Tempest: Chapter Eighty-Eight: More Questions Than Answers
AN: Slowly but surely building up to the Epic Fallout Take II
Hope everyone's staying safe in this pandemic.
"Are you sure your partner shouldn't be a part of this conversation?" Avery asked with a furrowed brow, watching the four children through the window as they left in arms, laughing about something the adults couldn't hear about. "He is a speedster."
"Its also my job to keep him safe," Barry sighed, "and he's been through a lot…he lost his parents in January, I don't want him worry until its actually something to worry about."
"I think we can safely call it something to worry about, Junior," Jay said, though Barry doubted he'd disagree with keeping Wally in the dark; Wally was family and he was practically Jay's grandson, the less harm done to him, the better. "What exactly is it that we're dealing with?"
He'd noticed there was no sign of Johnny Quick or his daughter Jesse, who were technically speedsters, though they used a formula to gain their speed; everyone sitting in the West-Allen house had gained their speed through the Speed Force.
"Not sure," Avery was the first to admit, sharing a glance with Max, "I think its after the Speed Force, whatever it is…and its already pretty fast."
"We don't need another Zoom on our hands," Max admitted grimly.
Barry thought that was incredibly ironic given how Zoom and Reverse-Flash had always been obsessed with killing him rather than a pair of technically retired heroes and a young upstart.
"Besides, it would have to know about the Speed Force in order to want it, wouldn't it?" Barry pointed out. "And there's one place it could've gotten that information."
"Where?" Jay asked doubtfully, frowning deeply. "Zoom and Reverse-Flash aren't exactly the carrying tales type."
Barry arched an eyebrow. "I guess you've never heard about Black Hole?"
Somehow it was more concerning that all the speedsters in the room weren't familiar with the group, but Barry had only found out about them because Amy had brought them up in the first place, surprised that he hadn't ever heard of them.
"Is this still speedster-related?" Avery asked dubiously.
"It's a terrorist organization that's obsessed with the Speed Force and finding ways to exploit it…I didn't even know what it was until Amy mentioned it," Barry told them all.
"How'd she find out about it?" Max asked dubiously.
It was easy to forget that not everyone was in the know about what Amy did on her off time.
"My daughter occasionally moonlights as Oracle, sort of a center for information to those in need," Barry smiled thinly. It was the nicest way to explain it without bringing up all the negatives of her work as Oracle.
"Is that why she's only allowed to use her laptop in the living room when you and Iris are here?" Jay asked archly and Barry sighed; evidently Amy had been the one carrying tales.
"Its…not not the reason why she's grounded," Barry conceded, thinking of how tightly she'd clutched him after he'd pulled her out of the sewer.
Max rolled his eyes and Avery snorted.
"I think the biggest concern is Wally," Max said, bringing them back in.
"Wally? Kid Flash?" Avery queried. "Why?"
"Because the kid's literal untapped Speed Force potential." Max crossed his arms. "We all got zapped in adulthood, but he's still growing and the Speed Force is growing with him…he's probably getting faster every day." He looked to Barry who rubbed the back of his head awkwardly.
It was true. Barry might still be able to run laps around Wally now, but he was much faster than he was when he'd first started and Max was right, it was different for him.
"How do we know that whoever it was that's been chasing active speedsters down isn't actually after him?" Jay asked seriously. "After everything going on with those possible meta-human kids…"
Barry really didn't like to think of Amy disappearing again -whether by her own design or by kidnapping- and somehow, he thought it would be even worse to deal with Wally's disappearing act, because he wasn't as equipped to survive in the wild as Amy seemed to be hardwired to.
He ran a hand through his hair. "God, I really hope not…the kid's been through enough."
They all had, really; it'd been a rough year.
"Your secretary let me in."
"Of course, she did," Bruce tried not to sigh loudly, but sometimes that was the only way to deal with Amy. "What can I do for you, Amy?"
She'd changed since the year had begun. She was quieter and more cautious and that wasn't an all-together good thing. She'd always worried Bruce, he couldn't deny that, but just as soon as she'd come into her own, it was like she'd retracted into her shell…and if Bruce was a betting man, he'd say that there was a very specific reason that she'd stopped using her atmokinesis.
"I finally got the rundown on the tech that we swiped from Cheshire," Amy smiled thinly, probably still pissed about how she'd been tossed in the sewers; from what Dick had said, she'd pulverized a punching bag and had probably broken a hand for an hour or two. But that's all Dick would say about it. He tended to be very tight lipped about Amy, and Bruce could guess why. "Normally it only takes a day, but this one took a bit longer because it's comprised of an alien element."
That did explain why it'd taken so long for her to get him the results. "What kind of alien element?" he asked, sitting behind his desk.
"I think something called Starro?" Amy came around the desk with her laptop to show him the results. "I'd never heard of it, but I guess it's a starfish-shaped alien species that possessed innate psychic abilities…ever heard of them?"
"Somewhat," Bruce had to concede, though it had been far before Amy or even Dick had started heroing.
"I was gonna ask Hal a bit more about it but he's still off-world," Amy admitted, "But anyways…it looks like someone found a way to combine alien biology and human technology…I'm not totally sure how it works but Dr. Palmer's interested in testing it out and he thinks that it might attach to control centers in the brain and release enzymes or neuro-inhibitors that can affect the brain chemistry, you know, kind of like Mom's pheromones."
"Always a possibility," Bruce had to agree with her there…though he found it strange that she wasn't including her own pheromones.
"And I compared them to the scans the hospital took of Roy's brain," Amy added, tapping out on the laptop to compare the black and white image to the one of the items taken from Cheshire's case. "Physically, they appear identical, so its possible that they are the same, and made by the same manufacturer."
Bruce could see the gears whirring in her head. "Just because they appear to be the same thing, doesn't mean they are, Amy."
Her eyes sharpened and the color of her skin seemed to shift to the slightest green; she was uncommonly like her mother. She slammed her laptop shut. "Well, fine," she said hissed furiously, "since no one else seems to care that Roy's missing!"
She shoved it into her bag and started to stride furiously away from him.
"Amara." Bruce hardly needed to shout to make his point, and Amy froze and automatically stiffened at the use of her full name. "I'm saying that you need more evidence, actual evidence…the reason Lex Luthor is still free is because everything against him is circumstantial. You need actual proof."
The expression on her face was downright demonic and trademark Poison Ivy. "Oh, I'll get you proof," she promised and then she was at the door, making to open it when he said for the second time "Amara."
"What?" she snapped.
"The poster you gave Dick," he said, "…it was very sweet birthday gift."
He could see how red her ears were even when she didn't turn around to face him. "It's not even the genuine article."
Bruce's lips twitched faintly. "It meant the world to him, even so…thank you."
Amy huffed in embarrassment and aggravation. "Whatever," she muttered, and she was out the door, leaving Bruce to rub his chin thoughtfully, faintly amused.
"You're sure it was her?" Doctor Spence asked seriously.
"DNA is a match," Guardian told her, eyes slightly out of focus, as they had been for months, "Project Amara is Masquerade."
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Masquerade's death had been all over the news. Supposedly her identity had been that of a young fifteen-year-old girl named Melanie Hill who had been dying of a rare form of cancer. No family had come to collect her body, she was just another orphan trying to live outside the system…the perfect kind of person to take the fall for someone who was technically a part of the Justice League.
"Well…that's certainly interesting," Doctor Spence said, a smile slowly spreading across her face.
Cadmus and LexCorps were involved somehow, Amara just knew it, and somehow Cadmus and Savage were involved too, she just wasn't sure how interconnected everything was. Scandal hadn't gotten what she wanted yet -almost, but not quite, Amara just had to be patient- which meant Amara didn't have the information that she needed, but she would. But she did know that Savage had known about the implants in Roy's head, something no one else did, and that it was LexCorps tech…
Really, Amara had too many false starts and dead ends in trying to figure out how to locate Roy.
But there was one person who'd been with Savage for an extended period of time, someone she'd never gotten the full story out of and the last time she'd heard of Steve Trevor, he was working his way through physical therapy at Diana's place.
And when Amara knocked on the door, it was opened by a dark-skinned woman with round cheeks that was very well-built and bald except for a mohawk of curly hair. Her face was very familiar.
"Hi," Amara said slowly, "I'm looking for Diana? Well, Steve, specifically, but this is her house, right?"
"Ah," the woman said, "red hair, green eyes, looks like you're up to no good? I'm guessing you're Oracle?"
"Sometimes," Amara said cautiously in return, eyeing her suspiciously. "Who're you?"
"Etta Candy," the woman stuck out her hand boldly, "former Commander in the army, current 'lady in the chair' so to speak, for Wonder Woman."
Amara arched an eyebrow in bemusement. "If she already had a tech person then why did she ask me for help in locating Steve?"
Etta allowed her inside, a grimace warping across her face. "I was out of the country for a few months, couldn't help if I wanted to…but thanks for stepping up for me. Both Di and Steve are good friends."
"No problem." Amara rubbed the back of her head, feeling a bit out of place. The only other tech-centered person she spent any time with was Dick so their whole exchange was throwing her off. "Um…do you know if Steve's available to talk?"
"Unless he's killing himself with physical therapy," Etta snorted, putting her hands on her hips, "come on, I'm sure he could use a break."
They came to a few steps and Amara was briefly stalled, a twinge descending painfully down her spine and she looked down at her feet, trying to lift them but failing. It was annoying sometimes when that happened; it was like her body had forgotten that she'd recovered from Merlyn's attack (But had she really? A voice in her head wondered, one that she shoved quickly aside).
She reached down to grasp a leg and bodily lift it to the next step, hoisting the remaining leg to remind it that she could still walk. Amara muttered a curse under her breath, forcing her way quickly up the stairs so Etta wouldn't notice, hurrying to catch up.
"Hey, Steve!" Etta bellowed through an open door. "Someone here to see ya!"
There was a loud yelp and Amara peered into the room curiously to see the man in question, slumped on the ground, grumbling in complaint. She arched an eyebrow towards Etta who snorted.
"Don't worry, he's just like that because he keeps pushing himself when he doesn't need to be," Etta stressed with a glower towards Steve, "he's fine…mostly."
"Thanks, Etta," he grumbled into the ground. "Very helpful."
Amara hovered awkwardly as Steve Trevor pushed himself up to a sitting position, surprised to see Amara there. "Amy! Hi."
"Hi," she said, teetering slightly, "I can come back later, if—"
"No, I need a break anyways," he waved her off with a smile, patting the floor next to him. "I'm guessing you finally had some more questions about what happened to me."
Amara lowered herself to sit beside him. He looked better than the last time she'd seen him, but he'd still been in the hospital then. "A couple," she admitted, pulling out a notebook, "if you've got the time."
Steve's smile was thin. "Better than physical therapy."
Etta clicked her tongue disapprovingly before shaking her head and leaving them on their own.
"Diana said you were looking into your family when you found out you were related to Savage," Amara probed, clicking her pen, "how exactly did you find out you were related to Savage?" Until Scandal got back to her, Steve was the best place for her to get any information about him.
"Diana told you I was an orphan?" Steve asked for clarification and Amara nodded. "Family was always something that was a bit like a dream to me, but eventually I had to grow up and realize my parents weren't coming back for me."
Amara tried not to think of Mardon.
"But I suppose everyone wants to know where they came from." Steve shrugged. "I just decided to keep going back as far as I could…my research took me to a man named Vandar Agd but I was never completely sure if we were actually related or if he was just a ghost story told to an ancestor."
"Not until you got kidnapped," Amara presumed and he nodded.
"I'm sorry I don't have a lot of information for you, but Vandal Savage always seemed to know more about me than I did." Steve grimaced, looking down at his legs where the atrophied muscles were just getting used to working again. "Any luck with finding your brother?"
Steve didn't know much about the relationship between Red Arrow and Storm Chaser, but it had always been plain to see that the pair were close, closer than partners; being without him must've been like being without a limb.
"Not yet," Amara muttered, writing down something quickly on a piece of paper in her notebook, "but you were helpful, thanks."
"Was I?" Steve asked absently, but she just gave him a careless wave before disappearing out the door, leaving him with Etta and her hands on her hips.
She gave him a look. "Am I going to have to lift you up to get you back into that wheelchair, Steve-o?"
Steve grimaced.
"I need some advice."
Dick snorted, fiddling his screwdriver in his hand. "If it's about Amy, I got nothing for you."
Zatanna huffed in annoyance. "You're her best friend, you literally know her the best!"
"I mean, technically Roy is her best friend, even missing, but go off," Dick muttered to himself, "and anyways, Wally knew her before I even came into the picture."
"Yeah but does she tell Wally everything like she does you?" Zatanna grated out.
Dick thought of when she'd vanished after Mardon had sent that man to collect her and had given Wally the laptop she'd used for BlackNet and streamed a single message to. "Pretty sure I'm not." He lifted his eyes, hidden as they were behind his domino mask and heaved a sigh. "All right, tell me what the problem is."
It was an awkward situation, asking for advice from your ex-boyfriend about your current girlfriend.
"Its just…we always seem to end up having arguments." Zatanna fell onto the bed as Dick shifted his chair back to give her a bit more of his attention. "And she's been distant lately…"
Dick furrowed his brow. "She's researching a new lead on Roy…she tends to cut herself off when she does that."
(She told him but not you? Talk about trust)
"She told you?" Zatanna demanded, stunned and Dick was faintly thrown off by her vehemence.
"No…" Dick said slowly. "I've just known her long enough to recognize the signs…we've been friends almost four years, at that point you kinda just can pick up on things."
That appeared to only sour her mood.
Dick didn't really understand what was going on, but he thought that if Amy was always bracing for an argument then it probably wasn't a healthy relationship anymore…but there had to've been something that caused it…maybe something that happened on a mission? Maybe it was that Amy toed more with the grey side of things as Oracle? Maybe it was because Amy had that tactile-fixation and Zatanna didn't like her holding hands with other people?
It was probably concerning that he could come up with so many reasons for them to be having issues; sometimes being perceptive had its downsides.
"Look," he sighed, putting his screwdriver down, "Amy's a complicated person and she throws herself into things without stopping to consider what's going to catch her when she reaches the end of her rope. She's secretive by nature and she's always been like that. Dating you wasn't going to change that…you want to know what she's thinking, what she's feeling, try and put yourself in her shoes." He shrugged. "That's really all I've got for you."
"Helpful, Robin."
Dick shrugged again. Amy hadn't even spoken about the fact that her thief identity had been literally killed and he wasn't sure anyone outside the family who knew that she occasionally moonlighted knew anything about Masquerade's supposed death; no one on the Team watched enough TV to have seen it on the news. She was always reserved but now it seemed more like she felt she needed to keep everything close to the chest.
He hoped that Zatanna wasn't the reason for that.
"Just think on it, okay?" he suggested, becoming just a touch suspicious of the glint in her eyes, only to be distracted when his phone buzzed suddenly. He glanced at the message, shaking his head fondly. "Sorry, I've got to go, a friend's having trouble with math and I promised I'd give some pointers."
"All right, see you later, Robin."
But once he'd gone, she remained stuck on what he said…put herself in Amy's shoes…there was a spell to do that, literally…
(What better way to get in her head than to be her?)
It had been too long and it had set too deep for Zatanna to realize how that ancient magic had affected her to the point that it had twisted and warped her mind so her scale of morality had tipped in the opposite direction.
Raquel had thought something was wrong for a while. Call her crazy, but when you lived with someone, you could pick up more clearly on changes that no one else noticed. Not that she lived at the Cave, her parents were still alive -God, that sounded bad, she did not mean it like that- but she spent a lot of time there and being the newest of the Team's recruits and being there at the starting point of Amy and Zee's relationship compared to now made it clear to see the differences.
The first thing that Raquel had learned about Amy -apart from her being an abuse survivor- was that she had a tactile fixation that usually resulted in her holding hands with any member of the Team. Raquel had noticed that she tended to stick to Wally and Robin and Artemis, though…but since she'd started dating Zatanna, it was only Zatanna or not at all and Raquel had noticed her flexing her fingers and linking them together a lot, like she'd become acutely sensitive.
And it wasn't something that had always been a thing, it just seemed that everything Zatanna didn't approve of or was jealous of had been amplified in the last month, even since Zatanna had told Raquel she was going to find a spell to make her get stronger.
Raquel thought it was safe to say that it had backfired and quite spectacularly.
And very soon she was going to have to tell Amy that it wasn't healthy to keep writing off all their arguments.
"Hey, Zee, you want any…dinner?" Raquel pushed the door open to the girl's room only to pause and stare. Her room had changed a lot in the past month, become more…witchy, if that was possible for a magician. There was a new altar on her vanity with two candles that looked freshly blown out, framing an Egyptian statue of some kind, a book of spells open there.
She frowned, easing in to get a look at the page it was open to.
"Body-switching?" she murmured, her brow creased and then it dawned on her. "Oh, shit!"
She ran out of the room but before she could shout Zatanna's name, she was overcome with a surge of energy, trying to catch the wall as she fell, but it was useless and she tumbled down onto the carpet, her world going black.
Kaldur knocked over a plate in the kitchen that shattered as he fell. M'gann careened into Conner, both falling into a pile of limbs.
Away from the Cave, Wally and Artemis both thought they fell asleep in the middle of a movie.
"Thanks for the emergency math help," Amara sighed as she pushed her book into her bag, leaving Dick to hold the door open for her to leave the coffee shop. "Dad'll kill me if I fail any more exams."
"No problem," Dick shrugged as they walked together back to his motorcycle -it seemed they were both a big fan of breaking the rules of the road. "Just…why didn't you want to do this at home? Its not Ariel, is it?"
Amara huffed a complaint under her breath. She'd only been back to Gotham about three days. "Ariel's great, no, its not her, its…I'm just feeling stifled you know?" She reached out for his hand, almost unwillingly, and Dick took it easily, practically feeling her sigh of relief when the tension went out of her shoulders. "I know the parents are just trying to keep us safe with all those meta-human abductions…but sometimes I just need some room to breathe, you know?"
"Yeah, I get that sometimes." Dick squeezed her hand and Amara smiled. "They're big on the buddy system right now, yeah?"
"Something like that," Amara said, rolling her eyes.
"How's art history going?" he asked instead and it was something else to see how her eyes positively brightened.
"I'm liking it a lot, top of the class, obviously," she rolled her eyes with some amusement. "I'm glad you convinced me to take it…it's kinda therapeutic in a way."
"Like art therapy?" Dick grinned.
Amara grinned back. "Something like that." Dick was a voice of reason, even when she didn't want him to be and it had been helpful and fun to take art history as an elective and by the end of the year, she'd be done with taking a language elective, so that would just leave her with just one.
They'd almost made it to his motorcycle when Amara pulled him to a stop. "Can I ask you something without you getting judgmental on me?"
"I would never get judgmental on you but continue."
Amara smiled thinly. "Do you think that Zee—"
But she didn't get to finish her question because she winced suddenly, pulling a dart out of her neck and went suddenly slack that Dick had to hold her up. "Hey! Amy—"
Something hard hit him from behind and dragged her from his grip. "Richard!"
The last thing he heard was her voice before the blackness settled in.
AN: Things to not try at home: body-switching spells
As always: please review!
