NO CELESTIAL / dick grayson

nine, the mother

SHE TRACED HER finger on the map. There were more ley lines than she'd thought running through Gotham. Albeit there was only one that was important enough to take notice of.

Her finger paused where the Yuyan Building was. If only that was still working. But never mind that.

That one line ran straight through the city and under a variety of important buildings. The Gotham Museum. The Town Hall.

There were also a few rather expensive manors.

Difficult to search those, though. She had extremely limited resources if she did say so herself. A one-woman army, quite literally. She had to be strategic with how she spent her time, and when she found the time and privacy to conduct these searches.

All League research had pointed to the newest Lazarus Pit having shown up in Gotham City. It hadn't been good news at first—Gotham was always a bit more difficult to operate in these days with the Batfamily running rampant. But now she was searching for it right under their noses. There had to be some irony in this.

She couldn't let Dick destroy all the Pits. At least not until she'd finished using it first.

Maybe she should let Damian in on the secret. And then they could be two instead of one. They could collaborate with each other, work together to try and find this Pit, but she didn't want to put that on him. He was having a tough enough time. And by making sure he didn't know, she kept herself safe too. If either of them were interrogated, at least Damian wouldn't be roped into it.

There were plenty of things that Damian didn't know. Like the fact that Ra's body had been retrieved—that had been top priority, according to Seraphina. And therefore, the moment she located a functioning Pit, the assassins would send men to have Ra's dipped in it and revived.

But it wasn't a flawless plan. For starters, she had no idea when she'd be able to find such a Pit. Secondly, it was in Gotham, right under Batman's nose. It would be difficult to sneak Ra's in. And third of all...

People were usually put into the Lazarus Pit quickly after death. Of course there were exceptions, but it was always risky. Jason Todd revived with few long-lasting side effects, though Talia had mentioned memory loss and bouts of madness within the first few months. Once he had recovered he was sent away from the Nanda Parbat base. There was always the worry that he might simply go back to Batman, and that meant keeping him in the base of all operations a slight security risk.

He was kept at another League base instead. One of the other smaller bases in the Himalayas. One that wouldn't be such a pity if infiltrated and destroyed.

But Ra's... he'd used the Pits hundreds, thousands of times throughout the centuries. The side effects usually didn't last more than a few hours. But never before had he been revived after so long.

There was the risk that he wouldn't come back the same, or might take years to fully recover. Time they did not have. If she couldn't find the Pit soon, Talia and Seraphina would be forced to take action. Like an assault on Nanda Parbat to reclaim the base from Deathstroke. But it was always far easier to defend than attack, and Deathstroke knew the secrets of the base. After all, before Damian's birth, he'd been considered a potential heir.

Your worst enemy always came from the inside, never the outside. It's the people among your ranks, those you hold closest to your confidence who know how to betray you the most. Seraphina had taught her that. Which was why growing up, Remiel didn't have many friends. Not that the League of Assassins was a place where friendships blossomed.

That was when her phone rang.

She didn't expect much at first, reaching over and grabbing it. Most likely a spam call. But when she answered it and held her phone up to her ear, a familiar voice came through.