May 7th 2012, 10:56 GMT -5
He's here and I start walking towards the surface access at once. The red one… M'gann, she's been offering to see if she can make adjusting 'easier' for me, and I know she
means well, but I've seen Sheeda brain weevils and I'm never letting anything touch my mind again.
"Got a hot date?"
That was the small one. Robin. He's smiling in a very
Sheeda way, pretending to be polite while he tries to find out something advantageous.
"Grayven's here. I'm letting him in."
Controls… Right. Just-.
"You remember this is supposed to be a
secure facility, right Artemis?"
The machine's not responding. Am I pressing the buttons right?
"Come on, Rob. It's not like he doesn't know where we are."
I am pressing the buttons right. It's just not opening.
"Not the
point, Kid."
"And he's strong enough to pull the door open, and he can open a boom tube in here anyway, and I'm pretty sure Sunset could
teleport him inside-."
Someone's.. denying me access.
OBEY YOUR QUEEN!
The control melts and the ramp opens
and I start feeling a bit more normal. That's… Probably bad.
I hear the quiet intake of breath from Robin
and feel the space move as he changes from 'passively observe' to 'ready for action'. I turn slowly back towards him and the ramp clanks to the floor, inviting him to comment or take action.
"Um." Wally frowns, glancing at Robin before walking over to the control pad and poking it. "Batman use non-certified labor or something?"
"How did you
do that?"
"I'm a goddess, it's a machine."
I feel a little of the who-is-everyone tension leave me as Grayven gets closer. Then I start getting annoyed with him because I know he's just strolling rather than getting here. Then I stop getting annoyed because I know he knows that I want to be able to do this. That I need to be able to do this without him being there the whole time.
"I thought you were a goddess of
arrows."
"I'm a goddess of arrows who ruled a planet."
I'm watching him, he's watching me. Neither of us are reaching for our
weapons but… Heh, like Grayven said that time, we can both see the weapons that aren't-.
We both blink in confusion and Wally waves his arms up and down between us. We both turn to look at him as he frowns at us.
"Ah, guys, what the heck was that?"
"I'm not so sure that Artemis is entirely
herself."
"Well,
yeah, she spent hundreds of years in the future. She's been Queen of the Bondage Elves longer than she's been on the team. People
change, Rob. And anyway-. Wait, are you still hung up on Grayven?"
"You mean the guy with at least two forms of mind control who was working with Doctor Sivana?"
"To be fair…" And I stop listening to what's behind me because Grayven's there and he's
got it. "That does sound pretty sketchy. And it's four forms of mind control. Five. Maybe six."
He's standing next to me, facing down this 'Robin' guy with me. I can't even
remember how many Sheeda Highborn we've faced like this. Feel a
little skeevy doing this to a
kid, but the sooner he learns not to mess with his queen the bet… Ter. For.. him.
I'm
not his queen. I'm not his queen. And I shouldn't take the fact I'm
forgetting out on him.
I can
feel Grayven thinking about making me queen of somewhere. I don't.. think that would be
better.
Have to be 35 to run for president, right?
Now Robin's watching Grayven's face. "You going to fix the door?"
"Are you going to
trust me to fix the door?"
"
Can I trust-"
I step aside just before Grayven turns around and
waves his ring at the ramp and its control station. The ramp starts to close and the control pad doesn't look
quite the same as it did before, but I already know that he just did that to force Robin to take the whole thing apart and check all of it. He's probably put a load of random wires and stuff in it to try and drive him crazy working out what it all does.
"-you to fix the door?"
The ramp closes fully, and Grayven mimes flipping a coin before we
both walk past him.
"Recognized, Batman, zero two."
Robin doesn't really react, but Wally's wincing as Batman appears. And all I can think is 'why did he used to intimidate me'? I've had giant millipedes try and eat me. Invisible people from the future try to kill or manipulate me into being their slave. I stabbed the guy who ate the universe to death.
He dresses like a bat. Who finds
bats scary? What's he supposed to
do, give people rabies?
"Batman!"
Grayven's smiling and using the faux-pleased voice he uses when he knows it's going to annoy whoever he's talking to.
Yeah.
"Grayven. Why are you here?"
Does he need a lozenge or something? I frown faintly, then notice that Robin and Wally are
almost standing to attention.
"Because I wanted to ask why you disregarded my instructions and sent a seventeen year old girl to attack the Castle Revolving, when I explicitly told you that I had it in hand."
He doesn't
say 'dumbass', but I don't think I'm the only one who
hears him not say it.
"Because I'm
pretty sure that Scott would have let me take a swing at them and only go in if I failed or asked for help."
"
You didn't tell us you were working with Doctor Sivana."
"I
also don't tell you how big my evening
shit is. But I can
start if you want?"
Wally cringes.
"Did you
intend for Sivana to destroy the Sheeda command ship?"
"No, but in my defence, who could have imagined that Sivana cared enough about anyone to carry out a suicide attack? And in
any case, that only reinforces my point: if I don't know that someone else is on-site, I can't take them into account. If…" He glances back and I keep watching the bat-man. "Robin or Kid Flash had been in the next room, you'd-" He turns back, and I go back to watching our peripherals. "-be down two sidekicks right now.
And that meant that you weren't covering the places I thought you'd be covering."
"If you wish to discuss planning for future events, we can do that another time. This is a debriefing session for Artemis."
"Ah? Well, pencil me in and carry on."
Grayven steps aside and the chiroptera cosplayer gives me his full attention.
"
Without you being here."
"Ye
ah,
no." I fold my arms across my chest. "I barely remember any of you people. I'm not doing anything with you without the person I trust
most being here. This happens with Grayven here, or I'm out.
Completely."
