March. Friendly fire p.3

On top of their previous exploring, the Five ended up becoming acquainted with the inside of the East High principal's office. Like everything else in this school, it was nicer than theirs: a sun-filled room on the second floor, facing north. There were extremely healthy potted plants inside, and a tree outside the big window. Dick took account of all these details.

"I could not believe it when our driving instructor told me our students teamed up with Murakami's infamous Project Club to harass him," the Principal was saying. "Yet there you were. I'm supremely disappointed, Karen."

The Principal was focusing on Bee in particular, which told Dick she really had enjoyed a great deal of trust and expectation before now.

"Mousier LeBlanc, if you let me-" Bee tried.

"I will not," the Principal cut her off. "When you wanted to set up your Project Club, you assured me you wouldn't be following the footsteps of the other one. I don't see how that translates to teaming up with them. I should-"

The secretary interrupted him by peeking in through the door. "Sir, renovators for the basketball court are here."

The principal stopped to consult his watch. "They were meant to come 10:30."

"No, the appointment was 10 o'clock."

"Didn't we change it to 10:30?"

The secretary hesitated. "It was meant to change to 10:30 but I couldn't contact them in time." And she closed the door before she could receive the principal's look of knowing irritation.

He waved vaguely at the group of teens before him. "Detention, obviously. I'll decide how much when I get back."

Dick eyed Bee, who bore holes into a wall in quiet fury. He couldn't help but sympathize: he still remembered what it felt like to be liked by faculty. It was an embarrassing and unwanted sense of security you didn't truly appreciate until it was gone.

Before he could decide whether he wanted to say anything comforting to her, they heard Ding Dong Daddy's 70's music blast off from somewhere on the ground floor.

"He's leaving?" asked Vic.

"Driving lessons will be over," confirmed Bee.

The Five looked at their leader. "As long as we're tracking the phone, we still got him," said Dick, and looked at Victor in turn.

Vic checked their classmate's phone, and his eyes widened at it. "We lost tracking! How!?"

"When Brett spent all that time in the freezer," started Kori.

"It could've happened then, but why?" asked Raven.

Gar clapped his hands together. "He wasn't supposed to move the tech. He's the guy who reboots stuff for Ding Dong Daddy."

"Of course he is," Vic seethed.

Dick was still unaffected. "Okay, plan B. We're climbing that tree out of this room."

Bee stared as the five went out single-file after Dick, as he opened the window and had them jump to the tree one by one. Moving past her shock, she said, "Wait. You'll get in way worse trouble."

On the windowsill, Dick said, "Comes with the job, Bee. You do what you need to do."

Seeing his friends were all safely on the ground, Dick jumped to a choice branch of the tree, swung on it to regain balance, and landed on his feet on the ground.

When he looked up, Bee was glowering down at them. "There's a back door in the office that leads to a fire escape," she spat out. "But I guess you wanted to show off."

"Use it and join us!" Dick told them, and had his team run to the parking lot.


Skulking behind Ding Dong Daddy's hot rod, the Five caught a glimpse of the box of electronics before he closed the trunk. As the man rounded the car towards the driver's seat, the East High kids joined the group, and all seven kids thought along the same lines: Vic's car was on the other side of the building. So was Bee's Jeep. They wouldn't get to either in time.

Dick's racing brain also accounted for this: Ding Dong Daddy's blasting music eliminated the need for silence, and the man was wearing sunglasses. Conditions were good for someone to hold onto the back of the car for dear life, but then they'd be cut off from the group.

He looked up at Victor with wild eyes, conveniently obscured by his own sunglasses. "Can you throw your arm into his back seat!?"

Victor stared at his friend for a second, then wordlessly detached his arm.

"Roy can aim!" Bee said, and pushed Roy forth. "Don't embarrass me," she hissed at him.

Roy took Vic's arm gingerly. He took the time to weigh it on his arm and explore how it bent, while ignoring the mounting cries of the teens behind him telling him to hurry; then he sent his left foot forward, shifted his weight back, aimed, and made the throw. Victor's arm landed squarely in the back of the car, with an entire second to spare before Ding Dong Daddy took off.

"Okay, now we really have to follow him," droned Raven.

Roy turned to the group. "Anyone wanna tell me why I just did that?"

Vic held up his phone, pulled up the app that tracked his prosthetics his and turned the location on. "We have him."

Gar was looking around. "How're we all gonna fit in your car-?" he began to ask Vic.

"We're taking my Jeep," Bee cut him off, and stomped off to the parking lot in full confidence she'd be followed, and she was.

Bee and Dick sat in the front, Vic and the girls in the middle, and Gar, Garth and Roy rode in the back.

"I think he doesn't remember you," Garth was telling Roy when Gar got on. "He didn't remember me either. I had to tell him, and then he remembered."

"Oh I think he remembers me too well," Roy returned.

Garth shrugged at his sullen friend, and focused on Gar. "You really took charge back when we were chasing Brett. Why'd you tell us to split the way we did?"

"Oh," went Gar. "I thought both groups had to have at least one person who knew the guy."

"Whoa." Garth's dark eyes smiled at him. "You can think really well on your feet."

The approval made Gar feel warm all over, and really like Garth all of a sudden. I thought Bee said this feeling passes, he thought.


They drove a long time, always making sure to drive one turn behind Ding Dong Daddy, and guided by the faint music from his car. When they got out into the countryside, they had to drive a long stretch behind him to stay out of sight, and went only by the tracker in Vic's arm. The sun had gone down by the time the red dot on Vic's phone finally stopped moving.

They found Ding Dong Daddy's hot rod parked near what looked like an abandoned barn in the middle of nowhere. Around a dozen cars were parked carelessly around it. It seemed those taking part in this stint counted on no one coming across them enough to make no attempt at hiding.

"First can you please get your arm back from that guy's car?" Raven told Victor.

"I'll go," said Dick. He skulked along to Ding Dong Daddy's car and got it.

With Victor reunited with his arm, they went on to the building. Shielded by some thick bushes and the growing darkness, they approached until they identified two men outside the barn, guarding the door.

Dick said, "Kori, you're up."

Kori didn't hesitate; she went out of hiding and towards the men.

"You're sending her? Seriously?" Bee asked.

"She's the best one to play pretend," said Dick.

They watched Kori make a hesitant way to the guards, making a pantomime of being lost; the guards looked at each other, torn on whether to buy it.

"And if they attack her?" asked Bee.

"She's the best one for that, too," said Dick. "Just watch, okay?"

Bee didn't have time to protest more. The man who'd looked more disbelieving of Kori's story moved forth, swiftly and violently, as if to intimidate her; he raised an arm as a warning, and was shocked when Kori grabbed it, and used it as the key to take him down, twisting it towards his back and sending him to the ground.

The second man took a moment to realize he had to help his partner, and by the time he did, both men were too focused on Kori and didn't see it coming when the other four joined the fight.

Bee, Garth and Roy watched as the Five subdued the men, Dick produced rope seemingly out of nowhere to tie them up with, and then Gar slapped tape over their mouths for good measure. Then they waved the three to come over.

"I thought you didn't beat people up," Roy said when they reunited.

"Not unless it's necessary," said Dick. He kneeled down next to a gap between the barn's wood panels, peered into it, and seemed satisfied enough to replace his eye with his phone camera, with which he started filming. Bee and Vic found other gaps to peek through as well.

"It's a whole operation," Vic narrated for the benefit of the others. "There's tons of boxes here. It's Ding Dong Daddy and his people on one side and these other guys in the other. I think they're buying the stuff."

"How many people are in there?" Kori asked.

"Dozens," said Bee. "This is big."

She sounded stunned to Dick's ears. He reminded himself this was her first mission; he remembered the early awe when a lead actually turned into a case. She must be reeling that what started as talking to a troubled classmate had ended in busting a theft ring.

After a while, Bee stood back from the panels and looked at Dick. "Get all the footage you can," she told him. "Makes no sense we're all here. I'll go to my truck, be ready to take off if we need to dash."

"Good idea," agreed Dick. He kept only Kori and Vic with him; the rest of them went back to the truck.

Dick, Kori and Vic didn't stay there long. Two other guards making their way around the building saw them, and in the ensuing fight one of them slipped past the three and burst the door open, alerting everyone inside of the presence of spies. Dick, Kori and Vic withdrew, climbing onto the back of the Jeep which Bee had already started.

She swiftly turned the truck around and drove back into town with careful urgency. No one spoke, except for when Kori relayed factual information about some of the cars being on their tail, and how many turned around and fell back, until only Ding Dong Daddy's and two other cars were still chasing after them. They were all so focused on the scene behind them, they didn't notice when they drove straight over the tire spikes. Bee skidded, regained control of the truck, and went on driving at a lower speed. Everyone started talking then: there were differing opinions about her going faster, stopping and nesting the truck out of sight among shrubs, or continuing as she was doing.

All discussion ended when they saw the lights of police cars in the distance, forming a barricade in front of them.

Raven understood the bad feeling she'd nursed all day had finally found its source.


Dick had always wished for a time machine every time something in his life went wrong. He always ended up thinking better of it, telling himself if he went back to fix every single thing he considered a mistake, he'd be fixing half his life and would end up twice his age in the present. He always got the visual of himself as an old man, with no mistakes in his life to boast having learned from. He didn't care about all of that now—now he wanted that time machine. He'd use it to go back to the moment Raven told him she had a bad feeling, and he'd turn them all around then and there.

When they were stopped by the police on the road, they hadn't quite understood. They went along with it as they were rushed to the station, because then they had still been thinking the spikes were Ding Dong Daddy's work somehow—so if they went to the police station, they were safe from him. They didn't get why they were being treated with exasperation. They only got it when Vic, Bee and Dick realized here at the station they were seeing some of the same men who'd been on the barn, against Ding Dong Daddy's people, and they were talking to the cops like they belonged there.

The information came in bits and horrific pieces, but they eventually got it. They hadn't singlehandedly busted a theft ring. They had ruined an undercover mission.

Ding Dong Daddy didn't just organize kids to steal valuables for him and then resold them; he also dealt drugs. When he learned that, the height of the whole operation finally made sense to Dick: the cops had cared enough to get this involved because it was about drugs.

Somewhere in the midst of things they got the full story. When Dick, Kori and Vic were discovered, both Ding Dong Daddy's people and the undercover cops had feared a double-crossing. Chaos reigned as both sides tried to contain the other, and Ding Dong Daddy left his underlings behind and managed to slip out of the barn. That wouldn't have been too bad, if the kids hadn't hauled back to Jump City. The cops had expected Ding Dong Daddy to escape back to his hideout in the city; the spikes and the barricade had been meant for him. When the kids caught it, Ding Dong Daddy had seen it, with enough time to turn the opposite way. Now he was on the road to who-knows-where, still with the money from the night's transactions.

After they understood it all, the night was a series of shitty Polaroids of scoldings and threats, and a deep sense of doom as they waited for their guardians. At some point, the cops had split the eight of them into different rooms. Just before they took them away, Vic had roused up some degree of self-preservation and broken their shared shameful silence to tell everyone, "No one says a thing without a lawyer, no matter what."

Dick found himself in an interrogation room with two officers who took his bag and emptied it violently in front of him, listing aloud all the things that constituted weapons and would bring him extra charges. Aside from the grappling hook, his lock-picks, hammer and throwing stars made the officers increasingly gleeful. They even discussed with each other whether his flashlight could be used for harm. And so the preparedness Dick had always been proud of was thrown in his face along with everything else.

Eventually they were allowed out and returned to the front of the precinct to wait for their parents. Dick felt he had to say something, as his friends' eyes kept darting at him. He had nothing that would fix this, so he told them that. "There's nothing I can say to this. Today, we were the bad guys."

And they all gravely sat on that.

But then their adults got there, and their self-righteous remorse became more of a worldly embarrassment and immediate fear of consequence.

Bruce arrived first. He stopped by the kids to asses they were all fine, then went straight to the commissioner to negotiate their fate.

Steve entered like a hurricane, followed by Rita trying to calm him down. He would have taken Gar away right then, and a few cops moved to stop him, as they still meant to process the eight kids. Thankfully, he calmed down when Bruce came back out. He only agreed to sit down when Bruce said he'd managed to make the station not charge the kids with obstruction of justice.

Bee's mother was terrifying. She came in with cold, tight-lipped anger, and it was Bee's father who asked their daughter if she was okay. Bee's parents took her home first.

In contrast, Silas stayed in the background when he arrived. He didn't say a word to Vic; he just looked nervous and concerned. Vic couldn't look at him in the eye.

The kids filed out one by one. Gar left when Steve forcefully told him to get in the car. The two men who came for Garth and Roy each talked to Bruce for a while, and then left with their respective charges. When there was hardly anyone left, Vic got up and Silas followed him. Kori had had Galfore waiting outside in the car for a long time, and only Bruce could've managed her being dismissed without a legal guardian to sign off on her, and also Raven, when she whispered to Dick that she knew for sure Arella couldn't come.


Bruce and Alfred dropped Raven off at her house. She only spoke to thank Bruce and Alfred before she got off. Dick had looked for her eyes to gauge how mad she was at him, and he guessed he got his answer when she refused to look back at him.

Back at manor, Bruce asked Dick, "What did you learn?"

Dick thought about it. "Do entirely more research. Better recon." Listen to Rae when she tells you she has a hunch. "Doubt a lot more when we're seeing a situation that seems simple. Never rush through things again."

Bruce nodded slightly. "Who were those other kids? I thought you had four friends."

"East High kids," Dick said, feeling the weight of having inspired a group with their own, then pulled them into this fiasco. He shook the thought to ask Bruce, "What happens now? With Ding Dong Daddy?"

"Nothing. He'll be the problem of whatever town he chooses to hitnext."

Dick knew he had really screwed up, when Bruce had nothing hopeful to say. "Am I grounded or something?"

Bruce looked genuinely at a loss. "I'll decide in the morning."

Across town, Galfore comforted Kori as she cried about the night's happenings.

Entering the garage, Silas stayed in the car for a moment. "Just, let me get this straight," he started, wavering. "You threw your arm at a truck? Your million-dollar, cutting-edge, not-in-the-market tech, technically rented arm, that you very much need to navigate everyday life?"

Vic grunted a yes. He couldn't muster feeling too bad about it. It was still his arm. He should get to decide where it went.

"And your car is?"

"In East High's parking lot," mumbled Vic.

"Right." Then Silas laughed. "And now you have a criminal record. Ha! And you wanted to get into an Ivy!"

Vic told himself he had no right to snap at his dad. He swallowed his anger, got out of the car, and went to his room, holding himself back fromslamming all the doors on his way.

Raven let herself into Azarath, arrived to her silent apartment, took off her shoes, explained herself to no one, and took herself to sleep.

Gar came into his house followed by Steve's screams.

"When we adopted you, what did I say!? I said the days of running around and getting into trouble were over!"

Gar whipped around on him. "I don't do that anymore! This is different! We're trying to do something good! Make a freaking difference in the world!"

He was saying whatever without worrying much about making sense, because he knew Steve wasn't really listening.

"This is what you do when you sneak out of the house!?" Steve demanded. "Go around looking for trouble? You've been grounded for three days, and all three days you've snuck out! What the hell am I gonna do with you!?"

Gar stopped on his way upstairs to face him again. "I don't know, Steve. Why don't you send me back to the state?" The next words out of his mouth would have been, Or just wait two years and I'll be out of your hair forever. But he saw Rita's face and stopped himself. She followed the both of them, her eyes silently pleading for Gar to cut it out, because they both new Steve wouldn't. Gar made for his room.

"Give me your phone!" bellowed Steve.

Gar went back down and gave it up.

"Now go to your room! You're grounded! Forever!" As Gar stalked up the stairs, Steve was saying, "I know what I'm gonna do! I'm gonna tape your window shut! That's what I'm gonna do!" As Gar reached his room, Steve was saying, "You're still the same misbehaving little kid you were when we met. You don't even know why you do what you do. You're thoughtless."

"Then send me back!" Gar returned from his room, and slammed the door.


On Friday morning, the Five arrived one by one and sat in their table next to the bleachers. Each one who arrived greeted the others in a subdued voice and joined a sort of silent circle of shame. As soon as Raven arrived, Dick told her, "I'm so sorry I didn't listen to you, Rae."

"It's okay," she thankfully replied. "Really, it is. I couldn't really explain myself."

No one outside of them would know what happened –it was a closed investigation now, and the most they'd have to do is tell that girl her stolen phone was evidence and she should get it back at the end of the month-, but that didn't mean they could hide from it. Among each other, they would always know.

Then Gar arrived, and it was like the sun came out from behind a cloud to greet them. He took a look at his downtrodden friends, looked unsettled and said, "Why're you all moping so hard right now?"

"What do you mean?" asked Vic, raising hishead from where it had rested on his palms. "We were terrible yesterday, Gar. Everything that happened was horrendous."

"Okay, I get it, but guys, come on." Gar left his bag on the table and stood before them. "We made a big mistake, yeah, but it was while trying to do something good!"

"It wasn't just a mistake," argued Dick. "We screwed up so bad my uncle had to step in and save us from getting charges pressed against us. If I didn't have him—"

Gar cut him off. "Other teenagers have to get saved by their millionaire pillars-of-the-community parentsfrom getting charged with DUI's. Violence. Bad stuff. We went down while trying to do good. Sorry, but I think that counts for something." He crossed his arms defiantly and shut his eyes. He cracked open one eye and was glad to see he was managing to get through to them. "You know why we fail at stuff?" he went on. They looked at him in askance. "It's because we do stuff! If we didn't do stuff, we wouldn't fail, but then we wouldn't do any good either!"

"That's," Raven started, raising her hand. Then she dropped it. "Okay, that actually makes sense."

"'Course it does!" Gar said, but his voice revealed he was heartened by her approval. "So come on, cheer up. I get we're all grounded forever, but we're in this together!"

"I'm not grounded," said Dick.

Gar stopped grinning. "What? How?"

"Well, Bruce said if he didn't ground me when we infiltrated a charity and ran away from a pretend cop, he couldn't do it now. The only difference was, last time we were lucky and this time it went badly, so it wouldn't be fair to ground me now."

"Galfore understood too," said Kori. "He saw my regret and grief about what happened and did not need further punishment."

"My dad's only mad that I threw my arm on a truck, because that's all he cares about!" Vic said, and fell in thought. "If it had occurred to him to ground me, he probably would have."

"Mom's still out of town," said Raven. "She has no idea what happened."

"You're telling me," Gar started, dramatically setting a leg on the seat, "I'm the only one grounded out of all of us?" He crossed his arms. "Okay. Now I'm gonna mope."

Dick, Vic and Kori cracked a smile despite themselves, so Gar considered them taken care of. He focused on Raven. "You tell your mom to come back quickly, so we can both be grounded."

"Yeah, I'll tell her that," replied Raven sarcastically.

But now she was frowning at him, so she no longer looked so sad. Gar picked up his bag and made for school. "Come on, let's get Friday over with. Then we can get smashed and drown our sorrows."

"But you are grounded," said Kori.

"I'll think of something," Gar waved her off.

"Something being sneaking out?" asked Dick.

Gar thought of it. Steve's rage was reaching levels that were giving even him pause. "Or I can sneak you guys in. That way I'm not breaking the rules. Does anyone have a ladder?"

"Do you know what grounding is?" asked Raven.

They didn't see Jen eagerly watching them as they walked into school.


The Five noticed the crowd of people first. The students gathered outside the Art classroom, and they didn't seem happy. The Five pushed to the front, and found the artwork posted outside the walls completely wrecked. Posters were torn, Mache models destroyed, and all over the destruction lay a huge spray-painted yellow tag that read Hive.

"Hive?" Dick asked out-loud. "What the hell is Hive?"


Halfway through the day, Kori found Dick in the library, where he was staring off into space. She tried to remember that phrase—a dollar for your thoughts? No, it was some kind of coin… A penny for your thoughts? No. A penny for your ponderings? It made more sense if it was ponderings—alliteration and all. But she couldn't decide the exact wording, so she just nudged his shoulder. "What are you pondering?"

Dick looked up at her helplessly. "It's just like—we bust our ass to get something right, and it blows up in our faces, right? We spectacularly fail. And then, to add insult to injury, we come to our own school, and someone's been trashing it while we were gone and signing it. It's like divine punishment or something!"

"Punishment for what?" she asked.

Dick looked at her. What had he meant? Punishment for trying, for being so out of the ordinary. For thinking they could do this, and be more than they were meant to. That was the vice of pride, right?

"Dick, we always go back to the same thing," Kori told him, sitting down and putting down the papers she was carrying. "You are not patient," she laughed. "But we will have better missions."

Dick peered at the stuff she brought. "What's all this?"

"Newspaper clippings," she replied. Dick had the feeling this was one of those times she'd double-checked a phrase online before using it. "I found there have been many times where undercover missions have been ruined, and resources squandered."

Dick forced himself to smile, seeing what she was trying to do and deciding to let her. "Really."

"There was this time, two groups of undercover officers arrested each other, wasting five million dollars allotted to the operation." She looked at him. "We did not waste five million dollars."

"No, we didn't," he agreed, finding it easy to smile for real.

Kori took out another paper. As he listened to her related more cases, Dick felt the overwhelming urge to tuck her hair behind her ear and make his hand linger on her cheek. He felt nostalgic for a possible future, in which he could theoretically reach out and do it with as much ease as he now looked at her and smiled.


Terra had seen the commotion outside the art room and went right past it. Not my problem. And it never will be. But on the other side of the hall, next to her locker, Jenny was waiting for her, with two of her ugly friends behind her.

"Hey," Jen said, in a bafflingly sweet voice.

Terra glared at them, first. "Hey," she said, imitating her tone, then let the sarcastic smile fall from her face. "What the hell do you want?"

"I was just thinking about the firecracker incident a while back," Jen said, leaning on the wall, like she was Terra's friend or something.

"What about it?"

"Couldn't have helped your crappy permanent record."

Terra's eyes went wide. "What? How do you-?"

"Word gets around fast, don't worry about it," Jen waved her off.

"I can't fucking believe this," Terra said, mainly to herself, not caring enough about Jenny to hide her distress. Maybe she was done with this town. She got a clear image of herself running out of the school and never coming back. But had she brought a change of clothes today? Then again, today was Pizza Friday. Maybe she'd run to Seattle tomorrow.

Jen was trying to get her attention. "Hey. Earth to blondie. It doesn't matter. We can help you fix it."

"Help?" Terra scoffed. "Because you feel so bad about the firecrackers thing?"

"No. Because you can do something for us in return."

Terra did feel safer in those terms –a transaction was easier to trust than charity-, but still she laughed. "Well, forget it. You're a bunch of bullies. I don't want anything to do with you."

"The Sham Titans told you that?" Jen returned. "And you believe everything they tell you, because they've done so much for you, huh?"

"They haven't done anything for me," Terra stated. That part was important for her. She made a point of opening her locker and getting what she needed, despite the annoying distractions.

Mikron snapped. "Hey snot-brain, we have a really good offer if you'd focus enough to listen!"

"Yeah!" said Baran.

Jen turned around to scold the both of them. "What did we agree on? I'd do the talking! Shut up!" She whipped back to Terra and smiled. "Terra. I don't think you understand what we're offering." She leaned in closer. "We have ways to change your permanent record."

Terra looked down at the girl and studied her. She was remembering how Jenny slipped into the teacher's lounge to get the lockers' key. "I bet you think changing a record is as easy as getting your hands on one."

Jenny smiled. "No. I mean getting the principal himself to change your GPA and, uh, forget your history of misconduct."

Terra was coolly intrigued, but stubbornness won out. "I don't want anything to do with you." She closed her locker and left.

The boys waited until Terra was out of earshot—for their own sakes, because Jen might have actually hurt them otherwise.

After that, Baran spoke up. "That's it?"

"We didn't convince her at all!" protested Mikron.

Jen faced them. "Hey assholes, I keep you around for the muscle and the book smarts—respectively. The social graces, the actual smarts, the fashion sense and leadership? That's all me. Walk behind me." They obediently folded behind her as she kept ranting. "The point of this was to make the offer. I know her type. We can't crowd her, or she'll just retreat. We have to let her come to us." She watched Terra from afar, moving through the hallway like the world had personally hurt her. "And she will. Trust me."

End of March.


Don't you love it when real life circumstances get in the way of your heroic dreams? And while you're failing at a big mission a supervillain team crops up in your own backyard? ^^ Don't worry, things are gonna get much worse ^^

Steeeveee: I'm stoked you're still reading! Thank you for commenting!^^

Next up: April. Baby's first villainous motivation

~The Lighthouse