Bonus chappy becuase I was feeling like it.
Kaldur's POV
Five luxury cars crossed the gates of the Star City docks well past midnight. They took sharp turns, navigating through the increasingly claustrophobic press of stacked shipping containers until they arrived at a dark corner where two men waited.
A night manager and one of his accomplices. The rest were scattered throughout the yard, keeping an eye on the cameras and watching for the police.
A door swung open, and a large man descended. He was the color of bricks, dressed in a tailored suit with a stogie in his breast pocket and long braids flowing down his shoulders. His goons stepped out with him, armed with guns that bulged beneath their blazers and jackets.
"Henry," he grinned, showing his gap teeth. "Glad you finally saw things my way."
Henry, the overweight night manager, was sweating. "You didn't leave me much choice. These guys you're messing with are the real deal."
A thug stepped forward and pulled his gun. "And you're saying Brick's not?"
Kid Flash stood up from the rooftop where we watched, lying flat on our bellies. I held his hand and shook my head.
"They're going to hurt him," he whispered through our collective telepathic link.
"They won't," Miss Martian said. "It's not worth the trouble."
And she was right.
"Cool it, LJ," Brick said. "And who said anything about letting them know? This little side deal will be our little secret."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick envelope filled with cash. He tossed it at the manager's feet.
"A little something for the stress we put on your family."
The manager looked at the money as if it were poison, and the dock worker seemed just as terrified, stepping back. Brick picked up on this, and suddenly the shadows parted, revealing somebody familiar—Gregor.
He was a tall, handsome man with tattoos covering most of his chest and hands, and he seemed to be in his late twenties.
"I'll say this much about you, human." His words came slowly, his Russian accent thick. "You've got balls."
Robin let out a confused sound, looking up from his holographic monitors.
"How did he—" He looked M'gann's way.
"I don't know. He wasn't there a moment ago, or anywhere near the docks."
"Another teleporter?" I wondered aloud.
"No," Artemis said, her voice low and firm. "The shadows moved. It reminds me of that thief, Shade, from Gotham."
"Either way, we're up against another suped-up sorcerer," Kid Flash grumbled.
"We knew this was the mission when we said yes," I reminded them.
"Either way, we hit him hard," Superboy said, baring his teeth slightly, "and we don't stop until he stays down."
I shared a concerned look with Miss Martian. Superboy had taken Canary's death harder than most. It changed all of us, more than Julius's disappearance or my first injury. Kid Flash had begun to truly push himself and had managed to finally shatter the sound barrier, albeit with concerning results.
His body could not handle it. As much as he wanted to be, he could never be his master. None of us would. He had grown increasingly despondent. Artemis was colder, and Robin was focused almost supernaturally so.
Miss Martian seemed to be the only one processing this remotely well. She spent nearly all of her free time with her uncle, mastering her mind and sharpening her skills.
It had led us to victory again and again, but sometimes I worried about them. About me.
Still, we had come prepared for Gregor. Batman had briefed us on his Jujutsu technique thanks to information delivered by John Constantine, who had recently been freed from his vows to the sorcerers.
I could only hope that Gregor's meta ability would truly be as simple as advertised.
Gregor swaggered past the night manager and his petrified assistant. The pair bolted immediately, narrowly escaping gunfire sprayed from submachine guns and pistols hastily pulled from jackets.
The sorcerer dodged with languid, effortless steps and waved his hands. His summon—his Shikigami, as the sorcerers called it—materialized.
It was a spectral jellyfish with tendrils ending in barbs that struck out like vipers. They plunged deep into shoulders, guts, and chests, pumping the sputtering men with a potent magical neurotoxin.
"Team, move, move, move!" I sent telepathically. "Remember the maneuvers we prepared for Gregor."
Miss Martian leaped into the air, her costume billowing as she closed in on the fight.
"Establishing energy sight now," she sent through our telepathic link as a filter settled into the minds of the non-magical members of the team. They all grunted. We had practiced for weeks in case we were ever assigned a sorcerer mission, but it still took some getting used to.
Miss Martian brought her hands down, leveraging her considerable telekinetic might and seizing Gregor's body. He grunted in surprise just as Superboy landed and swung, sending him straight into a container that crinkled and folded like a soda can.
I touched down and went after his Shikigami, summoning a water whip that cracked it in the chest. Tentacles flailed and lashed out in retaliation, nicking me in the arm. A numbness sank in, slowing me down slightly.
Wally barreled into it shoulder-first before the beast could take advantage.
His electrified fist shoved it back, though it did no visible damage. It did give Brick—who had been watching the entire fight—his chance to flee. He scurried away, left hand and leg limp from the initial tentacle attack.
"Boss!" one of the henchmen screamed, clutching his belly.
"Sorry, boys," Brick yelled as he leaped into the furthest sedan and put it into reverse. "Come too far to let myself get nabbed now."
Robin disagreed. Two batarangs sliced into his car tire, and another shattered his windscreen, expanding and filling the car with restrictive foam.
"Hmmfff."
Across the battlefield, arrows descended and exploded with a blinding light on impact, driving a recovering Gregor to his knees. He did not let the lack of sight stop him. He snapped his neck out of the way of an approaching strike and drove an uppercut into Superboy's jaw, flinging him into the air.
He spun, ripped a piece of metal from the crushed container, and hurled it at Miss Martian. She dodged easily, snatching the piece with her mind, only to find him gone.
He emerged from the shadow of the jellyfish that I was barely keeping up with.
It had marked me twice, but had yet to touch Kid Flash. That changed when Gregor spurred it to action. The creature moved with serpentine grace, its many tentacles lashing out simultaneously as if they had minds of their own.
In an instant, it had woven an intricate web of poison and pain.
I summoned my water to protect myself, forming a spherical barrier.
Kid Flash was not as lucky. Multiple tentacles lashed into him.
He tripped suddenly, losing his footing.
"Whoa—"
"Kid!" Robin shouted.
Artemis fired explosive arrows at the jellyfish Shikigami, but the tentacles still came down like guillotines.
They halted inches from Wally, held back by a formidable telekinetic force.
Through our link, I could feel Miss Martian struggling.
"Do you think this is enough to hold me?" Gregor fought her every inch of the way, using both his body and his Shikigami.
She was slowly winning, but it was closer than I would have liked.
"Robin, Artemis, cover the area in light," I ordered. "Everybody else, tear away that Shikigami."
My water whip cracked out, a mace forming at the end that struck with force strong enough to crack steel. Gregor's head snapped back.
Superboy launched himself forward with a running leap and latched onto the Shikigami's body with his bare hands. Then he began to punch.
The air quivered with each blow.
The bioship unveiled itself, bathing Gregor in light. More flashbang arrows dropped, keeping the sorcerer off balance while he continued to attack.
Mine and Miss Martian's assaults obviously had the greatest effect, and within seconds his Shikigami vanished, leaving the bruised, energy-depleted sorcerer floating there, enraged.
He even transformed, but that changed nothing.
Superboy's punches crunched bones that automatically popped back into place and squelched organs.
"Mercy!" he spat. "I'll take the collar. Just stop."
Superboy took longer than I would have liked to listen, but he did.
Gregor was promptly fitted with an inhibitor collar and moved to the bioship.
The entire affair felt anticlimactic, but I knew that was my impatience talking.
We had bagged a meta small crime lord and a sorcerer. Both were pieces that Artisan would've used against us if we hadn't stepped in.
The team was fighting better than ever, and the League had even worked something out with the government. We got first crack at the captured so that we could unchain their souls and interrogate them, but the government got to house them in Belle Reve to serve out their sentences.
We had gotten them to agree to no experimentation, in writing.
The agreement helped ease our collective conscience, but it paradoxically did very little to help us in the fight against Artisan.
The sorcerers still stayed quiet, even after Fate shattered their vows. It wasn't out of some misguided sense of loyalty, but rather a desire to keep their heads.
Artisan had fitted them all with kill chips.
It was bundled into the mental blockers she had implanted into their heads to make them resistant to our telepaths.
I huffed at the memory of the discovery. That woman was nearly as paranoid as Batman. She left nearly nothing to chance. It was a miracle we were winning at all.
Still, I focused on the win.
Any day that nobody on the team died or walked away injured was a good day.
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