Ch 23: Frustration

AN: Forgive me, lovely readers. I have no excuse. I've had the time to do this, and knew what needed to happen, I simply lacked the motivation to fight with the problems it had and fit it together. Eventually, I just had to cut giant chunks of stuff out. Anyways, this isn't great, but hopefully it does its job… And the good news is, after the next few chapters, I have most everything written (unless I get more bunnies, but that would be a good thing!) so there will hopefully be pretty regular updates until the end!

XxXxX

Chicago. Istanbul. Sapporo. Angle down.

Gotham. Lisbon. Beijing. Angle down.

She's here somewhere. Wally knows she is, and he's going to find her. It's only his second pass down the earth, after all. He just hasn't looked everywhere yet. She's fine. She's just waiting on him, wherever she is. She has to be. He can't lose her again.

Jacksonville. Cairo. Shanghai. Angle down.

He needs to look faster, but Wally's already feeling the pull of the Speed Force. If he's too slow, he might lose her to the Anomaly. If he pushes it any harder, he's not going to be able to stop. Wally doesn't know what scares him more.

No. That's not true. He knows exactly which frightens him more. It's the question of her fate, not fear for himself, that keeps his pace steady.

Guadalupe. New Orleans. Kuwait. Angle down.

Wally nearly runs Shayera over as he passes through Havana. He doesn't know how they tracked him down; he ditched his comm on his first pass through Star City. Shayera's not her, though, sister or no, so he dodges her outstretched wings and keeps going.

Dick blocks Wally's path in Mumbai. They must've made the effort to figure out his search pattern. Well fine. If they're going to waste resources trying to stop him instead of trying to find her, then Wally doesn't need them. He swerves around his best friend, and keeps running.

Unsurprisingly, they've coordinated intel. John doesn't give Wally a chance to avoid him. One moment, he's racing through a jungle in Uganda, the next he's slamming into a glowing green wall made of light. He's caught in John's spectral fist and hoisted far into the air before he has a chance to recover. Dammit. John's got him good and caught.

"Let go of me!"

"No. You – stop squirming! – need to calm down." The emerald grip around the speedster tightens and Wally's forced to stop struggling.

"I'm plenty calm! Stop interfering!" John's not listening to him anymore. He's calling the Watchtower, requesting their teleportation.

"Stop! Let me go! I have to find her!" Wally doesn't stop yelling until they've phased onto the Watchtower and M'gann overrides his voice with her own mental inquiry.

"Wally! What happened?" Ten pairs of eyes are watching him with concern, but Wally only notices the flash of gray that's missing.

"She's gone! It found us and she tricked me away and I couldn't get back and she's gone! Now letmegofindher!"

John's grip tightens in response to his renewed struggles and Wally cries out in frustration. "Please!" No answers him. No one even moves. In the face of their staring, concerned looks, the fight drains right out of the Scarlet Speedster and Wally stops struggling. It takes a lot of effort to fight, and too much of Wally's energy is balled up in a knot of worryfeardenial to continue. Said knot grows with every passing heartbeat; Wally thinks he might choke. It seems to take all of his strength to get out the words, "I can't live without her again."

Wally realizes John's ring is now longer holding him down. Instead, it's Diana's hug supporting Wally as his knees grow weak with emotion.

"Shh. Wally. It's okay to cry," she says as she gives him a gentle squeeze. A moment later, there's another hand on his arm; Kaldur is offering his silent strength and support, as always. Feathers brush his back as Shayera joins their hug. Suddenly, they're all there. John's ruffling his hair, M'gann and J'onn are soothing presences in the back of his mind, Dick and Conner have pulled Clark into the group hug with them. Bats doesn't join the embrace, but Wally sees the man – who had apparently recovered from whatever the attack had done to him – quietly shooing gawking Leaguers out of the room.

Diana whispers to him again, "We're here for you. What do you need us to do?"

Wally feels both incredibly loved and incredibly empty. He pulls his family in as tightly as he can, thankful to have such wonderful people around him. Still, he's missing the most important one, and he can't let that stand. His resolve hardens, cutting through the knot in his chest. He grits his teeth, and draws back enough to stare back at their worried faces.

"I need you to help me take down the Anomaly."

XxXxX

Dick fills them in as they move to a more private area than the main bay. Everyone – save Batman, unsurprisingly – agrees to a temporary mind link to more efficiently share data on the Anomaly. In this way, it takes only moments for Dick to catch them up on the highlights of their discoveries, however few they may be.

"That's all you two geniuses have got?" Wally's words are harsh, but there's no venom to them. As stressed and angry as Wally wants to be with them, he knows that none of this is his friends' fault. They're only trying to help him.

Dick seems to sense this, and doesn't call Wally out on his rudeness. His reply is all business. "We have been able to identify several patterns, but our analysis was… interrupted, so we haven't been able to conclude anything from them. There's also a lot more data we haven't even been able to get through yet. We've set up algorithms to help sort it, but the system only has so much processing power."

"Then it's a good thing we have some living supercomputers on our side." Kaldur cuts in, nodding towards Wally, Conner and Clark. "Certainly, working together, we can suss out enough information to nail down its M.O. and narrow down a location?"

"Kaldur's right! We've never actually tried to find the Anomaly before. It was never really a tangible thing. But if it took Artemis, then there has to be a physical place it – or he or she – went to. This might be the new perspective we need to finally make a break!" M'gann clasps her hands in her eagerness, and Wally winces. The red in M'gann's eyes is a good reminder that Wally's not the only one who cares deeply for Artemis. They're all close, but after Wally, M'gann probably feels the closest to her earth-sister.

The space cop in John shows when he says, "If we're trying to find it, we don't need to know it's whole M.O. Sort that information out and only take positional data – see if there's any sort of preference to the locations of Anomaly attacks across the multiverse."

Batman is less optimistic. "We already have the system going through the data. If something that obvious were happening, it would have been flagged by now. Besides, even if we did find a pattern in the location data, we'd be walking in blind. We're better off searching for the Anomaly manually while the servers run. It's more logical to be cautious when we're talking about all of our lives over one-"

Wally lunges at him. Conner grabs him – luckily Wally wasn't using his super speed – and Wally finds himself being held back for the second time that day. Before he can open his mouth to accost Bats for his callousness, Clark cuts him off.

"That's cold, Bruce. Even for you." The Dark Knight's best friend takes a step forward.

Batman seems unconcerned to be facing down the most powerful man in the world. He grits his teeth and says, "I'm being realistic. This is not the optimal-"

"Optimal!" Diana joins Clark in facing Batman down. "Are you kidding me, Bruce? Our enemy has that girl in its clutches, and you would have us leave her there for lack of information?"

"Yes." Wally's shaking, unsure if he's glad to be held back from attacking his friend or not. J'onn's tugging in the back of his mind, trying to soothe him. M'gann joins the older Martian, trying to make sure Wally knows "He doesn't mean it. He's just scared. He's worried too, really."

Dick shakes his head, not even seeming to need the mind link to see through Bruce's cruelty. "I'm not buying it, Bruce. If I know anything, it's that the logical thing to do is to hit the Anomaly at the time of our choosing, rather than being caught unprepared again. Since you insist otherwise, it makes me wonder: what are you up to?" Batman's mouth twitches, and M'gann stops broadcasting his emotions with a little gasp. Wally wishes he could see under the cowl. Batman's mask is cracking, and Wally wants to know what Bruce Wayne is feeling.

Finally, face under control, he grunts out, "The only thing we know that it can't intercept is TD tech. It can track our comms, our teleportation… hell, it attacked us on the Watchtower itself. In space. That means we are either dealing with a being with enormous magical power – which you'll remember some of us are weak to," he glances over at the Kryptonians, "or someone with access to technology so advanced we can't even begin to guess what they might be able to do."

The Dark Knight folds his arms over his chest, but for once, it's not intimidating. It's almost as if he's… embarrassed. "The… safest… option, is to allow me to continue my analysis and develop new technology that it can't track. Then we can send in the whole League – something we would do with any other enemy with this kind of power – and minimize casualties to our side."

"But Bruce! We don't even know if it's the technology in the TD remotes that's throwing the Anomaly off," Dick protests. "For all we know, you'll never be able to develop something it can't counter!"

"Do you have a better proposal?" Batman growls. "Because right now we're up against something we can't track, we can't outrun and we can barely fight. I'm not letting you all go into that sort of situation blind!"

Dick makes to argue back with his father's counterpart, but Wally cuts him off. The speedster's mind is whirring. "Dick. Did the League back home ever figure out how to control the quantum tunneling effect when zeta radiation interacts with anti-quarks in the folds of space-time disruption?"

"No… What does that…."

"Look I'm the only person here who has first-hand experience with both dimension's technology. If you guys didn't stabilize the space-time continuum mechanically, then that means your tech can't be more technologically advanced than our teleportation systems. Artemis is never going to let me live down admitting this, but it has to be the magic that's throwing the Anomaly off."

M'gann beams. "Then we might be able to get Dr. Fate to ping it with magic where our traditional tracking methods failed! Why didn't we think of this sooner? We've seen them do spells like that before!"

"Plus, he might even be able to transport us – we actually could take the whole League in," Conner adds a little giddily, getting caught up in his girlfriend's excitement.

Kaldur agrees, and asks Batman, "Would that be more optimal?" He would usually never be so antagonistic – especially not towards Batman of all people – but he's not quite ready to forget that the Dark Knight would leave one of Kaldur's teammates to her peril. As expected, Batman doesn't rise to the accusation in his words.

J'onn, however, does shoot down the idea. "Unfortunately, Dr. Fate is currently off-world."

"Zatanna is here, though. Hera help us, she might be able track it." Diana says.

"That doesn't solve the problem of back up, though." Batman disagrees. "If we don't want this thing to run, we'll have to use TD tech. That means five of us can go in at once, or we can send in a few groups of four. Those aren't good odds."

Wally sighs, and puts his face in his hands. "Fine," he says, and looks up. "If this works, I have to go after her, but I understand if you all don't want to do this-"

A round of disbelieving snorts and eye rolls keeps him from saying any more on that line of thinking. Shayera even scolds him. "Don't insult us, Wally! Of course we're going in with you."

Wally smiles at his friends' loyalty, although it quickly fades. "Thank you. I – Artemis – can't wait any longer. We should go get Zatanna."

It takes sixteen and a half minutes to locate Zatanna, get her caught up on their theory and to help her set up her detection ritual. By most anyone's standards, they're moving with incredible speed, but to Wally, it's about sixteen minutes too long. Shayera has him by the hand and Clark's got an arm around his shoulder, though, so he can only complain and tap his foot in protest.

M'gann, J'onn and Diana all have the most experience with magic, so they become Zatanna's assistants, marking runes and pacing out circles to help her prepare the spell.

Dick and Kaldur spend the time arguing with Batman about their plan of attack; the Dark Knight has reluctantly agreed to the assault even with their limited numbers (He really had no choice once John declared he wouldn't stop Wally from seeking out the Anomaly with or without the other founder's help).

Before most of them know it (and long after Wally's patience had run out) Zatanna is ready, and intones her spell.

Erehw si Simetra

Wohs em eht seloh ni ytilaer

Deppir yb eht repolretni ohw dekcatta su

Dna deyortsed eht Rewothctaw

Laever ot su erehw ev'yeht enog!

The ceremonial runes drawn on the floor glow as she speaks. With a flash of light, a projection of the earth hovers in the center of the room. It glows an eerie white, more ethereal and detailed than any of Nightwing's projections. The projection is marred as she speaks the last words, though. Black-tinged red smudges the model, obscuring Paris, the Gobi Desert, and a couple dozen other places across the globe. Wally recognizes many of them as areas the League had evacuated to after the Watchtower melee. A few more are locations where the League was stranded during the Anomaly's assault on Paris.

One, however, is a location that holds no significance to this world's League; there were no reports of Anomaly activity in that region prior to this. Wally's eyes are drawn to this place, by the green light that pulses in the middle of otherwise ominous red. He hears his Teammates gasp as they realize where Artemis – and the Anomaly – are.

"Such power!" Zatanna breathes as she examines the figure with the rest of them. "I've never seen anything like this!"

The Team glances among themselves. As soon as they realized where the Anomaly was – why it might alight on that particular moor in Scotland – everything clicked into place.

"We have."

XxXxX

Artemis returns to consciousness wrapped in heat. It's unpleasant. Not because it is too hot, as one would expect. Instead, her discomfort stems from the unnaturalness of her prison. Something about it is just… wrong.

She hopes death is more pleasant than this, and decides she's probably alive. She's not sure if she should be relieved or embarrassed. On the one hand, she's alive. On the other hand, she was captured. She's a damsel in distress. Ugh. Wally's never going to let her live down the fact that he's going to have to come rescue her.

Apparently her smile at that thought gives away her consciousness. A high-pitched voice whines in her ear, "Wakey, wakey, Archer-Baby."

She opens her eyes involuntarily, and finds herself staring into pitch-black ones in return.

"Oh, you and I are going to have so much fun," the being in front of her purrs, grin growing ever wider. "Your Speed-Brat is going to hate it."

Artemis finds herself snarling as she realizes that she's staring down the one who is responsible for so much of the grief in her life.

"Klarion."