Part 2 Assassin Nation

"So anyway, I told the governor that Alabama was too long it would be much more cool if they could change it to Bama, or even Utah,"

Batgirl once again got up and moved to a different chair, away from Bart.

Bart hung his head down and slowly trudged past Cissie, who was smiling broadly. He clicked on the huge screen TV in front of him and was immediately overjoyed. "It's on! It's on!"

Cissie came over to him, "You're going to watch this?  Bart, this is a small children's show."

"What are you talking about Ciss? It has the Muppets in it. How can you call anything that has the Muppets it, a children's show?"

Ciss turned up her eyes and walked away. "I just don't get you Bart"

"Oh wow, I love this one," said Impulse, noticing a new skit had come on. He started to sing along to the music.

"You take a G that's guh, and an E, T, et. You put em all together and that spells get, that's get, G, E, T, get."

Batgirl who was been sitting in a chair in the corner, got up and approached the TV tentatively, intrigued by what she saw on the screen. She may be very skilled, but the ability to read was one skill she didn't have. What she saw now, before her on the screen, made the task look not only fairly simple, but fun too.

So engrossed was Bart in the program that he did not notice as Batgirl sat beside him on the floor. He continued to sing along to the music, "You take a W… wha... and an E, T…"

"Et" interrupted Batgirl, Bart turned surprised to see her. He seemed overjoyed to be no longer shunned by her.

Bart continued, "You put em all together and that spells…"

"Wet." Batgirl supplied.

"That's wet, W, E, T...wet."

"Oh this is just great," thought Cissie watching them, "they've found a common interest."

Superboy flew an injured Cass and Trab under his arm as they headed out of the crevice, "Why did you jump in the bottomless pit after the rabbit, Alice."

"It is the flaming hare of the Deeps, the ghost of my murdered father said it would bring salvation to our nation, we must go back after it."

"The ghost of your dead father huh? Robin never told us you were insane, and I thought Bart was bad."

"Bad? No, that would be me," said a voice on top of them.

Kon halted his flight as there, above them, waiting at the edge of the crater was Deathstoke: the Terminator.

"You super people with your heart's on your sleeve and "s"'s on your chests."

Kon handed Trab over to Cass and flung them away from him into the air.

Deathstoke continued, his rifle pointed squarely at Superboy. "You caused me some trouble, so I'm going to cause you some trouble. In fact, I'll trouble to point out to you that right now I have a kryptonite bullet loaded in the chamber. Cost me a fortune, but that's ok, cuz me, I cost a fortune too. Make your move… Boy."

Kon rushed out to tackle him, he had just started to move to him right, when he caught a kick to his midsection. "Kon no!" yelled Cass.

Deathstoke fired, in the area where Kon would have been. The bullet grazed through Superboy's leg. He started to fly toward Deathstoke, then his world collapsed in blackness.

Cass flew down to catch him, she had just caught him in her arms and was slowing their decent, when she was hit by this strange kind of energy from behind, and suddenly lost her ability to fly. Seconds later they hit the ground with a loud thud.

Secret tried used the cycle's radio transmitter. "Cassie, come in. Darn, she's not answering. Robin told me she seemed pretty ticked off when he tried calling her before. She's out there practically alone with Kon, what could be the matter?" Secret asked.

"Oh, I can think of a few things. " Cissie intruded, "Maybe we should start all this without her. We should be able to handle this."

Batgirl stood "I'm ready."

Bart sat watching a program on the TV, "…and that's how you make knishes…"

Maxine came into the room;  "There is a large audience, wishing to greet his royal highness upon his return."

Batgirl started heading toward the reception area where the people were waiting.

Cissie and Secret followed behind. Secret asked, "Your abilities will really help us identify anybody who means Bart harm?"

"Yes," Batgirl replied.

They entered the audience room, they were shocked by what they saw, most of the audience consisted of men dressed in camouflage and brandishing large knives and guns behind their back.

 Cissie scoffed. "Special abilities? Ha. Like this isn't something I couldn't do."

Cassie took out a small penlight she kept with her. She shined it on the area where the bullet had grazed Superboy. It had bit into him deeply and the kryptonite impacting the flesh didn't compress and deform like a bullet would but shattered. Small glass like shards remained in Superboy's leg. Cass tried frantically to pick as many out as she could, but there were too many, and the longer they remained in the wound the sicker Superboy got. Right now he was completely unconscious but his shade was changing from a pale white to a green. She needled something besides her fingers to work with. The quickest and easiest way to get rid of the kryptonite was to cut it out of the wound. It didn't mater how deep or messy the cut was, because as soon as the kryptonite was out of and away from his system Superboy would start to heal. There was only one problem she didn't have a knife." What do I do? What do I do?"

Trab stood next to her, "You must look to yourself for answers."

"What kind of stupid advice is that, the last time anything remotely like this happened to me I was bit by this snake-like… hey wait…" Inspired, Cass bent down and used her teeth to suck and bite out the pieces of kryptonite.

 Unconscious Bodies were stacked along the sides of the audience room. One person who was dressed in an off white robe remained seated on the floor.  "May I now speak to our good King Trab?"

Bart entered the room, looking at the array of unconscious hit men. "Wow! Did Superman drop by?"

"Your new pal took them out," said Cissie pointing at Batgirl, "Float like a butterfly…"

 "String like a gee," said Bart.

"Um... Bart"

"Good and wise King Trab your people suffer," said the man in the robe. "A drought plagues the land.  Your people starve, while you live in such a grand dwelling."

"The loyal subject objected," said Cissie.

"Really?" said Impulse.

"Come, I will show you"

Cass leaned on Trab to take the pressure off her injured leg as she dragged an unconscious Kon behind her. "Just my luck that our communicators would be smashed when we landed. Good thing it's dark down here, and there are lots of tunnels. Hopefully we can hide out here until Kon gets enough strength to fly us out of here. All we have to do is avoid Deathstoke until that time. That's it. No big deal."

Then Cass seemed to notice that where she had been dragging Kon, the shaggy moss that coated the walls ands floors was stripped away. Leaving a surely identifiable trail if there ever was one. "Oh no" she thought, she went back over the area that they had just dragged Kon through. "I wonder if there's a way we can cover those bare patches up." Then she bent down and looked at one of the scrapped patches, "Hmm… that's strange. New moss is growing on it already, almost like it's seeping out of the rock."

She went back to Kon, picked him up again and began to drag him further into the cavern. She seemed surprised when Kon seemed to momentarily awaken, he looked around half dazed, then turned to Cassie and squinted "Cassie? It's really nice of you dragging me like this. You're a queen. You're a drag, queen." Then he slumped his head back and passed out again.

Bart and the gang stepped into the small doorway. The man in the white robe motioned to his surroundings, "My name is Jabah, welcome to my hut."

"Wow! These guys are poor. Look at that, he doesn't even have a bed, just a cot on the floor," said Cissie.

"This is my wife and son, Petesa and Tuthriefor."

Cissie looked around, "Boy, is this place ever small, all three of you live here?"

"Of course not."

"I was going to say," Cissie, in fact, did say.

"Petesa's parents and mine live with us as well. We would not expect them to sleep out in the cold."

"Talk about living in a shoe."

"Yes and we are starving." Petesa threw open the small kitchen cupboard. "See it's bare. Help us, King Trab, help your subjects."

Bart slumped down. "I have so many starving subjects, I don't know what to do."

Bart sat on the thrown in his mansion. "Here I am, king of a country, I have this houseful of cool stuff, stuff I've always wanted, and I can't enjoy it at all. I keep feeling guilty about having so much. Darn this guilt. I guess you wouldn't know much about that huh, Batgirl?"

Batgirl simply bowed her head.

I mean here I am surrounded by all this stuff, stuff that back home would be worth… Hey yeah! That's a great idea." Immediately Impulse rushed off.

Things began disappearing randomly at the mansion, the silver wear, the furniture, and the curtains. Soon there was nothing left in the giant mansion, it was stripped completely. Cissie saw the room she had chosen. Her room was empty save for a single cot on the floor. "Hmm..." she thought.

"Hmm…" said agent Fite contemplatively, "Let me get this strait, you want access to private international banking records, and you want me to help you. I'm just supposed to hand over ultra secret information to a couple of kids?"

"Yes that's right." Robin handed him a photograph. "His life might depend upon it, sir."

"Hmm…" He looked briefly at the photograph. "A chance to protect Impulse. How is this sweetening the pot?"

"That's not Impulse, look at the eyes, that's prince Trab of Markden. He's got a bounty of 25 million on his head, money that you could help us track down."

"I'm sorry I'm sure you have the best intentions but that would mean breaking department regulation and that's something I can't do. I'll see if we can get our own people on it however. Let me see the numbers." Robin hand him the leather bound book. "Hey wait, these are very familiar numbers, Hmm…" He rubbed his bearded chin, "What I'm about to tell you, I tell you as Anita's dad, not special agent Fite. This is personal knowledge not secret information, but those type of numbers are the ones found when you try to buy a large amount of gold."

"Gold, if he converted it all to gold that means… Come on Anita, we've got to get back to Markden."

Cass bumped into a wall behind her, she shone her penlight in a tight ark, in the area they were in. "Oh no, a dead end."

She bent in front of Kon, his breathing was labored but the color had started to return to his face.

Then she heard it in the distance, footsteps, and they were headed her way quickly. Then she saw the flame. A blue flame was fired from the tunnel into the small exit less area, Cass ducked down out its way. The hot blue flame struck the wall behind her.  She could feel a large wave of searing heat from above her.

Kon picked that moment to awaken, his half closed eyes looked at Cass as she had her back toward the wall. "Cass, wow did I ever have a weird dream, I got shot by Deathstoke."

Trab sat in the corner completely at peace.

"Well, well, three wounded animals. Don't worry, I'll make sure to put you all out of your misery. Now I don't have any spare kryptonite bullets handy, but I hear you're quite vulnerable to flame." He pointed his flamethrower at Superboy.

Cass tore at her hair in desperation, funny thing was it didn't hurt nearly as much as when she had previously pulled at her hair in desperation. Then she realized it wasn't her hair that she was pulling at but the shaggy moss behind her. The same shaggy moss that moments before had been hit with a flamethrower. "Oh wait it's not the flaming hare of the Deeps, it's the flaming hair of the Deeps." Suddenly Cass spoke up addressing Deathstoke, "Mr. Deathstoke sir, I hope you don't mind me asking, but how hot does that flamethrower of yours get?"

Still weakened, Kon turned to her, "Cass don't make nice with the bad guy, help me."

Deathstoke pointed the flamethrower at Cass. "Do you really want to find out how hot it is? You'll find out the degrees of pain, several thousand of degrees in fact.  It'll be worth it to toast you two even if there's no bounty on your head."

"Um…that's why you're doing this right Mr. Deathstoke? You're a hired assassin right, if I had enough money I could hire you right."

"Cass you're not really thinking of hiring an assassin? Have you gone nuts?"

"I'm afraid I'm a bit out of your price range, little girl."

"But not out of his," she said pointing to Trab.

"You're kidding right? He's the leader of what got to be the poorest nation on earth."

"Yes but he's monarch and therefore holds the rights to this land's natural resources"

"What natural resources? Sheep?"

 "No this!" she pointed to the shaggy moss. "You hit it with your flamethrower and it isn't even singed, in fact it's still cool to the touch. The hair is soft and pliable and will make an excellent substitute for, another fire resistant material that is expensive and unsafe, asbestos. And this resource is renewable, it seems like it grows out of the very rock. Do you realize what kind of demand there's going to be for this product?"

Deathstoke stopped and contemplated this. Then he reached into his pocket and withdrew a slip of paper, he went over to where Trab was seated, and handed it to him. "I want 50 million dollars deposited into this account by this date next year. A word of warning, don't try and double cross me or I'll come looking for you, and next time I'll bring more green bullets," with that he left.

Cissie sat around the bare mansion, Cass, Kon and Trab came into the door looking the worse for wear.

"What happened to you guys you think you ran into Deathstoke, the terminator or something with how late you are?"

"We did run into Deathstoke, he was about to kill us all, but then we bought him off with 50 million dollars."

"Oh," said Ciss.

At that moment they saw, through the windows of the mansion, that the supercycle descending. Robin and Anita came running into the mansion. Robin was carrying a strange device that looked sort of like a small handheld satellite dish.

Robin pointed this device at different sections of the walls. "The money was converted into gold. That's something that can be transported very easily, I wonder if it possibly might still be hidden here, in the house. By the way, what happened to it? It looks like it's stripped bare."

"Robin, I've been over every inch of this house, let me tell you there's no gold bars." Bart entered the room.

"Bart you're back what have you been up to, what happened to all the stuff from the house?" asked Cissie.

"I've been giving my subjects a little sunshine in my reign."

Suddenly they heard shouts from the street.

They ran outside, one man jumped up and down outside his hut. "Rejoice! Behold my pantry is full and in my stone hearth oven bakes a loaf of bread, along with a few knishes. Loaves and knishes! It's a miracle!"

Robin smiled, "I take this is your doing Bart."

"Yup, I went to Alabama and hawked all the stuff from the mansion, then brought groceries with the rest. I think the state of Alabama is out of flour. 25 million in gold buys a lot."

"25 million in gold, but I thought you said there was no gold."

"There isn't any. I sold it all, to by money for food. "

"You mean all across the country you've filled peoples cupboards with food?"

Trab embraced Impulse. "Indeed you are the one who is like still water, you quiet the rumblings of hunger in my people."

"Like still water I still don't get it, that is so not Bart." Superboy turned and looked to the shallow pool beside him, and quietly reflected on things.

"Where exactly was the twenty-five million?" Robin lowered the device he was scanning the walls with.

"It was Downstairs behind the secret door, with a dead guy. C'mon I'll show you." They headed off downstairs.

Kon faced Anita. "How did you guys find out about the gold, did you go to the world's greatest detective."

"Sherlock Hemlock?" said Impulse and Batgirl together.

"Who?" Robin was puzzled.

"You know, -It is I, Sherlock Hemlock, the world's greatest detective-,"

"I'm sorry Bart." Robin shrugged his shoulders.

Impulse sighed, "Some people have no culture."

The gang followed Bart downstairs. Impulse pointed at one of the walls. "The dead guy is behind this wall, I phased through it."

Robin felt along the wall until he found a seem with his fingertips. He pried on the seem slightly. The entire section of wall began to slide sideways. "Looks like it's on rollers."

Behind the wall was an elderly figure. He wore thick round glasses on the end of his nose, and he had thick sideburns, the stiff figure was clutching at a large chest, which had been opened. "The gold bars were in that." Bart pointed at the chest. " In case you were wondering where Uncle Skrewdge's money been."

"It is indeed my uncle," Trab said.

"He looks like he's been frightened to death, almost like he'd seen a ghost." Robin examined the body.

"Perhaps my evil Uncle Skrewdge passed away, when he was presented with the image of my ghostly father. The ghost who told me the future. A marvelous future it is thanks to you. How can I repay you?"

"Hey, can we be knighted." Kon asked.

"I wanna be dark knighted." Impulse said enthusiastically.

"You wish to be ignited, but you just recently avoided that?"

"No knighted. You know, I dub thee Sir. Kon, and then you bring your sword down my shoulder."

"You seem to keep wishing to be injured. I'm afraid I can't help you, perhaps a good physiatrist."

"We don't need any reward, that's not the reason we do what we do." Robin announced.

"Well you are always welcome here, among my people. I officially make you citizens of Markden, Maxine."

Maxine begin to tie blindfolds around the eyes of the members of Young Justice.

"What's the deal with the blindfolds." Anita demanded.

"It is our custom."

The gang could feel what seemed like sacks being pulled over them. Their blindfolds where removed. They opened there eyes to see, that they were now wearing robes of an off white color, that all off the citizens of Markden wore.

"Hmm… It's your custom to robe us blind then," said Cass.

"Looks like our work here is done." Kon crossed his arms.

Bart turned to Batgirl. "Ya know Batgirl, it's nice to meet someone who, like myself, is pretty innocent. I keep thinking about those assassins upstairs, what drives em to do what they do, I can't even begin to understand them. I guess people like you and me, we'll never really understand people like that, huh?"

Batgirl turned to him. "Yes… never really… understand."

"The Proper Pauper Prince's Prophecy of Prosperity." m