With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

21st October 2012
19:13 GMT -5

"…remember any of them?"

Death-Doll shrugs, and I try not to look at the way the stitching holding her epidermis together pulls her 'skin'. It looks painful, and under other circumstances I'd offer to fix… Fix her. But some people like looking that different and I don't know her well enough to know how she feels about it.

"Nah. I mean, I think I remember some of them, but I didn't talk to any of 'em." Her attention shifts from me to Canis, who is openly staring at her clearly-altered physiology. She smiles, her head tilting to the left and her hair -which is either artificial or held together with something that's not so much hairspray as hairglue- just sort of holds its shape rather than flowing with gravity. "See something you like, kid?"

"Your body is a walking sculpture; a meditation on the disposable and transitory nature of human flesh. Every inch of it thrills me."

She… Stares at him for a moment.

"I would like very much to paint you, if you would allow it."

"That's not something I expected to hear today." She stares as if not sure what to make of him. "Um. Sure, I guess."

"Hah!" Canis shakes his head, then turns to face me. "My art professor tried to tell me that humans disliked posing for paintings. As if nudity was something to be ashamed of."

"Wait, I didn't say anything about 'naked'. I'm married."

Canis looks puzzled. "I have no libidinous intent. I wish to depict the glory of your stitched together flesh on canvas."

And this is why Canis is extremely useful for interviews like this. I know that Death-Doll used to operate under the name Liberty-Lass, until a covert operation she undertook for the CIA went badly wrong. I know that the resulting 'experimental medical procedure' -read: we're handing your barely living body over to mad scientists and told them they could do whatever they like, no loss to us either way- left her a little unhinged. And a lot more violent.

In a normal confrontation with a League-affiliated superhero she'd posture about how dark and edgy she is. Canis wrong-foots her and I've got a larger body count and neither of us are bothered about talking about it. Which improves the chance that she'll cooperate, if only out of confusion.

She looks to me for a rational response. Which was probably a mistake.

"Is he for real?"

"He's the Apokoliptian God of Art, so, yes. Though in other circumstances he would probably call sex 'performance art'."

"I-. I mean-. Would anyone else be there?"

Canis nods. "How many people do you want?" A sight for all eyes?

"If we could return to the matter at hand? Canis?"

He nods a little sheepishly.

"What did you think of the meeting?"

"Meeting-? Oh. Ah. Guess they were well-meaning, but… I've been doing this a while. I know how to work with police, levels of force…" She shrugs. "There wasn't really anything there that I wanted."

"What do you think of the organisation as a whole?"

"Seem like good people. Probably real useful for people starting out. I don't do well in…" She raises her right hand and runs it over her neck seam. "Organizations."

"Did anyone approach you during or after the meeting?"

"It was a mixer. Plenty of people approached me. Only one that stuck out was a little girl."

"In what way?"

She frowns incredulously. "Because she was a little girl in a room full of roided out men. You've seen the guest list, right?"

I shrug. "They don't keep one, only a sign-up sheet."

"Right. Anyway, yeah, you know the statistics on the sort of people who put on masks, right?"

"What, that they're overwhelmingly male, particularly when they don't have superpowers?"

"Teenage girls who do it are usually part of a group. She was there on her own, but I think she'd already joined."

"What makes you say that?"

"The officials paid attention to her. Nothing obvious, just looking at her a bit more."

"To the teenaged girl in the room with the 'roided out men'? That doesn't seem too unreasonable."

"No, they weren't looking out for her. People look at people they know differently. Trust me."

While she's far from the strangest looking person I've met, I can't help but take in her raggy doll appearance when she asks me to take something on faith. We know the procedures altered her thought processes-.

"Yeah, I know. But trust me, all that spy craft stuff stayed. They'd have cut me up-. Left me in parts if it didn't. No one wants an incompetent assassin."

I nod. "Thank you. We'll be in touch if we need to ask any follow up questions."

"You got any idea why I'm still alive? I'm not exactly shy about maiming or killing."

"No idea at all." I smile. "It is not by eliminating the impossible that crimes are solved, but by the much harder job of eliminating the possible. Orchid wasn't violent. She breaks the pattern, so that can't be it. Maybe it's because you didn't cross… Whatever line there was. I don't know. Though if you're curious, I'll get in touch once we do solve it."

"I'd appreciate it."

I stand, stepping away-. Canis isn't following. I give him an interrogative frown.

"This was our last interview for today. I have no further business with you, and Death-Doll and I haven't agreed a time for her to pose for me."

"I haven't said I'm going to pose for you."

"You can read the intentions of a room by where people look and do not look? I know when someone will work with me."

She shakes her head. "I.. can't believe I'm considering this."

"I'll leave you two to it." I

step out

and reappear in the Mountain.

Richard glance around. "Same thing?"

"An out of place teenaged girl. I think we need to find her." I nod at the facial recognition system they've got running. "Find her yet?"

The Alliance genuinely made sure that the cameras of their venues weren't active, because not everyone turning up had the hang of the whole 'secret identity' thing. But there wasn't any rule about the people attending having their own cameras. They took pictures, and uploaded them to their masked identity's social media accounts. So there are hundreds of images for us to find this girl.

Beryl calls up a picture.

"I think we have."