Previous stories in the series include Hairy Situations and Situational Hair, Midst of Rough Earthliness, Discordant Hormoney, Harmonious Discourse, and Legacies and Traditions. I suggest reading those first if you want to have any hope of understanding this story. ;)
Question canon observed: The six issue Question mini, Devil's in the Details, which establishes Question as a "city shaman" and "walker between worlds." (Meaning he talks to cities, actual steel and cement cities, and gets answers.)
(Booster/Beetle slash, Bug/Skeets het.)
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5th Chapter
A question of time.
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Where is he? What nest does the Blue Beetle call home?
"--cloudy tomorrow--"
"--new apartment--"
"--around the corner--"
"Keep going straight, you can't miss it."
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It was getting late, but Junior wasn't worried yet. There were many things that could have held up his parents on their run to the store. Crowds, lines, shapechanging demons from the bowels of Hades, disruptions in the space-time continuum, any number of things.
He was checking the news during commercial breaks on the movie channel, in any case.
And he had called for take-out.
Which was why he didn't bother checking the peephole thingum before opening the door when he heard the knock. Though if either of his dads asked, he would blame his height.
What he found on the other side of the door was a man with no face. Junior's eyes darted over the man in search of take-out, just in case.
"You're not Ted," the man said flatly.
"You're not Take-Out Gary," Junior retorted. He liked Take-Out Gary. Take-Out Gary had interesting bits of metal on his face and sometimes told Junior knock-knock jokes.
"You know him," the man said slowly, cocking his head consideringly.
Junior wasn't sure what to say to that so he just said, "You're still not Take-Out Gary!"
"...No," the man agreed. "Where is Ted? I need to speak to him."
Junior almost said that his parents were at the store, but then it occurred to him that this was a stranger and according to TV strangers could be dangerous. So it might not be a good idea to let on that he was all alone until he could get his hands on a blunt object of the whacking variety. "They're close enough that if I screamed they'd be here in seconds to blast you into your component atoms," he replied cheerfully.
The man looked up, head slowly turning as if he were scanning the apartment with x-ray vision. "There's no one else here," he said impatiently. "When will Ted be back?"
"Who wants to know?" Junior demanded, a little worried by the certainty in the man's voice when he said there was no one else there. Maybe he really did have x-ray vision. That might be a bad thing, because even though Kon had x-ray vision and Kon was cool and his big brother mentor thing, so did Superman and Superman wasn't so cool and his dads weren't speaking to him.
The man seemed to consider that for a moment, tilting his head. "Good question," he said finally.
Junior blinked up at him in surprise. "I thought so."
The staring quality of the man's facelessness seemed to get a bit more stare-like and whereas before he had only been standing over Junior, now he was downright looming. "Where. Is. Ted?"
"He's gone," came a voice from behind the man.
The man whirled around and to the side, body language screaming surprise and more than a little wariness. With him no longer blocking the doorway, Junior could see Max with his prototype hologram up. Except for the pale peach skin and the brown eyes that had been timed to blink at regular intervals, he looked the same. He also looked upset.
"Gone where?" the faceless man demanded.
"I don't know where!" Max snapped. "Just gone. Not dead-gone or kidnapped-gone, gone-gone. As in Bug hasn't been making much sense except to say he's apparently stopped existing!" His eyes were wide and his skin was paler than usual, and Junior wondered if the hologram was set up to react to his thoughts. And if so, that was seriously cool, and helped distract him a little from what Max was actually saying.
"I..." Max swallowed, arms wrapped around himself, and looked at Junior. "She screamed. I...I didn't even know she could scream. I mean...I know she sends her voice through the comm to talk to me because I'm not used to talking..." He gestured vaguely toward his head with one hand. "But...she screamed. Skeets and I barely got her calmed down as much as we did."
"But...how'd she know?" Junior asked slowly, lowering an eyebrow in confusion.
Max stared at him for a moment, then said, "She planted nanites on him. I thought you knew."
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"Look, it's like...it's like blood to her. Some...family bond thing, I don't know. It's still new to me. Maybe in five, ten years I'll get the intricacies of the life and mind of the AI, but for now I still think like a human. The nanites are her way of feeling connected to people. Me, Ted, maybe you. Probably you. Because if we were all human and related the way we pretend to be, that's where the blood connections would be. I'm only adopted in the sense that I was originally born to someone else. As far as Bug's concerned, what I was was just the raw materials and the whole nanite thing and turning me into...this was giving birth to me. Sort of a born-again thing without any pesky religion.
"Anyway, the difference is, the nanites send reports. Signals. Not...anything big, it's just sort of white noise, usually. Like hearing someone's voice in the other room, or you leaving that damn comm in your ear all the time. If she wanted to, Bug could find us no matter where we are. ...Well, as long as there's nothing interfering, like that giant EMP. But even then...it'd still be there. Somewhere. But now...now the nanites in Ted aren't sending anything. Just bang! Gone. Like they never existed. And...when it happened, Bug flipped out."
"So...dad's gone?" Junior asked.
The three of them were sitting in the living room, movie channel long since turned off. The faceless man had finally introduced himself as Question and Max (shedding his hologram like a pair of too-tight shoes) said he'd heard of him. Some vigilante from Hub City. Apparently he'd worked with Blue Beetle before. Junior chose to assume that he was trustworthy since he knew his dad's real name.
Even so, he'd discreetly gotten out the metal baseball bat Ted used to hit Zombie Max with and hidden it nearby. Just in case.
Max stared at Junior for a second, then lowered his eyebrows and frowned. "No, I just explained all that for a laugh. He's actually waiting outside with an April Fools Day cake. Gosh, you're just too clever for us."
Junior made a face at him. "And he has nanites in him?"
"I thought you knew!" Max said defensively. "Don't you trust me?"
Junior cocked his head thoughtfully, then smiled. "I'll trust you until you lie to me, Max."
Eyebrows furrowing, Max slowly said, "Okay..."
"So where's Bug? Is she okay?"
"Better," Max said with a shrug. "Worried. She and Skeets are contacting Oracle. I was supposed to make sure you knew what was going on."
"Where did the signal stop?" Question spoke up suddenly.
"What?"
"If the signal is constant, where was it when it stopped being constant?" Question clarified, staring at Max.
For a brief moment, Junior wondered who would win a staring contest between the two of them and had to stifle a laugh. TV had led him to believe that it was generally frowned on to laugh while people were missing. But still, it was kind of funny. Question didn't appear to have eyes, and he'd noticed that Max didn't seem to blink anymore. He could move the little red pupil in his stylized eye enough to indicate he was rolling his eyes, but no blinking.
"That's...actually a good question," Max said, sounding surprised.
The blank stare somehow gave off the impression of smugness, though the voice was only wry. "Naturally."
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Where is your hero, Chicago?
"Who do you mean?"
"--haven't seen him."
Where is your azure-skinned champion?
"--left me--"
"--gone--"
Tell me where the bug man has gone, Second City.
"It was so bright--"
"--unnatural, if you ask me."
"--here today, gone tomorrow."
Tell me, Chi-town. Where is the Blue Beetle? Where has he disappeared to, Windy City?
"--know he's just next door, but it seems so far away--"
Tell me.
"--hard to see that far--"
"--our future--"
"--who knows where I'll be in ten years--"
"--feels like he's still here--"
"--years go by so fast--"
"--staying with his son, so I wouldn't worry."
Thank you, Checagou. Wild onion, mighty Hawk.
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"What the hell's he doing?" Max hissed to Junior.
They stood off to the side, leaning against a building while the Question knelt by the exact patch of sidewalk that Max had declared to be the last known whereabouts of Ted Kord. After a question from Junior, he had added that there was probably a pretty good chance that Booster was wherever Ted had ended up. Now, the faceless man was silent and motionless, the fingers of one gloved hand pressed against the cement.
"...Communing?" Junior suggested, shrugging cluelessly.
"Look, I've been scanning for info on this guy and there's not much favorable press."
"If I listened to the press I'd think my dads were bumbling half-wits," Junior retorted, rolling his eyes. "Do you have a better idea?"
"Better than communing with ground-in sidewalk gum?" Max crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. "Not right now, but give me five minutes."
"Yet-to-come," Question spoke up suddenly, startling the two teens. He rose from his crouch and turned to them. "It feels like yet-to-come, of untapped potential." He turned his faceless gaze back to the patch of sidewalk. "He's been pulled into the future by a...very familiar force."
Max raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
"Good question."
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Question's mysteriously-acquired information was quickly relayed to Oracle, amid Max's claims of an informant by the name of Bazooka Joe, and she said she had some leads she could look into. To which Question replied that time was of the essence, as well as casually mentioning that he wasn't welcome in Metropolis. Oracle was silent for a moment, then said that she would get back to them soon and closed the connection.
They had gotten back to the apartment by the time she contacted them again with news of an old satellite, doused in tachyons and neutrinos, that facilitated time travel.
"Bug thinks she can locate the nanites...in Ted, through the time field," Oracle informed them. "We just need a way to let them know to get close enough to the satellite in their current time to do so."
"Wake me when you think of something," Question said, then stretched out on the couch and promptly fell asleep.
Junior and Max stared at him for a long moment, then Max turned to Junior and said, "Dare you to poke his face."
"Boys," Oracle chided. "A little focus here."
They mumbled reluctant apologies and started brainstorming.
Question slept on undisturbed.
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He knew this place, and the Other. But not yet.
The space of a few yards spanned gaping years between them. He stayed where he was, though the space grew continuously smaller, barely perceptible.
"Where is Ted Kord?"
The Other spoke: "Here. Safe."
"Is Booster Gold with him?"
The Other spoke: "Yes."
"You're responsible."
The Other spoke: "It was a favor. And an accident."
"Sloppy."
The Other spoke: "Self-flagellation."
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. "There is a plan. A time travel satellite."
The Other spoke: "What a world."
Beneath his skin, he smirked. "One such."
The Other spoke: "Perhaps."
"What do you know?"
The Other spoke: "Nothing I can tell you. You'll know everything I do eventually."
"Hmn. Clever."
The Other spoke: "I thought so. But then perhaps I'm of two minds on the matter."
"Perhaps." Knowledge stretched between them, taking years and an instant to reach. "You have what you need?"
The Other spoke: "I'll pass it on."
"See you in a few years."
The Other spoke: "Barring paradox."
"Of course."
They nodded to each other and turned away, letting the ever-closing gap bear them away.
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"If we could put a message somewhere we could be sure they'd find it--" Oracle was saying.
"The message has been sent and the plan is in motion," Question said abruptly, making Junior and Max jump in surprise. He sat up and gazed at them blankly. "Now we have to prepare. And wait."
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