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Three days after Ted's death, Mallory, Megan, and Conner were in the living room of the cave. The TV was on static, Mallory was sitting on the floor with her back resting on the couch, Wolf at her side, and Megan and Conner were on the sofa. They'd been like that for over an hour when the zeta tube announced Zatanna's return to the cave.

"That was fast," Conner muttered. She'd gone to see John, and she hadn't even been gone an hour. The magician appeared and started hurrying around the back of the sofa, looking at the kitchen and not her friends.

"How was it?" Megan asked, but the question came out sounding automatic.

"Fine. I broke up with him. I'll be in my room if you need me."

She had left the room before the three realized what she'd said. Megan sat up and looked at the doorway.

"She broke up with him?" she repeated, confused.

Mallory got to her feet and started walking to her friend's room, the Martian not far behind. When she knocked on the door, Zatanna said, "I don't want to talk about it, I'm fine."

Mallory pushed the button and the doors slid open to reveal the magician on the floor by her bed, hugging a pillow to her chest. "Ok, you don't have to, but you don't have to be alone," Megan said.

They waited for Zatanna's nod before going to sit beside her. She didn't say anything for a while, then she looked at them and murmured, "thanks, I didn't really want to be alone."

"Of course," Mallory said.

"Do you want to get out?" Megan asked. "We could go get you some food, or some candy…"

"Or someone to beat up," Mallory continued for her with a smile.

Zatanna chuckled. "It wasn't like that. It was or good terms. But, how about going to Artemis's place? I don't really want to stay here all night."

"Sure, let's go," Mallory said.

Megan eyed Mallory's stretched-out sweatpants and faded crop top as she morphed out of her pajamas. "Do you want to go change?" she asked.

Mallory glanced at Zatanna, who was already dressed from her date, and sighed heavily. "Fine, I'll be ready in two minutes," she said, and went to her room and put on the first thing she found, some nicer gym shorts and a t-shirt that didn't have any bleach stains on it. She met her friends in the living room where Megan was telling Conner where they were going.

"Do you want to come?" she asked.

Conner shook his head. "No, I'm good. Their apartment is too small for everyone."

They nodded and went to the zeta tube. "We called Raquel. She'll meet us there," Megan mentioned as she put in their coordinates. Mallory nodded as the light sucked them out of the cave.

They reappeared a block away from their friends' apartment, and they met Raquel on her way from another tube a little farther down. "Hey, Z, how you feeling?" she asked, giving the magician a hug.

Zatanna returned it and shrugged. "I'm fine. Let's go."

They knocked on the door and Artemis opened it. "Oh, hey guys. What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Z broke up with John. We're just getting out of the cave," Megan told her.

"Oh, Z, I'm so sorry. Come on in," the former archer said, swinging the door open. Brucely came bounding to meet them, and Zatanna smiled and picked the little dog up. Artemis looked at the others, tilting her head. They shrugged, and she went and sat beside Zatanna on the couch.

"Well, Wally's not here, so we have the rest of the evening with no interruptions. What do you want to do?"

Zatanna looked around and suddenly sat up. "Oh, guys, I didn't mean to take up your whole night," she said.

Raquel scoffed. "Please, Z, does it look like any of us had anything better to do?"

Zatanna smiled, and so did the others.

"So, what happened?" Artemis asked gently.

Zatanna sighed and looked around at her friends. "Ted. That's what," she said. The girls exchanged a confused look. "I just, it made me think about what I want in life, and what I don't want, and I realized that I don't want to watch someone I love run themselves to their graves. When I met him for our date, I told him that, and I asked him to change the way he does his job, and he told me that he couldn't, so…here I am."

Mallory pulled the magician into a hug. "I'm so sorry, Z."

She shrugged. "It was my decision, I can't be too upset about it."

"Maybe, but you can be disappointed. You thought you'd be with him longer," Artemis said.

Zatanna shook her head. "I should have known better than to get involved with him in the first place. I mean, it's not like he hid the way he does magic, or how little he cares about what happens to him."

"I'm proud of you, Zatanna. I don't know that I could have done that," Megan said.

The magician smiled. "Thanks, guys. Look, I really don't want to wallow in self pity. We've all spent too much time doing that lately. Let's go get some food, put on a movie, and just not think for one night."

Artemis grinned. "No arguments here. I'll go get some snacks." She got up and went to the kitchen, but before she put the bag of pretzels and container of brownies down, she pointed at Mallory and said, "but when Wally gets here, you're the one that found the food."

Mallory laughed. "Oh, come on, don't tell me he still doesn't let you eat his food. You live with him!"

Artemis shrugged. "Sure he lets me, but it's always safer to just say that you visited."

"Uh, Artemis, how often do you tell him I'm over here?" Mallory asked.

Artemis shrugged. "Oh, at least once a week," she replied, grinning. The girls laughed and settled in with the snacks, the dog, and each other and pressed play on Megamind.

The girls fell asleep before the movie was over, but they woke up suddenly when the door opened and the light flipped on.

"Oh, uh, hey," Wally said when he saw the girls looking up groggily from the couch. Dick grinned at his side. "What are you doing here?"

Megan was the first to recover from the sudden light, and she got up to give Wally a hug. "We had a crisis, and we came to solve it," she said vaguely.

The boys cocked their heads to the side, looking at the others for more details. When they didn't get any, they shrugged and sat down with them, taking some of the snacks still on the table.

"Mallory found food in the cabinet," Artemis told her boyfriend.

Mallory opened her mouth to defend herself, but they were both smiling at her, so she shut it and shook her head, fighting a laugh.

"Looks like you had a long night," Dick mentioned.

Zatanna shrugged. "Not really, we just watched a movie," she said.

Dick nodded. "I guess it's been a while since any of us have had a good night's sleep," he mentioned.

"Has the killer confessed yet?" Artemis asked. The League had caught the immediate killer the day after Ted's death, but the member of the League of Shadows had yet to say a word.

"No, and he's tried to kill himself every chance he has. It's a good thing Superman found the cyanide pill before he turned him in," Dick said. They were quiet for a moment, still angry that they couldn't get closure as long as the Light was out there. Dick looked at Wally and said, "But I think I know what he was looking for."

The girls snapped their heads to him. "What is it?" Mallory asked.

Dick looked at his watch and pulled up a small holographic screen. He typed something, and some footage came up. "Tell me if this looks familiar," he said, and pressed play.

Mallory watched as something came into view. Whatever it was had on a blue costume with a similar symbol on his chest as Ted's costume, but instead of operating without powers, this blue beetle was flying, and he had some sort of weapon on his arm. He sent a pulse at a rock formation in the shot and it shattered. He let out a whoop and did a backflip in the air. The video ended and Dick watched the girls' faces for their reactions.

"That energy pulse was like Ted's gun thing," Raquel pointed out.

"Yeah, exactly, and the symbol on the chest is a lot like Ted's," Dick said.

"So you think there's a copycat? Where did this come from?" Artemis asked.

"It's from El Paso, right around the area of Kord Industries. And I don't know that he copied Ted so much as Ted copied that suit," Dick said.

"What are you talking about? How could Ted have copied something that didn't exist yet?" Megan asked.

Dick shrugged. "I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that that power source is what Ted based his work on, and it's what he didn't want the Light to get."

"Which means that they don't have it yet," Zatanna mused.

"Yeah, but it also means we have to get to this guy first," Raquel said.

Mallory was staring at the last frame of the video, the person in the blue beetle suit in the middle of doing a backflip, a goofy grin on his face. "Look. He's just a kid. If the Light finds him before we do…"

Dick nodded. "I'm working on tracking him down now. Don't worry, we'll get to him before they do," he assured her.

She nodded, and suddenly she felt like a weight had been lifted from her. Sure, their friend was still dead, the people behind the murder might never be brought to justice, and now they had yet another kid to worry about, but there was something else to take away from this video, and it made everything seem just a little less suffocating.

"What?" Wally asked when he noticed her expression change.

She looked at her friends, the small smile still on her face. "He has a legacy," she said simply.

They looked at each other, letting that sink in. He hadn't died in vain, and now his memory would live on through this new Blue Beetle.

"Maybe it wasn't such a bad day after all," Zatanna said, and the others murmured an agreement.