched. Not likely, they knew.
Then, from behind overturned tables came a gaggle of fancily-dressed Ursus children, their fine clothes caked with layers of dirt and grime, their once-immaculately coiffed hair now hanging in deranged strips around their heads.
They rushed the two of them.
Zima growled. Robin stoically pulled out his two escrima sticks.
They fought.
They fought like hell, like the world would end if they failed there and then.
Zima was a rampaging berserker, with an axe nearly as tall as she. It was well-worn, far too well worn for someone as young as her.
She lashed out in rage, barely directing it to strike only at her foes. Their flesh and bones split apart as if under a butcher's knife. The people of Ursus may have prodigious strength, but their flesh was no more durable than any other Terran. By the end, her attackers were chunks of meat and fabric, lying in fresh pools of blood.
Robin, trained in formal martial arts, was more graceful in his movements, yet no less fierce.
He moved with precision, dodging and deflecting attacks until his calculating eyes found the slightest opening, the rarest moment of tactical weakness. Then, he struck out with the force of a charging bull, straight into their guts, their legs, their faces.
He counted himself lucky that none of them had guns.
When the battle was over, the two of them looked over their handiwork. Zima looked at Robin's opponents, and snorted. Of course, all the enemies he engaged were merely knocked out, not dead. She could even hear some of them snoring.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing, bird-boy?"
What am I doing? I'm helping to defend you and friends! You should be grateful, you know!" he said, throwing his arms up in the air. "I'm not stupid. I could smell your rotten attitude from a mile away."
The Ursus girl walked up to him, and stared him down.
"... What's your problem?" he asked.
"... My problem? The fact that you handle these murderers with oven mitts! Yes, it's very sad that some of them have to die, but it's their own damn fault for attacking us first! Do you know what you're actually doing, circus freak? You're sending them a message that it's okay for them to keep trying to kill us all, because you'll let them off with nothing more than a bad headache the next day. Do you know what will fucking happen next? They'll just come again and again and fucking again, since they know there'll be no cost to messing with us!"
"Oh? And did those kids ever stop attacking you, even after you killed their friends? No, because they're hungry and desperate and want to survive, just like you. You just don't want to admit that you and them are in the same boat."
He casually leaned against one of the long tables that dotted what used to be the school canteen.
"Did you say all those things because you actually believed in them? Or did you just want to justify taking the lives of all your peers after the fact?" he pressed.
She snarled.
"Every life is precious. Even the ones that you don't think deserve to keep living. That's what my mentor taught me, and it was the most important lesson of them all." Robin enunciated, and Zima's urge to punch this stranger in the face was never stronger.
"They were not my peers, you fucking cosplayer, and you and your mentor are pompous assholes who believe in their own invented ideals more than actually helping people! You don't have the guts to accept the reality of improving the world, which will always involve some bloodshed!"
She trudged towards him until their noses were very nearly touching.
"Face it, you can't save everyone! Most of the time, you'll have no choice but to to pick and choose who to help, and who to leave. And I, for one, would much rather save my energy to help those people who fucking deserve my help, and leave the rest to deal with their own shit."
With that, she walked away.
The Ursus Self-Governing group was roughly more than a dozen strong, enough to fill half a classroom. Zima (real name Sonia) and Gummy (real name Lada) were their most notable members. The former was their tough-but-fair leader, while the latter was the only student in the entire group who knew how to cook. However, it was their total numbers that allowed them to withstand constant assaults from other groups of starving students.
Then one day, a few strangers moved in with them.
They were a few years older than the rest of them, dressed strangely, and who were definitely not students. They probably weren't locals, either. In most of their eyes, that was enough to avoid them like the Infected.
The only ones who bothered to speak to them were Zima, and their designated chef. The former seemed to keep those strangers on a leash, at least. For the latter, it was because one of the strangers had offered to help with the cooking. The rest were anxious about that, of course. What if they decided to poison them? What if they were bad news from the very beginning!?
At least with Zima around, they couldn't do very much without getting killed for it.
Anna and Sonia brought in some new people today. They weren't students, though they were teenagers, like us. Actually they were a few years older. They also weren't wearing uniforms, just these really colourful outfits!
Are they from the circus?
Ah well, Gummy thought, it didn't matter. The more friends, the merrier, right?
But…
How are we going to get enough food for us all?
Gummy was already worried when the food pantries in their part of the school began to thin out. They had to eat less and less each day to compensate. Gummy could see the effects on her friends. They grew thinner, and more temperamental. They got into loud arguments more often. She could hear their stomachs growl, even after mealtime.
It broke her heart to see them like this. She couldn't bear it if someone starved to death under her watch. Her schoolmates called her Gum because she always knew what to do with food. She could take snack foods, or takeout leftover, or some unused ingredients from Home Econ class, and turn them into something new and delicious. She was like a one-woman department store cafe!
But now there was barely anything left. The kitchen freezers have long been emptied, and now all that was left with them were a tiny handful of canned goods.
What could she do now, with so little?
...
But maybe…
What if...
After several days like this, she finally made the hard, hard decision to procure new meat from… unconventional sources.
After all, many students had already fallen. And though she knows a proper burial would be far more civilized… they really needed to eat.
If they were looking down from heaven now, she was sure they'd be alright with helping other kids like them live on, right?
Right?
RIght?
Gummy was sad that they finally had to resort to it, but Gummy was even sadder that she almost hurt one of her friends before this! All because she was so hungry!
Stupid Gummy. Pathetic Gummy.
It's such a good thing she had a helper in the "kitchen" now! A nice Savra girl a few years older than her! Gummy was pretty sure she was some sort of Chameleon Savra, since she could change her shape in all sorts of amazing ways. But when she asked about it, the other girl just laughed nervously.
She and the Savra girl were now at the "kitchen counter" (actually a bunch of cabinets joined together at one wall of the room). She was rather uneasy when looking at the harvested meat, so Gummy offered to chop those, while the Savra girl focused on the vegetables.
Hefting her knife, Gummy looked down at the meat.
pork meat
chicken meat
bear meat
From a certain point of view, what could possibly be the difference now? They're all meat. You can cook any of them over an open flame.
At this point, they should get what they can get.
They were preparing lunch. Gummy had better make sure it was special, because they only ever ate lunch these days
As she and the Savra girl (Megan, Gummy reminded herself) sliced the ingredients, she heard a loud sob from beside her.
"I'm sorry… I'm so, so sorry… Nobody your age should go what you just went through…" said Megan.
"... Why are you saying sorry?" said Gummy, giving her the brightest smile in the whole wide world. "You didn't do anything wrong."
The streets of Chernobog were less intense now than they were just a few days ago, during the retrieval operation. The central government seemed to have given up on this city. The only pockets of fighting left were at the very edges, or inside isolated districts. Whatever remained of the police and the military units in this city, were making their respective last stands.
"Ms. Blaze, our teams just got out of this godforsaken city! The hell were they thinking, sending us right inside again? I thought we already got what we wanted outta this place?" complained one Operator, watching her group's back
"Didn't you hear the briefing? Apparently, they picked up some weird Arts readings from somewhere in the city limits. Plus, we hadn't been in action for some time, so I guess they took the opportunity to see if we were still worth shit." joked another.
Their designated leader for this mission was near the front: A Feline woman with the build of an amazonian, and a chainsaw strapped to her back. She looked back at the Operators they gave her for this mission, and frowned.
"I'm no scientist, so I don't know shit about this "exotic energy" or stuff like it, but Doctor Kal'tsit said it was very important!" said Operator Blaze. "And Doc K's word goes. Whatever we're doing, it's for the good of the Infected. Also, all of us are getting hazard pay for this. If ya didn't want to risk your life out here, you shouldn't have bothered crawling out of Logistics!" she shouted to those stragglers at the back. She then turned around to keep track of the Operator who was supposed to be taking point, only to find her missing.
"... Skadi? Skadi, where'd you go? … Hey Skadi, what are you doing!?"
The figure she spotted in the distance calmly ignored her. Instead, she walked through a row of buildings in front of her, all the while dismissing the rain of arrows and bolts raining down on her.
There were shrill screams of terror as the buildings collapsed, leaving a dusty Skadi standing in the middle of the rubble.
"... Ah-choo!" the Aegir sneezed.
"... Wow… and I thought the stories about her were far fetched…"
"No, they're all true. Every single word of it."
"... Is this why a lot of people don't like her?"
"Meal's ready!"
The cheery Ursus girl went to each member of the Self-Governing Group, and gave them a small plate each. Each plate contained precisely one meat patty, and a smattering of lettuce.
Artemis and Wally, their stomachs rumbling, gladly dug in, while the rest regarded the food warily.
Robin took an experimental bite of the meat.
"..."
Suddenly, Robin felt a wave of nausea pass over him.
Looking at his little plate, Robin settled for placing it on top of the shelf next to him, the remaining contents uneaten.
"Rob? What the matter?" asked Artemis, as she was halfway through the meat patty. "Hmm… Kinda tastes like pork."
"Hey Rob, if you're not gonna eat that, can I have that for seconds?" asked Wally.
Robin kept silent for a moment, as if having an intense debate with himself. Finally, he pursed his mouth and turned to the rest of the room.
"We can't stay here." Robin said.
"Aww…" said Gummy. "He doesn't like my food…"
After looking at Gummy, Zima glared daggers into the "heroes". "You're really fucking idiot cykas, aren't you? Where the hell would we all even go!?. The entire city's been taken over by those maniacs! Hell, maybe even the entire landship! And even if we do get off the ship, we still have fucking kilometres of wretched snowy wasteland to trek through. At least here, we can guarantee to sleep for another day so long as we lock all our doors, and have somebody on night watch." she said.
"Err… what's a landship?" asked Wally.
"But is staying here really the better course of action, Zima?" asked Anna. "You know how they broke those locks a few days ago. The nobles are getting more and more desperate. They're hanging on a thread of food, Zima, just like we are."
Zima looked away.
"Pretty soon, no matter what… new sources of food we find, it's still not going to be enough. We are all going to run out of food, sooner or later. Leaving this place may soon be our only option."
Zima snarled, but said nothing.
As the sun dipped below the ruined buildings, and darkness fell, the school around them somehow became even more foreboding.
...
A few hours later, Robin's voice rang through The Team's heads.
Guys. Team powwow, now. In classroom 3C.
The Team huddled together in one corner of the abandoned classroom, perched upon scavenged chairs.
"Alright guys, one thing's become very clear to me: We need to leave here ASAP. Else, we're almost certainly going to die here." said Artemis. "With no backup, no contacts, no resources and no home base to return to, we'll either starve to death first, or get shanked in our sleep. Just telling it how it is, people."
"... But we can't just abandon them!" M'gann shot back.
"Maybe we can bring them along with us?" Robin offered.
"... Excuse me if you think I'm being insensitive, but I have to wonder what's the big deal?" said Wally. "I mean, yeah it's harsh, but they're all doing surprisingly okay with themselves so far. If they can still feed everyone hamburgers, then they're definitely not short on food supplies. Why can't we just hang in here until the authorities arrive?"
"… Dude, first off, did you see the state the city was in? Secondly, just earlier, they gave us human flesh patties for lunch."
At that phrase, everyone grew deathly silent.
"... Hahaha, that's funny Rob. Alright, tell me what really happened." Wally said, with far too much good cheer. "Those were definitely some pork patties they took from the school freezer or something, my tastebuds never lie when it comes to food! I'm the five-time eating champion at my local Happy Burger!"
Robin just stared at him.
"... Oh God, you're serious, aren't you?"
Nods.
"..."
For a long time, the rest of the Team was dead silent, their faces taking on unreadable expressions.
"... Oh Gods, how am I gonna tell my old man that I ate people." Wally exclaimed, putting his face in his hands. Meanwhile, everyone else turned a little bit green.
"Yeaaah… I decided to tell you this only now and not immediately after dinner, 'cause I didn't want you guys to start throwing up all over the floor…" said Robin.
Ever since those strangely-dressed teens came into their school, Ann had been suspicious. Deeply suspicious.
The others, being so laser-focused on surviving to the next day, probably hadn't noticed. Or if they had, they considered it less important than the fact that these strangers were on their side, for now.
But Istina couldn't quite pin them down. Most of them had none of the animal features of the Ancients, nor the halos of the Sankta, or horns of the Sarkaz. Yet, they were also too tall for Durin. She'd come across Durin before, and all of them would easily be dwarfed by the height of these supposed "fellow teenagers".
That was strange enough. But their proficiency in fighting was even stranger. Her Ursus classmates fought too, but these people moved differently, almost as if... they were trained soldiers trapped in the bodies of teenagers.
Thus, Anna continually observed them from a distance, trying to figure out what made them tick.
Alas, even a bookworm like her gets impatient too. And so when those strange teens went off without a word (either to them or each other), she couldn't help but follow.
"Guys, I looked at a few of the books in their little school library." said Robin
"… And?"
"Batman made me memorise trivia from a wide variety of disciplines, because there were cases he worked on where knowledge of obscure stuff like history or literature were key to tracking down the suspect. I can state facts on most subjects today, from physics to the history of world music.
And yet, I recognise almost none of the names in those books. All the countries referenced were unrecognisable to me, as are all the cities, important figures, and historical events like wars and plagues. None of the books, movies, or paintings ring a bell. Plus, they write about magic like it's well-known and widely-used. The only things I could recognise were several bits of technology, and the cuisines, weirdly enough."
"Wooow, This must be some really out-of-the-way town then, if the books are that strange to you. Or maybe you just can't read Russian as well as you think?" Wally said.
"KF, I'm being serious here. You're the Team clown, but you also get straight B's on all your Math and Science classes, and the only reason you don't get A's is because your Speed Force-induced ADHD keeps you from paying attention for more than five seconds at a time. But I know if you can apply that noggin of yours, you can see why a school library in a big city with almost nothing recognisable in them is such a goddamn big deal."
"… Oh geez, don't tell me… "
"Yes KF, we're in another world, it seems."
"What!? I thought we travelled to the far future or something…"
"... Possible, but given the dearth of connections to our world, assuming we're on another world entirely is our safest bet."
"... Okay. Cool."
"Wally!"
"What? We'll get back, it's okay. I mean, Flash told me all about the times the Justice League-"
"Yes, we're aware of your point, Wally. Personally, though, I wouldn't find it too much of a comfort if we find a way back by the time we're of old age." Kal'dur said, in a rare moment of candidness.
"... Personally, I don't mind if I never saw some of my folks again." Artemis deadpanned. "But that leaves us with this: What do we do now?"
"If only we had the bioship with us… It'd make this situation so much easier..." said M'gann.
"Yeah, well, tough luck, eh?"
"Being a warrior... being a Hero means adapting to ever-changing circumstances." said Aqualad. "Now that we've lost our bioship, and any access to allies from our world, we'll have to learn how to make do without them. We have no other choice."
"We will, because we were trained by the best."
"Not all of us…"
"Not helping, Superboy."
"… Sorry."
"… Guys, wait." Robin said, holding up a hand for the rest of the Team to hold their silence.
Approaching the door of the classroom, Robin suddenly jerked it open. It swung inwards, causing a certain blue-haired bear girl to fall face-first inside into the room. She quickly stood up and brushed off her blouse, as if she didn't just face-plant in front of the whole Team.
"So… How much did you hear?" asked Robin, more teasingly than worryingly.
"Some… but not enough. Is it true that you people are from another world?"
"... I knew we should've stuck with telepathic chat." Artemis said. Robin shushed her.
"Does it really matter?" M'gann asked.
"Yes." Anna replied, her tongue sharp. "People tend to be afraid of those they don't fully understand. And while I'm all for regulating one's instincts as the next civilized person, in this case I am more inclined to trust it. I don't trust you, and the more I know about you people, the better I can protect my friends."
"Are we really that threatening to you?" asked M'gann.
M'gann, just come clean. All this dancing around is making me nauseous. Superboy said over the telepathic line.
M'gann paused, and shot a look at the others.
Well, there's no point in hiding it, is there?
Nope.
Probably not.
We're already pretty goddamn strange to them. We have no fancy animal ears on our heads, as seems to be the norm around here. I think it's just better to come clean with them now, rather than having to keep up a tangle of lies that'll keep getting more tangled the longer it lasts.
… Well, good enough for me.
After a few moments, Robin finished formulating his response:
"Okay, to put a very long and complicated answer short: You're right. We currently believe this world isn't our world."
Anna took several seconds to process this.
"So what you're saying is… There are other worlds than Terra, you just happened to stumble in from another, and now you're looking for a way back?"
"Hey, it happens all the time." said Wally. "I heard all sorts of stories from other heroes, about times they got sucked into a portal and ended up on another planet or universe, and had to make do until they found a way back home. I remember this one guy in Japan-"
"KF, now is not the time."
"Geez, sorry. Anyway, it's alright if you have trouble believing us-"
"I believe you. There would be no reason for you to make it all up."
"... Really?"
"Yes."
Sensing the awkwardness, Ms. Martian quickly redirected the conversation to more fruitful ends
"So, err, Terra, right? Is that what you call your world?" she asked.
"Seems pretty generic, if ya ask me."
"Wally."
"Alright, alright, sorry."
Kal'dur strode up to the Ursus girl.
"Ms. Anna, I know we may seem strange and untrustworthy to you, but in actuality, we need your help more than you need ours. Being from another world, we have lost access to our homes and everybody we know. We only have each other now. So please, as one of the first people who have helped us in this world, please lend us your aid one more time:
Tell us as much about your world as you know. Do not leave anything out. Your nations, your peoples, your ways of living... Every single bit could help."
We have access to the contents of this school's library, but an explanation from a local of this world would still be best. Such a person would be able to give appropriate context and answer any uncertainties we foreigners might have."
"... Alright, I guess I could humour you." she said. "But bear in mind, you would be better off asking an expert about these sorts of stuff… I read a lot of books, but I don't consider myself an expert on anything, even Arts."
"We know, but in this situation, we have no better options."
"How flattering… Ah, and it's Ms. Morozova. That's my real last name. Call me Anna or Ms. Morozova, but not Ms. Anna please. It sounds a bit juvenile to me..."
Robin, Wally, and Artemis just looked at each other.
"They're still breathing. Holy crap. I mean, they show all the signs of having been recently electrocuted, yet they're not dead, just unconscious..." said the Ops team's medic, as she examined the pulses of the Reunion troops trapped inside the net. They found them in the middle of a street, an incongruous sight in a place where corpses and Originum were more common than living things.
When they rounded a corner, they came across another pair of Reunion thugs, also knocked unconscious and tied up in the middle of the street.
"Now this is damn strange. Anyone with enough strength to concuss them like this should've had enough strength to just kill them. Instead, whoever did this clearly exerted a great amount of control to preserve their lives…" said the medic, examining the bumps on their heads.
"Geez, It's like something out of some old-timey comic book or something…" said another Operator, carelessly scratching his head. "I didn't think there'd be people who bothered to do it in real life..."
"Well, whoever it was, the trail of tied-up Reunion goons ends here." Blaze said, pointing to a stocky building that was almost certainly a school. "There's gotta be something interesting in there. Everyone, make yourselves presentable! We're gonna have a little school visit."