Chapter 25:
– Amara Black –
I picked my way across the ruined sitting room, wincing as I dodged jagged chunks of stone and glittering shards of glass with my bare feet.
Note to self: keep shoes on at all times when living next door to Batman.
My eyes locked onto the little gremlin in the domino mask, Robin himself, Damian Wayne, Dick's pint-sized younger brother with a permanent scowl etched into what little of his face was visible.
I reached out and grabbed him by the collar of his cape, hauling him up until we were eye to eye. His gloved hand dropped to the katana on his hip, fingers curling around the grip, and for one tense heartbeat I genuinely wondered if the little psycho was going to try and gut me.
But he just hung there, scowling under his mask like a wet cat pulled out of a storm drain.
"What do you want, Black?"
I rolled my eyes. "Don't get snippy with me, short stuff. It was your family's crazy murder robot that just tore up my yard, put a hole in the side of my house, and almost killed Starfire."
Speaking of, Starfire perked up from where she sat on what remained of the couch, half the cushions shredded and stuffing spilling out like cotton guts. She was dabbing bright green Tamaranean blood off her forehead with a strip of ruined curtain, using it like a makeshift towel.
"I am most glad you worry for my safety, friend Amara!" She beamed at me like she hadn't just been launched through a wall. "But I was not close to death. I shall be fully healed in only a few minutes and will be ready for the butt-kicking revenge we shall deliver against that vile robot who dared attack us and take our friends!"
God, she's a golden retriever with starbolts.
"We don't even know anything about the robot, though," Kara pointed out from across the rubble. She shifted her weight and her foot caught a chunk of stone. There was a sharp bang as it rocketed off her toe like a cannonball, smashing clean through what was left of the far wall, which groaned, cracked, and collapsed in a cloud of dust and plaster.
Silence…
I set Damian back on his feet and just stared at Kara, a slow smirk curling across my lush lips. She stood there in that pretty white cardigan and yellow sundress, shoulders hunched up to her ears, looking like a puppy who'd just knocked a vase off a table. Blonde hair slightly mussed, blue eyes wide and guilty, fidgeting with the hem of her dress.
Innocent and fuckable. The most dangerous combination in the known universe.
No. Bad Amara. Focus. People you care about have been kidnapped by a murder machine. This is not the time to think about peeling Kara out of that sundress.
"Stop looking at me like that!" Kara's cheeks flushed a gorgeous shade of pink. "It was an accident!" She turned her head to the side, the blush deepening all the way to the tips of her ears as she mumbled, "I'm just... a bit distracted. From all the craziness. And, um... from our kiss earlier."
That little admission sent a warm curl of satisfaction through my chest.
It also made her nephew Jonathan, standing a few feet away in his civilian clothes, sputter like someone had poured ice water down his back.
"What kiss!?" He whipped around to stare at Kara with wide, horrified eyes. "Why are you even here, Aunt Kara? And why are you kissing a supervillain!?" my character. "Damian told me all about this lady! She's the one who's been trying to..." He faltered, realizing mid-sentence that he was about to say something incriminating. His eyes darted to Damian, then back to Kara, and in the way of all panicking teenagers who know they're already in too deep, he just plowed forward. "She's the one who's been trying to seduce Dick away from Damian and it's making him all jealous and weird about it!"
The silence that followed was delicious.
Damian, still standing right beside me, went completely rigid. His masked glare slowly swiveled toward Jonathan with the kind of quiet, murderous intensity that would've made Batman proud. If looks could kill, the half-Kryptonian boy would've been a smoking crater.
I couldn't help it. A snicker escaped me, then another, bubbling up from my chest until I was grinning wide enough to hurt. I reached over and ruffled Damian's dark hair, messing it up thoroughly.
He slapped my hand away hard enough to sting. "Don't touch me, homewrecker."
I just pouted at Damian, tilting my head with exaggerated offense. "Homewrecker? I doubt you even know what that word means, short stack."
Damian didn't miss a beat. His arms crossed over his kevlar-armored chest and his chin lifted with the imperious confidence of someone who had been raised in a literal palace of assassins. "I know exactly what a homewrecker is, Black. My mother Talia al Ghul is one. She wrote the manual. You're simply a less competent edition."
...Okay. I walked right into that one.
"Fair enough," I conceded, because honestly, what do you even say to a thirteen-year-old who just roasted you using his own mother's criminal romantic history as ammunition? The kid had layers. Awful, stabby, emotionally constipated layers, but layers nonetheless.
I shook my head and clapped my hands together once, the sharp sound cutting through the scattered conversations happening around me. Jonathan had drifted over to Kara the moment the initial tension broke and was now tugging at her sleeve like the earnest teenage boy he was, his voice pitched somewhere between indignant and desperately curious.
"Aunt Kara, seriously, why were you kissing her? Does Kal know you're here? Does he know you're kissing... that?" He gestured at me with the baffled energy of someone trying to comprehend a math equation that had too many variables. "She literally has a villain name! People with villain names are bad guys, Aunt Kara, that's like... that's the whole point of the naming convention!"
"Jonathan, it's... it's complicated, okay?" Kara's blush had graduated from pink to a truly spectacular shade of crimson that spread all the way down her neck and disappeared beneath the collar of her white cardigan. She kept fidgeting with the hem of her sundress, tugging it down, smoothing it flat, tugging again. "And she doesn't have a villain name. Amara is her real name. It's a perfectly normal name for my perfectly normal girlfriend! Who we don't need to tell Kal about…" she mumbled at the end there.
God, she's adorable when she's flustered. The way her blue eyes kept darting sideways toward me and then snapping away, like she was afraid prolonged eye contact would make her combust.
But we didn't have time for adorable right now.
I let my [Simmering Fury] rise. The rage that never truly went away, that my System had hardwired into my very soul, sharpened everything.
Dick is out there. Raven is out there. Every second counts. Focus.
Damian stiffened beside me. I saw his hand twitch toward his katana again before he caught himself, but this time the reaction wasn't aggression.
"Black." His voice was careful now, stripped of the bratty teenager entirely. "Your eyes are glowing. Red."
I blinked. "They are?"
"Bright red. Like embers."
Huh. That's new.
I didn't feel any different, beyond the sharpened focus. Maybe it was the succubus blood responding to the anger. Maybe it was something else entirely. Either way, I filed it away under "deal with later" alongside roughly forty-seven other mysteries about my own biology that I hadn't had time to investigate.
"Noted," I said simply, then raised my voice to fill the room. "Everyone. Listen up."
The scattered conversations died. Jonathan stopped interrogating Kara. Starfire straightened on her ruined couch, the gash on her forehead already sealed to a faint green line that was fading by the second. Even Damian turned to face me fully, his posture shifting into something attentive and professional despite himself.
"We need to find that robot," I said, and I let them hear the iron beneath my words. The controlled fury that wasn't asking for cooperation but expecting it. "As soon as possible. Every minute we stand here arguing about my love life or kicking holes in my walls..." A pointed glance at Kara, who had the grace to wince. "...is a minute that machine has to do whatever it's planning with Dick and Raven. And I refuse to let that happen."
Raven is mine!
The memory of her body beneath me on the cruise ship. The sounds she made when my tail pushed inside her. The way her violet eyes had gone wide and glassy, her lips parting on that broken, beautiful moan. The Veil Chain gleaming on her slender wrist as she kissed me in front of everyone just hours ago, brave and fierce and blushing.
Dick is mine!
His hands on my waist at the nightclub. The taste of his mouth in my London penthouse. The way he looked at me like I was worth saving even when I kept proving him wrong. That stupid, infuriating, beautiful belief in my redemption that I didn't deserve and couldn't stop craving.
Mine. Both of them. And nobody takes what's mine!
My succubus instincts surged in agreement, a simultaneous growl and purr that resonated through every nerve ending in my body. I felt my wings strain against the glamour holding them flat against my shoulder blades, my tail coiling and uncoiling inside its invisible prison at the base of my spine, my horns pressing outward against the skin of my forehead like something trying to hatch. The demonic parts of me wanted out. Wanted to fly, to hunt, to find the thing that had stolen my people and tear it apart with burning claws.
I held them in. Barely. My jaw clenched with the effort and I swallowed hard, forcing the transformation back do
I turned to Kara, who had gone quiet during my little speech, her earlier embarrassment replaced by something steadier.
"Kara, can you or Jon track it? X-ray vision, superhearing, anything?"
Jonathan shook his head before Kara could answer, frustration tightening his young face. "I already tried. The whole thing is covered in some kind of lead-carbon alloy. Can't see through it and I can't hear it anywhere nearby. It's like it just vanished."
Of course it did. Batman built it. Of course it's lead-lined. The man prepares contingencies for his contingencies…
Kara's expression mirrored her nephew's frustration, but when her eyes met mine, something softer flickered through the determination. "Sorry," she said quietly. "I tried scanning the moment it left, but I was more focused on keeping you safe after those wards collapsed. You could barely stand, Amara. I wasn't going to leave you to chase a robot I might not have been able to catch anyway."
She chose me over "the mission."
The thought landed in my chest like a warm stone dropped into still water, ripples spreading outward through places I usually kept frozen. This impossibly kind, stupidly powerful, earnest girl in her sunny yellow dress had watched a kidnapping happen and chosen to stay because I looked like I was hurting.
Fuck. I am so screwed with this one.
I closed the distance between us in three strides, and before my rational brain could overrule my instincts, I cupped both sides of her face and kissed her.
Not the tentative, exploratory kiss from the hallway earlier. This was harder—hungrier. My lips sealed over hers and I poured every ounce of gratitude and want and terrified affection into it, tilting her head back with my palms on her jaw.
She made a startled sound against my mouth, a soft little "mmph!" of surprise that melted almost instantly into something warmer. Her hands found my hips and gripped, strong Kryptonian fingers pressing into the thin fabric of my dress just hard enough for me to feel the steel beneath the silk of her skin. Her lips parted and I swept my tongue against hers, tasting the faint sweetness of the lemonade she'd been drinking before the world exploded, and she whimpered. A tiny, breathy, involuntary "nnh" that she clearly hadn't meant to let escape, because her fingers tightened on my hips in embarrassment even as she kissed me back with clumsy enthusiasm.
"Oh wonderful!" Starfire squealed from her position on the destroyed sofa, clapping her hands together with enough Tamaranean force to produce two sharp cracks that echoed off the remaining walls like gunshots. "Congratulations! This is the Kel'vari first-stage mouth-pressing I mentioned earlier! Though traditionally it would be performed with both participants unclothed and..."
"Kori," I murmured against Kara's lips. "Love you. Shut up!"
"Of course! Shutting up immediately!"
I broke the kiss slowly, dragging my lower lip against Kara's as I pulled back, savoring the dazed, half-lidded look in those beautiful blue eyes. Her lips were flushed dark pink and slightly swollen, parted on shallow breaths that fanned warm across my chin. A thin strand of saliva briefly connected our mouths before it broke, and Kara made another one of those involuntary sounds, a shaky exhale that was almost but not quite a moan.
Later, I promised myself. When this is over. When everyone is safe. I am going to take my time with you, Supergirl...
I turned my head just enough to catch the two teenage boys in my peripheral vision and had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
Damian had turned almost entirely away, his arms rigid at his sides, fists clenched, the visible tips of his ears burning a shade of red that would have made a fire engine jealous. He was staring at a section of undamaged wall with the fierce concentration of someone trying to memorize its molecular structure so he didn't have to acknowledge what had just happened three feet away from him.
Jonathan was not handling it any better. His mouth hung slightly open, his cheeks were blazing, and he had the expression of someone whose brain had blue-screened and was in the process of rebooting. He blinked rapidly, looked at Kara, looked at me, looked at Kara again, then stared at the ceiling as if praying for Kryptonian gods to beam him away from this moment.
Teenagers. Bless them.
"I..." Jonathan started, voice cracking magnificently. "I'm going to... not think about that. Ever. For the rest of my life. Starting now."
"Excellent plan," Damian ground out without turning around.
"Good boys," I said sweetly, which made them both flinch.
But the lightness lasted only a moment before reality crashed back in. I still didn't have a lead on Failsafe. I still didn't know where Dick and Raven were being taken. And every second that passed pushed them further away from me and closer to whatever that machine had planned.
I opened my mouth to suggest we split up and search the surrounding area when Damian's voice cut across the room, clipped and professional and dripping with poorly disguised smugness. "I don't know how you get anything done around here, homewrecker. You seem to be the one who can't focus." He reached into a compartment on his utility belt and produced a small device about the size of a coin, its surface blinking with a steady amber pulse. "Lucky for you, I placed a tracking device on the robot."
Every head in the room snapped toward him.
"You what?" I demanded.
He held up the tracker between two fingers, the blinking light casting tiny amber flashes across the lenses of his mask. "I placed a micro-tracker on its dorsal plating. Military-grade adhesive. Sub-dermal frequency that can penetrate up to three hundred meters of solid concrete. Battery life of seventy-two hours."
Jonathan's jaw dropped. "When did you do that!? We were both in the cave when it showed up, you were standing right next to me the whole..."
"When it was poisoning you with kryptonite," Damian said flatly, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. "You were on the floor writhing in agony. The robot dismissed me as a non-threat and turned its back. I placed the tracker and retreated to maintain the appearance of compliance."
Jonathan spluttered. "You... while I was dying... you used me as a distraction!?"
"You were not dying. Kryptonite exposure at that range and duration would cause extreme discomfort and temporary power loss but I knew you would live." Followed by a pause. "You're welcome…"
"That's not... I don't... you can't just..." Jonathan turned helplessly to Kara, gesturing at Damian with both hands in a universal plea for someone to acknowledge the insanity. Kara just pressed her lips together in a thin line that was trying very hard not to be a smile.
Starfire, however, had no such restraint. She launched off the couch, crossed the distance to Damian in two long strides, and scooped him up from behind in a crushing bear hug.
"You are so wonderful, Son of Batman!" she declared, squeezing him against her chest with the enthusiasm of someone who had absolutely no concept of personal space or the effect her body had on adolescent boys. Damian's face went nuclear. His arms locked at his sides, his legs went stiff as boards, and every single one of his limbs twitched simultaneously as if his nervous system couldn't decide between fighting, fleeing, or simply shutting down entirely.
Kori, blissfully oblivious, rocked him side to side while his masked face pressed unavoidably into the generous curve of her chest. "Such quick thinking! Such bravery! You will make an excellent addition to our rescue party!"
"Unhand me!" Damian's voice came out muffled and about two octaves higher than normal. "This is... you are... RELEASE ME IMMEDIATELY, WOMAN!"
Kori set him down with a bright smile and a pat on the head that made his eye twitch violently. Damian stumbled forward, cape askew, hair ruined again, vibrating with what I could only describe as the full-body mortification of a boy who had just had his face shoved between an alien supermodel's breasts in front of a room full of people. Jonathan was carefully looking anywhere except at his best friend, with his cheeks bulged with the effort of containing whatever sound was trying to escape.
Don't laugh. Don't you dare laugh, Amara. The little gremlin just saved our entire operation with that tracker.
I managed. Barely. The corner of my mouth twitched once. Twice. I bit my tongue and turned it into a cough.
Then I let out a long breath, and for the first time since the wall had exploded inward, the crushing weight on my chest eased just a fraction. We had a lead.
We're coming, Dick. We're coming, Raven. Hold on.
Kara's hand found mine…
– Raven –
Her head throbbed with a dull, pulsing ache that radiated from the base of her skull to her temples, and when she tried to move her arms, metal bit into her wrists with a sharp, unforgiving pressure.
Her violet eyes cracked open.
Steel. Concrete. Flickering fluorescent tubes mounted on a ceiling that stretched high enough to suggest she was underground, deep underground, the kind of space carved out of Gotham's bedrock with industrial purpose and zero concern for aesthetics.
Another underground lair. Gotham has more secret bases than it has functioning streetlights.
She was strapped to a heavy steel chair bolted to the floor. Thick metal bands pinned her wrists to the armrests, another circled her waist, and a final one clamped around her ankles. They weren't ordinary restraints. Faint symbols were etched into the metal.
Raven reached for her magic on instinct, tried to summon the familiar darkness that lived coiled behind her ribs, and felt it slam against an invisible wall. The symbols flared brighter for a half second, then dimmed again.
Anti-magic bindings. Of course.
Her pulse spiked. Then the weight on her left wrist shifted, cool and grounding, and she felt the Veil Chain's crescent moon charm press against the inside of her forearm. The bracelet Amara had given her. The empathic filter hummed softly against her skin, and the spike of fear smoothed out, flattened into something she could hold and examine rather than drown in.
Okay. Breathe. Think. Panic later…
Dick was in an identical chair roughly four feet to her right. His head hung forward, dark hair falling across his forehead, the muscles in his neck and shoulders slack. The top two buttons of his dress shirt had been torn open during the fight, and an angry bruise was already purpling along his jaw. His wrists were bound with the same steel bands, though his lacked the glowing runes.
"Dick," she whispered.
Nothing.
"Dick." Louder this time.
A groan. His fingers twitched against the armrest, then curled into a fist. His head lifted slowly, eyes squinting against the harsh fluorescent glare.
"Nngh... Raven?" His voice came out rough, scraped raw. He blinked hard, twice, then his gaze sharpened with that particular speed that separated Richard Grayson from ordinary people. One heartbeat confused, the next fully present and scanning the room with trained precision. "Where are we?"
"Underground. Somewhere beneath Gotham, I think." Raven tested her restraints again, the metal groaning faintly but refusing to give. "These are warded. I can't access my magic."
Dick pulled against his own bindings, the muscles in his forearms straining, tendons standing out beneath tanned skin. The chair didn't budge. He exhaled sharply through his nose. "Yeah. These aren't standard. Titanium composite, maybe heavier. Batman-grade hardware." His jaw tightened at that last part, a shadow passing behind his blue eyes.
The room they occupied was a fraction of a much larger space. From her chair, Raven could see past a half-wall partition into what could only be described as a command center. Multiple holographic screens floated in a semicircle around a central terminal, each one cycling through feeds, data streams, and tactical overlays. Some showed satellite imagery of Gotham. Others displayed schematics she couldn't quite make out from this distance, though the angular, organized layouts reminded her uncomfortably of military strike plans.
And standing at the heart of it all, bathed in the cold blue glow of a dozen holographic displays, was the robot.
Failsafe.
Dick had noticed the screens too. He leaned forward as far as his restraints allowed, his eyes narrowing. "What is it doing?"
Raven followed his gaze. A screen showed biographical files cycling rapidly. She caught fragments: Superman. Real Name: Kal-El. Known Vulnerabilities. Wonder Woman. Real Name: Diana Prince. Combat Assessment. The Flash. Real Name: Barry Allen. Containment Protocol.
It has files on all of them. Every member of the League.
"Hey!" Dick's voice cracked through the sterile air like a whip. He'd spotted the files too, and whatever composure he'd been maintaining evaporated. "Turn around. Now."
Failsafe's metal hands paused on the terminal. The movement was subtle, almost casual, like a man interrupted during paperwork. "You're awake. Thirty-seven minutes ahead of my projected timeline. Impressive pain tolerance, Nightwing. Your file said as much, but empirical data is always preferable."
"My file," Dick repeated flatly. "Start talking. What the hell are you? Why do you have Batman's symbol on your chest? And why did you attack us?"
"I attacked you because you were the most efficient vectors to achieve my objective," it said, as if explaining weather patterns to a child. "As for what I am..." It took three measured steps forward. It stopped precisely eight feet from their chairs, close enough for the red glow of its optics to cast faint shadows across their faces, far enough to remain outside any reasonable lunge distance. "I am Failsafe," the robot declared. The crimson light intensified behind its optics as it spoke, casting shifting patterns across its faceplate. "Designation: Omega Contingency Protocol. I was designed and constructed by Bruce Wayne in a specialized facility beneath the original Batcave approximately four years, seven months, and thirteen days ago."
Dick's expression shifted. The particular sting of betrayal that came from learning someone you trusted had built something terrible behind your back. Raven knew the look. She'd worn it herself more times than she cared to count.
"Bruce built you," Dick said quietly. The words came out heavy.
"Correct. My primary directive is straightforward." Failsafe clasped its hands behind its back, a gesture so perfectly Bruce Wayne that Raven's stomach turned. "In the event that Batman himself becomes compromised, goes rogue, or commits an act of murder, I am to activate, neutralize Batman, and assume protective oversight of Gotham City."
"And the Justice League?" Raven asked, keeping her voice carefully level. "Those files on your screens. The containment protocols."
Failsafe's head tilted, an eerily human gesture of consideration.
Dick let out a breath that was half laugh, half groan. "A failsafe for his failsafes. That is the most Bruce thing I've ever heard."
"Upon activation," the robot continued, ignoring Dick's commentary, "I conducted a comprehensive threat assessment of all active Justice League members. The results were... illuminating."
It raised one hand and gestured. The holographic screens shifted, reorganizing themselves into a grid of video feeds. Raven watched, a slow chill creeping up her spine, as the footage played.
Superman sitting at a dinner table in his Metropolis apartment, laughing at something Lois said while emergency sirens wailed faintly through the window behind him. He didn't react. Didn't even glance at the window.
Wonder Woman in her quarters on Themyscira, polishing her sword with methodical, mechanical precision. Her communicator flashed urgently on the table beside her. She looked at it, and her eyes flickered red for a fraction of a second before she returned to polishing, expression serene and empty.
The Flash slumped on his couch in Central City, a cooking show playing on his television, a half-eaten bowl of nachos on his lap. His phone buzzed. He picked it up, stared at the screen, then set it face-down without answering. His eyes pulsed crimson.
Batman himself in the Watchtower, sitting at the primary command console. Alert after alert scrolled across his screens. Missing persons. Unexplained massacres. Priority Alpha distress signals. He stared at them with glassy, unfocused eyes, then pressed DISMISS on each one, systematically, methodically, like a man sorting junk mail.
His eyes burned red.
Every single one of them.
Dick was staring at the feeds, his face drained of color. His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. "What... what happened to them?"
"Days ago, every active member of the Justice League was simultaneously subjected to an external psychic influence of extraordinary magnitude," Failsafe reported, clinical and detached. "The signature is consistent with high-tier demonic compulsion magic. Specifically, I have identified the source as the arch-demon Trigon. The league had only just learned of his existence before this all happened."
Her fingers curled against the cold armrests, knuckles whitening. The bracelet hummed harder, working overtime, pulling her back from the edge of the pit that yawned open in her chest every single time someone spoke that name.
Trigon. Father.
The word tasted like bile.
"I am unfamiliar with the full scope of his capabilities," Failsafe continued, its optical sensors fixing on Raven with uncomfortable precision. "My databases contain limited information on entities classified as interdimensional. However, I have cross-referenced the timeline of the League's behavioral anomalies with data from five simultaneous mass casualty events across the globe. The correlation is absolute. Whatever Trigon's objectives are, compromising the League appears to be an essential precondition."
Dick leaned forward, the muscles in his arms flexing against the restraints. "Then let us go. We're on the same side here. Raven knows more about Trigon than anyone alive. We'll help you fix the League, break whatever hold he has on them, and then we deal with the bigger threat together. That's the smart play." The words were earnest, measured, delivered with exactly the kind of calm authority that made Dick Grayson a natural leader. Raven had seen him talk down armed criminals, enraged metahumans, even hostile aliens with that same steady voice.
Failsafe regarded him in silence for three full seconds. Then it laughed. The sound was wrong. Rolling out of its vocal synthesizer like it had been practicing in the dark for years. It echoed off the concrete walls and steel plates, bouncing back at them from multiple angles.
"You misunderstand the situation, Nightwing." Failsafe's laughter faded, but something remained in its tone, something that might have been amusement if it had come from a human throat. "I have no interest in saving the Justice League."
Dick blinked. "What?"
The robot unclasped its hands from behind its back and spread them, palms up, in a gesture that was almost philosophical. "The Justice League has failed! Catastrophically and repeatedly. They have allowed themselves to be compromised by a demonic entity. They did not prepare." It turned, walking back toward the command center with measured strides. "Furthermore, even if the League's mental faculties were restored, what then? They return to their pattern of half-measures? Capture villains who escape within months? Protect a world that grows more dangerous with each passing year while they hold back, restrained by moral codes that their enemies do not share?" It stopped at the terminal, one hand resting on the console. "Batman understood this better than anyone. It is why he created me. Not as a tool to preserve the League, but as a contingency in case the League proved inadequate. That contingency has now been activated."
"You're insane," Dick said, and there was no anger in his voice now. Just quiet, dawning horror. "You're not a failsafe. You're a replacement."
"Correct." The word came out with something approaching satisfaction. "Batman will never willingly allow me to continue operating. The moment his mind is restored, his first action will be to decommission me. I know this with absolute certainty because I was designed to think as he thinks. I understand his psychology intimately." A pause, the faint hum of processors cycling. "He even erased his own memories of my creation to prevent himself from preemptively dismantling me during a moment of doubt. He knew I was necessary. He also knew he would not be able to stomach my existence once the necessity passed."
"So what?" Raven asked, her voice cutting through the clinical monologue. "You're going to let the entire League stay compromised because fixing them is inconvenient for your survival?"
Failsafe turned its head just enough for one crimson optic to fix on her. "The League, restored, will attempt to stop me. I have run three hundred and twelve simulations. In every scenario where the League is freed before my objectives are complete, they prioritize my destruction over the Trigon threat. Batman alone would dedicate seventy-three percent of his operational capacity to hunting me within the first forty-eight hours." It turned back to the screens. "No. I will address the Trigon incursion on my own terms, at my own pace. But first, I require the League permanently neutralized."
The word "permanently" hung in the air like a guillotine blade.
Dick went very still. "You want to kill them," Dick breathed. "All of them."
"Want is not a concept that applies to me, Nightwing. I don't want anything. I was built to protect Gotham. To protect the world. The Justice League, in their current state, represents the single greatest obstacle to that protection. Removing them is not a desire. It is an optimization."
Dick lunged against his restraints so hard the metal shrieked and the chair legs groaned against the bolts anchoring them to the floor. His face was flushed, cords standing out in his neck, teeth bared. "You can't do this! Bruce would never..."
"Bruce would never." Failsafe repeated the words back with perfect inflection, each syllable a mirror of Dick's desperate conviction. "And that is precisely why he built me. To do the things Bruce would never!"
"Only Bruce," Dick muttered to the ceiling, voice hollow with a bitter kind of resignation. "Only Bruce Wayne could be so goddamn paranoid that he accidentally created his own bat-themed Skynet. Complete with daddy issues and an entire murder plan for the world's best heroes."
Failsafe tilted its head again, but this time its optics glowed in a way that almost looked angry. "I do not have daddy issues."
"You literally just spent five minutes explaining why your creator doesn't appreciate you and how you're going to prove him wrong by killing his friends," Dick said flatly. "That's the textbook definition of daddy issues…"
It seemed that Raven's initial assessment was correct because that comment ended up pushing Failsafe too far. His metal hand backhanded Dick across the chin with a painful slap that ended up knocking him out again.
"You bastard—" Raven's curse was cut off as a second later she saw its fist moving right towards her face.
– Amara –
Half an hour later, I touched down on the flat gravel rooftop of an abandoned warehouse on Gotham's eastern industrial strip, my boot—and yes I was wearing shoes now!—crunching against loose stone and ancient bird shit. My wings folded inward first followed by my tail and horns.
Villains and warehouses. It's like a law of nature. Secret underground base? Better put a shitty warehouse on top of it.
Failsafe's lair was underground, somewhere beneath this crumbling monument to Gotham's dead manufacturing sector.
Then again, I literally lived in a warehouse too before we got the manor..
The soft rush of displaced air behind me was the only warning before Starfire touched down.
Kori had been unusually quiet during the flight over from the manor. But whatever solemn warrior focus she'd been channeling evaporated the moment her feet hit solid ground.
"Your demonic appearance is very the sexy, friend Amara!" she announced brightly, clasping her hands together and tilting her head at me with an expression of earnest artistic appreciation. "When you were flying with your wings extended and your tail trailing behind you, you reminded me very much of those drawings the boys on the 4chan are always looking at. The ones with the horns and the tails and the very little clothing." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I believe the category is called 'demon girl' or sometimes 'succubus waifu.' Yes. You are very much the succubus waifu."
My brain did that thing where all the gears try to spin in different directions simultaneously and the whole mechanism just locks up. "I'm sorry," I said slowly. "Why do you know what 4chan is?"
"I have explored much of Earth's internet to better understand your fascinating culture!" Kori beamed at me, zero shame radiating from her gorgeous orange-skinned face. "It is a website with many interesting discussions about art, politics, and which female superheroes have the most appealing posteriors. There is also plenty of the sexy fanart of me on there, which I find very the flattering." She placed a hand over her chest with genuine warmth. "The artists capture my likeness with great skill and passion. I have considered reaching out to some of the more talented ones to thank them personally, but Cyborg said that would cause something called a 'meltdown' on the boards."
Starfire browses 4chan. Starfire has seen her own Rule 34. Starfire wants to write thank-you notes to the artists. This is the most Kori thing I have ever heard and I've only known her for a week.
Supergirl landed a few feet to my left, the gravel cracking under the impact of those deceptively powerful legs. She'd changed back into her full costume during our departure from the manor. The red boots, the blue suit with its crimson cape, the iconic S-shield stretched across her chest. The transformation from sweet girl in a yellow sundress to one of the most powerful beings on the planet was always a little jarring. Like watching a golden retriever suddenly remember it was actually a wolf.
Her cheeks, however, were already burning pink, which told me she'd heard every word of Kori's artistic analysis. "Kori," Kara said with the exhausted patience of someone who had clearly had this conversation before. "You really shouldn't talk about stuff like that. Especially not right before a dangerous mission."
Kori tilted her head. The movement was birdlike and confused, her long auburn hair cascading over one shoulder. "But why? The human body is beautiful, and art that celebrates it should be praised, not hidden away in the shame. On Tamaran, our finest sculptors are celebrated with feasts and mating ceremonies when they capture a warrior's form with particular skill." She gestured at me. "And Amara's demonic form is genuinely exquisite. It would be dishonest not to say so."
Kara pressed her palm flat against her own face with an audible smack. Her voice came out muffled through her fingers. "Because not everything needs to be said out loud, Kori."
"But how will people know you are thinking nice things about them if you do not say those things out loud?"
Kara just shook her head, dragging her hand down her face in slow, defeated surrender. Then Kara straightened, and the flush faded from her cheeks as something harder clicked into place behind those blue eyes. "What's the plan?" she asked—me?
Both of them were looking at me. Kori with eager readiness, Kara with steady trust. Waiting for me to tell them what to do.
Oh shit. I'm in charge of this rescue operation!?
The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water. I glanced between the two of them. An alien princess with combat experience spanning years. A Kryptonian who could punch holes in mountains. And they were both looking at me, the nineteen-year-old succubus witch who'd gotten her first wand less than two months ago.
"Okay, hold on," I said, raising both palms. "You two realize that you're both way more experienced at this than I am, right?"
Kara's eyebrow arched. "You're the one who took command back at the manor. You organized everyone. You assigned roles. You sent Damian and Jonathan away with specific tactical instructions while the rest of us were still processing what happened." A small, knowing smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "You were already leading, Amara. You just didn't notice."
Kori nodded vigorously. "You have the voice of command, friend Amara. It is quite the attractive quality. On Tamaran, a woman who speaks with such natural authority would have many suitors presenting themselves at her dwelling for formal consideration. There would be the competitive trials and the ceremonial wrestling and eventually the..."
"Thank you, Kori," I interrupted before we ended up with a full breakdown of Tamaranean courtship rituals. "I appreciate the cultural context. Really." I let out a breath and rubbed the back of my neck, thinking it through.
Fine. You're in charge. Act like it!
"Alright. The reason I sent the boys away wasn't just about their ages." I held up one finger. "One, I didn't want a younger audience for what's about to happen. I'm not a hero. When things get ugly down there, my methods are going to get ugly, and I won't sanitize myself or hold back for the sake of a thirteen-year-old's developing moral compass, no matter how many katanas he carries." Second finger. "Two, Damian and Jonathan are our insurance policy. If the three of us go underground and we don't come back, those two are the rescue team for the rescue team. The failsafe for the Failsafe." I paused. "I gave Damian strict instructions. If we don't check in with him within ninety minutes, he contacts Morgana directly using the emergency charm I left with him. And believe me, if Morgana shows up, whatever is left of that robot won't fill a thimble!"
I was opening my mouth to outline the infiltration approach when Kara's head snapped to the right. Her eyes widened. She didn't speak. She just moved. Kryptonian hands clamped down on my left shoulder and Kori's right, and with a single brutal yank, she hauled both of us flat against the rooftop.
Kori let out a startled "Eep!" that I filed away as the most adorable combat sound I'd ever heard.
"Mmph! Kara, what the fu..." A warm palm pressed firmly over my mouth. Kara's face was inches from mine.
Kori and I exchanged a confused glance from our sprawled positions on the filthy rooftop. Then Kara pointed, one finger extended toward the cluster of buildings across the street, and the blood in my veins turned to ice water.
Two figures descended from the Gotham skyline onto the roof of the warehouse directly opposite ours.
The first was unmistakable even at this distance. The dark cape, the cowl with its pointed ears, the armored suit that turned a man into a living shadow. Batman landed in a crouch.
The second figure floated down beside him, her boots never quite touching the concrete. Wonder Woman.
Fuck me sideways, this just got a lot more complicated.
"I can hear them," Kara whispered, her expression tight with concentration. Her head was slightly tilted, superhearing dialed to maximum, filtering through the ambient noise of the Gotham evening to isolate two voices a hundred yards away. "They're... they're not talking normally. Like someone else is using their mouths."
Possession. Not just mind control. Full demonic possession.
"Batman is calling himself Wrath," Kara continued, her voice barely a breath. "Wonder Woman is... Envy." Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "And they both keep referencing 'Father.' As in Trigon." Kara's ears caught every syllable. "They know the robot captured Raven. They know she's underground in that base. And they're saying..." She paused, and for a moment. "They're saying their father wants her back. That she's the 'Gem of Scath,' the final key. They need her for the concluding ritual…"
Over my dead body!
We watched in tense silence as Batman, "Wrath," fired a grappling hook at the warehouse across from us and swung down in a controlled swing, disappearing through a gap in the structure's facade. Moments later, I caught the faintest scrape of metal on metal as he located and opened the hidden entrance to Failsafe's underground lair.
A manhole cover, disguised beneath a pile of industrial debris. He descended into the darkness without a backward glance.
Wonder Woman remained above, floating at a casual altitude of about thirty feet, her eyes slowly scanning the surrounding rooftops for anyone who would interfere.
I cannot take her. Not even close. On my best day, in my strongest form, with every advantage and dirty trick I know, Wonder Woman would turn me into a smear on the pavement before I finished my first spell.
I turned to Kori and Kara. Two alien powerhouses. Two women who could trade blows with gods and walk away from it. The math was ugly, but the only equation that worked was obvious.
Kara was already nodding before I spoke. "I'll handle her," she said quietly. "I can keep her occupied," Kara continued, and her voice firmed as she spoke, conviction replacing hesitation. "Drive her away from the warehouse, at least. Give you and Kori a clear path underground." Then she glanced at me with a flicker of her usual warmth. "Besides, it's probably better I stay out of that base anyway. If that robot has a stockpile of Kryptonite down there, I'd go from asset to liability the second I stepped inside."
Smart. Practical. And it meant I was about to lose my heaviest hitter before we even started the hard part.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
Kori stepped forward and pulled Kara into a brief, fierce embrace. "Good luck, Friend Kara," she said softly, and for once there was no bubbly cheerfulness in her voice. Just sincerity.
I caught Kara's eye over Kori's shoulder. A dozen things I wanted to say crowded behind my teeth. Be careful. Don't die. I haven't even taken you on a proper date yet. If Wonder Woman hurts you, I'll find a way to burn an immortal. What came out was simpler. "Good luck, Kara."
She gave me one last look. Soft, warm, and full of a promise that said we'll finish this later more clearly than words ever could. Then Supergirl rose into the Gotham sky, her red cape catching the wind, and flew straight toward Wonder Woman with her fists clenched and her chin held high.
"DIANA!" Kara's voice rang out across the rooftops, strong and clear and deliberately loud.
The Amazon's eyes snapped toward the approaching Kryptonian. Her lips curled into a smile that belonged to something ancient and cruel wearing Diana's face.
And then they collided, two forces of nature crashing together above the Gotham skyline in an explosion of raw kinetic force that sent shockwaves rippling across the rooftops. Windows shattered for three blocks in every direction. Car alarms screamed to life. The sheer displaced air nearly knocked me off my feet.
I steadied myself, tore my eyes away from the battle erupting above us, and looked at Starfire.
Kori's green eyes burned with a fierce, eager light. "Shall we go save our friends, Friend Amara?"
…Kori launched through the open manhole like a missile, and I dropped in after her, my boots hitting damp concrete in a dark corridor that smelled like rust, stagnant water, and the particular brand of industrial neglect that Gotham's underground seemed to exude from every pore.
The base was enormous. Corridors branched off in multiple directions, lit by intermittent strips of emergency lighting that cast everything in a sickly amber glow. But navigating wasn't the problem. Batman, or whatever was wearing Batman's skin right now, had already blazed a trail for us.
Well, at least the possessed Dark Knight is good for something. He cleared every trap between us and the front door like a homicidal concierge.
We moved fast, my enhanced legs carrying me at a pace that would've left any normal human gasping, but "a bit above human speed" was still painfully slow when the stakes were this high. The sounds reached us first. Metal shrieking against metal. Concussive impacts that shook dust from the ceiling. And voices, distorted and wrong, shouting commands that echoed up through the labyrinth of corridors.
They're already fighting. Move. Faster!
"Friend Amara!" Kori called from ahead, her feet already lifting off the ground. She spun mid-air and swooped back toward me. Before I could protest, her arms hooked beneath my knees and around my back, scooping me up into a bridal carry so smooth it felt rehearsed.
My stomach flipped. One strong arm cradled beneath my thighs, fingers curled against the back of my knee. The other pressed warm and firm across my upper back, her palm splayed between my shoulder blades. My body was tucked against her chest, close enough to feel the furnace warmth that Tamaraneans radiated like personal suns, close enough to catch the faint scent of something sweet and alien clinging to her golden skin.
"You are very soft, Friend Amara!" Kori announced cheerfully, completely unbothered by the fact that she was hauling a grown woman through a supervillain's underground lair at roughly sixty miles per hour. Her green eyes glanced down at me with bright appreciation. "And your posterior is very the perky! It is pressing most pleasantly against my forearm!"
"Kori!" My cheeks burned. "Read the room!"
"I am reading the room! The room is a dark tunnel and you have a fantastic ass. Both of these are the observable facts!"
A laugh punched out of me before I could stop it.
And this was the girl who broke Dick's heart. The girl whose casual attitude toward intimacy had fractured the Titans and sent Raven fleeing to Gotham. The girl Dick still couldn't talk about without that shadow crossing his face. I was being carried like a bride through the depths of Gotham by the one person guaranteed to make every future group interaction astronomically awkward.
This is going to be a problem, isn't it? My succubus instincts purred a lazy, unhelpful confirmation. Yeah. Thought so.
Then we rounded the final corner.
…My eyes found them instantly. Everything else, the towering server banks, the flickering holographic displays, the two titans locked in brutal combat across the chamber, all of it faded into background noise the moment I spotted those two chairs against the far wall.
Dick's chair had been knocked over at some point during the fighting. He lay on his side, still strapped to the metal seat, his dark hair matted with blood from a gash above his eyebrow. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. Fresh bruises bloomed purple and angry across his jaw and cheekbone, layered over the ones I'd noticed earlier.
He's alive. Thank fuck, he's alive.
Raven was still upright, but barely. Heavy chains wound around her torso and arms, binding her to her chair in thick coils that glowed with those same anti-magic runes I could sense even from here. Her violet eyes were wide and alert, darting between the battle raging across the chamber and the doorway where Kori and I had just appeared.
The moment those eyes locked onto mine, something shifted in her expression. Despite everything, despite the chains and the bruises and the chaos erupting around us, her lips curved into the smallest, most relieved smile I'd ever seen.
I'm here, Raven. I'm here. Just hold on.
"SURRENDER THE GIRL, FOUL MACHINE!"
The roar dragged my attention sideways, and I got my first clear look at the battle consuming the other half of the chamber.
Failsafe stood amid the wreckage of what had probably been a very impressive command center.
Batman, Wrath, circled the robot.
Failsafe's optical sensors flared. "You wear Batman's body like a puppet, speak with his voice, utilize his combat protocols, and yet you fail to understand what makes him dangerous." The robot caught an incoming batarang and crushed it in its remaining fist, sparks showering across the floor. "It was never the tools. It was never the training. It was the mind behind both. And whatever you are, demon, you are not that mind. You are merely a passenger in stolen flesh."
They're completely focused on each other. Neither of them has even noticed us yet.
I grabbed Kori's arm and pointed toward the chairs. "Now. While they're distracted."
Kori nodded once, her expression fierce and focused, and we moved.
We crossed the chamber at a dead sprint, Kori's boots barely touching the ground as she half-flew beside me. The sounds of combat continued behind us, Wrath's snarling proclamations mixing with the crash of metal against metal and the crack of exploding ordinance.
I reached Dick first, dropping to my knees beside his overturned chair. His face was slack, his breathing shallow but steady. The gash above his eye had stopped bleeding, the blood already drying in dark streaks down his temple. I pressed two fingers to the pulse point beneath his jaw and felt the steady thump of his heartbeat against my skin.
"Dick." I patted his cheek gently. "Dick, can you hear me?"
No response. Not even a flutter of his eyelids.
Shit.
"Amara."
Raven's voice pulled my attention sideways. She was straining against her chains, her violet eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that made my breath catch.
"You came," she said softly. The words were simple, but the weight behind them was anything but.
I crossed to her in three quick strides, my hands reaching for the chains wrapped around her torso. "Of course I came. You really think I'd let some jumped-up toaster and a possessed billionaire..."
My palms made contact with the metal.
Pain. White-hot agony seared through my hands like I'd grabbed a branding iron. I yanked backward with a hiss, my fingers curling instinctively as I stared at the angry red welts already forming across my palms.
"The chains are warded," Raven said quickly, her voice tight with concern. "Anti-magic and anti-demonic. Failsafe was very thorough. I'm sorry, I should have warned you before you..."
Kori stepped forward, her green eyes narrowing as she examined the chains. "Allow me, Friend Amara. Tamaranean physiology is neither magical nor demonic. Perhaps the wards will not affect me." She wrapped her fingers around one of the chain links and paused, waiting for the burn that didn't come. A fierce smile spread across her face.
The chains parted with a shriek of torn metal.
Raven surged forward, her arms snapping free, the remaining links clattering to the floor around her feet. She stumbled slightly as she stood.
I caught her elbow before she could fall, steadying her against my side. "Easy. Take a second."
"I don't have a second." Raven's voice was stronger now. But she leaned into my touch anyway, just for a moment, her shoulder pressing against mine. "Dick needs healing. And we need to leave. Immediately!"
She pulled away and crossed to where Dick lay in his overturned chair. Her healing magic was amazing as I watched the purple bruises disappear from Dick's handsome face. A second later he snapped his eyes open and quickly shot up. I yelped—my face had been too close—and we almost collided.
"What's happening?!" he asked quickly looking around the room.
Thump…
We all turned at the noise. I saw that the robot had one against the imposter. Batman's body was on the cold metal floor, unmoving, and Failsafe held a large knife in its robotic hands about to drive it into the Dark Knight's heart!
"No!" Dick shouted and dove past us, slamming into the heavy metal robot.
"You were an annoyance before, Dick Grayson, but you served your purpose in luring Batman here! Now you will share his fate and die!" Failsafe's cold voice called out as it easily threw Dick right off of itself.
Dick slammed into some nearby servers with a grunt and a few curses as he picked himself back up. "I won't go down as easily as before!"
Seeing this damn robot hurt MY PEOPLE made my anger spike to a point where I couldn't and didn't want to hold it back anymore. I shouted to get that damn thing's attention. "Hey, you metal piece of shit. You wrecked my home, you kidnapped people I care about, and now you think you can kill them. Die, you stupid tin-can!" I called out as I raised my soul-bound wand and unleashed a small torrent of cursed black fire.
The temperature in the room immediately spiked and the air almost boiled where the cursed 3000-degree flames shot towards Failsafe.
I could hear Raven shouting behind me—some kind of warning—but I was seeing red. Literally, I was so angry at the audacity of this robot my vision was literally tinted red. And that's probably why I missed the fact that it didn't seem concerned by my flames. With the flick of its wrist, it sent the blade it was holding in my direction.
The flames burned so hot they should have melted that blade the second it made contact in mid air. That did not happen. Instead, I could only gape in shock as I felt a ripple of magic in the air. Magic that felt OLD—it felt like Morgana's magic. The second the flying weapon touched my flames they were snuffed out. My wand that was casting the spell literally recoiled in shock as my magic instantly cut off.
I then glanced down at my stomach. The blade—an anti magic blade, a weapon I was pretty sure had been forged by Morgana and was one of her lost treasures—was currently lodged into my normally flawless stomach up to the hilt!
"Oh…" I said, feeling myself immediately go into shock. That's what Raven was trying to warn me about. My knees hit the cold metal floor and I felt my wand roll out of my fingers across the floor.
"Target identified. Amara Black. Apprentice of supervillain Morgana le Fay. Threat level: moderate." A pause, "Neutralization method—easy." Failsafe marched over towards me, acting like it had already won. "I will be taking that weapon back. It is a very efficient tool when it comes to dealing with magical threats."
"F–Fuck you…" I hissed through bloody and clenched teeth. I felt the knife inside me, and as a magical being, the anti-magic was antithesis to almost everything I was.
Almost everything.
Above all else in this second life of mine—I had something in spades. And that something was pure stubborn SPITE!
I raised my hand, felt my magic scream in protest, but I ignored it anyway and lobbed a lava hot fireball right at Failsafe's metallic face.
"Impossbile!" The robot recoiled in shock as its cameras and sensors were melted in real time. The fireball splashed across Failsafe's face like a molten paintball, and for one beautiful, spiteful second, I watched its optical sensors bubble and warp, liquid metal dripping down its faceplate like chrome tears.
Worth it.
Then the last of my energy left me all at once, like someone had pulled the plug on a bathtub and everything I had just drained straight out through the hole in my stomach. My raised hand dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. The world tilted sideways, the ceiling and floor trading places in a slow, nauseating rotation.
"Oh... damn," I managed, and my voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone at the other end of a very long hallway.
My knees buckled. I swayed forward, caught myself on one palm against the cold metal floor, then my elbow gave out too and I pitched sideways. The impact barely registered. Everything was going fuzzy at the edges, my vision narrowing to a shrinking tunnel of flickering fluorescent light and dark concrete.
The blade was still in me. I could feel it with every shallow breath, a wrongness that went so far beyond physical pain it was almost philosophical.
The anti-magic properties of Morgana's stolen weapon weren't just preventing my healing factor from knitting the wound shut. They were burning me from the inside, searing through the magical pathways that made up the very foundation of what I was. Every cell in my body that ran on magic, which was most of them considering I was a witch and a succubus, felt like it was being slowly dipped in acid.
I'm not dying. I refuse to die. Tis just a flesh wound…
"""AMARA!"""
Three voices hit me simultaneously, layered on top of each other like a chord struck on a piano. Dick's sharp and desperate. Raven's cracking with something raw. Kori's pitched high with fury.
Warm arms scooped beneath me before I'd even finished collapsing. Kori caught me before I fully fell. She gathered me up with that same effortless bridal carry from the tunnel, one arm hooked beneath my knees, the other cradling my upper back, and this time there was nothing playful about the way she held me. Her fingers dug into my shoulder with barely restrained Tamaranean strength. She was careful, so careful, not to jostle or touch the hilt of the blade protruding obscenely from my stomach.
"Do not close your eyes, Friend Amara." Kori's voice was steady but her hands were trembling. I could feel the fine vibrations running through her arms and into my body. "You will stay awake. This is not a request."
"Wasn't... planning on napping..." I slurred, but my eyelids were already dragging downward like they'd been filled with lead. Every blink lasted longer than the last. The pain had crossed some threshold and come out the other side into a strange, floating numbness that scared me more than the agony had.
"You bastard." Raven's voice cut through the haze, and the temperature in the chamber dropped ten degrees in a single heartbeat.
I forced my eyes open. Forced them to focus. And what I saw almost made me forget about the knife slowly killing me.
Raven stood between me and Failsafe, her cloak billowing outward in a wind that didn't exist, whipping and snapping around her like a living thing. Her hands were raised at her sides, and tendrils of pure shadow poured from her palms like ink bleeding into water. They spread across the floor, crawled up the walls, devoured the fluorescent light until the only illumination left in the chamber came from two sources—the angry red glow of Failsafe's partially melted optics, and Raven's eyes.
Four of them. Her normal violet irises had split, doubled, the second pair manifesting directly above the first, all four burning with a deep, hellish crimson that painted her pale grey skin in shades of blood and fire.
The floor beneath her feet cracked. Chunks of concrete lifted into the air around her, hovering in lazy orbits like debris caught in a gravitational field, and the server banks closest to her sparked, shorted, and died as her power fried every circuit within a ten-foot radius.
She looks so fucking hot when she's mad.
The thought was absurd. I was bleeding out with an enchanted knife in my gut and my brain chose this moment to admire my girlfriend's demonic rage transformation. Even dying, some primal part of me looked at Raven wreathed in shadows with four glowing eyes and thought, Yes. That one. Want.
"You hurt her." Raven's voice had changed. It wasn't one voice anymore. It was layered, harmonic, as if three or four versions of her were speaking in unison from slightly different dimensions. The sound resonated in my ribcage, vibrated in my teeth. "You stabbed her with a weapon designed to kill everything she is!"
Failsafe, half its face a melted ruin courtesy of my spite-fueled fireball, tilted its damaged head. Servos whined as it recalibrated its remaining sensors. "Raven. Daughter of Trigon. Threat level: extreme. I would advise you to stand down… You should be thanking me for subduing the entity that was after you—"
"SHUT UP!"
A wave of black energy slammed outward from her body in every direction, a shockwave that shattered every remaining screen in the chamber, ripped server racks from their floor bolts, and sent Failsafe skidding backward across the floor, its metal feet carving twin grooves into the concrete as it braced against the blast.
"Dick proved earlier that you can feel anger, robot. Now I will make you feel despair!" Raven declared.
– ??? –
The space between spaces had no name, because names were things that belonged to reality, and reality was something that happened to other people.
It existed, if "existed" was even the right word, as an impossibility folded in on itself. A place where up was also down, where yesterday sat comfortably next to next Thursday, where the concept of distance had thrown up its hands in defeat sometime around the birth of the first star and simply wandered off to find something more sensible to do. Light didn't work here. Neither did darkness, not really. What filled the gaps was something older than both, a kind of ambient awareness that predated photons and shadows alike, the raw stuff of perception before anyone had gotten around to inventing eyes.
This was the realm of the Endless.
And curled up on a massive floating beanbag chair that definitely should not have been able to exist in a dimension without physical matter, Death of the Endless was having a very bad evening.
"Oh, you absolute idiot," she groaned at the shimmering window hovering in front of her face.
The window wasn't glass. It was a hole in the concept of "here" and "there," a place where the boundary between Didi's realm and the mortal world grew thin enough to peek through, like pressing your face against a frosted windowpane and breathing until a little circle of clarity appeared.
Right now, that little circle of clarity was showing her Amara Black with a blade buried in her stomach, blood seeping through her fingers, her beautiful face twisted in pain and fury and the kind of stubborn defiance that made Didi want to simultaneously shake her and hug her until her ribs cracked.
That's my girl. Spitting fire with a knife in her gut. Stupid, reckless, magnificent girl.
Didi kicked her bare feet against the beanbag, which rippled in a way that suggested it was less a piece of furniture and more a small, obliging section of the void that had agreed to be sat upon.
She was, as she usually chose to appear, a young woman of perhaps twenty, with pale skin, dark eyes lined with kohl, and ink-black hair that fell in messy waves past her shoulders. A silver ankh pendant hung at her throat, cool against her collarbone. Her outfit today was simple: black tank top, black jeans rolled at the ankle, bare feet with chipped black nail polish on her toes.
She looked like a goth college student having a lazy Saturday.
She was, in actuality, the anthropomorphic personification of the cessation of all life in the universe. Every life that had ever ended or ever would end had passed through her hands. She had held dying stars and whispered comfort to collapsing civilizations. She had walked beside the last dinosaur and the first human and would one day, at the very end of everything, put the chairs up, turn off the lights, and lock the door behind her.
But right now, right this very second, the most powerful entity in the DC universe was pouting.
"I gave you that system!" She jabbed a finger at the scrying window, her voice rising with indignation as she watched Amara's fireball splash across Failsafe's face and melt its optical sensors into slag. "I hand-picked every single perk! I rolled those dice myself! Well, I nudged them. Fine, I completely rigged them, but the point is that I set you up with an incredible toolkit, Amara Black, and what do you do? You charge face-first into an anti-magic weapon like a... like a..."
She fumbled for the right comparison.
"Like a Kryptonian flying into a Kryptonite warehouse! Like a Green Lantern picking a fight in a yellow room! Like a..." She threw her hands up. "Like a nineteen-year-old succubus with more bravery than common sense, which is exactly what you are, so I don't know why I'm surprised!"
The void around her offered no response. It never did. That was the thing about living in the spaces between reality. Excellent privacy. Terrible conversation.
Didi sank deeper into her beanbag, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. The scrying window followed her movement automatically, maintaining its position a comfortable arm's length from her face. On the screen, the scene continued to unfold. She watched the robot, Failsafe, stagger backward, clawing at its ruined face with mechanical fingers while molten metal dripped from what used to be its optical array. That fireball had been impressive, she'd give Amara that much. Casting through sheer willpower and spite while an anti-magic blade was literally suppressing her magical core? That shouldn't have been possible for a witch of her level.
But then again, Didi thought, a small, proud smile tugging at her dark lips, Amara has never been very good at accepting what "should" be possible.
The smile faded as she watched Amara's body go limp, the last of her strength spent on that defiant attack. She slumped sideways on the cold metal floor, the blade still protruding obscenely from her abdomen, dark blood pooling beneath her. The half-demon girl, Raven, was already moving toward her, violet eyes wide with panic, hands outstretched and glowing with healing energy.
"And another thing!" Didi continued, because she was on a roll now and the void was a very patient listener. She shifted on her beanbag, tucking one leg beneath her and pointing accusingly at the unconscious Amara with the energy of someone who had been holding this rant in for weeks. "My cloak! I gave her my cloak! The Cloak of Death! One of the most powerful protective artifacts in existence, woven from the fabric of endings themselves, and where is it right now?" She made a show of peering dramatically at the scrying window, shielding her eyes with one hand as if searching a vast horizon. "Oh, that's right. It's sitting in her System inventory, collecting metaphysical dust, because she forgot it existed!"
Didi flopped backward on the beanbag, arms spread wide, staring up at the not-ceiling of her realm with the theatrical despair of someone who had invested emotionally in a project that refused to follow the instruction manual.
"Amara. Sweetie. Darling. Future mistress of mine." She spoke to the void in the patient, slightly unhinged tone of a woman who had been talking to herself for millennia and had gotten very good at it. "You have a cloak that makes you functionally immune to anyone detecting you. You have a healing potion that regenerates every three days. You have a System interface that literally tracks your abilities for you so you don't forget them." She pressed both palms over her face. "And you still threw yourself at a robot with an anti-magic weapon like... uuuughhh."
A long, dramatic sigh escaped through her fingers.
She lay there for a moment, wallowing. Then her dark eyes snapped open behind her hands, sharp and focused, and she sat up so quickly the beanbag rippled in startled protest.
"Okay. That's it. I've been patient. I've been hands-off. I've been the good cosmic entity who respects free will and lets her chosen champion make her own mistakes." She swung her legs off the beanbag and stood, bare feet settling on the not-floor of her realm with a soft pat. "But this girl clearly needs a nudge. A big one. With a quest attached. And maybe some mandatory reading on using the tools you've been given."
She paced back and forth in front of the scrying window, her ankh pendant swinging gently with each step. Her shadow, which behaved itself about as well as shadows could be expected to in a dimension where light was a polite suggestion, stretched and coiled behind her in shapes that occasionally looked like wings.
"When this Trigon business is sorted," Didi muttered, tapping her lower lip with one finger as plans crystallized behind her ancient eyes, "I'm giving her a proper quest. A real one. None of this reactive, stumble-into-danger nonsense she's been doing. She needs direction. She needs purpose." Her pacing quickened. "My Stone and my Wand are still out there. And I can't manifest properly, not yet, not without a tether, not without someone on the other side who's mine in a way that goes beyond the usual death-and-mortal relationship."
She stopped pacing and turned back to the scrying window. On the screen, Raven had made the robot suffer, and now she had reached Amara's crumpled body and was pressing her glowing hands against the wound. The half-demon's face was tight with concentration and barely contained terror, her grey skin flushed violet at the cheeks, her lips moving in what might have been a prayer or a curse or simply Amara's name repeated over and over like an incantation.
She loves her, Didi observed quietly. The demon girl. She really loves her.
Good.
She's going to need people who love her for what comes next.
"Find my Stone and my Wand, Amara," Didi whispered to the window, and her voice was no longer playful or petulant or theatrical. It was old. It was vast. It carried the weight of every ending that had ever been. "Find them, and bring them together, and I can finally come to you. Not as a hand reaching through the void. Not as a voice in your System. But me. In the flesh. At your side." A pause. A softer smile. "Where I belong."
But that was a conversation for later. A quest for another day. Right now, her girl was bleeding on a cold floor, and Didi could not, would not, just sit here and watch.
"Rules," she said aloud, because saying things aloud made them more real, even for beings who predated the concept of sound. "I'm not supposed to interfere directly. The other Endless would throw a fit. Destiny would give me that look. Dream would sulk for a century. Desire would never let me hear the end of it." She held up one finger. "But. There is a difference between interference and... adjustment."
She stepped closer to the scrying window. Close enough that her breath, or what passed for it, fogged the boundary between dimensions. Close enough that if she reached out, her fingertips would brush the membrane separating her realm from Earth.
"That blade," she murmured, "Nasty piece of work. I can see why Morgana made it to kill Merlin. Very elegant. Very lethal."
Didi couldn't remove the blade. That would be too overt, too direct, and besides, it needed to come out naturally or the wound would be worse. But what she could do, what fell within the gray area between "interference" and "adjustment," was much more subtle.
The enchantment on the weapon shuddered. It didn't break. Didi was too careful for that. A shattered enchantment would leave traces, evidence that something cosmic had intervened. No, she didn't break the enchantment.
She simply... dimmed it.
"You're welcome, Amara," Didi said sweetly, withdrawing her hand from the window and flexing her fingers.
She settled back onto her beanbag, tucking her legs beneath her and resting her chin on her fist as she watched the scrying window.
"Now," she said with patient fondness as she watched Raven's healing magic slowly knit Amara's wound back together. "Let's see how the rest of this plays out."
XXX
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