She flinches as the battle rages, as fire burns around her. First came the plague, then the war, and she knows, deep in her soul, that it will never end. Her parents beckon her over to the cruiser they've stolen, and she follows because she doesn't know what else to do, and she's sick of this fighting. They escape Mars, watch as it falls apart from the space above, and begin traveling the stars.

Years pass. They go from planet to planet, never staying for long. The fate of the Martians makes them a rare commodity, and they are sick of the fighting. They know other White Martians have survived, but they still seek to wage war, so they hide from them as well. M'gann hears the slurs, the hatred, and she desperately hopes to never prove them right.

They continue to drift, until — an opportunity. A Green Martian, named J'onn J'onzz, survived. He now lives on Earth, a celebrated hero. Perhaps… well, they are sick of always running, always fleeing.

Perhaps Earth could be their new home.


It is a mistake.

M'gann watches as her parents are executed, and stifles her tears as she turns herself into a human and escapes. J'onn J'onzz might be a celebrated hero, but he is Green and they are White, and that makes all the difference here, as much as it did on Mars. The White Martians have invaded once, twice, and the government of this world would dare not risk another attempt.

So she escapes. She cannot be herself here, so she must become something else. A human, first. And, when the Titans discover her, a Green Martian next. It holds, for a while. The Titans are kind to her, even after the Titans of Tomorrow, even after discovering the truth. Even as her future self gets stuck into her head, makes her do things she never wants to do, they never turn her away.

Instead, they bring her to J'onn.


Things are awkward between them, at first. Her Green Martian disguise doesn't fool J'onn in the least. He is a telepath with magnitudes of more practice and experience than her. He knows what she truly is almost immediately. White and Green, differing philosophies, always at each other's throats. She can feel those old prejudices rear up as they try to converse within their minds, as he helps expel the foreign presence in her mind.

But. They are the last of the Martians. The last of their race. Those prejudices don't matter, and sometimes, M'gann wonders if they ever really did. She does not want to be a White Martian, because people say they are evil. But she is a White Martian, and so were her parents, and neither of them were evil. Nor is she, she believes.

She tells this to J'onn, and to her surprise, he agrees.

"If there's anything that time on this planet has taught me, M'gann," he speaks, rubbing a hand in her red hair, "it's that your appearance means nothing when determining your character. You'd think that us Martians, as shapeshifters, would have realized that on our own." He smiles bitterly. "You'd be wrong."

About a month later, he asks her to call him 'Uncle J'onn'.


The years pass. M'gann splits her time between Uncle J'onn and the Titans, slowly growing more and more comfortable with bringing elements of her true appearance into the one she uses for the public eye. She makes friends: Stephanie Brown and Kara Zor-El. She does not find love, but that's fine. This, all of this, is enough. It is a mistake, coming to Earth, she thought when her parents died. But it's not a mistake anymore, she realized — just a choice.

A choice that gave her a life. A good life, beyond all the drifting, all the fear. Her parents may be gone, but the loss doesn't hurt as much as she thought. She is happy.

She is happy, and then Uncle J'onn dies.


It's Despero, of course. It always is. The Flame of Py'tar won't allow for anything less.

Despero won't allow for anything less.

He attacks them and them alone. The rest of the Justice League is far away, dealing with a crisis that she is all but certain was Despero's doing. That might as well be a death knell for them both, because it takes more than one team to take Despero down. He never dies, he comes back stronger and stronger every time. And now, after he's died dozens upon dozens of time, he's far beyond the scope of their reach. The only thing he cannot touch is their telepathic bond, their minds having melded so many times that M'gann cannot remember a time when her Uncle J'onn was not with her.

Until now, that is.

Until he burns her Uncle J'onn, turning him into a barely living husk. He tosses the body toward her, crooning over his victory, the final defeat of his greatest enemy. And as he does that, M'gann cradles the body of the last Green Martian, beseeching him not to leave her, to not make her the last Martian of them all. And he…he cannot promise that, they both know. So he just whispers comfort into her mind, tells her of all the happiness he had, all the happiness she brought him. And then…and then

It's gone.

He's gone.

She feels the energy enter her, feels power never felt before, and screams.


She has always had great potential as a telepath, she knows. Uncle J'onn always told her so. But Uncle J'onn is gone now, and has left all this power in his place. She wants to avenge him, but she cannot, because Despero cannot die. At least, not permanently.

So she improvises.

Py'tar may be magic, but it is still fire, still painful, and it is easy, so easy to find. A basin of amethyst flames, and even as she feels the fear course through her, there is a triumph in her eyes. This is her revenge.

Despero comes for her, of course. But that was the plan all along.

Another time, another place, this would've been suicide. But M'gann's mind has been bolstered by her uncle's death, and it is so easy to knock away her opponent's own telepathy. To pierce his defenses, to break them all down, damaging them one by one by one until his mind is nothing more than a ruin. To cut the connection between the mind and the body, to kill him.

Despero might need multiple teams to be vanquished.

But that is only because they can never afford to kill him.

M'gann has no reservations about that now.

He dies, and already she can sense him about to be reborn in the fire below. She needs to be quick. She uses her telekinesis to remove the binding talisman from her person, and quickly mutters the spell taught to her. She has practiced the words for hours, even days, to get the pronunciation right, and the talisman is woven by the collective hands of Zatanna and Doctor Fate. She cannot afford a single mistake.

She says the words, drops the talisman into the fire. And then, finally, Despero is reborn, and tries to escape, to finish the job.

Only to find that he can't.

Only to find that he's still in the flames, the darkening flames, dying and being reborn again. And then dying and reborn again. Death and rebirth, ad infinitum. All the while, M'gann watches, a deadness to her eyes.

It is after the tenth reincarnation that Despero survives long enough to demand an explanation. When she doesn't answer, he dies again. The next time, he demands again. He dies. He is reborn. He dies. And it continues and continues, until…

"Please," he begs.

M'gann stares down at him, a coldness to her. There is a hole in her heart that will never be filled again, all because of him. She shakes her head.

"Go," she says. "Go and suffer."

She leaves.


It is a curse, this power. It is too much.

At first, she could sense the surface thoughts of unshielded minds, and those alone. Then just the surface thoughts of everyone but the most practiced mind warders, telepaths like herself. And now — now she could sense them all, not just the surface, but the deepest and most inner parts of their mind. There is not a mind in the world she cannot control, cannot invade.

M'gann doesn't think anything of it, until she enounters Dr. Psycho trying to use his powers to rape a woman. The sheer rage she feels overcomes all her reason and by the time it's gone, Psycho is broken, a drooling man on the ground, stripped of his power. M'gann feels her own power grow, and refuses to admit to herself how addicting it is.

It's just one time, she tells herself. One time. Until she finds Psimon trying to break the mind of a young boy for bumping into him. Until she finds Hector Hammond trying to take over Hal Jordan's life again. Until she keeps encountering others like herself, abusing their gifts for their own personal gain, or worse yet, to harm others for the sake of their own satisfaction.

The thought infuriates her more than anything else. They don't deserve this gift, she thinks. So she takes it from them. She takes and takes and takes and she doesn't stop. And the others, they try to stop her, and why can't they understand? This is for everyone's good! The power is better off with her!

She keeps going and going until…until…


"This isn't what he would've wanted, M'gann," and it's Clark, of course it's Clark.

"Please, M'gann," and Diana too, and there's Jason as well because Bruce and Dick are both long dead, and so is Tim, "stop this. J'onn would've never approved."

And why should that matter? she screams into their minds. He's dead, he's never coming back! What he would think doesn't matter.

You're wrong, Jason tells her, glaring hard as memories of his lost family bombard her, what the dead would think matter very much.

It cuts, she won't lie. But she won't let Jason of all people keep that over her.

She blasts all their minds, not enough to permanently damage, but enough to knock them all away. She doesn't want to hurt them, they're still her friends, Uncle J'onn's friends, but they don't understand. They will, one day, when they see the fruits of her labor, when they see how much good she's doing.

That opinion holds for a little while.

And then they send the Titans after her.


The Justice League is one thing. The Titans are another.

The League are allies, acquaintances, even friends. But they were her Uncle J'onn's friends first, not hers. The Titans, though? The Titans are family. She has been one of them for so long that she can't imagine being anything else. The team may change from time to time, people join and leave all the time, but there is no place on Earth she considers home more than a Titans Tower.

She begs them not to stop her. Not to fight her. They beg back. They can't reach an accord.

They fight. M'gann will remember it for years to come, haunted by the shame.

No matter how many times she knocks them down, they keep on getting back up. They're Titans — that's what they do. Another time, another life, she would've admired it, taken pride in it, because she's a Titan too. Now, however, it's just frustrating. She doesn't want to hurt them. She doesn't.

But they're not going to stop.

Until they do, because determination can only match the body so much.

There's only Conner left at the end. Kon is a psionic himself — what he lacks in telepathy, he makes up in telekinesis tenfold, and his mind is so shielded that M'gann had never been able to bypass it until she got the boost from Uncle J'onn. Now, with all the power at her fingertips, it's an easy thing to flick away.

She doesn't want to do it. She hesitates. And then…

Do it, M'gann. Kon tells her in his own thoughts, weary. It's the only way you're going to stop me. The only way you're going to stop any of us.

She stares at him.

She can't do it.

So, all she can do is collapse to her knees and cry.


They don't imprison her, even though they should. It wouldn't be effective in her case, they say. She's too powerful to be contained, they say. It's all lies. They won't do it, for Uncle J'onn's sake.

Instead, they force her to atone with 'community service'. She's forced to join the Justice League, forced to take Uncle J'onn's seat on the council. She's under constant watch — the Watchtower is her home now, not Titans Tower. When not on missions, her powers are only allowed to connect people together, to heal trauma, not create it. M'gann does it all without complaint, because she's lucky to have this much.

The years pass. Friends continue to die, or retire. A year before Uncle J'onn it had been Bart and so came Wallace. Garth decides he wants his family more and gives up his seat to Kaldur'ahm. Then Kara falls to Doomsday and Reign, and then Stephanie retires to have a family of her own. Cassie is gone too. Hal Jordan falls and Kyle Rayner takes his place. Then Clark dies, and Kon takes his place, and then Hippolyta dies so Diana goes to Themyscira and brings back Donna in return. Tim died before them all.

And through it all, M'gann watches, always at arm's length. Every loss hurts, and the hole widens, and M'gann fills it with a new addiction. She settles on Chocos, because Uncle J'onn loved Chocos, and she loves Uncle J'onn, and it gives her a pleasant buzz that helps her forget the pain.


It's when Donna comes that Era 2 begins, and things begin to change. Surprisingly, the change begins with Jason. At least, for M'gann.

Jason is technically the second-most experienced hero on the Council, after Donna. In reality he's the most experienced because Donna has been on sabbatical for ten years. As far as being on the Council, though, he's the longest-tenured member. By the time Wallace, the next-tenured member (and, ironically, the youngest member of the Council, if one went by mental ages) had joined, Jason had been a member for three years.

He also used to be the most controversial member of the Council until M'gann and later Kaldur joined. While the younger members are only tangentially aware of his time as the Red Hood, for older echelons of the superhero community that 'phase' had been an all-too-real memory. There are crimes Jason has committed that might never be fully forgiven. If it weren't the great number of external factors that played a part in the process, including Jason's own solid redemption and atonement, it's doubtful he would've been accepted as Batman, let alone as a member of the Justice League and its Council.

But that was a decade ago. Now, the feeling has greatly diminished, and while his actions might not be completely forgotten, they've certainly been forgiven. Jason has redeemed himself, Jason has changed, and he's proven that time and again. And while they've never certainly been close before, they are kindred spirits in a way. M'gann imagines that the only reason he hasn't opened to her before is because of that standard Bat Paranoia of his. His father had certainly been the same way, though Jason is better about.

(M'gann remembers reading the file, the first time she joined the Justice League. How Jason could ever forgive his father after that, she'll never know. It made her wonder if she had ever known the real Bruce Wayne, the real Batman, at all.)

There's a certain kindness in letting her probe his mind. His thoughts are dominated by his family — his children, his sister, the army of godchildren and honorary nieces and nephews who call him 'Uncle Jay,' and aren't afraid to ask him for help. The close friends that have helped him become the man he is today. There is darkness and pain, yes, but it's filled with so much love that M'gann feels warmer just by being in it.

Jason is the first mind she truly melds with in a long time, and he is unquestionably her favorite.


After Jason, the others soon follow. If the Batman, by nature the most paranoid superhero on the planet, is willing to trust her with his mind, then what other reservations do they have? Soon M'gann is filled with Kyle's vibrant images and Wallace's incessant chatter, of the pulse of Kaldur's calming waves and the warmth of Donna's bright thoughts. It is Kon, however, that holds the special place in her heart. He has empathy, compassion, understanding. She has not forgotten that day, she never will, and she is glad they've managed to reestablish their friendship.

(And if her heart beats a little faster and her smiles are a little wider, well, who cares? She likes Hiyori, can see how much Kon loves her. Stepping away is a little easier, after that.)

M'gann no longer feels so alone. Nothing will ever fill the hole Uncle J'onn left behind, but there's plenty of more space to fill beyond that. And with that, the hole no longer feels so large and hollow, and if there anything she is grateful for, it is that.


And then, they die. They all die.

First it was Kon, and that one always causes M'gann to stifle a sob, because it was so soon after Van was born. Then it's Jason, and even though it's the kind of death he wanted, lung cancer will always be nothing but a cruel way to go. Wallace hurts, and Kyle hurts even more, and then there's Donna and that is the worst of them all because there was a time when M'gann believed she would always have Donna. Then Kaldur retires and he dies and M'gann is alone, alone, alone.

M'gann is last. She is always last. The last of her family, the last of the Martians, and now the last of Era 2. A remnant of an age long gone by, a relic of the past. Was that how Diana felt when Clark died? No wonder she was so ready to leave.

The memories linger around her for three more years until her end finally comes. Despero, of course, because some fool managed to break the binding she put on the Flame of Py'tar over three decades ago. The constant cycle of dying and resurrecting, the parody of a phoenix's life, has driven him mad. He starts killing and killing and M'gann knows what she must do. The price to pay for revenge is two graves and a grief-stricken girl had made the choice for her a long time ago. And finally, years after she had healed from the loss, the universe has come to collect.

She says her goodbyes, pays her respects, announces her successor for her seat. She updates her will, parsing her belongings to the few loved ones she has left and the descendants of those she does not. Then she goes to the new Doctor Fate and collects the final item she needs to finally end her war with Despero once and for all.

They find each other on Mars, because Despero is nothing if not cruel and he wants to end her and her planet in one go, to destroy the legacy of his two greatest enemies. And then, they duel. M'gann has held back for so long, the power she stole brimming at the back of her mind, rarely ever unleashed. But for Despero, who has been enhanced continuously by his flames, it is barely a match. Even with decades of combat experience behind her, she can barely keep up with him.

But she does, because she has no choice. And eventually, through the creative use of a teleporter, they find themselves at the Flame of Py'tar once again. She clinches him with all her strength, and binds him back into the flames, and draws out a new stone with her mind — one that negates and destroys all mythical properties of an item. Pressed against the chest of Despero as they burn in the basin, it will extinguish the Flame for good. But only if she keeps it pressed to him, and holds him close.

So, she burns. Like Mars before her. Like Uncle J'onn before her.

Fire is the death of all Martians, after all.

(M'gann is always the last to go.

But still, she goes.)


J'onn blinked.

He was still falling. The memories he viewed were still repeating in his mind. It was more than he had ever dared to look at, for anyone before or anyone after. J'onn could ruminate over them for the rest of his life, and he almost does, before he remembers that he still has a job to do. So, righted himself and ascended back up the void.

His arrival to the chamber was greeted by another snarl, but this time, J'onn was prepared. He darted forward, gently taking the struggling M'gann's head, and pressed their foreheads together. The fission of psychic energy between them sparked as he slowly connected their minds again, merging their mindscapes together, synergizing them as one. It is a rare technique, one that only could be initiated by the most powerful and experienced of telepaths. An intimate one too — the last time J'onn performed it had been with his family.

(This woman is family too.)

The other J'onn had done this with M'gann a few times. That means she would be remember, even long after the decades that passed after his death, the feel of his mind. If he could just prove to her that he was real

The room around them transformed, beginning to resemble the forests of Mars before it all went to hell. Visions of his most private memories begin to play around them. And through it all, their minds remained connected, the bond between them beginning to grow and solidify. A moment stretched on, lasting for what seemed like eternity, until…

"Uncle J'onn?" a small voice whispered.

J'onn pulled his head away, and stared. M'gann was watching him, hope in her gaze and tears in her eyes. Slowly, he nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Almost immediately, the golden chains that bound her arms shattered as a powerful wave of telepathic energy burst out throughout the mindscape. The merge broke, and J'onn found himself thrown out of the mindscape and back into reality.


J'onn opened his eyes slowly, gradually blinking them more and more rapidly as he slowly got to his feet. M'gann was kneeling before him, her head down. He crouched down in front of her, gently taking her shoulders. "M'gann?" he said softly.

Slowly, she awoke. And when she did, she stared up at him. "You're him," she noted, "and at the same time…you aren't."

He swallowed. "I am not the J'onn you knew, M'gann. Just a past version of him. But even so…it is good to meet you, my niece."

M'gann placed a tentative hand on his forearm, before suddenly surging upwards to wrap her arms around him. J'onn froze for a moment, before smiling and returning the hug. His heart hasn't felt this light in years. He was…happy.

"I've missed you, Uncle J'onn," M'gann confessed quietly.

J'onn knew he couldn't say the same, because this was the first time they had met from his perspective, so he simply hugged her tighter.


They lingered in the embrace for only a short while, much to both their regrets. There would be more time to bond later. Unfortunately, right now they were on the job. "What do you remember?" J'onn asked.

M'gann bit the corner of her lip nervously. It was such a human thing to do, J'onn noted fondly. "I remember…Savage. The others. And then…" she used her hand to mimic an explosion. "Light. And then I was stuck in my own mind, trying to fight off the mind control." Her eyes suddenly widened, and her hands went to her mouth. "Oh my God! The others!"

J'onn watched as his niece's eyes glowed scarlet for the second time. After a moment, she began to curse, and grabbed his hand, urging him to fly with her. "They're here! I sensed them fighting!"

The Martian Manhunter bit back a curse. "Savage must have put them under mind control too, and sent them after their own families like he sent you after me."

"He said, right before he transformed us, that while we wouldn't be killing him, we would still be doing a lot of killing," M'gann remembered, her white skin growing eerily paler, "this must've been what he meant."

"We will not let that happen," J'onn stated with conviction. "Who do we go after first?" he asked her.

Miss Martian bit her lip again, thinking the question over for a moment. "Jason," she finally answered after her deliberation.

J'onn raised a nonexistent eyebrow. "Jason?"

"Batman," M'gann elaborated. "My Batman."

"Ah. Gotham Knight."

"Gotham Knight?" she asked, bewildered and slightly amused.

"The superhero identity your friend has been using ever since he came back," J'onn explained.

M'gann tilted her head, letting out a short, breathy laugh. "I should be surprised, but I'm really not. It figures he'd rather make a new one than go back to that one," she said fondly, mostly to herself.

"What do you mean by that?"

She waved him off. "It's nothing, Uncle J'onn. At least nothing that matters anymore. Now c'mon, we need to go." She began floating towards a wall, and after a moment, J'onn followed her.

As they began transversing through the underground maze, J'onn connected their minds again. Not that I'm protesting, but why do you think going after your Batman first is best?

Well, for one, no matter how good a Batman is, he's still baseline human. He'll be the easiest to subdue, especially since he won't be expecting us. M'gann sent back over the bond. For another, he's the best strategist out of all of us. He'll know what to do next, who we should go after first. And for the last reason… she trailed off.

The last reason? J'onn prompted her.

Nobody likes fighting family. M'gann noted wearily. Not like this, at least. But out of all of us, nobody hates it more than Jason. It…it brings back a lot of bad memories.

J'onn had nothing to say to that. He had a feeling that if he pushed any further, he wouldn't like the answer.


"An energy pulse mechanism," Dick groaned as he crashed into the ground. "Why the hell do his sticks have an energy pulse mechanism!"

Bruce grunted. Unlike Dick, he had managed to keep enough wherewithal to land on his feet, skidding back on the ground to one knee. "He must've kept it hidden for some reason. Perhaps a secret weapon of some sort?"

"But that thing is powerful!" Dick pointed out as he slowly climbed back to his feet, watching as Jason silently crossed his escrima sticks together. "If he had just blasted all four of us with that at the start, he could've easily taken us all out! There has to be some other reason why he hasn't used it until now!"

His father grunted again, this time in agreement. Together, the two of them engaged Jason again, ignoring the pain their bodies were in. While they had grown more familiar with Jason's style over the course of this fight, it was a paltry advantage compared to the in-depth knowledge Jason had of their own fighting styles, up to and including their double-teaming. And, as shown with powerful pulse of energy he had just used to knock them down, the second Robin had absolutely no issues lording the disparity of technology levels to his benefit at their expense. Especially with a suit that boosted his physical abilities to metahuman levels, which, Dick hazarded to guess, was on Deathstroke's level at least.

In short, the fight had not been going well for them at all.

Almost instinctively, they had agreed on a plan — disarm him. But that was difficult; Jason, as Gotham Knight, only shifted his weapons occasionally, usually because his fights rarely ever lasted this long. This Jason, this Batman, shifted his weapons constantly. He'd slash down with one sword and toss the other up into the air and the next second it would be a stick, brimming with electrical energy as he twisted around to strike them on the side with it. And then he'd merge them both into a single sword and pull it back, and they would just barely manage to evade it, leaving only a graze on their sides.

That was just one of the many complicated maneuvers Jason seemed to have, and moved through them with such quickness and fluidity that even Dick, the acrobat of the family, had a hard time keeping up. This was a man that was not only used to being in a fight, but also being in one on end, with both singular and multiple opponents. Every attack was meant to be swift and temporarily crippling, except now, under Savage's control, they had a lethal edge to them. And with Jason having so many different ones that he could easily flow in and out of, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ward them off. It was only because Bruce and Dick's own combined experience as combatants that they hadn't been killed yet.

Eventually, their luck finally ran out. Jason managed to separate them again, kicking Dick to the side and drawing out a bola pellet from his utility belt, tossing it at his older brother. One look at it and Bruce quickly realized it was not any ordinary bola — it glowed a sickly green as it wrapped around his eldest son, and as Dick struggled to escape it, it shocked him into submission. He wasn't quite knocked out, but the glassy look to his eyes made it clear that he was out of the fight for the time being.

Enough. "Stop it, Jason!" Bruce yelled as he charged at his son, "Break out of it!"

If Jason was listening, he either didn't hear him or wasn't in a position to carry out his orders. He engaged Bruce again with the escrima sticks, both of them glowing an eerie silver, pulsing with every hit that Bruce blocked. Then, suddenly, another energy pulse expanded out from them, not as strong or as powerful as the first one but still disconcerting. Bruce shook his head as he stumbled back, just barely managing to block the kick Jason aimed at his head after pocketing his sticks. That had been a faint, however, for the powerful blow to the gut that Jason drove into him with his right hand after using his left to grab purchase on Bruce's suit and pull him forward.

Bruce stifled a gag even as Jason delivered a hammerlock blow to his back, crashing him face first into the ground. Before he could recover, he felt Jason take his right arm, his dominant arm, and stretch it backwards, and giving it a pointed twist. The first Batman bit down a scream as his arm was wrenched out of socket, dislocated, possibly even broken. It was finally too much. He curled into himself, clutching his arm, prone as Jason leisurely grabbed one of his sticks, transforming it into a sword. He held it high above his head, like an executioner's axe, before slashing down.

Only for the blade to be knocked out of his hands by a well placed Birdarang.

Jason glanced at the direction of where the weapon had come from. Cass and Tim were both standing, both looking ready for a fight. Cass had fallen into a stance, once fist stretched out and the other reared back, while Tim had his bo-staff back in hand with a grim look on his face. Jason turned his body fully to face them, now completely ignoring the currently invalid Bruce outside of tossing another bola at him to restrain him. He drew his other stick and shifted it back into a sword.

There was a stillness and then the two sides were clashing. Tim and Cass had been trained as a team at Jason's insistence, citing how they covered each other's weaknesses, so they had some solid combos of their own. But those combos, again, were at Jason's direction — Jason had been training them just as much, if not more than Bruce had been for the past several months. He countered them quickly, breaking them apart and dodging them with almost contemptuous ease. Eventually, Tim retreated to watch while allowing Cass to continue engaging their brother, desiring to form a strategy while she held him off.

Cass' body-reading ability meant that she was having a better time at it than Bruce and Dick had, but it didn't take long for Tim to recognize that Jason still had the advantage. Not only was he able to block her blows, he was able to counter them with his own, many of which Cass was barely able defend herself against. It wasn't just because of the enhancements from the suit, Tim quickly realized — it was because of his foreknowledge again. Cass was the only member of the family to outlive Jason in the last timeline. That means Jason would've been a regular sparring partner of the adult Cass, who was unquestionably infinitely more experienced and skilled than the current version. Compared to her, this Cass must seem woefully inadequate.

He knows how to fight us better than we know who how to fight him. That is the biggest advantage he has over all of us. Tim quickly deduced. So the only way to win…is to fight in a way he doesn't expect us to fight.

And suddenly, Tim understood exactly what they needed to do.

"Batgirl!" he called out to his sister. She quickly retreated backwards, kicking off Jason's chest for good measure to keep him at bay as she landed back next to her brother and partner. Cass glanced at him, silently asking him to speak. "Switch," he said.

He could see her eyes widen behind her mask, and then she gave him a single nod. The two tensed again, once again facing Jason who was watching them expectedly. Once again, they charged in together — except this time, it was Cass that darted away while Tim faced him head-on. While Jason couldn't express any surprise at this, Tim could tell he was fumbling slightly over this change in tactics. Tim wasn't stupid, he knew he couldn't fight Jason head-on as he currently was, let alone beat him. But he was small and nimble and could keep dodging, a sufficient distraction while Cass used her superior speed to do sneak attacks where she could.

It was usually the other way around, because Tim didn't have the skill Cass had. He could quite easily get killed. But the other way around was what Jason expected, and that wasn't something they could afford to do anymore. Doing what Jason expected here and now would just get them killed by Jason himself. And once the deed was deed, their older brother would never forgive himself for it once he finally came to. Tim had read Vandal Savage's profile before, knew of the man's sadism — he wouldn't have put Jason under his control and sent their brother after them if this wasn't his intention. Tim refused to let that happen.

Even if that mean having to fight Jason himself. Even if that meant having to beat Jason himself.

The strategy worked out well. Jason, for the first time since the fight started, was floundering. Tim could tell he was expecting a bo-staff whenever Cass attacked him with her fists and feet, and whenever he was off-balance Tim would manage to strike him then. Slowly, ever slowly, they were beginning to beat him back. It was a heady feeling that Tim tried not to get drunk off of. They weren't out of the woods yet, after all.

As if to echo his thoughts, Jason retreated back, making a quick bank to grab his discarded sword. He suddenly flicked something on them, and the edges of the blades began glowing a luminescent blue.

Tim and Cass couldn't help it. They stared.

Energy blades, Tim groaned. Because why the hell not?

Every time they thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, the universe seemed intent to prove them wrong. With all the different, fantastical weapons at Jason's disposal, the entire fight was starting look like a bad sci-fi movie. Tim lamented his plight even as his sister and him tensed as Jason once again began to furiously approach them.

And then, their brother suddenly and quite literally froze.

"Enough, Jason," an unfamiliar voice, unquestionably feminine, called out.

The siblings whirled around to see Martian Manhunter floating inside their room, next to a bald, white-skinned woman with red eyes, wearing a similar suit to the alien next to her. Miss Martian, Tim quickly deduced, stunned.

Miss Martian flew towards his brother, as Manhunter lifted his frozen form into the air. Slowly, with a flick of her hand, she disarmed him, before straightening out his body into a less awkward position. She cupped his chin, pressing their foreheads together.

Then, to the shock of all the Bats, she disappeared into his head.


Well, I hoped you liked this chapter. It was fun diving into M'gann's head. And yes, she does have some lingering feelings for Kon. It's more of a nod to Young Justice than anything else, and I don't know if it will go anywhere. Kon is still in love with Hiyori, after all, and M'gann would know and respect that.

Next chapter: the counterattack!