09:15 PM

"How does a seven foot wolf-lizard just disappear?," Superboy asked nobody in particular, thoroughly exasperated.

They had been searching Gotham for hours, with no sign at all. Monitoring news channels hadn't turned anything up either. They knew their quarry could be anywhere by now. They'd seen Robin move before he was completely transformed, and doubtless his speed had increased since then.

"He does it by being careful," came Batman's reply on the radio "he hasn't forgotten how to hide,"

"I think we may have something," Martian Manhunter, in the Watchtower, informed them "a small town several miles outside of Gotham. Several residents reported seeing a werewolf,"

"It's the only lead we've got," Batman said "give me the coordinates. I'll meet up with the rest of the team and we'll go from there,"

The town wasn't a total loss. Though the creature had, for the most part, covered its tracks well, a badly torn apart warehouse told of a skirmish between the beast and Nightwing. Blood marked the broken walls, and there was even a tuft of fur impaled in concrete by a batarang.

"That's odd," Batman said, looking at the blood "we haven't been able to pierce the skin of any of the creatures we've captured. It's one of the things that makes finding a cure so difficult,"

"Maybe it's Nightwing's blood?," Miss Martian suggested.

"Not all of it," Kid Flash observed "or he'd be here yet,"

"Kid Flash is right," Batman said "Nightwing's still using his weapons, which means he's still human, more or less. Losing this much blood would have killed him,"

"So he poked a hole in the creature, who cares?," Superboy asked impatiently.

"Even Superman with his lasers couldn't cut through the tough hide of these creatures, they broke all manner of knives. Which means either Nightwing did the damage himself and is much stronger than we anticipated, or this one isn't like the others,"

"We already knew that," Superboy said.

"But we did not know of its weakness," Batman told him coldly.

"But Robin was infected more recently than any of the creatures in the Watchtower," Kid Flash protested "he helped catch some of them even. Why would there be a weakness in the new formula that wasn't present in the old one?. They had to have designed it specifically to create that kind of toughness and wouldn't begin to do anything that might tamper with that,"

"So why does Robin have the weakness?. Or does he?," Kaldur asked.

For this, no one had an answer.

11:55 PM

It was Superboy who heard it. They had continued circling the town in ever wider circles, now and then regrouping if they found a track or some sign of violence. They seemed to be heading into the heart of nowhere, miles from anything.

Over the whistling wind and pounding of the rain and the rolling thunder, there came a series of noises. Standing in the middle of a circle of trees, Superboy looked around sharply, rain dripping into his eyes, though he ignored it.

The forest had come alive with sounds. Scratching and scraping, howling and shrieking. As he continued to stare into the underbrush, Superboy was suddenly aware of noises overhead. Looking up through the sheeting rain, he saw birds and squirrels fleeing through the branches. Day creatures awake and active at night, all running in the same direction.

And then there came the wolves. Superboy heard them first, a baying sound cutting through the night, an advance warning to all who heard it that death was hot on the heels of this pack. Then the bushes shook, revealing the first wolf, a slender black female.

Seeing Superboy, she at first pulled up short and made as if to turn back, but then her fear of what lay behind her overrode her terror of what was before her. Leaping on ahead, she cleared the way for a second wolf, then a third, a fourth. At the back of the pack was a rangy gray wolf, larger than the rest.

He took no notice of Superboy, but halted in the small clearing and looked over his shoulder. His breath clouded in the air, and he growled low in his throat. But it was a fearful sound, and his ears and tail were tucked to his body. He turned suddenly and sprang after his pack.

The wolves were followed by other animals, larger ones. A lumbering bull moose swept by Superboy as if he wasn't even there, lowered head nearly smacking into him as it passed. Springing deer leaped high over the bushes, their widened eyes showing the whites as they tried to simultaneously looking in front and behind them. Looking down, Superboy saw a flurry of activity as mice, lizards and insects all came marching through the leaves, following the wolves in their flight.

Superboy swallowed, wondering what could have frightened every animal so. And then he heard it. The sound was so loud, so unnatural, so utterly terrifying that he thought for a moment it had stopped his heart. The vibrating noise shook the trees, and their leaves fell around him like some sort of curtain.

The sound was a shrieking-roar, a deep guttural sound belonging to neither man nor beast, not even a combination of the two. It belonged to something... other.

It was so loud that it was painful, and Superboy covered his ears, wincing as the single note threat went on for a full minute. Leaves fell on him, lightning flashed, the roar sounded. All was chaos, and he could think of nothing to do but wait for the noise to stop.

The roar had stopped his thinking, it was as if he was paralyzed with fear, though he knew that wasn't the case. He just couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't even breathe. Around him, the fleeing animals staggered, stumbling to their knees, some falling down entirely. The sound vibrated the air to such a degree that it affected balance. Even the trees seemed to be strained between the desire to lean away from the sound, and the physical force of the wind which blew them in the opposite direction.

As suddenly as it had sounded, the roar was silenced. But the forest was far from quiet.

Though the animals had all gone by, the cries of the wolves resounded still, a warning to all that they should flee if they valued their lives, for a creature had come to the forest. A hellish beast, far more dangerous, far more deadly, than any predator in the world.

Dizzy and suddenly exhausted, Superboy fell to one knee, gasping for breath.

"Did you hear that?!," Kid Flash's voice was on the radio, on the edge of panic.

"What was it?," Miss Martian asked, as if anyone would know.

"Don't panic," Batman's voice was stern, clearly he had not missed the fear in their voices.

"I don't know," Superboy said between breaths, in answer to Miss Martian's question "but whatever it is, every animal in the woods is racing to get away from it,"

"It's Nightwing," Batman stated flatly "it has to be,"

October 6th, 12:01 AM

No sooner had this information sunk in than a rustling sound began in front of Superboy. He felt the urge to flee, something he couldn't ever remember feeling before. He had never run from a fight, at least not willingly. But some instinct, perhaps the same one which had made the animals run, told him that this was no mere beast, no mere mutant creature sprung up from a lab accident.

A flash of lightning temporarily blinded him, and when he could see again, a pair of gleaming eyes were staring back at him from out of the underbrush. Instinct, the same which bade him run, told him that those eyes were not of this world, or any other. They belonged to nothing on Earth, or on any other planet for that matter. Never before had there been eyes like that and, likely as not, there never would be again either.

When the thunder which had almost immediately followed the lightning subsided, Superboy could hear the creature growling quietly, more to itself than him. Each breath was accompanied by a guttural snarl, a self perpetuating anger, as if the very fact that it was alive annoyed it to no end.

"Guys," Superboy spoke slowly into the radio, never taking his eyes off the glowing orbs before him "I think I may have found Robin. Or possibly Nightwing,"

There was a flurry of responses, and the beast raised its head sharply, rustling the bushes. Superboy still couldn't make out its form in the shadows, but the impression he got was that it was big, and semi-upright, standing on two limbs but leaning forward to compensate for its top-heaviness.

"So now what?," Superboy asked, a sudden burst of anger temporarily obliterating his fear.

The animal's head snapped up higher, and the eyes seemed to advance without the physical distance between them closing at all.

"Now you kill me?. And what would that accomplish?. Would it make you human again?," there was a growl of response, but no words "I know you can still understand me," it was something of a lie, because he knew nothing of the sort.

He had no idea what the creature still knew about being human, if anything. But that it hadn't torn him to pieces yet gave him a small, irrational hope that maybe it somehow recognized him on some level. He realized that this was probably a bad thing, as Robin had attempted to kill him earlier.

The growl rose an octave, and the creature advanced slowly, the forest shaking behind it. It moved slowly, but with a self assured air that said it had no fear of Superboy at all, that its caution was mere habit. Superboy noticed that it didn't disturb a single leaf on the forest floor, and realized it could move utterly silently. It was making noise for his benefit.

The wide-set eyes were slightly to the sides of its head, but aimed forward, more bird-like than wolfish, in spite of the broad skull and canine snout. As it slowly slipped into view, entering the clearing which was lit only by the moon which struggled to make itself seen through the clouds, Superboy realized that there was something amiss in it.

It took him a moment to realize that the heavy rolls of scaled skin were absent from its sides, that instead there were sleek black feathers. He noticed other differences. The fur on the creature's head extended to its lower jaw and throat, and was more hair-like than spiked. The arms were shorter, and so were the fingers. In addition to the claws the other creature had on its feet, this one had a lump on the inside of each ankle, which revealed itself to be a pocket of skin protecting a massive sickle-shaped claw, whose tip just barely peered beyond it. This creature was also bigger. Maybe ten feet long.

Superboy saw all this, without realizing the significance of it, though he thought he did.

"You're not Robin," he said aloud.

The creature's head snapped to the left, and it eyed him out of its golden right eye. Within that mysterious eye lurked all the colors, all the shades, of the universe. It was a shifting mist of color, whose form and function was perhaps as alien to Superboy as he himself was to Earth.

A forked tongue lashed out from between crocodile teeth, the lipless mouth parted in an eternal grin.

A supernatural scream from above made Superboy look away from the creature on the ground. He didn't think about it, and a moment later wished he hadn't. Subconsciously, he had started to feel less threatened by the creature as it failed to attack him. The unknown sound from above had him on his guard instantly, but made him forget the animal before him.

It hit him with the force of a two ton truck falling from a great height, flattening him and plowing him into the ground for about ten feet. Searing pain lanced through him as the sickle claws were unsheathed and buried in his flesh. The right claw entered his left shoulder just below the collar bone, the left sliced right into his gut as if he was made of butter.

Superboy was unaccustomed to pain. He was almost impervious. The feeling of the claws raking through him ripped a scream from his throat. The claws dug deeper and the wolfish head rolled towards him on a flexible neck. The jaws parted, revealing a mouth full not only of teeth and drool, but also coated in blood, with strips of skin and muscle, and even chunks of bone stuck between its fangs.

Superboy realized he'd made a mistake. The scent of death on the creature's breath told of things which had died hours before, and begun to rot in the warm mouth. Nightwing could not have accomplished this in just five minutes. And yet it was plain that the forest creatures were running back the way Superboy had come, the way Robin surely must have. That indicated that Nightwing had become a beast, one more frightening even than Robin.

But all of this meant that it was Robin who now pinned him, and was about to bite his head off like he was an animal cracker or gingerbread man. But he was sure he remembered the scales on the under jaw of the creature in the photo, and was absolutely certain that it had possessed no feathers.

The shrieking sound came again, vaguely reminiscent of the roar of dragons from movies, yet far more terrible than that, malice in every note of the feral cry.

The creature on Superboy swung its head towards the sky, its eyes narrowing and a low hiss escaping from it. It clenched and unclenched its 'hands', and Superboy was painfully aware of the talon-nature of its hind feet as it gripped tightly to him.

Then came the roar. Closer than before, louder than before, angrier than before. Superboy was deafened by it. He thought to defend himself, but the creature's hold was stronger than he was. He lay there pinned, and furious at being so.

He had taken on beasts of greater size, greater bulk. There was very little which could pierce his skin. Then a sick feeling began to come to him, a sensation he recognized with horror. It was like Kryptonite was being injected into his wounds. The creature's claws?. But how?.

The pain paralyzed him, and he realized he was utterly helpless.

High above, there circled another creature, this one nothing like the first, despite the wolf-lizard parallel. Its forelimbs were as long as its hind, with talons on each, including a thumb on the front. It had the overall form of a movie dragon, save for the same savagely wolfen head, this one on a shorter neck, thicker. It was a creature whose form favored power over speed.

It had been this one who roared. The first creature stepped off of Superboy, but he still couldn't move. The poison in his system made that impossible. He only now noticed the telltale scores down the beast's side, wounds pouring blood, probably from that early encounter in the warehouse.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought.

He received another shock, which he should have seen coming. The beast on the ground spread great black wings, its feathers shimmering as if they themselves had tiny lights on them. Within the creature's very feathers was that same all colors, all shades impossibility that was in its golden eyes.

It roared an answer to the circling beast and, as it did so, the feathers began to fall from its wings, revealing a tough leathery skin, like that from before.

Superboy swallowed hard as he realized what he should have, what they all should have, from the very start. The thing that made these creatures perfect killers, that made them of interest to the Light. The reason Nightwing had been able to draw blood when they had not. The reason the creature had been able to poison Superboy, as though it were designed for just that.

These creatures were shape-shifters.