Teen Titans Hero School (1)

Fetching a Tamaran

Wonder Woman

These girls were going to be the death of me. To be fair, I was expecting them to pick the mutating son of a supervillain, it fit with Lena's tendencies. But Supergirl taking an interest in the new alien threw me for a loop. She was an illegal alien, having arrived on this planet without informing any of the relevant authorities and it was for that reason, more than the property destruction, that we were holding her.

"I don't like the idea of throwing some wild card into this program." It sounded like I was whining, but it really was inconvenient.

So, I was en-route to the detention center where the girl was being held. The magic of the lasso had been spotty since my run in with Bad Penny, plus I'd found a small coin stuck to my shirt. I suspected my power had been interfered with as well, others had mentioned these bad pennies in combat. So today I took the invisible plane.

That at least gave me time to look over the details. I sighed when the boy opposite me whined, "I don't like the kryptonian picking villains. Her school friend is bad enough, I can buy she's changing for Supergirl's sake. But why bring more in?"

I blew hair out of my eye, looking over the young boy in the seat across, "Honestly, I think this whole idea is bogus..." I responded, the tablet I looked at was playing a news stream. A disturbing one, muted but with subtitles scrawling.

"The latest 'villain party' has set a terrible precedent. What had, before the rise of the Inscrutable Machine, simply been an excuse for adult fans to dress up as their favourite heroes or villains, has now become an indoctrination camp for villain culture!" The woman was screaming on camera at the calm, bespectacled reporter.

"Actual kids with superpowers showed up to my daughters costume party, dressed as the Inscrutable Machine!"
I wondered if we really should be outlawing the sale of villain themed merchandise. Yes, people would just make their own. Villains nowadays were like pop idols, with all the biggest names having their tell all expose's with the press.

"It's the truce's fault!" Robin interrupted my thoughts. "Look, I get that during the disaster we needed it to protect ourselves, what with half of all supers being outed during the cleanup."

I swiped off the news article, too tired to feel repulsed and tabbed through several other sites talking about the new child villains.

Children in the industry were nothing new. Drake opposite me was the prime example. What, 15? Had been enamoured with Batman all his life, joined the vigilante when he was 9 and had been trained to within an inch of his life. Up until Batman vanished.

Drake still wore the Robin costume. Red and Gold body plate, leggings, padding with a blood red cape. It looked battered and she wondered if he had more than one. I'd tried to encourage him into a new outfit, or to take on a new moniker only once and had been hit by such cold hard silent anger that I never tried it again.

Apprentice to the now missing man of bats.

"Technically none of them are villains. Not yet, though without this intervention they could be. Charlie is actually being sponsored by his uncle for this position, and villain kids have turned hero before. Once or twice." He merely snorted disbelief in response.

I continued absent mindedly, "The orange alien is the one that concerns me. She's not from Earth, near as I can tell she only just got here. She hasn't even registered with any authorities, although I'm told we can do that if she's willing."

The jet was mostly there, seatbelt lights coming on overhead and being ignored by both of us. The plane jittered as I took over from the auto pilot and I looked out the fuselage at the small squat building near the edge of some small town.

It wasn't a high priority prison, nor intended to house super powerful criminals. It even had a nice sports oval with grass in it, albeit surrounded by barbed wire fences and guarded by super powered wardens.

The southward building had a chunk missing, and singed lines criss crossed out into the basketball court melting messy patterns into the bitumen.

"For all we know, she could be a spy. Or a first strike. Some superweapon gone rogue! She might not even be an alien!" Robin was looking at the destruction too. It was impressive, for someone who had apparently surrendered when a scared prisoner asked her politely to stop.

"Or she could be a refugee, lost? She hasn't mentioned any family yet but there have been no similar sightings - so perhaps she got separated from her family?" I played advocate on the angel side today.

Either way, I switched off my phone, and made sure Robin did as well, we would be interviewing her soon. She would be registered, the league would be sent her file and, while we were here, we could make Supergirl's offer to her.

Hopefully she would refuse.