(late bc i got stuck playing the luna 3 AQ in genshin until 4 in the morning iykyk)

no warnings (i think)

November 5

Recognized

Recognized Cujo A 0 4

Robin walked off the Zeta platform, still holding Cujo. He wasn't sure it would work but clearly they did manage to get him into the system when they were trying to get Phantom into it. Another positive to note, proving they're one step closer to getting it to work right. If only his own code could be functional enough to actually use again.

Letting go of the pup, Cujo ran straight to Wolf. While he was scared the mutant hound would react, all Cujo got in reply was an annoyed huff and a tail swat.

That was...unexpected but not unwanted. Maybe Wolf knew how stressful the situation was and let his frustrations with Cujo be for the moment. Either way, it was a worry less for him.

Walking up to the center of the room, he half heartedly greeted Kaldur with a nod. The Atlantean had been eying him since the moment they materialized. Not even caring to look if he got anything in reply, Robin immediately pulled open a new tab and started the Mount Justice reboot and diagnostics as well.

With the main network having been down, it was best to just do a precautionary reboot before trying anything more. Once they got Bruce back, he'll leave the Watchtower mess to him. Partially because Robin wasn't supposed to have access to it but mostly because he just didn't want to be near any of the adults until they apologize for how they're acting.

Actions, meet consequences.

The lights flickered softly, shutting off for just a few seconds before everything turned on again. He could feel the intense stare on his person. Not just Kal but Wolf was also keeping an eye on them. Cujo had wandered over and curled up around his feet, head leaning onto his shoe. The soft warmth permeating from his body was quite nice but it did nothing to ease the growing tension of being watched so closely.

As if the guy was reading his mind, he tried to clear his throat but coughed halfway through. Maybe Atlantean throats weren't the best for clearing the human way. But at this very moment, Robin couldn't care less about the intriguing scientific study material. Not looking up from his work, he ignored Kal while making notes.

There were a few issues with the inner workings of the Mound Justice side of the system. Could it have been from all the times he haphazardly had to hack into the security system and whatnot? Probably, but it were mainly issues with the still somewhat outdated models they used. Nothing too bad that it would cause a critical failure but enough to raise awareness with Bruce. Chances were that they were just a temporary install anyway and just hadn't gotten to updating them since giving the Team the base to work from.

Considering what their past month has looked like. Yeah it was pretty valid to say they were quite busy.

"So," Kaldur drawled out, walking over until he was directly behind Robin. "Everything works again?" Robin could feel the presence behind him, feel the towering sensation try to push him down.

Biting the inside of his cheek, he let out a neutral yes before continuing his work. He knew if he kept switching between the tabs, Kaldur wouldn't know what he was doing. Was he intentionally making it harder for the Atlantean to understand his work? Sure, but it wasn't like he would understand much of it anyway. Tech was his thing, was the Bat thing, to handle.

"What is it that you're doing?"

As if a guy can't work in peace and quiet, Kal just had to open his mouth again and question his actions. Was he really that untrustworthy that one of the most tech illiterate heroes he had ever met tried to ask him what he's working on? Was he really not capable of just having faith that he was doing what was necessary.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm just running the program I made the way it's supposed to be used so nothing blows the fuck up if we try to use it later." He bit out, trying to mentally fight the, intentional or not, energy from pressing down on him. Totally not his preferred working environment and it was getting on his nerves. "But by all means, if you think you can do better because I'm just such an inexperienced, useless child that can't work without supervision, go right ahead."

Kaldur looked visibly taken aback by Robin's outburst, sputtering out a defense. "I- that was not my-" But Robin didn't care. The moment the diagnostics finished with a clean enough bill of tech health, he shut everything down to let the full reboot happen in the background.

Cujo took the opportunity to fly into Robin's arms, keeping the frustrated boy's hands busy and effectively preventing him from grabbing something more throwable.

Kaldur looked like he wanted to reply, mouth gaping like a fish on land as he tried to form the words his mind couldn't think of. Luckily for him, his suffering was cut short by a certain ghost boy crashing the party.

The two youngest exchanged glances, clearly noting the other's frustrated moods. The closer Phantom walked, the more restless Cujo got as the poor pup didn't know who to comfort more. Clearly Phantom needed it, but Not-Phantom might reach for the stabbies if he gave him his arms back. The struggle was too much for the poor pup to handle as he ended up just vibrating in place.

"Phantom? What are you doing back already?" Kaldur finally found his voice, ever so perplexed at how he knew where to go without being told to do so.

Phantom looked him over and had to keep a hand on Cujo's head to steady his own feelings as he could feel the anger radiate off of his brother like a nuclear bonfire. "I sensed Cujo, figured it meant Robin was back. The others are making excuses to leave the kids with M'gann's friends." He conveniently left out the fact he was already out flying anyway so he had the advantage of escaping with a solid headstart.

Robin noticed though, because of course he did. He knew well enough that the team was paired up so for only Phantom to be there, well, everything pointed to some sort of split having happened. And to neither of their surprise, their great and all-knowing leader in power didn't notice a thing amiss.

They stood in somewhat awkward silence, silently stewing in their annoyance as the others finally started trickling in. Considering the lack of Zeta announcements, Bioship probably picked them up. Which was somewhat valid at least. None of them knew if Robin had fixed everything yet so taking Bioship was the safest option.

Under the glaring watch of the two boys, Kaldur finally broke the deafening silence and started is debrief. "No adult heroes are responding to the summons. Not even Red Arrow who is only a few months over the legal age. Whatever this was specifically targeted anybody over the human age of adulthood." Kaldur sent Robin and Wally a pitying look. They were closer to the man than he was, having been heroes together for longer. Knowing he was targeted as well must have not been a pleasant feeling.

Still, he continued on. They had a mission that needed to be fixed as soon as possible, and standing around won't do them anything. "Traditional media has yet to report on anything having happened, but children on social media have been crying out the moment it happened." While he didn't understand much about the use of such platforms, it did come in handy to see youngsters all over post videos of the exact moment the adults vanished. A soft whispering could be heard in some of them but it wasn't legible enough for Kaldur to make out the words.

Silence befell the team once again. It was starting to become so common one could make it into a drinking game and fall ill form alcohol poisoning by the time the hour was over.

Getting fed up with the lack of direction, Robin gracefully overstepped the imposed boundaries of being demoted. "Zatanna? Any clue on what this could have been?" Zatanna looked about as uncomfortable as they felt, but appreciated the break speaking gave.

"No." She wrapped her arms around her. "The magic to pull this off had to be scary strong. Not even my dad could do it and I'm nowhere near his level." Hell, she was barely on any level. With no formal combat training, she was about as strong as what little she taught herself. Moments like these were really why she wanted to hang out with the team so much. They had so much she could learn from then that her father wouldn't allow because he just sees her as his child. A kid to be protected and kept from harms way. But as per usual, harm found them and now she had to deal with the fact she barely knew what she was doing.

She felt an hand on her shoulder and looked up with a gasp. Leaning downward to try and meet her eyes, the Bat only slightly straightened back out when recognition flooded the magi's eyes. "There you are." Coming face to face with Robin was not what she expected to happen. Did she zone out too much? Missed anything? Nerves were wrecking her brain, but Robin's steady voice helped her calm down.

He smiled softly, passing Cujo over to her as she clearly needed the pup more than him. "We need you to locate the source." He stated matter of factly, not even leaving it as a suggestion.

Zatanna swallowed hard, Cujo squirming in her arms as she fought her rising nerves. "How am I..." She couldn't even form the words to explain how insane that sounded.

But insanity was just part of the Bat brand unfortunately. With a reassuring squeeze, Robin let his hand drop from her shoulder in order to pull up old security footage. On it, they could all see the time Zatara cast a spell on a holographic globe to trace where the Injustice League was hiding. "And that was just Wotan." Robin added, "you said this was big, so it should be easier to track down, no?"

Zatanna looked around. Everybody's eyes were on her. The only magi they could call upon. Was this what it felt like to have the sake of the entire mission in her hands? She hated it. If she failed, refused, messed up somehow, it would make an already bad situation even worse.

"But, but the words are only part it. The rest takes training and skill and-" She felt a warmth bloom in her chest. More like on her chest as Cujo looked up at her. Trying to climb up, he nuzzled his snout in her neck. The wetness distracting her enough to breathe steadily once again. "Robin, I'm just not on Zatara's level."

"We don't need you to be at your dad's level." Phantom cut in, standing next to his brother's side and ignoring the audible groans of anger at daring to insert himself in what should have been a team discussion anyway. Ignoring the silent rage around him, he focused on Zatanna. "We need you to believe in yourself, no matter how hard it seems, just like we believe in you. We'll find your dad, Batman, everybody, just like last time."

"It's what we do." Robin added with a shrug and a way to blasé mood for what they were asking of her.

But he wasn't wrong. Saving the world, helping people, pushing themselves to their limits is what a good hero does. She begged for so long to let her start training so she could be a hero one day, just like her dad. And now, her time was finally coming. Her time to prove to her dad that she had it in her to become a good hero and help out.

Taking a deep breath, she hugged Cujo closer before letting go of some of the tension she had been keeping in her shoulders. "Fine. I'll do it." The two idiots in front of her broke out into smiles. She wasn't blind however, she knew only a fraction of that smile was real. The rest covering for the sheer pressure of the tension between the team.

"But for this to work," she looked over the two boys before making direct eye contact with every single person in the room. "I don't care what you guys have going on here but you're supposed to be a team. You need to talk your whatever out because the tension is masking the mystical energy I need to pull this off. So fix it." She glared at nobody in particular but they had a good feeling on who she was talking about.

Trying to hand over Cujo, Phantom stepped back, letting her take the furball of cuddles and comfort with her. He'll do her more good than staying out here will. At least that way, they'd both stay calm, rather than Cujo try to protect either Bat and setting Wolf off for the millionth time. Plus, knowing Cujo was with her, they both knew he'd take her to their room as it was the safest place in the entire base. Nobody except them could enter so nobody except them could go bother her.

Zatanna was right, though. They can't work as a team with all this idiotic tension going on. The incident at the gym already proved just how badly things will go if they can't at least trust each other. Though that was mostly a one-sided issue that nobody wanted to acknowledge.

Having no patience to fall into yet another silence, Robin chose to just rip the bandaid off. "Well somebody better start before we all choke from the tension in the air." Standing defiantly, he looked directly between Kaldur, Conner and Wally. If any bets were to be taken, it would be one of them to set shit off.

"Who said we'll make it to choking when we got Phantom to blow us the fuck up." Wally grumbled, taking the bait and throwing radio active acid onto the fire all at the same time.

Phantom's eyes snapped towards him, trembling hands hidden by his cloak. "That's not what happened."

"Oh I'm sorry, you're right." Wally held up his hands in mock surrender. "The US government had to blow it up after you fucked it up too hard!"

"They....They did what?" Phantom's voice broke off. Had it not been for his ability to float, his knees would have given out under him. Amity, his home for 4 years of his life, was gone? Sure, he knew it was in a rough condition after the explosion but to level it? Because of him no less? Surely that had to be an overstatement. He didn't even do anything, it was older-him, that monster! He killed everybody, he made the stupid sauce explode, he was to blame for it!

But...that monster was just Phantom himself, just a few years into the future. So, technically, he was and still is that very same monster who failed everybody he grew to care for.

"Oh shut up, Wally. What do you know about a town in the middle of nowhere Illinois." Robin argued back, stepping in front of Phantom to block his sight as much as he could. His brother was still not off of the flight risk list and pushing this too far might end up in him disappearing and finding a new impossible hole to crawl into. The look on his face already said enough.

Wally actually dared to stand against Robin, refusing to back down any longer when he had enough of this entire charade. "No," Wally's hands balled, vibrating as he tried to burn off the energy coursing through him. "Do you even know what happened? What actually happened and not just what he made you believe?"

Robin glared at him, ignoring the soft spoken attempt at easing them down to normal speaking levels by M'gann. Wally took Robin's silence as a silent admittance that he didn't, in fact, look into it himself and went on a rant. "Oh this is great. You're defending that when you don't even know. So much for being the son of the greatest detective alive."

Wally stepped forward, jabbing a finger in Robin's shoulder before turning to the others. "His entire town, plus a 50 mile radius, were on the Justice League Dark's do not fucking enter list! Do any of you have even a single clue how hard it is to get onto their danger zone list? How bad you need to mess up that only the top members of Dark can handle situations there?" Wally looked around, a certain craze in his eyes that made everybody take a step back as he continued on.

"Then this poser showed up." He pointed straight at Phantom who was shrinking away into his cloak more and more as time ticked on. "And suddenly it went from just a bolo to absolutely the fuck not in their books. Because something decided to come play hero with other demons that broke into the human world." Phantom flickered out of visibility for a moment at being called a demon.

Still receiving no push back, Wally kept going, spilling every single detail he overheard from the mentors. "Whatever it was that you did to that city, whatever you unleashed there? Yeah, it fucked up the entire area. Everybody had to get evac-ed before it could get worse. Some of the people you protected," Wally spat out, spit hitting Phantom in the face as Robin's hands twitched dangerously close to his batarangs, "had to be hospitalized with radiation poisoning. STAR labs had to treat them because normal meds wouldn't work on whatever poison you infected them with."

If getting rid of tension was the goal, that did the exact opposite.

Robin couldn't argue against anything. Really, what does one say against that? He couldn't rebuke anything because Phantom never mentioned anything about the town being nuked or the radiation thing. Their search earlier had not mentioned it either. How the hell did they miss a crucial detail like that when researching what happened to Danny was all he could think about back then?

But judging off his reaction, chances were his brother didn't even know himself. And Wally likely only knew because Barry has connections with STAR. Oh what a shit show this was ending up to be.

But of course, Wally still wasn't done. He had been bottling it up for weeks now. Once the flood started, there was no stopping it until he got out what he wanted to get out. "How dare you come in here and claim to be a hero when there was more evidence you were just some low life. Of this Earth or something else, I don't even care but heroes don't attack multiple elected officials or rob banks or attack civilians!"

The others were starting to feel nervous at everything Wally was revealing. Sure, everybody knew bits and pieces, certain Leaguers couldn't keep a secret to save their life. How any of them have functioning secret identities was up to whatever guardian angel was looking over them. But having everything listed out? Not even denied or argued against by the one accused of such horrible things? Not even Robin, the closest to Batman they currently have, calling out mistakes? Yeah, it sent chills down everybody's spines.

"What, cat got your tongue?" Wally mocked, head lulling to the side as he looked past Robin's shoulder at Phantom's hiding form. "Don't you want to explain to everybody how you managed to get an entire town to vanish off of the face of the Earth for hours?"

Phantom curled in on himself, legs vanishing into a tail that coiled around his mid section like his life depended on it. At least he didn't need to worry about cutting off his own blood flow. "That wasn't me." His voice was barely audible by this point, as fragile as a lone snowflake falling from a cloudless sky.

Not that Wally cared. "Oh, that wasn't you?" He mocked further, laughing at the absurdity that that was the only thing he bothered to respond to, giving more merit to everything he said. "Who was it then? More of your ghost buddies? Give me a fucking break. If ghosts really were real, why have none of us seen any until you showed up?"

Dick finally had enough of Wally's incessant power trip. So what if he knew what the League was saying about Phantom, he was taking it too far bring in others to his name and shame tirade. "Wally, Deadman exists. You've met him." Dick shoved Wally hard, enough to cause the speedster to stumble into Artemis.

Conner immediately jumped between, putting a hand on Robin's chest to keep him from jumping the red head. Artemis helped stabilize Wally who needed a second. "He's a soul bound by magic. That's not a ghost it's witchcraft bullshit." Keeping a steadying grip on his arm, Wally couldn't go anywhere without dragging Artemis with him.

"Oh so now you do believe in magic so long as it's for your benefit?" Robin called out the hypocrisy, so unbelievably done with how much of an idiot his best friend was being. Just how long would Wally have kept it in without telling him? If it really was so bad what happened in Phantom's past, why wait to use it as ammo in a stupid argument rather than warn anybody!

Wally scoffed in disbelief, too far in the mess of insults to stop now. "It's much less believing in magic rather than understanding the science behind binding a soul!"

"Do you even hear yourself?!" Robin fought back against Conner's grip, failing to push his way past the clone. Was it even possible for him to shoulder his way past a guy with super strength? No, but at least he got to work out some of his pent up frustration.

He'll apologize to Conner later. Probably. Depended on how the clone chose to side after Wally's tell-all was done with.

Finally remembering who their appointed leader was, Kaldur sure did take his time to step in, literally. "Enough. This isn't helpful to our situation." Stepping between so neither could have direct eye contact without straining their necks, he glared at them both.

"Having a passive ass leader isn't helpful either yet here you are."

"I said enough, Robin." Kaldur raised his voice, trying to exert his barely existent authority over their little group. Robin, to his credit, was not ready to put the towel in the ring. Not after everything that just happened.

"Maybe it's time we took a moment to ourselves?" M'gann softly suggested, floating over to the two boys. "Bioship asked to see you." She hovered slightly over Conner's hand, prompting the clone to let go of Robin. Having to steady himself at the loss of contact, he only realized then just how much he was leaning onto Conner.

Robin looked over to Kaldur, who looked over to M'gann before giving a single, curd, nod. "Go." With their wise leader's permission, Robin grabbed Phantom's hand and started dragging him to the hangar.