"I don't have time to write any Rao Scripture from scratch—but there are still quite a few of his priests in Atlantis. Maybe we can bring them up to the surface to spread the faith. This is Rao's land of miracles, after all; handing it to them to steward seems perfectly natural. It would also solve Aquaman's headache in one move."
Honestly, this solved several problems at once. Thea and Diana immediately set out for Atlantis—she had priests to persuade.
San Francisco. Titans Tower.
The Teen Titans' headquarters.
Nightwing and Starfire were adults with their own lives and responsibilities, and both had been genuinely busy lately. Roy Harper—Arsenal, Thea's lover in the original timeline—had recently grown close to Jason Todd, the second Robin and current Red Hood. Whether out of shared ideology or something more personal, he hadn't responded to the Titans' summons.
Miss Martian and Martian Manhunter, Superman and Supergirl were out combing the world for nuclear warheads.
Of those remaining: Red Robin, Wonder Girl, Raven, Impulse, Beast Boy, and Blue Beetle were all present.
Batman—apparently concerned that Gotham was too dangerous to leave unguarded and worried the Joker might go after his son—had sent Damian along as well. Officially: to assist.
Damian had then dragged in his friend Jonathan Kent, who'd been home watching television.
Eight kids, all in the same room, ready for their first group mission.
The adult heroes had a solid plan: Mr. Terrific would lead, and they'd work through the problem methodically.
What the adults had fundamentally underestimated was the kids' competitive pride. Mr. Terrific? Who was this guy, with his two silver glowing orbs? He could get lost.
The off-the-charts-intelligent Mr. Terrific had absolutely no desire to pick a fight with this particular crowd.
Looking at what he was dealing with—Superman's son, Batman's son, Thea's student, Diana's student, the Flash's grandson. Every single one of them was a legacy heir. On matters that didn't touch core principles, he wasn't about to play the villain. He cheerfully agreed: he was just there to assist.
Red Robin Tim exchanged a few polite formalities—something about staying in touch sometime—and ended the call.
"Everyone, where do we go first?" They were all capable, but this was their first group mission, and he wanted to move as a unit.
Greenland was immediately off the table—Mr. Terrific was already operating there. Turning him down and then showing up thirty minutes later? None of them had that much nerve.
Eastern Siberia was ruled out as well. Batman had that region.
In the end, they settled on the Sahara.
As Batman's protégé, Tim had no shortage of aircraft. The others—all except Impulse Bart Allen, who could only run—could fly without assistance. Damian included: Thea had gifted him a Phantom Dragon. For discretion, though, they agreed to make the trip inside the plane.
The group settled into their own conversations in clusters of two and three.
Raven and Damian had known each other for years. Their teacher wasn't the most consistent presence, and both of them had done a significant amount of self-directed learning—but over time, they'd started to have a bit of mutual interest between them. The two were talking in that particular quiet register that only they shared.
Across the cabin, Jonathan and Beast Boy—currently in gorilla form—were locked in an arm-wrestling match. Impulse was carefully inspecting Blue Beetle's armor.
Wonder Girl, sitting up front in the co-pilot's seat, was making idle conversation with Tim.
Below them, sweeping stretches of green covered land that had once been nothing but sand. She stared down at it and shook her head. "The change here is incredible."
"Right—the word 'Sahara' actually comes from the Arabic for 'great desert.' In the Bible, this region was considered akin to hell, and in the ancient Mesopotamian sources..."
Tim continued for a considerable while. Wonder Girl Cass gave him a long-suffering look. The two were close in age—three or four years older than the rest—and genuinely had things in common, including a fondness for each other that neither had fully addressed.
Cass just wished the courtship could be a little more romantic. But Tim had zero experience in this department and seemed constitutionally unable to stop himself from sharing everything he knew. The practical result was that he consistently overdid it, leaving her with absolutely nothing to say in response—forcing her to laugh awkwardly and steer the subject somewhere else.
The eight young heroes moved through the region like they were on a school trip, unhurried, pausing along the way. These militia fighters were nothing more than ordinary people holding guns. They didn't even qualify as soldiers. How were they supposed to stand against this team?
Three camps fell in quick succession. Hundreds of refugees were freed.
Just as the group was beginning to feel like the mission lacked any real challenge, an old man casually mentioned something strange.
"Demons?" Tim repeated the words under his breath. "There have been signs of demonic activity in the deep Sahara for years?"
He looked first toward Damian—his unofficial little brother was, after all, a practitioner of the magical arts.
Damian shook his head. He wasn't sensing anything.
Tim glanced at Cass. Wonder Girl concentrated for a moment, frowning, then exchanged a look with Raven and shook her head.
Her Silent Armor had been forged specifically to stand against Trigon. The armor carried an instinctive aversion to Raven's presence—and even knowing the two teachers were on unusually close terms, Wonder Girl remained extremely cold toward Raven.
Raven grumbled inwardly about Cass, and also shook her head. There wasn't a trace of demonic energy anywhere nearby. The old man had probably been drinking.
Tim, drawing on his training in psychology, micro-expressions, and behavioral linguistics, went back and spoke with the old man at length, then questioned several other locals.
"Interesting." He stroked his chin and shared what he'd gathered. "The locals say that before Rao, the valley to the northwest already had legends about a demon—one that fed on human blood, but never left its own territory."
The group looked at each other. There was no fear in any of their expressions. Only unanimous, unmistakable interest.
"How far back does the legend go?" Damian asked, methodical as ever.
"Three hundred years. But in the last fifty, a group of strangers has been coming here every few years."
Every eye in the team lit up. The universal expression: oh, this just got much more interesting.
Someone had established a secret base in the desert and was apparently running inhumane experiments. That conclusion didn't require much effort to reach.
Tim read the group's faces and made a quick decision: investigate what was hidden out there, then determine severity—rough them up or cripple them.
The hidden valley wasn't far—less than 50 li (about 25 km / 15.5 miles). The team demonstrated their various abilities: flight, Speed Force sprinting, teleportation. They stopped at the perimeter.
Inside the valley, there were no demons. Only tents—wall to wall, suggesting at least five hundred people. The same spread of refugees, the same few dozen armed men. Identical to every other militia camp they'd already broken up.
"No infrared sensors. No drones. Nothing tracking us from orbit." Tim completed his sweep quickly.