Watchtower Post-Mortem

[http://users.livejournal.com/_darkknight_/]

With the Monster Society handled and Beetle's brilliance avoiding disaster from the villains' work, virtually all of the team involved in the fight is on the Watchtower, teleported there for safety and quick escape. (Having Sue and that Orion kid monitoring everything comes in handy.) They still have a few prisoners to handle, and then someone might want to tell Ray that Jean was spotted in the guise of Enchantress.

For his part, Batman would rather deal with securing the prisoners.

His walk even stiffer - and his manner even more growly - than usual thanks to the latest in a long line of rib and head injuries, Batman first makes certain the dangerous villains brought aboard are secured for processing. Admittedly, his method for doing so involves throwing them bodily into holding cells until they can be transferred to Earth for the authorities to handle. And then he heads for the computers, wanting to see all data about what just transpired. Something feels wrong, and it's damned sure more than Light not being taken down as easily as he should have.

Super-Speed Recon

[kidflash2.livejournal.com]

He'd missed the little altercation at the door of Aurora's parents' house. And he wasn't as keenly aware of the little signs - the burnt barn - as some. But Bart can tell when his friends are agitated, and from there, it takes a mere pico-second for Bart to guess something may be rotten in the state of Denmark.

Residents of the commune may notice that it's a little more windy than usual as a teenager with an overactive imagination zips around too fast for the eye to follow, searching.

(no subject)

[amazon-diana.livejournal.com]

It was not good news she brought to Ray Palmer, but it was news he needed to know. Diana didn't want him to find out the same way she had that Enchantress was Jean Loring, face to face in battle was not a good way to find out that someone has become what she had.

She walked over to where he was at the monitor and spoke in a voice that would not carry.

"Can you leave the monitor? There is something I need to speak to you about."

At Titans Tower

[clear-thinker.livejournal.com]

Many of the Titans were out - some had business in their hometowns, and some had accompanied Aurora to her home for a kind of vacation. To Lyle Norg, this means one thing : The opportunity to read without being interrupted by Bart.

In the sparsely decorated room he's been assigned, there is now a stack of finished books as high as the bed, and a second stack building towards the height of the first. Though it will take a few more weeks of polish to round off the accents, Lyle's managed to teach himself English and French, with a little outside assistance.

So now he's moved on to more pressing tasks - a schematic of the Justice League Satellite is spread out on the bed before him, along with a few reams of technical specifications.

"Considering the technology level, it's a pretty amazing piece of work.." he murmurs as he reads.

Portsmouth.

[amelia-z.livejournal.com]

Nice town. Except. Well.

Maybe it's the biased view of upper-white class, but Amelia's as dressed-down as possible. No jewelry or large amounts of cash. Simple jeans, t-shirt, sneakers. The part of her that's still a snotty rich girl feels incredibly fabricated. She's out of her element.

She couldn't give up the iPod, though. Sometime in the last decade or so, Oingo Boingo went out of style. In the past few weeks it's been her travelling soundtrack, put on highest volume in protest of the band's now Uncool status.

So this is where Tara spends her free time. It's not your average hobby, that's for sure. That's also assuming Tara hasn't gotten a case of the deads. Amelia's not sure, it's been... well, a whole frickin' summer, really.

Onward to war, as they say, or something else fitting. With a grunt, Amelia hefts the box she's carrying onto her shoulder as she walks into the clinic, in search of one Nurse Tara.

Midnight at the Commune

[middle-amazon.livejournal.com]

Everyone else is asleep, but she can't get there herself, so she's taken to the roof and enjoying the arid night air and the sea of stars. It reminds her of the Navajo Reservation Roy took her to on their road trip. It reminded her of Themyscria with hints of circus wagons and Tameran...little wonder Aurora adjusted so seamlessly into Gar's life. By the Gods, if they had been together for a year that meant she'd been back alive for one year, too.

It's a little chilly, so she holds herself and wishes the arms were someone else's. After Dark Angel's defeat, Raven had placed them back up in their room at the Tower. There was so much now remembered and so little they could come up with to say. Then more assignments came pouring in. The distraction was almost welcome - almost. Just today with the militia though, she realized she was running again and using the work as an excuse. Maybe he had been too. She remembered a lot worth remembering now, and some things, like Loren Jupiter's experiment in forced pacifism that really made her wish to talk to someone that had lived through it. Tomorrow morning, it was all going to be the team snooping around and discovering what they could do about this threat to the family of one of their own. Dick might very well be down there now.

They still hadn't set a date. She wanted to. She wanted to know he was okay. She wanted to say she remembered the sleepover on couch and Christmas and why she loved him and how stupid it was that she stopped believing. She looks out to the red tinted earth and imagines she sees a dust cloud in he shape of a corvette coming up the main throughfare in town.

Up On A Rooftop

[brian-durlin.livejournal.com]

Savant whistles quietly to himself, walking the railing of the apartment roof, watching the cars on the street below. There are fewer that stop in this area now that things have gotten difficult for the local corner dealers. Savant suspects that Jussub will step up his own game soon, but their little ongoing spat over turf with the resident druglord has taken a backseat to other pursuits recently.

Huntress will be there to collect the information from the gangster's laptop. That is no problem; the disk is tucked away safely in Creote's back pocket. (It had been in Savant's a moment before, but Creote had confiscated it once his former employer had begun his rail walking. Creote worries too much; it isn't as if they don't have copies.)

Savant glances over his shoulder, having to look down at Creote from this vantage point. At least the big Russian is cooperating, even if unawares -- his muscle shirt and jeans show off his body to good advantage. Not that it's easy for a man built like a bipedal bull to hide his physique, but it is good that he's showing some skin.

"You should probably be the one to return Huntress' grapple line to her," Savant remarks.

The next morning.

[jla-extras.livejournal.com]

Leaf's ten years old, his little sister Janis is seven. Luna and Sol are nine years old, and you can hardly see one of the fraternal twins without seeing the other, though Luna's a lot more lively than her brother.

It wasn't always like this, but the Elders tell them that this is a test of their faith and convictions. They still miss the tourists that come in so they'd get more children to play with and hear all about things like Nintendo and television.

So, Leaf waves to the dark-haired tourist girl walking past.

"Hey, wanna play?"

(no subject)

[ten-of-six.livejournal.com]

Last time they talked, Dent gave Jervis a card to contact him when the device was finished.

That time is now.

Sure, the process was painstaking. You'd think that subtle emotion stimulation would be easier than full-blown mind control, but it's not. Hacking a brain into submission, complete override, all that takes is force.

This, this takes trickery. It involves increasing the production of certain neurons, commands to the brain to shut down some areas, or at least slow them. And most importantly, it has to do it sub-consciously. Thorne can't wake up one day and realize he's been a bit more twitchy than he normally is. It has to be completely unnoticeable by Thorne himself.

And since he's got cronies to study him too, some other things have to be implemented. Up his aggressive urges, so that he gets angry at anyone who suggests that there may be something rotten in the state of Denmark. And even that has to be subtle. He can't be more aggressive towards everyone, or the plan could backfire entirely. Certain phrases, certain people, they have to be the triggers.

Not guaranteed fool-proof, but there's a much higher chance of success than failure.

All in all, Jervis is proud of himself. This was a real test, and he feels he's passed it. All his tests on the device have gone well. Lab mice reacted appropriately. Even that sap of a thug he was allotted for human experimentation.

Of course, that thug did kill himself, but that's just as likely to have been from all the other stress and tests, not just this one.

So now, Jervis finds himself with the phone in his hand and calling Dent's number. The real fun gets to start soon.