He rarely heard her curse, let alone in her own language, which he barely understood. Inza had been at the burns on her wings for hours, but getting almost torched by Kryptonian heat vision was enough to scare anyone. A portal appears behind John and he sees an unexpected sight behind Fate. Bruce and Diana back in costumes that look resemble yet depart from any previous appearance. He wonders what went on at the Island, but that would have to wait if they ever chose to divulge it. They got lucky that Shayera's fall did not hurt the baby, which took away some of the pain as she had worried about falling straight down onto her abdomen. Diana grips her friend's hand as Fate begins his attempt to regenerate the burnt portions of her wings. Batman stands shoulder to shoulder with John who is standing close to her as well with his hand in her other hand. A strange glow encompasses them all for several moments before subsiding to reveal the wings were healed and she gradually sits up before flapping them a little glad to not feel pain from it.

"So what news?" she asks noticing the change in Diana's look.

"The Gods have been forgiving too."

"That's news but what about this business with Cadmus and Ra's?"

"Vic and J'onn were taken as you know, but Vic managed an escape after Crane's toxin turned the inmates into fearless people."

"Now that's a little scary."

"Yes, but we handled it with some help from my old partners."

"They went back into costume, well no more a risk than you took."

"We are all at risk whether we have a costume or not."

"What about the Outsiders?"

"Many were captured, probably being held in cells in Arizona, as for the others they are holed up in Central City."

"You put an Outsiders safehouse in Wally's town?"

"It was not on purpose, it was stragetic in one sense of the word, but as for the rest, it was just to provide direct routes between places."

Persephone appears a second time and Diana reacts as she did before except this time, the goddess has come for John and Shayera. Bruce tells them to go with her and John wonders why, all they say to him is you'll see on the other side. They too encounter the spirit of Wally West who like before is overjoyed to see them, Shayera nuzzles against him, he feels solid, but anything can be whatever one believes it in this place. Wally feels Shayera's belly and laughs at John, calling him Dad, which makes Shayera giggle a little.

"Now that's what I always wanted to see again among other stuff, you two happy together, laughing, making a family, imagine that Stewart the family man and Shayera the mother with wings."

The visit seems as long as it was before, but in the real world no time passes at all so when they come back, everyone is where they were before. Shayera is still wiping her eyes as she follows Diana and Inza to the latter's garden. As for Bruce, he takes the time to slip out of the costume for a bit, and Stewart converses with Fate, with Nelson.

"Have you deciphered who Ra's new allies are?"

"I believe the former Superman is one of them, as is Vandal Savage, there are others, but he has been very specific about who goes off when."

"A precision tool, not a blunt intstrument, naturally."

"What news of J'onn?"

"Near as I can find with magic is that he is no longer in Gotham."

"Coulda told you that one right off the bat."

"Someone did contact a Karen Fenton in Central City in the past several hours."

"You mean Kara..."

"Yes, that is one of her aliases since having gone into hiding, the message came from someone called Faraday."

"Government agent, not affilitated with Cadmus, but has enemies in that bunch."

"She's gone ahead to meet him."

"What? who has she got for backup?"

"Vigilante and Palmer."

"That's doable."

"Glad you agree."

***

"Why are you helping us Faraday?"

"Let's just say I don't share Cadmus' definition of patriotism, I make my own."

"I'll take that, so where is he?"

"You are looking at him."

"What?"

"It's an image inducer, makes me look like the good agent."

"Why the charade."

"He told me its a test run for this thing."

The real Faraday walks over with an image inducer that makes him look like J'onn's old human disguise.

"Almost like looking in a mirror eh?"

"Yes something like that."

Kara interrupts again asking about the countermeasure to Achilles.

"It is something we thought about using if the Lords ever showed signs of well what's happening now."

"Who is we?"

"The agency name is unimportant, we simply don't share the directives of Cadmus, the world governments never acknowledge us publicly, but believe we are the best countermeasure to Cadmus. Cadmus represents at best aggressive tendencies towards the belief that costumed heroes, superpowered or not are dangerous to global security."

"What do you represent then?"

"A world that understands that it cannot do everything on its own, a world where we recognize the symbolism of what people like you did and can do on a daily basis, of course many blame supervillains on superheroes, but we aren't so perfect either, we hold you to higher standards than ourselves so your failures make us look better, less evil."

"I can respect that and thank you for bringing him back to us."

"Consider my offer..."

"I'll run it by the others, but until then I'm content to be as I am."

"Oreos for your time."

"Thank you."

A team armed with kryptonite enhanced lasers appears overhead with jetpacks on their backs.

"Damn I was sure nobody saw me."

"This is me, three to transport now!"

Kara, J'onn, and Faraday vanish as they try to close in on them. Hardcastle would not react well thinks the team leader, but at least they had gotten close enough to shoot a tracker onto Faraday. The signal leads them to an abandoned factory in the outskirts of Central City except what is waitng for them is a ready team of Outsiders operatives. Faraday had been suspicious of why they were reluctant to fire even though he saw exactly the kind of weaponry they had on them. Vigilante opens fire on the jet packs sending a few crashing into the building though relatively unharmed save for some minor cuts. They tie the lot of them up before evacuating this safehouse then scrambling all its systems to prevent anyone from finding anything useful.

"What else can you tell us Faraday?"

"My associates in Kasnia have heard of a pregnant woman being snuck between safehouses there."

"You think its her?"

"Its our best guess though they conceal her face well probably out of fear of him figuring out where she is."

"What made her decide to leave after all this time?"

"Something did, but who helped her out, she couldn't have gotten that far on her own."

"We think her helper was Savage, he is the most likely candidate we can think of for the moment."

"Perhaps its time to pay Queen Audrey a visit, you know her title is merely ceremonial now as the country verges on civil war."

"Vandal almost became a dictator there if not for what we did in the months before..."

"Yes, well hopefully she won't react too badly to us."

Bruce and Diana travel across the skies away to Kasnia as Fate goes in their place to Arizona where an increasingly agitated Vic Sage demands to know why they are not there and why he is working with Fate now.

"Talia isn't it?"

"Yes its her."

"He is placing her above the Outsiders."

"No he is not, but remember Ra's having a Kryptonian on his team proves a problem especially as security footage that Faraday told us about shows him with different powers now, which may mean Kryptonite might do nothing to him."

"You are gambling Talia knows the new one if there is a new one."

"Its a risk, but we are all risking our necks. I'm sorry if your threads and numbers are not lining up like your mind says it should, but a lot of things are going wrong with our world, get used to it."

"I'm sorry Nelson, you are right, now let's get going."

The other detective, the patterns seer actually made an apology for being his usual direct self or at least for letting his grievances override the task at hand, either way or anyway there is still hope. There are things that aren't things that people must hold onto, believe in, otherwise what kind of a world is worth saving anymore, not to resign to absolutes, but Fate learns to trust in magic, as Question relies on the convergence of patterns, as Batman endures through emotions like compassion. What drove Ra's or Kal, nobody could say perhaps except for them yet even then there are two worlds that can emerge from this scenario, one from stopping Ra's and the other from failing to stop him.

The difference is as close as the next second and as far as the most distant star, but Fate always knew there is far more than what his senses tell him to be so.

A/N 1: Faraday is back, part of another supersecret organization that wants to help the Outsiders, also knows about Talia's whereabouts, of course that means a trip to Kasnia.

A/N 2: Fate and Question, they obviously have different views of the world, of the universe, the argument between them is like seeing that perspectives can occasionally align to where things like mathematics and sorcery find commonality.

A/N 3: Still debating whether or not to have J'onn get his abilities back if Faraday's claim about a countermeasure to Achilles is genuine.