Happy Boostlethon, idiosyn!
Title: Trapped on the Merry-go-round
Author: Muccamukk
Recipient: Idiosyn
Rating: M
Prompt: "Find a way to add Ted to DCnU."
Booster pushed off his goggles as soon as he let go of Ted's hand. It made his hair even more tousled and devil-may-care than usual. "So," he said, turning on the same grin he used to use to sell surf boards, "Do you want the dime tour?"
They were standing in the foyer of an old office building - one of those blocky '70s monstrosities that had been designed by someone who thought Soviet Five Year Plan architecture was too ostentatious - but Booster made it sound like the Hall of Justice. If the Hall of Justice was in a slightly dodgy industrial area in Queens. They were actually worryingly close to the old Super Buddies headquarters.
"Isn't there an interview process or something?" Ted asked. He half expected Oberon to show up with a clipboard a list of ridiculous questions. He hadn't figured out where Oberon was in this timesteam yet. Hopefully he was okay.
"Nah. You're uniquely qualified." Booster's smile thinned into something a little vicious. "I told Briggs that all applicants for the job had to rewire an alien space ship while it was exploding. Somehow we didn't hear from anyone else after that." He clapped a hand on Ted's shoulder, and waved him through into the ground floor offices. Components for new computer systems had been stacked on top of battered PCs that matched the disco-era faux-wood panelling. Ted wondered if the job included getting this mess up and running. It seemed likely.
"What happened to the last head of R&D?" Ted asked as he followed Booster through.
"That was kind of weird," Booster said, frowning. "We used to have Dr. Jack Soo, a buddy of mine from S.T.A.R. Labs. I thought he was pretty stoked about the job, but then he comes in yesterday and hands in his notice. Says he has a better offer."
Ted had to wonder if that better offer had anything to do with a certain seven-year-old girl's promise. He added it to his list of things to ask Hunter next time he showed up to tell him what to do. He shook his head and tuned back into Booster's spiel.
"...only the receiving equipment and some of the processors went up with the Hall of Justice," Booster was saying. "Jack said he'd get all that set up here before he takes off for Arizona, so you don't have to worry about that. In the meantime, we'll have to rely on my own systems." The stacks of equipment took up so much of the room that they had to turn sideways to slide out the back door into the service halls. "There's more offices and a big conference room upstairs, and Briggs is getting the top two floors turned into living quarters. Nothing's finished yet, but I can show what it'll look like. But mostly, I need you to look at..." he paused to punch an access code into an incongruously modern door, "this."
"Wow." The space behind the door was cavernous, at least three stories high, with layers of catwalks around the edges, and warehouse loading doors on the far side. It was also full of alien tech, including the space ship he and Booster had escaped in, what looked like fragments of giant robots, and a multitude of odds and ends that Ted couldn't begin to identify without three weeks and a universal translator. He closed his mouth and looked back at Booster, who had his hands on his hips and a smug little grin. "Is this all from Peraxxus?"
"Pretty much." He pointed to haphazard pile of equipment in the shadow of a twenty-foot robot leg. "Vixen and Batman found that in the Signal Man lair in Zambesi. Whoever was so hot to get their hands on alien robots also left in a hurry. It's not anything I recognise, but you're the tech expert. I thought maybe you could track back the transistors or whatever and tell me who done it and what they were after."
"Okay." Ted stared around the old warehouse again. There was a lot of alien junk in here. He wondered how Booster had been able to wrangle it for the JLI instead S.T.A.R. Labs jumping on it like they usually did. Part of him wanted to take off his jacket start prying things apart and just disappear into happy tech land forever. The rest didn't want to let Booster go. It felt so strange to be standing here with him in his costume and Ted in an Interview Suit he'd bought off the rack, pretending not to know his best friend. "Um... anything else on your to do list? Do I need to sign up for the health plan or anything?"
Booster patted his shoulder again. "Oh, trust me, there's stack of paperwork tall as Batman. I wanted to show you the incentives before I buried you in it."
"I take it the hours are long and the pay is terrible?" Some things about the JLI remained constant, no matter what the universe.
"You got it. And even if you're support staff, crazy people will try to kill you pretty much all the time." There was that grin again, the one that would make most women and some men involuntarily start to spread their legs and used cars salesmen start to weep. "But don't worry, I'll protect you."
Ted wondered when this Booster would learn not to make promises like that.
The problem with this new time stream, one of the problems with it anyway, was that the tech was different. Not that Ted couldn't handle new tech, it didn't take an hour to figure out what everything did and how, but tracking down who made what was turning out to be a bit of a challenge. He recognised bits and pieces, the way things were wired seemed familiar, but with people like Ollie Queen making completely different things than they were before, nailing down specifics was turning out to be tricky. Plus the general level of advancement was about two years ahead of what he remembered from his Earth.
He knew that he could pass his ignorance off under the "abducted by aliens five years ago" excuse, but that wouldn't do him any good if he wanted to prove that he was necessary to the team. It was the first thing Booster had asked him to do, and by God he was going to figure this out. Booster and the UN had hit him with so many forms that he'd already gotten a late start on it.
Rubbing his hand across his face, he closed his eyes then refocused. He had the wiring pulled apart and spread across the bench, and the software scrolling across an isolated monitor. He'd given up on identifying the build, which looked home built rather than black market anyway, and was looking at individual components. If he could figure out who supplied these people, it would be a start. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something basic. There was a familiarity to the work that he just wasn't picking up on. Ted sighed and hit the reset key, starting the code again. Maybe there would be something there. A lot of programmers left a signature, whether they meant to or not.
Something moved behind him, and Ted started, knocking his chair over as he fell into a crouch. It was Booster, of course; who else would be in the JLI lab at this time of night? He'd changed into tailored blue jeans and an untucked black silk button down, and looked like a million bucks. He also looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or yell for help.
"Sorry," Ted muttered, straightening. "I'm still a little jumpy. Do you, uh... do you need something?"
Booster relaxed into a smile. "You bet. It's a Friday night, and I desperately need a beer. I was wondering if you wanted to come with."
Ted glanced back at the monitor, then at the pile of circuits. "I don't know. I mean, I would, but I really need-"
"To have a beer with me," Booster finished for him. "Come on. I'm the boss, and the boss says it's Miller time."
"But..." Ted found himself grabbed by the elbow and pulled away from his work station. He stretched back and hit the shut down key before Booster dragged him out of reach. "Okay, fine. You win."
"Great," Booster said cheerfully. "I love winning. Come on. I found this little place you'll love. It's like two blocks."
The little place turned out to be the Dark Side, the (hopefully) former super villain bar run by Dick Hertz and (thankfully) not Guy Gardner. Booster installed them in a booth in the back corner and stood for the first two rounds. "I'm still trying to figure out how to expense beer," he said. "Maybe I can call it a team building exercise."
"You'd need to have the team here for that," Ted said, not looking up from the menu. He hadn't eaten since airport food at breakfast, but the features here all seemed to be grease fried in more grease with a side of grease. Damn, he used to love this kind of food, but the beer was probably bad enough.
Booster slide a little closer so he could bump his shoulder against Ted's. "Hey, you're on the team now. There's an idea, maybe this could be part of your interview."
"I thought that was the exploding space ship thing."
"Oh, sure, call it a review then." He wiggled his eyebrows. "So, Mr. Kord, how's your performance?"
Ted snorted. "Wouldn't you like to know." He took a long swallow of his lager and added seriously, "I'm not sure where I'm getting with that equipment Batman found. The build seems familiar, but I haven't got anywhere on tracking down the source. Too long out of the loop, I guess. Sorry."
"Well, do you know what it was used for at least?" Booster asked.
"It's just a diagnostic system." Sighing, Ted leaned back against the cracked plastic cushions. "I think it's set up to map circuits, maybe to find specific sections of hardware to salvage. From what they dug out of that giant robot head you brought back, I'd say they were looking for communication systems, but I need to run more tests. One thing I do know: whoever your scavengers were, they knew what they were doing. This is a specific custom-built system, not the kind of thing that falls off the back of a truck."
Booster was leaning forward, watching him seriously, and Ted realised he hadn't been completely factitious about this being a review. "That's more than we had before. Good work."
"Thanks. I'll know more tomorrow." He hoped. Ted stretched, arching his back to pull the kinks out. He feet brushed into Boosters under the table. "Sorry. Been a long day." And two beers on an empty stomach was going straight to his head.
Booster finished his second pint, throat rippling. "Sure thing. I should pack it in too. Are you flying back to Chicago tonight, or...?"
"No, I, uh, cancelled my ticket when you said I got the job." Which had been via Greyhound, but Booster didn't need to know. "I thought I'd just crash in the lab until I figure out a place to stay." Or got his first pay cheque, at least. The money Murray had loaned him wasn't going to stretch to extended hotel stays, and he was too damn old for hostels. He was probably also too old for cots in labs, but at least it would be quiet there.
"Broke, huh?" Booster said, his smile sympathetic. "I'm guessing everything you own is in that one suitcase."
Ted took another pull of his beer so that he didn't have to meet his eyes. "Pretty much."
"I've been there." A warm hand rested gently on his wrist. Despite spending most of his time either fighting or working out, Booster's skin still felt smooth and soft. Ted wondered if he'd been shilling for hand cream recently. When he glanced over at Booster, he had one of those looks that had only ever meant trouble. "Hey, you know what you should do?"
Dinner be damned, this was going to need another drink. He waved the waitress over. "No, what should I do?"
"Sell your memoirs."
"What?"
"No, seriously. You'd make a bundle. Super heroes are almost old hat by now, but everyone still loves aliens. Especially when the film rights come through and Ben Afflick plays you."
"Ben Affleck? Are you crazy? He's not even a redhead!" Ted protested, then skipped back to the more salient details. "And I can't write."
"Your CV says you have an English degree."
"English Literature, not creative writing. That means I know bad writing when I see it, and I am therefore authentically certified to say that I have terrible prose."
Booster waved that away. "So hire a ghost writer! That's what most celebrities do. I know a guy who can hook you up with the guy who wrote the book about that guy who spent two years in the tree in Sierre Leon."
"What? No..." Ted rubbed his eyes, and when he opened then, there was more beer and a new basket of pretzels. He took another drink. "If that's such a good idea, why haven't you done it?"
"Too early in the game," Booster said, shrugging. "I told you, superheroes are old news. You have to do more than wear tights and save Metropolis a couple of times to win fame and fortune these days."
"Something like leading the Justice League?" Ted asked. He could see that gleam in Booster's eyes and his apprehension grew. This was Booster Gold with a plan, and that never seemed to end well.
"Sure, something like."
"Even Justice League Queens?"
"Sure the Hall of Justice got blown up on our first day, and our budget isn't providing the best replacement in the whole world ever. We don't have a single first stringer, except for Batman, and Batman's not supposed to be on the team," he was actually ticking off on his fingers. Ted hoped he didn't run out of hands before he got to the end of the list of things that had gone wrong with the first mission. "And maybe the team's about a nanometre away from eating each other in front of the international press corps, and no one thinks that I can lead, and Briggs only picked me because he thinks I'm a pushover. And okay, that last mission could have run more smoothly. But," he spread his hands flat and mimed sweeping the table clear. Only reflexes honed by years of super heroic exploits preserved Ted's beer. "We saved the whole damn planet. Us, Justice League International: We saved the Earth. The team came through okay, only a few minor injuries. We're new, and no one knows us yet, but a few more successful missions - and we will keep winning - a bit of good press, and we'll hit our stride. In a couple years, we'll have embassies all over the world, and Superman will be begging to join."
"And you'll make a killing on endorsements for sports cars?"
Booster wrinkled his nose. "No endorsements so long as I'm leading the team: UN rules. After, when I've graciously stepped aside to allow my hand-picked successor to take over? Sure. I'll hire that ghost writer, too, maybe go on a speaking tour."
It wasn't just his smile now, Booster's whole body radiated enthusiasm, and Ted tried to remember the last time he'd seen his friend look like that, when he hadn't just been pasting a smile on top of another dismal situation, but he'd really believed that he was going places. When was the last time either of them had had faith that it would work out in the end? Maybe this Booster had simply learned to be a better salesman.
"It's nice to know that you're so dedicated to the true ideals of heroism," he found himself saying. He wondered where the second pint had gone, and when, exactly, he'd turned into a cynical drunk, but Booster waved him off, unabashed.
"Everyone has an agenda, even Wonder Woman. At least I'm up front about mine."
Ted winced and decided that two beers wasn't going to begin to cover the week he was having.
Ted woke up fully dressed in a strange hotel room with only a faint recollection of how he'd gotten there. He remembered Melody, in there somewhere, bending over to kiss her while still trying to keep an eye on the road. Wait, no, that had been a dream, a replay of one of their nights on the town when they were both still in college. He hadn't even had that car for years.
The real story as it came back to him had involved g force, rain hitting his face, and both arms wrapped tightly around Booster's waist. He loved flying with Booster, that familiar arm wrapped around his ribs, their hips pressing together. When he was younger, he'd regretted that this was the closest they'd ever get. Years of shared secrets and grief later, he'd realised that there was more than one kind of intimacy, and that was okay too. It took Ted a moment more to remember that this wasn't his Booster, or even his world. Then he let his head sink back into the pillow until the worst of the spinning passed. When the room settled, he started to lever himself up incrementally, until after a few minutes he could swing his legs out of bed and lean on his knees.
Watery daylight streamed past the curtains, revealing the room in all its monotonous glory. It could be any mid-priced hotel room anywhere in the world, save for his one suitcase standing in a corner. He had to blink repeatedly and rub his eyes to make sense out of the alarm clock, but it looked something like mid morning. Saturday, thank God.
A piece of note paper stuck out from under the edge of the clock, with familiar loopy handwriting reading: Thanks for the good time -B. PS: The room's on the UN. Details of the night were starting to filter back, and he sifted through the two bars, the all-night diner, and a surprising lack of public nudity, but couldn't find anything too compromising. Hell, he'd had fun too. He and Booster hadn't just hung out for beers in a long time. Even if this wasn't exactly his best friend, and he didn't have all of the same memories, he still felt like the same man. Close enough to go drinking with, anyway.
"You're pathetic, Kord," Ted muttered to himself, and pried himself off the bed and stumbled toward the shower. When he was feeling sixty percent human again, he headed back to the JLI offices. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go.
Ted hadn't been in the lab for five minutes when Tora knocked smartly on the robot carapace leaning next to the diagnostic system. "Can I come in?" She was in civvies, albeit white slacks and a pale blue sweater, and had a tray in one hand.
"What? Oh, sure. Hi." Seeing alive-amnesiac Tora was even stranger than new-amnesiac Booster. He didn't quite know what to say, so he held out a hand. "Ted Kord, Chief Cook and Button Pusher as of yesterday."
"I know. We met on the plane in Peru." She held out her hand anyway, and Ted took it in both of his. Warm and alive, thank god. "My name's Ice, if you don't remember that either. That's my superhero name, anyway. You can call me Tora if you like."
"Sure, nice to meet you, Tora." Ted made himself let go of her hand, and looked down at the tray. It had a bright purple sports drink, an extra-large Sundollar coffee, a plate of orange slices and a bottle of pain killers. "Is that for me? You're a goddess."
She grinned at him. "I am, actually." Balancing the try between two monitors, she pulled up a lab stool. "You looked even rougher than Mr. Gold did, and besides, it's an excuse to meet you properly. It's nice to have a new face around. We haven't had a mission since we last saw you and everyone's going stir crazy."
Ted tossed back a couple of pills and chased it with half the sports drink. "I appreciate... wait, Booster's here? Like before noon on a weekend?"
"Sure, he's usually the first one in every day." She stole an orange slice and started to peel back the skin, being careful not to get juice on her hands. "You two sure hit it off," she observed. "Do you know him from before or something?"
"I uh..." Ted couldn't think of what to say. Lying to Booster was one thing - half way to a tradition actually, though usually not about stuff that really mattered - but lying to Tora? "I just assumed he was a friendly kind of guy."
"Not with us, he's not. Unless it's about the team, our fearless leader is positively standoffish, and not just when Godiva's around. Want to know what I think?" The legs of the stool grated against the cement as she rocked it closer. He voice dropped to a whisper, and Ted leaned in. "I think he's got a secret identity."
Ted barely stopped himself from saying No shit! "Aren't superheroes supposed to have..."
Tora shook her head solemnly. "Not us. UN rules: everyone on the team has to have public identity. Code names like mine are fine, but no secrets. You should have seen how mad they got about Batman, and even Godiva got in trouble for changing her given name to Dora."
This was too good to pass up on. "You've got a point there. I mean, who names their kid 'Booster Gold.' You know what I think?" He dropped his own voice to a whisper, and Tora leaned in even closer. "His real name is probably something like Bart Wigenfelter; he lives in his parents' basement, and has never, ever had a girlfriend."
"What about all the women he's with in the papers? The actresses and supermodels." Tora asked, eyes gleaming.
"All PR. They're just in it for their careers." That part was probably somewhat true, which made it an even better story. "That's why he keeps to himself. He's terrified that you'll find out his dirty secret."
Tora's brow wrinkled, and she pouted a little. "But he's not afraid of you?"
"I'm tech support." Ted straightened and spread his arms to encompass the warehouse full of computers and partly-disassembled robots. "Nerds know no shame, especially penniless ones."
"Penniless but not friendless," she said and slid off the the stool. "Thanks for the gossip. It's way better than Bea's theory about a secret criminal past." Then with a smile and a pat on Ted's arm, she skipped out to the warehouse, brushing past Booster on her way out.
"She's never brought me breakfast," Booster whined as he took the empty seat and stole a couple of Ted's orange slices. He was in costume again, but still had his goggles pushed back. Ted snuck a look at his butt as his legs flexed to stay balanced. Same old Booster there, at least. Some of the juice had dripped onto his gloves, and he licked it off before looking up at Ted through fine blond eyelashes. "Should I be jealous?"
"Not unless you want the position of JLI mascot." Moving the plate only made Booster scoot closer and lift them from right in front of him. He wasn't going to get any at this rate. "I think I've been adopted."
"Maybe I can get Godiva to 'adopt' you too," Booster said, laughing, then leaned in even closer than Tora had, and said, "Actually, dropped by to talk to you about last night."
He sounded so serious that Ted had to run another review of events as he remembered them. He still couldn't think of anything too compromising, but then he was running on Old Booster standards. "What about it?" he asked cautiously.
"Nothing I just..." Booster pinched the bridge of his nose, and as Ted studied his face, he decided that Tora had to be wrong. There was no way that he looked more wrung out than Booster did. "I don't know why I said half the stuff I did, and the rumour mill's bad enough around here as it is, if you could..."
"Sure thing, buddy. What happens in the Dark Side stays in the Dark Side." He didn't mention that he'd already been making up gossip, but Booster would undoubtedly catch that one soon enough.
"Thanks." Booster nodded awkwardly and started to get up, but Ted caught his wrist.
"Listen, Booster, if you ever need to talk, I..." He met Booster's clear blue eyes and held them. "Well, I'm not exactly Mr. Sensitive, but I'm always willing to lend an ear if you need one."
"Especially if I'm buying the beer?" Booster asked, but some of the stiffness had left his shoulders and his smile looked warm and appreciative. When Ted didn't laugh, he added, "No, seriously, I'm grateful. You know, it's weird, I don't usually take to new people this fast. Somehow I just feel like I've known you for years."
Ted felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and he had to let go of Booster's wrist so he wouldn't notice him shiver. He swallowed a couple times, then said, "Yeah. Me too. Weird, huh?"
Skeets' voice broke in on whatever Booster might have said next. "Sir, alleged meta humans are attacking S.T.A.R. Labs in Chicago. The branch head is requesting all available assistance."
Booster was halfway to the ceiling before Ted had time to get out of his chair. His force field shimmered around him, and Ted could see the fluctuations as it cycled up into battle readiness. "Skeets, how long..." Then he stopped in place with a jerk that had to be ten Gs, and swore. "Never mind. Booster Gold to all JLI members. Level three alert. Anyone not in the shuttle in five minutes gets left behind."
"Forgot you had a team, huh?" Ted asked as Booster drifted back to the floor. Booster glared, but Ted just shrugged, smiled and started packing tools. Glare proving ineffective, Booster pulled up a couple of digital display panes. Those were new. Ted made plans to steal Booster's suit and take it apart.
"Okay, Skeets, I guess you can catch me up now instead of on the way." Images started to appear on the panes, and Ted edged around his bench for a better look. The first showed an aerial view of the exterior of S.T.A.R. Labs, apparently undisturbed; the second, a street view of the main entrance, had a little more activity. Or rather, less activity; the normally hectic street was cordoned off and still. Two Chicago PD squad cars sat motionless in the foreground. Booster waved to the next image, internal security footage of five masked figures bursting into the lobby. They moved with oiled grace in tight coordination, the first over the receptionist counter before security even drew on them, the next two moving in and snapping the guards' necks. They had the whole lobby contained in seconds, without a shot fired or an alarm sounded. The remain assailants moved out of the picture, which turned to static a moment later. The monitors returned to the exterior views. Ted felt his mouth go dry, and forced himself to turn back to his tool kit.
"As you can see, sir," Skeets was saying, voice as calm and clinical as ever. Ted knew that he was Booster's friend, maybe Booster's only friend in this timeline, but there were times when he really wanted to hit that sanctimonious little toaster. "The strength displayed by the attackers indicates a meta human nature. At the moment it is assumed that they're holding the building hostage, but no demands have been made."
"What about Murray?"
"Who?" Booster's head whipped around to face Ted, the display panes blinking out; apparently he'd forgotten that Ted was there at all.
"Murray Takamoto," Ted replied, trying to sound completely reasonable. "Branch head in Chicago."
Booster still looked unsure, or maybe just not sure of Ted, and it was Skeets who explained, "Mr. Takamoto made the initial call from inside the building, and sent on the security footage I've just shown you. Unfortunately, the call cut off after only forty-two seconds. Since then, there have been no communications in or out of the building."
The door to the warehouse lab burst open, and Ice hopped in, still pulling on one of her boots, with Fire right behind her. Rocket Red and General Iron followed half a minute later, almost getting jammed in the doorway as they tried to come in at once. "Godiva and Vixen are right behind us," Ice said, finally getting her boot straight and freezing the floor enough to skate for the shuttle, "And Guy says he'll fly himself."
Ted snapped the tool box shut. "I'm driving," he told Booster.
"What? No you are not! I can fly it just fine."
Ignoring him, Ted picked up the tool box, and strode towards the shuttle. He stepped around Booster without pausing. "Not if you're not in it. What if you need a different pick up point, or a fast getaway, or, God forbid, the building blows up?"
Booster hovered then flared ahead to keep pace. "I'll just slave it to my suit controls like I did the last jet."
"Oh, right. Remember how when you hired me you said, 'Teddy, old boy, what I really need you to do is build an interface between my fantastically-advanced fibreweave-circuitry costume and my new, fantastically-advanced alien spaceship, so make that your first priority'?"
"I never said that."
"Exactly." Ted dashed up the ramp, ducked around General Iron, jumped over Bea's legs and made the pilot's seat before Booster caught up. "And since this ship was made by a race of paranoid alien warlords who thought the Cylons were out to get them, and not a friendly - if over-caffeinated - tech company from Star City, your suit can't just hack in. This thing's got so much security that you can't even use the comms remotely, remember?" The chair still was still made for someone a lot bigger than him, and he had to stretch to reach the farthest controls. It made him look less nonchalant and more rushed than he wanted, but whatever worked. The little ship whirred to life around them.
"Fine, whatever." Booster landed beside him, bracing one hand against the back of the chair and the other on the starboard bulkhead. "But first thing after we get back, you're setting up a remote control on this sucker. And if you try do anything besides hold the mules, I'm firing you."
"Fine."
"If you're making a list," Bea yelled from somewhere in the back, "I want chairs."
"With seatbelts," Tora added.
"And I would like pony," Rocket Red chipped in.
Booster let his head fall against the bulkhead. "Can we go now?"
"Oy, hold on a tick, not without us." Godiva and Vixen burst in, which caused a general reshuffling in the back as everyone tried not to sit next to someone they didn't like. Thank God Guy was flying on his own.
"Now we can go." The loading doors started to roll aside, and Ted punched in the sequence for take off, and the little ship launched into the grey December skies.
It only took ten minutes to get to Chicago, and most of that was acceleration and deceleration. It took twice that time again for Booster to get his team of cats herded into something resembling a plan of action. Fire and Rocket Red wanted to go and go now, and were keyed up and snappish. Booster still didn't seem completely clear on his team's powers, though he was trying to hide it by asking for volunteers for specific jobs. They still had no idea what, exactly, they were up against. Guy wanted to just blow the roof of the building go in shooting. The August General in Iron was laughing at them, silently of course, but Ted knew it to be true.
"What are you grinning about?" Booster snapped.
"What?" Ted hadn't realised he was. He tried to stop and couldn't. "I guess I'm just happy not to be filling out forms." Happy to have his family back and whole and alive. It didn't matter if they didn't know him, they were here. This was the second - or third, or sixtieth - chance that he never thought he'd get.
Booster snorted. "Now that you mention it, me too." He leaned in to activate the comms. "You ready, G.L.?"
"Been ready since I got here, pretty boy."
"Open the hatch."
Even hovering ten feet behind the ship, Guy was only just visible through the clouds. Ted turned to watch as Tora took Bea's hand for a moment then stepped out onto a glowing green fur-lined sleigh. "Give me five minutes," she said, then faded into the cloud.
Ted closed the hatch again, and upped the internal heat a few degrees. He flipped through displays; the low-hanging clouds they were hiding in wiped out a lot of the passive scanners, and he didn't want to risk pinging the building and warning everyone inside. Anything that fed pure data was in a language he didn't understand. He could still patch in the street-level views, but there wasn't anything happening there. A lot more cops had arrived, including S.W.A.T., but they were all pretty much milling. No one had seen any movement from the building since the initial attack. He flicked to another screen, then set the monitors to cycle through different views.
Booster was leaning in to watch, so close that Ted could feel his breath on the back of his neck. "There," Booster said, tapping a monitor. "It's started." A few flakes of snow were lazily drifting across the screen. By the time the view returned to that camera, two dozen more flakes had joined it. The next cycle showed a complete white out on all cameras. He straightened and turned to the back. "Okay, team two, you're up."
Freezing air and snow blasted into the cabin, and Fire, Rocket Red and Vixen jumped out into the blizzard.
"Christ, that's cold," Godiva complained, wrapping her hair around herself.
"Good thing too," Booster said. "They'd never buy a freak blizzard in July."
A tendril of hair snaked past Ted to creep up Booster's leg. "Feel like huddling together for warmth?"
The little ship didn't have enough room to back away, but Booster tried it anyway, hovering out of the hair's reach. "Ah, no. My suit's insulated, thanks."
"There's Fire," Ted said, pulling up a police camera and expanding it. The snow had almost completely obscured the view, but he could still make out a green figure disappearing into the S.W.A.T. mobile command unit. "The locals should be in on the plan now." Whether they liked it or not. Booster hadn't exactly consulted them.
"Can you see where the others are?"
"Nope. Hopefully no one else can, either." The comms panel beeped twice, Rocket Red's signal. "Shouldn't be long now."
"Right. Yeah." Every muscle in Booster's body was strung so tight Ted could almost see them vibrating through the suit. He was still hovering slightly above the deck, arms folded across his chest, face deliberately blank.
Ted smiled sympathetically. "I don't like waiting, either."
"A good-" General Iron started to say.
"August General, if you quote Sunzi at me one more time, I will not be-" Booster stopped and took a breath. "Sorry."
The General laughed, an odd creaking sound that set Ted's teeth on edge. "I am just remembering the first time I led men into battle," he said. "I was so nervous that I think I turned green."
"Oh, sorry." He landed and turned back to the monitors. "Kord, can you see-"
"I'll let you know."
"Fine."
Silence closed in around them again, so close Ted could almost taste it. He wanted to break the tension, but he was drawing a total blank on anything that didn't start with "Knock, knock." He wanted to lighten the mood, not start a race to see which superhero would clobber him first.
Everyone one jumped when the comm beeped again.
"Did everyone get that?" Booster asked.
"Should have."
He turned abruptly. It only took him three long strides to get to the back. "Open her up. Your lucky day, Godiva: you and the General are with me until we hit the roof." The last thing he said before he stepped out into the snow was, "Remember, Kord, do anything besides hold the mules, and you're fired."
Then Ted was left alone in an empty ship. He sighed and turned back to the control panels. If he couldn't go along, then maybe he could get some more info out of the scanners. Or rewire the ship into a full-service bar, grill and black hole generator. Or something to kill time.
This was why Ted hated being the science guy and button pusher: all his friends rushed off into danger, leaving him behind to twiddle his thumbs and fret. More so in this case than usual, given the communications blackout inside the building. He couldn't even follow the action.
He knew the plan, hell, he'd helped make it, and he could picture everything as it happened: Tora creating a snow storm; Rocket Red hacking past the security and locks on the roof; Vixen - armed with override chips and manifesting a chameleon to avoid cameras and infra-red scanners - taking over security on the top few floors. Then everyone had gone in, save Bea on front door watch duty, and Ted stuck up here. They were supposed follow Vixen down, as far as the controlled labs in the sub basements if need be, and take care of the mystery assailants as they went. Supposed to, with no comms, no idea who or what they were up against, and a long history of JLI missions never, ever going to plan.
Not like Ted was limiting himself to worrying about the team or the plan, either. Why the hell did Murray Takamoto have to be such a goddamn workaholic? Why couldn't he take Saturday off and sleep in like a normal Earth human? They could have picked up him on the way in and got a proper run down of blueprints and valuable projects, not just out-dated City Hall copies and the bits and pieces Ted could remember. Instead Ted didn't know if he was alive or dead, if any of them were.
He checked his readouts again: with Tora inside, the snow had lightened up, but he still couldn't see a thing. On the ground, the cops were clearing drifts away from their equipment, but the building was as still and silent as a brick.
Man, when he got his hands on whatever they were using to wipe out every transmission inside the building, he was... well he wasn't sure what yet, but it was probably going to involve four hours, an acetylene torch and a modern art installation. Or, now that he thought of it, he could mesh it with the other impenetrable jamming system he'd run into this week.
His watch said only fifteen minutes since Booster had left.
Keeping a corner of his eye on the screens, he started pulling the front panel apart. He wanted to test a theory.
"Booster, this is Bee... the shuttle, do you copy?" Ted held his breath, as if that small sound would make a difference when he had the volume cranked as high as he did.
But Booster's voice came through clear as a bell, and only a little winded. "Five by five, shuttle. Good to hear your voice. I thought the building was jammed."
Ted slumped back into the pilot's seat, letting the splicer fall into the tool box. "It was; I fixed it. Short version is we found the missing bits of robot head. How's it going down there?"
"Um..." Booster hesitated, sounding chagrined. "Kind of hard to tell. I think they know we're here, but they seem to be avoiding us. Vixen, you see anything?"
"I ran into one in the second security room, but it threw me into a wall and ran away. Whatever they are, they're fast and pack quite a punch."
"Where are you now?"
"Main access point to the sub levels. I need Gavril to get the door open."
"Okay." Another pause. "General Iron, Gardner, I want you on secondary exits. Everyone else, meet up with Vixen. We'll move in together."
The transmission broke down into static, then a grunt and an animal snarl. Ted snapped upright, reaching for the controls before he realised he couldn't do a damn thing.
"Vixen, status?" Silence. "Vixen! Dammit, who's closest?"
"Ice..."
"Vixen here. All five just blew past me, heading for the upper. Two of them were carrying a large crate between them."
"Did they have hostages?"
"Not that I saw."
Then a crash, a squeal of feedback and Russian profanity. "They got by me too. I hit leader with hardest shot. No damage."
"Godiva, General Iron, heads up. They're-" Booster's signal gave out.
Ted could feel his pulse pounding and every muscle tensing, ready for a fight. Hell with going into action, just sitting here was going to give him a heart attack.
More silence, then the General's hollow voice, "We are fighting robots. My staff is able to damage them, but barely."
"Try to confuse their sensors," Ted yelled at the comm. "Energy discharges, vibrations, anything, then hit them when they're disorientated."
"Yeah, that didn't work," Guy snarled. "Got any other bright ideas, genius?"
Damn, that was usually pretty reliable. "I'll get back to you."
"I tried icing one to a wall, but it broke the wall."
"Blimey, they can fly!"
"Kord, they're out of the building and headed up. Fire, intercept!"
"On it."
The console was flashing purple at him, which Ted didn't think was good. "Weapons. Weapons." His fingers ran over the switches, trying to remember the power distribution system. "No weapons. I'll put it on the list after a pony."
One of the hijacked cop cameras showed the five small black figures in tight formation bursting out of the building; two carried a box between them. A green flame shot after them, but they ignored her, barely even shuddering under her plasma blasts. A second later, Guy, Booster and Rocket Red shot through the broken window. Then street view blinked out, replaced with a muddy radar image and a purple blotch headed right for where the shuttle was hidden in the clouds.
"Come on, come on..." No weapons. But the ship did have a laser of sorts. From the power it pulled, Ted figured it might just do the trick. "Guy, I have another idea, but I need to get close, can you net them or something?"
"I got it," Booster said.
According to the radar, the blotch was almost on top of him, but Ted saw the flash of yellow before the black shapes. Biting his lip, he manoeuvred the ship right up to the edge of Booster's force field.
"Better hurry," Booster snapped. "These guys are siphoning power. I don't know how long the force field will hold."
"Hang on, buddy." There, almost lined up. "Drop shield in three, two, now!"
The golden shell vanished. Ted nosed the ship forward the last two yards, then hit the laser cutters on full power. All the screens dimmed, then flared green, then cut out. He felt his stomach hit the roof of his mouth as the ship dropped. Then navigation blinked back to life again, and the ship righted itself. Only then did the restraints snap into place. Ted added it to the list.
"Shuttle, this is Booster. You okay in there, Ted?"
"Everything's fine," he said, then remembered to check the screens to make sure that was actually true. "Still flight worthy, anyway." Mostly. "Did it work?"
Booster laughed, the sound crackling over the speakers. "You could say that."
The sensors were starting to come back, though the ones on the forward sections seemed to have been knocked out entirely. "What the hell was that?"
"Gardner and Fire hit the first robot at the same time you did, must have ruptured its power core and set off a chain reaction because-"
"Robots make big explosion," Rocket Red cut in cheerfully. "Probably picking up pieces in Russia."
Wow. Okay, that had been a little more than Ted had been going for. "All of them?" He asked. "Is everyone okay?" He could see four little blips on the screens, at least.
"Everyone's fine," Booster said.
Bea snorted. "Booster got a bit singed."
"I'm fine."
Yeah, Ted thought, I'll bet you are. The wind was starting to pick up, making the shuttle pitch in ways that it really shouldn't. "If you guys don't mind, I'm going to put down on the roof." He hoped the circled "H" in the middle indicated it was rated for small spaceships as well as large helicopters. The snow muffled some of the impact in what wasn't his best landing, but he didn't go through the roof. God bless S.T.A.R. Labs construction. Ted had only been wearing coveralls over shorts and a light shirt when he left, and he shivered as he stepped out into the full blast of Chicago winter. Bea was just landing and he folded his arms against the cold and shuffled closer to her.
A moment later, Booster landed lightly on the roof, hair blackened, suit charrd through to the circuitry across his back and arms, but setting down the stolen chest and grinning like an idiot. Ted could have kissed him. "Justice League International wins again!" he crowed.
"Whatever's in there, it'd better be good." Bea said.
Guy stepped forward, brandishing a giant can opener. "If it's gold, I want a cut."
"I wouldn't," Another voice called from across the roof. "I think we've had enough explosions for one day."
Ted spun, slipped in the snow, let Bea catch his arm, and skidded towards the roof access. "Murray! Hey. Are you okay?" He looked okay, paler, but about the usual level of rumpled. The rest of the team was standing behind him in the elevator. Ted felt like his birthday had come early.
Murray approached the box cautiously, eyes widening as he saw Booster's suit. "Did you..." he choked, then fell to his knees in the snow, intimately examining the box. "Did you blow up a crate full of Promethium?"
"That's Promethium?" Ted had a sudden urge to throw up. "Oh. God."
Booster to took a step back, eyes narrowing. "I have no idea what that is," he said, a little defensively. "But we did not blow it up. We blew up the killer robots, while carefully shielding the box of whatsit." As in Booster had thrown his personal forcefield around the crate, and got caught in the explosion. Ted, however, had fired high-powered cutting lasers near the thing. He rubbed a hand over his face and tried not to think about it.
"Which is why the building's still standing," Murray was saying, still protectively holding the box, though he'd already gone over the seals twice. "We're trying to tap into it as a source of perpetual energy by getting it to bond with something more stable; in its raw form it's highly reactive."
"As in extremely reactive." Ted added. "And unstable. Did we mention unstable?"
Murray frowned at him, but didn't say anything as he shakily got to his feet. "The sooner we get it back in a controlled environment, the happier I'll be."
"Sure, fine. It's freezing out here anyway." This time, Booster handled the box a lot more gingerly. "You can fill us in on the way down."
Ted took Murray's elbow, steadying him as the headed back inside. "How do you know about Promethium?" Murray asked, keeping his voice low enough that the others wouldn't hear it over the wind. "We hadn't even discovered it before you disappeared."
Oops."Something I ran into with the Cluster."
"Really, and they called..." Murray's cell buzzed, and Ted let go of his arm, ducking away to stand next to Bea again. With Rocket Red and the General, the elevator was only rated for half the team at once. Ted let the others go first.
"Nice flying," Bea said, deliberately increasing her flame. The snow melted around them and soaked through Ted's shoes.
"Thanks. You too."
Ice backed away a few steps. "Do you think Mr. Gold will fire you?"
"I hope not; I'm just starting to get the hang of this job." Though if he wanted to keep it, he was going to have to start being more careful about remembering what he was supposed to know.
Murray didn't catch up with him until the end of the day, when he had the nose of the shuttle pulled apart and was too deep in blown circuits to see him coming.
"Hey, Roomie," Murray called out from six inches behind him, and he started, slamming his head on the hatch.
"Hey! That- Wait, is that coffee?" Wrapping his hands around the steel travel mug, he decided, "I forgive you for everything you've ever done."
"Even the time with..."
"Everything!" Murray had put in more cream and sugar than coffee, just the way Ted had taken it in college. He sipped for a few minutes, letting Murray drool over the ship's innards. His friend has always been more of an administrator than an engineer in his own right, but he'd worked around enough advanced technology to appreciate a captured spaceship.
"Quite the job you've got here." Ted felt himself tense at the forced casualness in Murray's voice. Was he still worried about the Promethium, or was this something new?
"My first day certainly has been interesting," he said, trying to sound neutral. Unconsciously stepping aside so he wasn't backed into the ship and had space to take a swing probably counted against anything in his tone though.
Murray spread his hands appealingly, his own mug trailing tea across the ground. "Hey, ease up. I'm still your best friend, right?" Which Ted realised was true for this timeline, though from his perspective he'd lost track of Murray years ago. Now he wondered how he'd let that happen. He hadn't let the Atlantic get in the way of other friendships. "Even if you have been avoiding me all afternoon."
"I'm actually more trying to keep out of reach of that S.W.A.T. captain who keeps yelling at everyone. Plus I need to make sure that this tub is in decent enough shape to make it back to New York, and..." Murray was watching him steadily. "And I'm maybe avoiding you a little bit. Sorry, it's just... " He looked at the sensors, now patched as best as he could manage here, then at the otherwise empty roof. "Look, why don't I show you the inside of the ship. I'm freezing my ass off out here anyway." That was true enough; he'd borrowed a parka and gloves, but the wind still cut through it. Murray silently helped him reseal the sensors, then pack up his tools. Only when they were both inside with hatch closed and the heat turned up did Ted finish. "I've got a lot going on right now, and it's hard enough to keep it all straight in my head without..." He couldn't think of any way to finish that that wasn't straight up insulting.
"Without lying to your friends?" Murray suggested. He was sitting in the pilot's seat, posture held deliberately open and non-threatening, and looking for all the world like the feeling of hostility physically embodied.
Ted had felt better about himself when he's found out he'd nearly vaporised the city block. Staring at the floor didn't seem to be helping, so he met Murray's eyes, and admitted."Yeah, without that." He crouched so he wasn't looming over the chair. "There's stuff going on since I got back that I can't tell you or anyone else about, important, fate of the universe stuff. If it makes you feel any better, I promise it's nothing that will involve you or your lab, but I can't... what?"
Murray's expression had softened from annoyed to almost pitying. "It's too late for that."
"Oh, god." Ted tried to think of what he'd done since he got back. He couldn't remember anything that would have hurt his friend, but then he couldn't account for what Rip Hunter might have done. "What happened?"
"Those robots or whatever they were weren't just here for the Promethium, Ted," Murray told him. "I spent a lot of time alone with them - taking more time than I needed to make it ready for transport, trying to keep them away from my people. And here's something I haven't even told the cops yet: one of them kept asking where you were. They knew we were connected, and they wanted you. Not that it matters what I told them now, but I said I didn't know, that you'd left." He his hands steady in his lap, but his right thumb ran steadily back and forth over his left knuckles. Ted doubted that he realised he was doing it. "Then that call I got, right when you ducked out on me, that was the police letting me know someone had broken into my apartment same time the lab was hit. Security footage showed two superhumanly-fast masked figures in black. And you know what the police thought was odd?" He didn't wait for Ted to answer, but pressed on relentlessly. "They didn't take anything or even toss the place. They just broke in, looked around and left. Like they were looking for something big, say a person, and not a USB drive full of files."
Ted had sunk all the way to the floor so that his knees were pulled up in front of him. "I don't... I'm so sorry, Murray." Pulling himself together, he said honestly, "I don't know what's going on. I'm not even supposed to be alive!" In this timeline or in any other. "How can someone be after me already?"
Murry leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. "That's what I came here to find out. From where I'm sitting, killer robots are looking for you and a top a secret project you're not supposed to know about, and I have a trashed lab and two people in the morgue."
Ted considered just laying it all out, but somehow he didn't think that I come from a reshuffled timeline was going to convince Murry of anything. Instead he fell back on the kind of limited truth that he'd been spinning since he landed in Peraxxus' brig. "I swear I don't know anything about the attack, and I don't know who's looking for me or why." But he sure planned to find out and soon. "I did know that you had Promethium, or did a few years back, but I didn't tell anyone, and there's no way in the world anyone else could have found out the same way I did."
"What about your alien friends?"
"Possible, but not very likely. Booster blew Peraxxus up, and this has had far too little melodrama to be Manga Khan."
"Okay." Murray sighed and slumped back in the chair, hands falling loosely on his knees.
"Okay?"
"Okay." Murray confirmed. He stood and reached down to pull Ted to his feet. "How long have we known each other, Roomie? It's got to be ten years now, even if you've been gone for half of them. If you swear you don't know who did this, I believe you." His grip tightened. "But you've got to promise me one more thing, Ted: you take down whoever's behind this, and, when you do, you let me know."
Ted nodded, squeezing back. "I promise I'll do my best."
"Good enough."
"Thank you. I..." He paused, trying to figure out how to say how much he meant that. He'd never been all that good with words. "This means the world to me. You're a good friend, and I'm not just saying that because I owe you money."
The last of the tension eased from the cabin as Murray laughed. "And don't think I'll forget it. Now, show me this ship of yours."
* Part One * Part Three * Part Four *
Author: Muccamukk
Recipient: Idiosyn
Rating: M
Prompt: "Find a way to add Ted to DCnU."
Booster pushed off his goggles as soon as he let go of Ted's hand. It made his hair even more tousled and devil-may-care than usual. "So," he said, turning on the same grin he used to use to sell surf boards, "Do you want the dime tour?"
They were standing in the foyer of an old office building - one of those blocky '70s monstrosities that had been designed by someone who thought Soviet Five Year Plan architecture was too ostentatious - but Booster made it sound like the Hall of Justice. If the Hall of Justice was in a slightly dodgy industrial area in Queens. They were actually worryingly close to the old Super Buddies headquarters.
"Isn't there an interview process or something?" Ted asked. He half expected Oberon to show up with a clipboard a list of ridiculous questions. He hadn't figured out where Oberon was in this timesteam yet. Hopefully he was okay.
"Nah. You're uniquely qualified." Booster's smile thinned into something a little vicious. "I told Briggs that all applicants for the job had to rewire an alien space ship while it was exploding. Somehow we didn't hear from anyone else after that." He clapped a hand on Ted's shoulder, and waved him through into the ground floor offices. Components for new computer systems had been stacked on top of battered PCs that matched the disco-era faux-wood panelling. Ted wondered if the job included getting this mess up and running. It seemed likely.
"What happened to the last head of R&D?" Ted asked as he followed Booster through.
"That was kind of weird," Booster said, frowning. "We used to have Dr. Jack Soo, a buddy of mine from S.T.A.R. Labs. I thought he was pretty stoked about the job, but then he comes in yesterday and hands in his notice. Says he has a better offer."
Ted had to wonder if that better offer had anything to do with a certain seven-year-old girl's promise. He added it to his list of things to ask Hunter next time he showed up to tell him what to do. He shook his head and tuned back into Booster's spiel.
"...only the receiving equipment and some of the processors went up with the Hall of Justice," Booster was saying. "Jack said he'd get all that set up here before he takes off for Arizona, so you don't have to worry about that. In the meantime, we'll have to rely on my own systems." The stacks of equipment took up so much of the room that they had to turn sideways to slide out the back door into the service halls. "There's more offices and a big conference room upstairs, and Briggs is getting the top two floors turned into living quarters. Nothing's finished yet, but I can show what it'll look like. But mostly, I need you to look at..." he paused to punch an access code into an incongruously modern door, "this."
"Wow." The space behind the door was cavernous, at least three stories high, with layers of catwalks around the edges, and warehouse loading doors on the far side. It was also full of alien tech, including the space ship he and Booster had escaped in, what looked like fragments of giant robots, and a multitude of odds and ends that Ted couldn't begin to identify without three weeks and a universal translator. He closed his mouth and looked back at Booster, who had his hands on his hips and a smug little grin. "Is this all from Peraxxus?"
"Pretty much." He pointed to haphazard pile of equipment in the shadow of a twenty-foot robot leg. "Vixen and Batman found that in the Signal Man lair in Zambesi. Whoever was so hot to get their hands on alien robots also left in a hurry. It's not anything I recognise, but you're the tech expert. I thought maybe you could track back the transistors or whatever and tell me who done it and what they were after."
"Okay." Ted stared around the old warehouse again. There was a lot of alien junk in here. He wondered how Booster had been able to wrangle it for the JLI instead S.T.A.R. Labs jumping on it like they usually did. Part of him wanted to take off his jacket start prying things apart and just disappear into happy tech land forever. The rest didn't want to let Booster go. It felt so strange to be standing here with him in his costume and Ted in an Interview Suit he'd bought off the rack, pretending not to know his best friend. "Um... anything else on your to do list? Do I need to sign up for the health plan or anything?"
Booster patted his shoulder again. "Oh, trust me, there's stack of paperwork tall as Batman. I wanted to show you the incentives before I buried you in it."
"I take it the hours are long and the pay is terrible?" Some things about the JLI remained constant, no matter what the universe.
"You got it. And even if you're support staff, crazy people will try to kill you pretty much all the time." There was that grin again, the one that would make most women and some men involuntarily start to spread their legs and used cars salesmen start to weep. "But don't worry, I'll protect you."
Ted wondered when this Booster would learn not to make promises like that.
The problem with this new time stream, one of the problems with it anyway, was that the tech was different. Not that Ted couldn't handle new tech, it didn't take an hour to figure out what everything did and how, but tracking down who made what was turning out to be a bit of a challenge. He recognised bits and pieces, the way things were wired seemed familiar, but with people like Ollie Queen making completely different things than they were before, nailing down specifics was turning out to be tricky. Plus the general level of advancement was about two years ahead of what he remembered from his Earth.
He knew that he could pass his ignorance off under the "abducted by aliens five years ago" excuse, but that wouldn't do him any good if he wanted to prove that he was necessary to the team. It was the first thing Booster had asked him to do, and by God he was going to figure this out. Booster and the UN had hit him with so many forms that he'd already gotten a late start on it.
Rubbing his hand across his face, he closed his eyes then refocused. He had the wiring pulled apart and spread across the bench, and the software scrolling across an isolated monitor. He'd given up on identifying the build, which looked home built rather than black market anyway, and was looking at individual components. If he could figure out who supplied these people, it would be a start. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something basic. There was a familiarity to the work that he just wasn't picking up on. Ted sighed and hit the reset key, starting the code again. Maybe there would be something there. A lot of programmers left a signature, whether they meant to or not.
Something moved behind him, and Ted started, knocking his chair over as he fell into a crouch. It was Booster, of course; who else would be in the JLI lab at this time of night? He'd changed into tailored blue jeans and an untucked black silk button down, and looked like a million bucks. He also looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or yell for help.
"Sorry," Ted muttered, straightening. "I'm still a little jumpy. Do you, uh... do you need something?"
Booster relaxed into a smile. "You bet. It's a Friday night, and I desperately need a beer. I was wondering if you wanted to come with."
Ted glanced back at the monitor, then at the pile of circuits. "I don't know. I mean, I would, but I really need-"
"To have a beer with me," Booster finished for him. "Come on. I'm the boss, and the boss says it's Miller time."
"But..." Ted found himself grabbed by the elbow and pulled away from his work station. He stretched back and hit the shut down key before Booster dragged him out of reach. "Okay, fine. You win."
"Great," Booster said cheerfully. "I love winning. Come on. I found this little place you'll love. It's like two blocks."
The little place turned out to be the Dark Side, the (hopefully) former super villain bar run by Dick Hertz and (thankfully) not Guy Gardner. Booster installed them in a booth in the back corner and stood for the first two rounds. "I'm still trying to figure out how to expense beer," he said. "Maybe I can call it a team building exercise."
"You'd need to have the team here for that," Ted said, not looking up from the menu. He hadn't eaten since airport food at breakfast, but the features here all seemed to be grease fried in more grease with a side of grease. Damn, he used to love this kind of food, but the beer was probably bad enough.
Booster slide a little closer so he could bump his shoulder against Ted's. "Hey, you're on the team now. There's an idea, maybe this could be part of your interview."
"I thought that was the exploding space ship thing."
"Oh, sure, call it a review then." He wiggled his eyebrows. "So, Mr. Kord, how's your performance?"
Ted snorted. "Wouldn't you like to know." He took a long swallow of his lager and added seriously, "I'm not sure where I'm getting with that equipment Batman found. The build seems familiar, but I haven't got anywhere on tracking down the source. Too long out of the loop, I guess. Sorry."
"Well, do you know what it was used for at least?" Booster asked.
"It's just a diagnostic system." Sighing, Ted leaned back against the cracked plastic cushions. "I think it's set up to map circuits, maybe to find specific sections of hardware to salvage. From what they dug out of that giant robot head you brought back, I'd say they were looking for communication systems, but I need to run more tests. One thing I do know: whoever your scavengers were, they knew what they were doing. This is a specific custom-built system, not the kind of thing that falls off the back of a truck."
Booster was leaning forward, watching him seriously, and Ted realised he hadn't been completely factitious about this being a review. "That's more than we had before. Good work."
"Thanks. I'll know more tomorrow." He hoped. Ted stretched, arching his back to pull the kinks out. He feet brushed into Boosters under the table. "Sorry. Been a long day." And two beers on an empty stomach was going straight to his head.
Booster finished his second pint, throat rippling. "Sure thing. I should pack it in too. Are you flying back to Chicago tonight, or...?"
"No, I, uh, cancelled my ticket when you said I got the job." Which had been via Greyhound, but Booster didn't need to know. "I thought I'd just crash in the lab until I figure out a place to stay." Or got his first pay cheque, at least. The money Murray had loaned him wasn't going to stretch to extended hotel stays, and he was too damn old for hostels. He was probably also too old for cots in labs, but at least it would be quiet there.
"Broke, huh?" Booster said, his smile sympathetic. "I'm guessing everything you own is in that one suitcase."
Ted took another pull of his beer so that he didn't have to meet his eyes. "Pretty much."
"I've been there." A warm hand rested gently on his wrist. Despite spending most of his time either fighting or working out, Booster's skin still felt smooth and soft. Ted wondered if he'd been shilling for hand cream recently. When he glanced over at Booster, he had one of those looks that had only ever meant trouble. "Hey, you know what you should do?"
Dinner be damned, this was going to need another drink. He waved the waitress over. "No, what should I do?"
"Sell your memoirs."
"What?"
"No, seriously. You'd make a bundle. Super heroes are almost old hat by now, but everyone still loves aliens. Especially when the film rights come through and Ben Afflick plays you."
"Ben Affleck? Are you crazy? He's not even a redhead!" Ted protested, then skipped back to the more salient details. "And I can't write."
"Your CV says you have an English degree."
"English Literature, not creative writing. That means I know bad writing when I see it, and I am therefore authentically certified to say that I have terrible prose."
Booster waved that away. "So hire a ghost writer! That's what most celebrities do. I know a guy who can hook you up with the guy who wrote the book about that guy who spent two years in the tree in Sierre Leon."
"What? No..." Ted rubbed his eyes, and when he opened then, there was more beer and a new basket of pretzels. He took another drink. "If that's such a good idea, why haven't you done it?"
"Too early in the game," Booster said, shrugging. "I told you, superheroes are old news. You have to do more than wear tights and save Metropolis a couple of times to win fame and fortune these days."
"Something like leading the Justice League?" Ted asked. He could see that gleam in Booster's eyes and his apprehension grew. This was Booster Gold with a plan, and that never seemed to end well.
"Sure, something like."
"Even Justice League Queens?"
"Sure the Hall of Justice got blown up on our first day, and our budget isn't providing the best replacement in the whole world ever. We don't have a single first stringer, except for Batman, and Batman's not supposed to be on the team," he was actually ticking off on his fingers. Ted hoped he didn't run out of hands before he got to the end of the list of things that had gone wrong with the first mission. "And maybe the team's about a nanometre away from eating each other in front of the international press corps, and no one thinks that I can lead, and Briggs only picked me because he thinks I'm a pushover. And okay, that last mission could have run more smoothly. But," he spread his hands flat and mimed sweeping the table clear. Only reflexes honed by years of super heroic exploits preserved Ted's beer. "We saved the whole damn planet. Us, Justice League International: We saved the Earth. The team came through okay, only a few minor injuries. We're new, and no one knows us yet, but a few more successful missions - and we will keep winning - a bit of good press, and we'll hit our stride. In a couple years, we'll have embassies all over the world, and Superman will be begging to join."
"And you'll make a killing on endorsements for sports cars?"
Booster wrinkled his nose. "No endorsements so long as I'm leading the team: UN rules. After, when I've graciously stepped aside to allow my hand-picked successor to take over? Sure. I'll hire that ghost writer, too, maybe go on a speaking tour."
It wasn't just his smile now, Booster's whole body radiated enthusiasm, and Ted tried to remember the last time he'd seen his friend look like that, when he hadn't just been pasting a smile on top of another dismal situation, but he'd really believed that he was going places. When was the last time either of them had had faith that it would work out in the end? Maybe this Booster had simply learned to be a better salesman.
"It's nice to know that you're so dedicated to the true ideals of heroism," he found himself saying. He wondered where the second pint had gone, and when, exactly, he'd turned into a cynical drunk, but Booster waved him off, unabashed.
"Everyone has an agenda, even Wonder Woman. At least I'm up front about mine."
Ted winced and decided that two beers wasn't going to begin to cover the week he was having.
Ted woke up fully dressed in a strange hotel room with only a faint recollection of how he'd gotten there. He remembered Melody, in there somewhere, bending over to kiss her while still trying to keep an eye on the road. Wait, no, that had been a dream, a replay of one of their nights on the town when they were both still in college. He hadn't even had that car for years.
The real story as it came back to him had involved g force, rain hitting his face, and both arms wrapped tightly around Booster's waist. He loved flying with Booster, that familiar arm wrapped around his ribs, their hips pressing together. When he was younger, he'd regretted that this was the closest they'd ever get. Years of shared secrets and grief later, he'd realised that there was more than one kind of intimacy, and that was okay too. It took Ted a moment more to remember that this wasn't his Booster, or even his world. Then he let his head sink back into the pillow until the worst of the spinning passed. When the room settled, he started to lever himself up incrementally, until after a few minutes he could swing his legs out of bed and lean on his knees.
Watery daylight streamed past the curtains, revealing the room in all its monotonous glory. It could be any mid-priced hotel room anywhere in the world, save for his one suitcase standing in a corner. He had to blink repeatedly and rub his eyes to make sense out of the alarm clock, but it looked something like mid morning. Saturday, thank God.
A piece of note paper stuck out from under the edge of the clock, with familiar loopy handwriting reading: Thanks for the good time -B. PS: The room's on the UN. Details of the night were starting to filter back, and he sifted through the two bars, the all-night diner, and a surprising lack of public nudity, but couldn't find anything too compromising. Hell, he'd had fun too. He and Booster hadn't just hung out for beers in a long time. Even if this wasn't exactly his best friend, and he didn't have all of the same memories, he still felt like the same man. Close enough to go drinking with, anyway.
"You're pathetic, Kord," Ted muttered to himself, and pried himself off the bed and stumbled toward the shower. When he was feeling sixty percent human again, he headed back to the JLI offices. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go.
Ted hadn't been in the lab for five minutes when Tora knocked smartly on the robot carapace leaning next to the diagnostic system. "Can I come in?" She was in civvies, albeit white slacks and a pale blue sweater, and had a tray in one hand.
"What? Oh, sure. Hi." Seeing alive-amnesiac Tora was even stranger than new-amnesiac Booster. He didn't quite know what to say, so he held out a hand. "Ted Kord, Chief Cook and Button Pusher as of yesterday."
"I know. We met on the plane in Peru." She held out her hand anyway, and Ted took it in both of his. Warm and alive, thank god. "My name's Ice, if you don't remember that either. That's my superhero name, anyway. You can call me Tora if you like."
"Sure, nice to meet you, Tora." Ted made himself let go of her hand, and looked down at the tray. It had a bright purple sports drink, an extra-large Sundollar coffee, a plate of orange slices and a bottle of pain killers. "Is that for me? You're a goddess."
She grinned at him. "I am, actually." Balancing the try between two monitors, she pulled up a lab stool. "You looked even rougher than Mr. Gold did, and besides, it's an excuse to meet you properly. It's nice to have a new face around. We haven't had a mission since we last saw you and everyone's going stir crazy."
Ted tossed back a couple of pills and chased it with half the sports drink. "I appreciate... wait, Booster's here? Like before noon on a weekend?"
"Sure, he's usually the first one in every day." She stole an orange slice and started to peel back the skin, being careful not to get juice on her hands. "You two sure hit it off," she observed. "Do you know him from before or something?"
"I uh..." Ted couldn't think of what to say. Lying to Booster was one thing - half way to a tradition actually, though usually not about stuff that really mattered - but lying to Tora? "I just assumed he was a friendly kind of guy."
"Not with us, he's not. Unless it's about the team, our fearless leader is positively standoffish, and not just when Godiva's around. Want to know what I think?" The legs of the stool grated against the cement as she rocked it closer. He voice dropped to a whisper, and Ted leaned in. "I think he's got a secret identity."
Ted barely stopped himself from saying No shit! "Aren't superheroes supposed to have..."
Tora shook her head solemnly. "Not us. UN rules: everyone on the team has to have public identity. Code names like mine are fine, but no secrets. You should have seen how mad they got about Batman, and even Godiva got in trouble for changing her given name to Dora."
This was too good to pass up on. "You've got a point there. I mean, who names their kid 'Booster Gold.' You know what I think?" He dropped his own voice to a whisper, and Tora leaned in even closer. "His real name is probably something like Bart Wigenfelter; he lives in his parents' basement, and has never, ever had a girlfriend."
"What about all the women he's with in the papers? The actresses and supermodels." Tora asked, eyes gleaming.
"All PR. They're just in it for their careers." That part was probably somewhat true, which made it an even better story. "That's why he keeps to himself. He's terrified that you'll find out his dirty secret."
Tora's brow wrinkled, and she pouted a little. "But he's not afraid of you?"
"I'm tech support." Ted straightened and spread his arms to encompass the warehouse full of computers and partly-disassembled robots. "Nerds know no shame, especially penniless ones."
"Penniless but not friendless," she said and slid off the the stool. "Thanks for the gossip. It's way better than Bea's theory about a secret criminal past." Then with a smile and a pat on Ted's arm, she skipped out to the warehouse, brushing past Booster on her way out.
"She's never brought me breakfast," Booster whined as he took the empty seat and stole a couple of Ted's orange slices. He was in costume again, but still had his goggles pushed back. Ted snuck a look at his butt as his legs flexed to stay balanced. Same old Booster there, at least. Some of the juice had dripped onto his gloves, and he licked it off before looking up at Ted through fine blond eyelashes. "Should I be jealous?"
"Not unless you want the position of JLI mascot." Moving the plate only made Booster scoot closer and lift them from right in front of him. He wasn't going to get any at this rate. "I think I've been adopted."
"Maybe I can get Godiva to 'adopt' you too," Booster said, laughing, then leaned in even closer than Tora had, and said, "Actually, dropped by to talk to you about last night."
He sounded so serious that Ted had to run another review of events as he remembered them. He still couldn't think of anything too compromising, but then he was running on Old Booster standards. "What about it?" he asked cautiously.
"Nothing I just..." Booster pinched the bridge of his nose, and as Ted studied his face, he decided that Tora had to be wrong. There was no way that he looked more wrung out than Booster did. "I don't know why I said half the stuff I did, and the rumour mill's bad enough around here as it is, if you could..."
"Sure thing, buddy. What happens in the Dark Side stays in the Dark Side." He didn't mention that he'd already been making up gossip, but Booster would undoubtedly catch that one soon enough.
"Thanks." Booster nodded awkwardly and started to get up, but Ted caught his wrist.
"Listen, Booster, if you ever need to talk, I..." He met Booster's clear blue eyes and held them. "Well, I'm not exactly Mr. Sensitive, but I'm always willing to lend an ear if you need one."
"Especially if I'm buying the beer?" Booster asked, but some of the stiffness had left his shoulders and his smile looked warm and appreciative. When Ted didn't laugh, he added, "No, seriously, I'm grateful. You know, it's weird, I don't usually take to new people this fast. Somehow I just feel like I've known you for years."
Ted felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and he had to let go of Booster's wrist so he wouldn't notice him shiver. He swallowed a couple times, then said, "Yeah. Me too. Weird, huh?"
Skeets' voice broke in on whatever Booster might have said next. "Sir, alleged meta humans are attacking S.T.A.R. Labs in Chicago. The branch head is requesting all available assistance."
Booster was halfway to the ceiling before Ted had time to get out of his chair. His force field shimmered around him, and Ted could see the fluctuations as it cycled up into battle readiness. "Skeets, how long..." Then he stopped in place with a jerk that had to be ten Gs, and swore. "Never mind. Booster Gold to all JLI members. Level three alert. Anyone not in the shuttle in five minutes gets left behind."
"Forgot you had a team, huh?" Ted asked as Booster drifted back to the floor. Booster glared, but Ted just shrugged, smiled and started packing tools. Glare proving ineffective, Booster pulled up a couple of digital display panes. Those were new. Ted made plans to steal Booster's suit and take it apart.
"Okay, Skeets, I guess you can catch me up now instead of on the way." Images started to appear on the panes, and Ted edged around his bench for a better look. The first showed an aerial view of the exterior of S.T.A.R. Labs, apparently undisturbed; the second, a street view of the main entrance, had a little more activity. Or rather, less activity; the normally hectic street was cordoned off and still. Two Chicago PD squad cars sat motionless in the foreground. Booster waved to the next image, internal security footage of five masked figures bursting into the lobby. They moved with oiled grace in tight coordination, the first over the receptionist counter before security even drew on them, the next two moving in and snapping the guards' necks. They had the whole lobby contained in seconds, without a shot fired or an alarm sounded. The remain assailants moved out of the picture, which turned to static a moment later. The monitors returned to the exterior views. Ted felt his mouth go dry, and forced himself to turn back to his tool kit.
"As you can see, sir," Skeets was saying, voice as calm and clinical as ever. Ted knew that he was Booster's friend, maybe Booster's only friend in this timeline, but there were times when he really wanted to hit that sanctimonious little toaster. "The strength displayed by the attackers indicates a meta human nature. At the moment it is assumed that they're holding the building hostage, but no demands have been made."
"What about Murray?"
"Who?" Booster's head whipped around to face Ted, the display panes blinking out; apparently he'd forgotten that Ted was there at all.
"Murray Takamoto," Ted replied, trying to sound completely reasonable. "Branch head in Chicago."
Booster still looked unsure, or maybe just not sure of Ted, and it was Skeets who explained, "Mr. Takamoto made the initial call from inside the building, and sent on the security footage I've just shown you. Unfortunately, the call cut off after only forty-two seconds. Since then, there have been no communications in or out of the building."
The door to the warehouse lab burst open, and Ice hopped in, still pulling on one of her boots, with Fire right behind her. Rocket Red and General Iron followed half a minute later, almost getting jammed in the doorway as they tried to come in at once. "Godiva and Vixen are right behind us," Ice said, finally getting her boot straight and freezing the floor enough to skate for the shuttle, "And Guy says he'll fly himself."
Ted snapped the tool box shut. "I'm driving," he told Booster.
"What? No you are not! I can fly it just fine."
Ignoring him, Ted picked up the tool box, and strode towards the shuttle. He stepped around Booster without pausing. "Not if you're not in it. What if you need a different pick up point, or a fast getaway, or, God forbid, the building blows up?"
Booster hovered then flared ahead to keep pace. "I'll just slave it to my suit controls like I did the last jet."
"Oh, right. Remember how when you hired me you said, 'Teddy, old boy, what I really need you to do is build an interface between my fantastically-advanced fibreweave-circuitry costume and my new, fantastically-advanced alien spaceship, so make that your first priority'?"
"I never said that."
"Exactly." Ted dashed up the ramp, ducked around General Iron, jumped over Bea's legs and made the pilot's seat before Booster caught up. "And since this ship was made by a race of paranoid alien warlords who thought the Cylons were out to get them, and not a friendly - if over-caffeinated - tech company from Star City, your suit can't just hack in. This thing's got so much security that you can't even use the comms remotely, remember?" The chair still was still made for someone a lot bigger than him, and he had to stretch to reach the farthest controls. It made him look less nonchalant and more rushed than he wanted, but whatever worked. The little ship whirred to life around them.
"Fine, whatever." Booster landed beside him, bracing one hand against the back of the chair and the other on the starboard bulkhead. "But first thing after we get back, you're setting up a remote control on this sucker. And if you try do anything besides hold the mules, I'm firing you."
"Fine."
"If you're making a list," Bea yelled from somewhere in the back, "I want chairs."
"With seatbelts," Tora added.
"And I would like pony," Rocket Red chipped in.
Booster let his head fall against the bulkhead. "Can we go now?"
"Oy, hold on a tick, not without us." Godiva and Vixen burst in, which caused a general reshuffling in the back as everyone tried not to sit next to someone they didn't like. Thank God Guy was flying on his own.
"Now we can go." The loading doors started to roll aside, and Ted punched in the sequence for take off, and the little ship launched into the grey December skies.
It only took ten minutes to get to Chicago, and most of that was acceleration and deceleration. It took twice that time again for Booster to get his team of cats herded into something resembling a plan of action. Fire and Rocket Red wanted to go and go now, and were keyed up and snappish. Booster still didn't seem completely clear on his team's powers, though he was trying to hide it by asking for volunteers for specific jobs. They still had no idea what, exactly, they were up against. Guy wanted to just blow the roof of the building go in shooting. The August General in Iron was laughing at them, silently of course, but Ted knew it to be true.
"What are you grinning about?" Booster snapped.
"What?" Ted hadn't realised he was. He tried to stop and couldn't. "I guess I'm just happy not to be filling out forms." Happy to have his family back and whole and alive. It didn't matter if they didn't know him, they were here. This was the second - or third, or sixtieth - chance that he never thought he'd get.
Booster snorted. "Now that you mention it, me too." He leaned in to activate the comms. "You ready, G.L.?"
"Been ready since I got here, pretty boy."
"Open the hatch."
Even hovering ten feet behind the ship, Guy was only just visible through the clouds. Ted turned to watch as Tora took Bea's hand for a moment then stepped out onto a glowing green fur-lined sleigh. "Give me five minutes," she said, then faded into the cloud.
Ted closed the hatch again, and upped the internal heat a few degrees. He flipped through displays; the low-hanging clouds they were hiding in wiped out a lot of the passive scanners, and he didn't want to risk pinging the building and warning everyone inside. Anything that fed pure data was in a language he didn't understand. He could still patch in the street-level views, but there wasn't anything happening there. A lot more cops had arrived, including S.W.A.T., but they were all pretty much milling. No one had seen any movement from the building since the initial attack. He flicked to another screen, then set the monitors to cycle through different views.
Booster was leaning in to watch, so close that Ted could feel his breath on the back of his neck. "There," Booster said, tapping a monitor. "It's started." A few flakes of snow were lazily drifting across the screen. By the time the view returned to that camera, two dozen more flakes had joined it. The next cycle showed a complete white out on all cameras. He straightened and turned to the back. "Okay, team two, you're up."
Freezing air and snow blasted into the cabin, and Fire, Rocket Red and Vixen jumped out into the blizzard.
"Christ, that's cold," Godiva complained, wrapping her hair around herself.
"Good thing too," Booster said. "They'd never buy a freak blizzard in July."
A tendril of hair snaked past Ted to creep up Booster's leg. "Feel like huddling together for warmth?"
The little ship didn't have enough room to back away, but Booster tried it anyway, hovering out of the hair's reach. "Ah, no. My suit's insulated, thanks."
"There's Fire," Ted said, pulling up a police camera and expanding it. The snow had almost completely obscured the view, but he could still make out a green figure disappearing into the S.W.A.T. mobile command unit. "The locals should be in on the plan now." Whether they liked it or not. Booster hadn't exactly consulted them.
"Can you see where the others are?"
"Nope. Hopefully no one else can, either." The comms panel beeped twice, Rocket Red's signal. "Shouldn't be long now."
"Right. Yeah." Every muscle in Booster's body was strung so tight Ted could almost see them vibrating through the suit. He was still hovering slightly above the deck, arms folded across his chest, face deliberately blank.
Ted smiled sympathetically. "I don't like waiting, either."
"A good-" General Iron started to say.
"August General, if you quote Sunzi at me one more time, I will not be-" Booster stopped and took a breath. "Sorry."
The General laughed, an odd creaking sound that set Ted's teeth on edge. "I am just remembering the first time I led men into battle," he said. "I was so nervous that I think I turned green."
"Oh, sorry." He landed and turned back to the monitors. "Kord, can you see-"
"I'll let you know."
"Fine."
Silence closed in around them again, so close Ted could almost taste it. He wanted to break the tension, but he was drawing a total blank on anything that didn't start with "Knock, knock." He wanted to lighten the mood, not start a race to see which superhero would clobber him first.
Everyone one jumped when the comm beeped again.
"Did everyone get that?" Booster asked.
"Should have."
He turned abruptly. It only took him three long strides to get to the back. "Open her up. Your lucky day, Godiva: you and the General are with me until we hit the roof." The last thing he said before he stepped out into the snow was, "Remember, Kord, do anything besides hold the mules, and you're fired."
Then Ted was left alone in an empty ship. He sighed and turned back to the control panels. If he couldn't go along, then maybe he could get some more info out of the scanners. Or rewire the ship into a full-service bar, grill and black hole generator. Or something to kill time.
This was why Ted hated being the science guy and button pusher: all his friends rushed off into danger, leaving him behind to twiddle his thumbs and fret. More so in this case than usual, given the communications blackout inside the building. He couldn't even follow the action.
He knew the plan, hell, he'd helped make it, and he could picture everything as it happened: Tora creating a snow storm; Rocket Red hacking past the security and locks on the roof; Vixen - armed with override chips and manifesting a chameleon to avoid cameras and infra-red scanners - taking over security on the top few floors. Then everyone had gone in, save Bea on front door watch duty, and Ted stuck up here. They were supposed follow Vixen down, as far as the controlled labs in the sub basements if need be, and take care of the mystery assailants as they went. Supposed to, with no comms, no idea who or what they were up against, and a long history of JLI missions never, ever going to plan.
Not like Ted was limiting himself to worrying about the team or the plan, either. Why the hell did Murray Takamoto have to be such a goddamn workaholic? Why couldn't he take Saturday off and sleep in like a normal Earth human? They could have picked up him on the way in and got a proper run down of blueprints and valuable projects, not just out-dated City Hall copies and the bits and pieces Ted could remember. Instead Ted didn't know if he was alive or dead, if any of them were.
He checked his readouts again: with Tora inside, the snow had lightened up, but he still couldn't see a thing. On the ground, the cops were clearing drifts away from their equipment, but the building was as still and silent as a brick.
Man, when he got his hands on whatever they were using to wipe out every transmission inside the building, he was... well he wasn't sure what yet, but it was probably going to involve four hours, an acetylene torch and a modern art installation. Or, now that he thought of it, he could mesh it with the other impenetrable jamming system he'd run into this week.
His watch said only fifteen minutes since Booster had left.
Keeping a corner of his eye on the screens, he started pulling the front panel apart. He wanted to test a theory.
"Booster, this is Bee... the shuttle, do you copy?" Ted held his breath, as if that small sound would make a difference when he had the volume cranked as high as he did.
But Booster's voice came through clear as a bell, and only a little winded. "Five by five, shuttle. Good to hear your voice. I thought the building was jammed."
Ted slumped back into the pilot's seat, letting the splicer fall into the tool box. "It was; I fixed it. Short version is we found the missing bits of robot head. How's it going down there?"
"Um..." Booster hesitated, sounding chagrined. "Kind of hard to tell. I think they know we're here, but they seem to be avoiding us. Vixen, you see anything?"
"I ran into one in the second security room, but it threw me into a wall and ran away. Whatever they are, they're fast and pack quite a punch."
"Where are you now?"
"Main access point to the sub levels. I need Gavril to get the door open."
"Okay." Another pause. "General Iron, Gardner, I want you on secondary exits. Everyone else, meet up with Vixen. We'll move in together."
The transmission broke down into static, then a grunt and an animal snarl. Ted snapped upright, reaching for the controls before he realised he couldn't do a damn thing.
"Vixen, status?" Silence. "Vixen! Dammit, who's closest?"
"Ice..."
"Vixen here. All five just blew past me, heading for the upper. Two of them were carrying a large crate between them."
"Did they have hostages?"
"Not that I saw."
Then a crash, a squeal of feedback and Russian profanity. "They got by me too. I hit leader with hardest shot. No damage."
"Godiva, General Iron, heads up. They're-" Booster's signal gave out.
Ted could feel his pulse pounding and every muscle tensing, ready for a fight. Hell with going into action, just sitting here was going to give him a heart attack.
More silence, then the General's hollow voice, "We are fighting robots. My staff is able to damage them, but barely."
"Try to confuse their sensors," Ted yelled at the comm. "Energy discharges, vibrations, anything, then hit them when they're disorientated."
"Yeah, that didn't work," Guy snarled. "Got any other bright ideas, genius?"
Damn, that was usually pretty reliable. "I'll get back to you."
"I tried icing one to a wall, but it broke the wall."
"Blimey, they can fly!"
"Kord, they're out of the building and headed up. Fire, intercept!"
"On it."
The console was flashing purple at him, which Ted didn't think was good. "Weapons. Weapons." His fingers ran over the switches, trying to remember the power distribution system. "No weapons. I'll put it on the list after a pony."
One of the hijacked cop cameras showed the five small black figures in tight formation bursting out of the building; two carried a box between them. A green flame shot after them, but they ignored her, barely even shuddering under her plasma blasts. A second later, Guy, Booster and Rocket Red shot through the broken window. Then street view blinked out, replaced with a muddy radar image and a purple blotch headed right for where the shuttle was hidden in the clouds.
"Come on, come on..." No weapons. But the ship did have a laser of sorts. From the power it pulled, Ted figured it might just do the trick. "Guy, I have another idea, but I need to get close, can you net them or something?"
"I got it," Booster said.
According to the radar, the blotch was almost on top of him, but Ted saw the flash of yellow before the black shapes. Biting his lip, he manoeuvred the ship right up to the edge of Booster's force field.
"Better hurry," Booster snapped. "These guys are siphoning power. I don't know how long the force field will hold."
"Hang on, buddy." There, almost lined up. "Drop shield in three, two, now!"
The golden shell vanished. Ted nosed the ship forward the last two yards, then hit the laser cutters on full power. All the screens dimmed, then flared green, then cut out. He felt his stomach hit the roof of his mouth as the ship dropped. Then navigation blinked back to life again, and the ship righted itself. Only then did the restraints snap into place. Ted added it to the list.
"Shuttle, this is Booster. You okay in there, Ted?"
"Everything's fine," he said, then remembered to check the screens to make sure that was actually true. "Still flight worthy, anyway." Mostly. "Did it work?"
Booster laughed, the sound crackling over the speakers. "You could say that."
The sensors were starting to come back, though the ones on the forward sections seemed to have been knocked out entirely. "What the hell was that?"
"Gardner and Fire hit the first robot at the same time you did, must have ruptured its power core and set off a chain reaction because-"
"Robots make big explosion," Rocket Red cut in cheerfully. "Probably picking up pieces in Russia."
Wow. Okay, that had been a little more than Ted had been going for. "All of them?" He asked. "Is everyone okay?" He could see four little blips on the screens, at least.
"Everyone's fine," Booster said.
Bea snorted. "Booster got a bit singed."
"I'm fine."
Yeah, Ted thought, I'll bet you are. The wind was starting to pick up, making the shuttle pitch in ways that it really shouldn't. "If you guys don't mind, I'm going to put down on the roof." He hoped the circled "H" in the middle indicated it was rated for small spaceships as well as large helicopters. The snow muffled some of the impact in what wasn't his best landing, but he didn't go through the roof. God bless S.T.A.R. Labs construction. Ted had only been wearing coveralls over shorts and a light shirt when he left, and he shivered as he stepped out into the full blast of Chicago winter. Bea was just landing and he folded his arms against the cold and shuffled closer to her.
A moment later, Booster landed lightly on the roof, hair blackened, suit charrd through to the circuitry across his back and arms, but setting down the stolen chest and grinning like an idiot. Ted could have kissed him. "Justice League International wins again!" he crowed.
"Whatever's in there, it'd better be good." Bea said.
Guy stepped forward, brandishing a giant can opener. "If it's gold, I want a cut."
"I wouldn't," Another voice called from across the roof. "I think we've had enough explosions for one day."
Ted spun, slipped in the snow, let Bea catch his arm, and skidded towards the roof access. "Murray! Hey. Are you okay?" He looked okay, paler, but about the usual level of rumpled. The rest of the team was standing behind him in the elevator. Ted felt like his birthday had come early.
Murray approached the box cautiously, eyes widening as he saw Booster's suit. "Did you..." he choked, then fell to his knees in the snow, intimately examining the box. "Did you blow up a crate full of Promethium?"
"That's Promethium?" Ted had a sudden urge to throw up. "Oh. God."
Booster to took a step back, eyes narrowing. "I have no idea what that is," he said, a little defensively. "But we did not blow it up. We blew up the killer robots, while carefully shielding the box of whatsit." As in Booster had thrown his personal forcefield around the crate, and got caught in the explosion. Ted, however, had fired high-powered cutting lasers near the thing. He rubbed a hand over his face and tried not to think about it.
"Which is why the building's still standing," Murray was saying, still protectively holding the box, though he'd already gone over the seals twice. "We're trying to tap into it as a source of perpetual energy by getting it to bond with something more stable; in its raw form it's highly reactive."
"As in extremely reactive." Ted added. "And unstable. Did we mention unstable?"
Murray frowned at him, but didn't say anything as he shakily got to his feet. "The sooner we get it back in a controlled environment, the happier I'll be."
"Sure, fine. It's freezing out here anyway." This time, Booster handled the box a lot more gingerly. "You can fill us in on the way down."
Ted took Murray's elbow, steadying him as the headed back inside. "How do you know about Promethium?" Murray asked, keeping his voice low enough that the others wouldn't hear it over the wind. "We hadn't even discovered it before you disappeared."
Oops."Something I ran into with the Cluster."
"Really, and they called..." Murray's cell buzzed, and Ted let go of his arm, ducking away to stand next to Bea again. With Rocket Red and the General, the elevator was only rated for half the team at once. Ted let the others go first.
"Nice flying," Bea said, deliberately increasing her flame. The snow melted around them and soaked through Ted's shoes.
"Thanks. You too."
Ice backed away a few steps. "Do you think Mr. Gold will fire you?"
"I hope not; I'm just starting to get the hang of this job." Though if he wanted to keep it, he was going to have to start being more careful about remembering what he was supposed to know.
Murray didn't catch up with him until the end of the day, when he had the nose of the shuttle pulled apart and was too deep in blown circuits to see him coming.
"Hey, Roomie," Murray called out from six inches behind him, and he started, slamming his head on the hatch.
"Hey! That- Wait, is that coffee?" Wrapping his hands around the steel travel mug, he decided, "I forgive you for everything you've ever done."
"Even the time with..."
"Everything!" Murray had put in more cream and sugar than coffee, just the way Ted had taken it in college. He sipped for a few minutes, letting Murray drool over the ship's innards. His friend has always been more of an administrator than an engineer in his own right, but he'd worked around enough advanced technology to appreciate a captured spaceship.
"Quite the job you've got here." Ted felt himself tense at the forced casualness in Murray's voice. Was he still worried about the Promethium, or was this something new?
"My first day certainly has been interesting," he said, trying to sound neutral. Unconsciously stepping aside so he wasn't backed into the ship and had space to take a swing probably counted against anything in his tone though.
Murray spread his hands appealingly, his own mug trailing tea across the ground. "Hey, ease up. I'm still your best friend, right?" Which Ted realised was true for this timeline, though from his perspective he'd lost track of Murray years ago. Now he wondered how he'd let that happen. He hadn't let the Atlantic get in the way of other friendships. "Even if you have been avoiding me all afternoon."
"I'm actually more trying to keep out of reach of that S.W.A.T. captain who keeps yelling at everyone. Plus I need to make sure that this tub is in decent enough shape to make it back to New York, and..." Murray was watching him steadily. "And I'm maybe avoiding you a little bit. Sorry, it's just... " He looked at the sensors, now patched as best as he could manage here, then at the otherwise empty roof. "Look, why don't I show you the inside of the ship. I'm freezing my ass off out here anyway." That was true enough; he'd borrowed a parka and gloves, but the wind still cut through it. Murray silently helped him reseal the sensors, then pack up his tools. Only when they were both inside with hatch closed and the heat turned up did Ted finish. "I've got a lot going on right now, and it's hard enough to keep it all straight in my head without..." He couldn't think of any way to finish that that wasn't straight up insulting.
"Without lying to your friends?" Murray suggested. He was sitting in the pilot's seat, posture held deliberately open and non-threatening, and looking for all the world like the feeling of hostility physically embodied.
Ted had felt better about himself when he's found out he'd nearly vaporised the city block. Staring at the floor didn't seem to be helping, so he met Murray's eyes, and admitted."Yeah, without that." He crouched so he wasn't looming over the chair. "There's stuff going on since I got back that I can't tell you or anyone else about, important, fate of the universe stuff. If it makes you feel any better, I promise it's nothing that will involve you or your lab, but I can't... what?"
Murray's expression had softened from annoyed to almost pitying. "It's too late for that."
"Oh, god." Ted tried to think of what he'd done since he got back. He couldn't remember anything that would have hurt his friend, but then he couldn't account for what Rip Hunter might have done. "What happened?"
"Those robots or whatever they were weren't just here for the Promethium, Ted," Murray told him. "I spent a lot of time alone with them - taking more time than I needed to make it ready for transport, trying to keep them away from my people. And here's something I haven't even told the cops yet: one of them kept asking where you were. They knew we were connected, and they wanted you. Not that it matters what I told them now, but I said I didn't know, that you'd left." He his hands steady in his lap, but his right thumb ran steadily back and forth over his left knuckles. Ted doubted that he realised he was doing it. "Then that call I got, right when you ducked out on me, that was the police letting me know someone had broken into my apartment same time the lab was hit. Security footage showed two superhumanly-fast masked figures in black. And you know what the police thought was odd?" He didn't wait for Ted to answer, but pressed on relentlessly. "They didn't take anything or even toss the place. They just broke in, looked around and left. Like they were looking for something big, say a person, and not a USB drive full of files."
Ted had sunk all the way to the floor so that his knees were pulled up in front of him. "I don't... I'm so sorry, Murray." Pulling himself together, he said honestly, "I don't know what's going on. I'm not even supposed to be alive!" In this timeline or in any other. "How can someone be after me already?"
Murry leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. "That's what I came here to find out. From where I'm sitting, killer robots are looking for you and a top a secret project you're not supposed to know about, and I have a trashed lab and two people in the morgue."
Ted considered just laying it all out, but somehow he didn't think that I come from a reshuffled timeline was going to convince Murry of anything. Instead he fell back on the kind of limited truth that he'd been spinning since he landed in Peraxxus' brig. "I swear I don't know anything about the attack, and I don't know who's looking for me or why." But he sure planned to find out and soon. "I did know that you had Promethium, or did a few years back, but I didn't tell anyone, and there's no way in the world anyone else could have found out the same way I did."
"What about your alien friends?"
"Possible, but not very likely. Booster blew Peraxxus up, and this has had far too little melodrama to be Manga Khan."
"Okay." Murray sighed and slumped back in the chair, hands falling loosely on his knees.
"Okay?"
"Okay." Murray confirmed. He stood and reached down to pull Ted to his feet. "How long have we known each other, Roomie? It's got to be ten years now, even if you've been gone for half of them. If you swear you don't know who did this, I believe you." His grip tightened. "But you've got to promise me one more thing, Ted: you take down whoever's behind this, and, when you do, you let me know."
Ted nodded, squeezing back. "I promise I'll do my best."
"Good enough."
"Thank you. I..." He paused, trying to figure out how to say how much he meant that. He'd never been all that good with words. "This means the world to me. You're a good friend, and I'm not just saying that because I owe you money."
The last of the tension eased from the cabin as Murray laughed. "And don't think I'll forget it. Now, show me this ship of yours."
* Part One * Part Three * Part Four *