JADE (young justice/robin)

15. homecoming

Mount Justice
October 31, 18:02 EDT

jade.

"Ok. We have Zatanna's red sweater with my black pants or my green sweater with Zatanna's brown pants," Artemis said as she and Zatanna held up the different clothing items.

"That or we could do my pink dress and Artemis's black jacket," Zatanna added.

I made a mental note as I watched the two go back and forth over all sorts of clothing combinations: no more letting Artemis know about my dates.

Actually, I wasn't trying to tell her about the date in the first place. It's just that after yesterday, Dick somehow left me feeling a little bit more excited to see him again. But the excitement also meant I suddenly became far more aware that nothing in my extremely minimal closet would be nice enough for this homecoming thing. Since I, technically, can't steal and the cash from the check was strictly for necessities, I made the horrible mistake of asking Artemis if I could borrow something to wear.

This led to a long and heated grilling about why I needed nice clothes, which led to her assuming this was about Birdie, then she assumed the clothes were for a date between me and Birdie. Eventually I had to fess up and explain that the Birdie thing was out the window and this was a casual date with a different guy.

"No wonder your voice has been getting stronger," she smirked.

"What?"

"Your voice, it seems a lot healthier now. I should have known you've been getting your exercise in talking with this mystery guy."

"You're ridiculous."

"Do I know him?"

"Doubt it."

"Well is he cute?"

"He's not ugly."

She punched my arm. "Obviously he's not ugly! I meant what does he look like?"

Rubbing my arm, I said, "Black hair. Blue eyes. Kinda short and annoying."

She had this smug look on her face.

"What?"

"Nothing," she raised her hands in surrender. "It's just I think you have a type."

"Shut up. No, I don't."

Once the grilling finally concluded, Artemis actually began to be of use in the clothing department, but not without making the executive decision of calling Zatanna to come over early. Zatanna was the daughter of some magician dude in the League, and the one time she stopped by the cave, we didn't meet because I was still off duty per the Bat's orders. They were supposed to be getting ready in an hour or two for the dance M'gann invited everyone to, but she arrived at the cave instantly, carrying a heap of clothes for me to try. Artemis briefly introduced us and so far I actually thought she was pretty cool.

"Uh, maybe change back to the green top," Zatanna thought aloud, making me switch my outfit for the millionth time. I swapped the tank top they were observing for the green long sleeve and displayed myself one more time.

"I think we have a winner," Artemis smiled. "Mystery man's gonna love it."

I twirled my finger in the air to show my fake excitement.

"Ignore her," Artemis laughed.

"I wish you could take those glasses off so we could do some of your makeup," Zatanna frowned.

"No can do," Artemis answered for me. "All the Bat children are still on strict secret identity orders."

The amount of times people have mistakenly deemed me as one of  the Bat's "kids" made me scoff internally. You'd think they'd notice I'm not a bird and I don't don the logo.