"I'm dying!" cries Tucker, barely getting out those few words before gasping air again. I grin, happy at my torture. He lands heavily on an exercise bench, grabbing his water bottle and alternating between drinking and breathing.

"I don't think so," I sing, and I play a new song for him: Stronger, by Kelly Clarkson (What else?). I give him one of my signature grins that is usually followed with a punch from the recipient. But Tucker can't land a punch on a dummy, let alone me.

"I hate this song," he groans, as it goes into the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" part. "Danny loved it though. Something about irony." His melancholy comment ticks me off.

"I hate your attitude," I snipe. "Fifty more laps! MWAHAHA!"

"I'm dying because I ran seven!" he cries, looking almost terrified.

"Fine. I'll call in KF and he'll run with you. It'll be fun!"

He points at me, swallowing his mouthful of water. "You overestimate my pride. As unhealthy as I am, I've accepted it."

I smile, this time prideful. "Seven almost doubles your last try. Have you been following the training schedule I sent home with you?"

"I tried not to," he whines, standing again. "But Jazz wouldn't let me be lazy!"

I laugh. Jazz is such a hard trainer. She was driven by it a little obsessively. She ran until she dropped, and her determination was scary solid. She reminds me of Bruce.

As long as they don't go beyond their physical limits, they can train as hard as they like, but I'm a little scared that Jazz is ignoring her's.

"I don't mean to offend, I promise, but are you not as invested as Jazz?" I don't really know how to phrase it. The look on his face tells me I did it wrong.

But instead of yelling, he gives a heavy sigh and sits back down, hands on his knees. "No, I would do anything to find my friends. I just... I feel like none of this will help. I'm waiting for something to happen. We still haven't found anything, and I- I don't know. I guess I'm just tired."

"I get it." I go to sit next to him. "I've solved hundreds of cases with the Batman, many of which I personally identified with. Sometimes giving your all isn't going to help anything. But somehow I doubt that'll stop Jazz."

He shakes his head. "She and Danny... They're really close."

"Dating?"

He sputters, shaking his head vigorously. "OH, no, no, no, ew no." He shakes his head once more. "The very image. No."

Surprised at his reaction, I defend, "That's usually what 'close' means..."

"No. Danny and Sam are close. The romantic way. Though they won't really admit it. But Jazz and Danny, they're... well, they're related."

"This didn't come up before," I exclaim, but my voice drops in volume.

"In terms of closeness," he elaborates, but it's almost like he's correcting himself. "Danny and Sam are close like boyfriend/girlfriend, Danny and Jazz are close like brother/sister."

"Ah." But I'm not really convinced. Jazz does act like a protective older sister about Danny. I let it drop, though. They haven't told us everything, and it's obvious that there are secrets they are trying to keep for this Phantom person. But Batman, in all his paranoia, hasn't pushed for answers, so he must not think it important or malicious. "What about Sam?"

"What about her?"

"You guys seem a lot more concerned with Danny, to be honest."

He shrugs. "They want Danny because he's a ghost. Technically, ghosts aren't allowed to be in the human world. But Sam's human. She can take care of herself. I think maybe something happened to her memory, or she's trapped in the Ghost Zone, somehow. At the very least, she's with Danny but safe."

"That's pretty optimistic."

"This coming from you?" He laughs. "I've only known you, what? Maybe three days consistently, and I can already say with a hundred percent surety that you are more optimistic than I am."

I shrug, still a huge grin. "Have you met Batman? Someone needed to contradict him. Can you imagine two stoic heroes? Ha! Should we do more training?" Tucker follows my topic-switching relatively easy, to my surprise and joy.

He sighs for a solid thirty seconds before: "Yeah... okay. But hey, can we do something more fun?"

"Like gymnastics? Sparring? Weapons? Non-gun variety. It's a make a weapon of anything sort of training."

"Why is gymnastics on that list?"

"Acrobatics are the key to any good fighter. Flexibility, speed, agility. Or, to epicly parkour on buildings. It's part of what makes Batman and I such great vigilantes."

"That's your specialty. Not everyone's. What about the other team members? What are their acrobatics?"

First I start leading him in stretches, very much so showing off. "Well... Superboy's brute strength. And anger. But he channels it well. KF is our speedster, so obviously his strength is speed. Kinda impulsive though. Zatanna is a quick thinker. She has to be, doing the whole backward spell thing. M'gann identifies personally to people; she's the best negotiator we've got, and the best psychic. Artemis is skilled in weaponry and fighting technique. She has finesse. Most determined, for sure. Kaldur is the most focused. He adapts the best. He's cool under pressure. The leader."

"Yeah, what's up with that? I'd think you'd be the leader..." Tucker can't do the splits. I ease him into a bent legs position that will help with the splits later.

I shake my head. "Kaldur's a better choice. He's mature, level headed. Knows best. I'm still learning. Teams weren't ever really my forte. I guess now they are. But I'm still not ready for a team of my own."

Tucker raises an eyebrow at me. "That sounds like you're assuring yourself."

I shrug. Kaldur still reminds me ever so often that if I want to be the leader all I have to do is tell him, and he'll step down immediately. So instead of confronting that, I ask him about his team's strengths.

"I, of course, am the most talented of the bunch." I roll my eyes and change stretch positions. "Technology, elaborate distractions, incredible looks. I'm all that. Sam is the most competent. Best fighter, instincts, street smarts. She's also rich. Danny is our leader, the powers, bravery, selflessness. Jazz is the... I want to say smartest, but she isn't really good at the instincts. I'll say book smart. She has all this knowledge, she understands how things work. There was this feud with reality a while back, and the only reason we won was because Jazz primed Danny to use ghost psychology or something. I don't know. I was on this death roller coaster. Wasn't really concerned with what they were doing. Anyway, Danny used this dude's jealousy of ghosts and so the guy used his reality powers to turn himself into a ghost. Then Danny sucked him up in the thermos." I tilt my head in question. "It's a containment device."

Tucker talks a lot. I use this as a distraction to switch stretches, using the better ones that are bit more uncomfortable, like twists. He follows without objection.

"Where was the Justice League during this? I mean, assuming it was big enough to attract League attention."

"It definitely was! Huge!" He waves his arms for emphasis. " And I don't know what happened. I think he imprisoned you guys or something."

"I missed that?"

"No, Danny erased all reality so only the four of us knew what happened. Then destroyed the Reality Gauntlet."

"Wow, you guys have cool adventures." I don't mention all my cool adventures.

"Not as cool as yours. Definitely weirder."

"Weider than a bunch of clowns killing people with gas that makes you laugh to death?"

Tucker smirks in a way that tells me I've lost this battle.

"One of the first ghosts we fought was a lunch lady that wanted to take over the world with meat." He sniffs. "It was a cruel betrayal."

I laugh until I realize he's serious. Then, I laugh even harder. "That is way weird!"

"We also had a singer that got power by people saying her name, a technology ghost that liked to set humans up together, a little kid that only kids can see that wants to stay young forever, a hunter that lives in an robotic suit-because he's a blob- and the pièce de résistance: The Box Ghost."

"What does he do?"

"Annoy, mostly. Throws boxes at people."

I laugh again at the ridiculous notion of that. Then, I stand up from my V position. "Let's start at the beginning. Somersaults."

I can just see his amazing acrobatic skills. He has zero flexibility, his fitness is nonexistent, and he doesn't have any desire to be an active superhero. But he's going to be. This is my pet project. (Jazz is Artemis's because she's the only one who can keep up with Jazz's rigorous training.)

Tucker groans, but I grin. This is going to be sooo much fun.

**Man, I wish Danny Phantom and Young Justice were mine, but they're not. They go to their respective creators.**