-requested by the bestest: WallyandDick . There will be an epiloge up by tomorrow, I'm just in a hurry to get to class-

"Heyy..." Wally called, stepping through the zetabeam, then bending and snapping like Elle Woods. "How was school."

Artemis set down her phone and one-upped his bend-and-snap. "Fine. Had a test."

"How'd it go?" 

"Okay. How bout you?"

Wally shrugged. "Others here?" 

"Kaldur is somewhere... I dunno about the aliens."

"Rob?"

"Huh?" Dick sat up on the couch. "Sorry, I'm sleepy; semifinals this friday."

"Shleepy." Wally said.

"Shwleepy."Artemis said.

"Shghlieeghpy." Dick said.

"Schle-" Artemis frowned. "Why am I- I loose braincells around you two!"

There were footsteps down the hall that lead to the mountain-door, they turned to face the approaching teens. 

"Hey, how was school?" Wally asked.

Conner tore off his backpack and threw it to the floor with a clank. He stormed off down the hall to their bedrooms. 

M'gann looked up at them, pale and doe-eyed. She gingerly picked up the backpack, dusting it off.

"What happened?" Dick asked. 

"We had a rough day." They said in a quiet voice, still obsessively dusting off the backpack so as to avoid meeting any of their eyes. "Where's Kaldur?"

"Armoury, I think." Dick replied.

"Thank you." She slipped off down the hall, so quiet it was like she was never there.

Dick looked at his friends, who's faces had turned dark and violent. "What's up? What do you guys know?"

"It's those assholes in their class." Artemis growled. "I know it is."

"Which ones?" Dick asked, feeling anger thrive in his stomach like a Dragon. 

"Flynn Springthorp and Dylan Myttenar." Wally recited. He made sure to remember them. "The ones in their Lit. 11 class."

"Oh. The ones who used the T-word for M'gann." Dick said icily.

Artemis nodded darkly. "They've been giving them trouble lately." 

The dragon growing in Dick's stomach coughed a cloud of husky smoke.  "How?"

"Let's find out." Wally said, leading the way after M'gann. He knocked on the door cautiously.

"M'gann, can I come in?" Wally asked.

"It was those bastards Flynn and Dylan, wasn't it?" Artemis snarled.

Dick gently opened the door. "Can we talk about it? Please?"

"I'm okay." Was her first answer, turning to face the door, wiping her eyes.

"Are you sure?"

She choked a little, nodding, though the word that came from her lips was a shaky: "No."

"Can you tell us, sweetie?" Dick asked, creeping in. "Do you want some tea? Wally, tea."

"Got it." He skidded off.

Dick sat on the edge of M'gann's bed, putting an arm around her waist. Artemis joined on their other side, pulling M'gann's head onto her shoulder. "Was it in English class? M'gann nodded. 

"Can you please tell us?" Dick asked. "We want to help you."

"I know." She choked. "W-Well." She was breathing hard. "The teacher blew a whistle in class, and it really hurt Conner, so he had to leave." She sniffled a little. "So he ran out, and his brain was panicking, so he was crying, and shouting, and he was stimming really hard... you know when he gets really overwhelmed and he starts hitting his head and tugging his hair?"

"Yeah, I know." Artemis said.

"Here." Wally put a mug of tea in her hands. "Chamomile."

"What happened next?"

M'gann passed the mug from hand to hand: it was hot. "When he calmed down enough to come back to class, they were talking about him."

"Are you comfortable saying what they said?" Dick asked as gently as he could.

"I- I dunno." She muttered. "They- I don't know! They were talking about Conner, and saying that he wasn't normal... I don't know." She wiped her face on her sleeve, hiding in it a little. "and they talked about how I was his only friend, and Conner got really mad." 

"Then what happened, sweetheart?" Artemis said softly, hugging him.

M'gann cradled their mug protectively. "Uhm, he got really mad. and the teacher made him leave, and I had to take him to the counsellor's office."

"Okay, sweetie, I understand." Dick said gently, petting their hair. "Can you say the words they said?"

"No." She sniffed. "It was like, the tran- word. And the Ret- word, and uhm... a lot of swear words." She hiccupped a few times. 

"Alright, darling. Let it out." Artemis said, kissing her cheek. "Maybe Kaldur should check in on Conner."

"We'll do that, with him." Wally said. "You stay here."

"I wouldn't leave." Artemis said. "I'm staying, baby. Don't worry."

Dick and Wally gave both the girls cheek-kisses, and recruited the third member of the independence day trio, and headed off to find the forth part of the Cadmus quartet. 

It wasn't hard to find Conner when he was upset, they followed the trail of destruction to the boy; sitting on the ground, facing the wall.

"Hey bud. Heyy sport." Wally said, approaching cautiously. "You uhh, you wanna talk?" Silence. Usually that was a hard yes, but today it was hard to tell.

"Conner, I heard you had a hard day." Kaldur said softly, lowering himself closer to Conner. Kaldur could do what no one else could; help Conner through his feelings without a chair and whip out of fear of the super-emotions. "Please tell me what happened?"

Conner didn't reply, staring into the wall. He had uncharacteristic dried tear streams on his cheeks. They all did their best to ignore them.

"Hey Con, what happened?" Dick sat behind him, hand hovering a few inches off his shoulder.

"Please tell us." Kaldur said, very softly, something he started to do for his friend's sensitive hearing. "Please let me help?" He put a hand on his shoulder, Conner didn't react to it at first, but reluctantly lay his head on Kaldur's shoulder. Kaldur was the first person who got to know him. "What happened?"

"Start in English Literature 11." Dick said, comfortable putting his hand on Conner now that Kaldur broke the ice.

"It was loud." He said. "I had to go, M'gann came with me, but no one was nice."

"How weren't they nice, baby?" Dick asked softly, he gave the clone a cheek-kiss, but just a little one, because Conner wasn't about PDA.

Conner flatly recited some dialog he remembered: 'he's ret*rded, that's why he hits his head and shit', 'I think his only friend is the Tr*nny', and 'what the fuck, was he literally fucking crying? Why?'. 
And those are just the ones he would say.

Kaldur wasn't showing his anger, he was good at that. Kaldur just held Conner loosely around the shoulders, letting the boy sink into him more and more, now almost lying in Kaldur's lap, face gradually looking less blank and more stressed.

Wally had been lingering back, he wasn't as good with touchy subjects- he always felt like he had to make lighthearted jokes about everything, plus he and Conner had a few recent spats that made him feel in danger from being near emotional-superboy. Instead he'd left and retrieved Wolf, knowing he usually calmed Conner a lot.

Dick made room for the beast that came it, letting the monstrous dog burrow his tickly nose under Conner's arm, and lick his face. Conner accepted this.

"I'm going to tell Black Canary." Dick said. "We should probably check on the others..."

Kaldur moved his arm to let Wolf in closer. "Do you mind if I check on M'gann?" nothing. 

"We'll tell Canary you're in here." Dick assured. "Wolf, watch him."

The dog snuffled a little, now onto 'cleaning' Conner's hair. He would always take care of any of his pups, no doubt.

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"DI-UDE!" Jason exclaimed, fumbling to grab something to cover his face. "WHAT THE FUCK! You can't bring people into the cave!"

"It's only the boys!" Dick told him. "Jay, hear me out, we need to take down someone."

"Oh, it's your SOs." Jason groaned. "Who do you need dead?"

"Not dead, we need them to suffer." Artemis said.

"Their names are Dylan Myttenar and Flynn Springthorp." Wally followed the other two teens to the batcomputer. "They're in 11th grade at Happy Harbour high."

"Happy Harbour as in where the mountain is?" He asked. "Did they hurt you?"

"They hurt Conner and M'gann."

"Catfish and clone boy? So?"

"So we love them, asshole." Dick said. "Do you want to help us inflict suffering?"

Jason shrugged. "Sure. What do you have in mind?"

"I don't know... but we're gonna make it happen."

"Weak." Jason said. "Don't you have semifinals tomorrow?"

"Don't worry about it."

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M'gann leaned into Kaldur's chest, accepting the hug. Why did everything have to be so big? She felt bad for being Conner's friend because she was his only one, but if she didn't exist, he'd have no friends at all. 
Which was worse?
Was it worse to have no friends at all, or only be friends with the school tr*anny? 

She also had to feel bad that she had other friends, because every time she wanted to hang out with Karen and the girls, she had to feel guilty for abandoning him alone. 

It was hard to be friends with someone she felt she had to protect at school. I mean, she liked taking care of Conner in their relationship, but she couldn't help him through everything all of the time, she had to worry that he was having a meltdown whenever they had different classes.

Life was so overwhelming, but things wouldn't get better if she gave up.

"How do you run the team?" They sniffed. 

He rocked her slightly "What do you mean?"

"You keep up with our personal lives, you protect all of us inside and outside of missions, you handle missions, you write reports, you have training with Aquaman, you have a personal life... how do you do it?"

"I don't know." He admitted. "I'm sorry."

She sniffed. "...It's okay."

"Do you want to talk about how you feel?" Kaldur asked. "You've only talked about how Superboy felt."

"I dunno. It hurt him more."

"Is that because you weren't hurt, or because you weren't expressing that you were hurt?" Kaldur asked. "Superboy's pain is very clear, but just because you weren't shouting doesn't mean you weren't upset."

"I guess."

He stroked her hair a little, comforting her. "Please tell me about it."

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Bruce barely even noticed that there were two extra kids at dinner. He was so used to extra children just appearing around the manor that he didn't even ask why they were there, or if they were staying the night.

Alfred didn't ask why they'd traveled into his domain, he merely put out two extra plates and asked if they were sleeping in Dick's room and would need mattresses.

Their alliance with Jason expanded quickly. As different as the brothers were, they were all vengeful. They even got Damian on video call from Bludhaven after dinner.

"What did they do?"

"They bullied our te-fr-s-friends." Wally said, not sure what to call them, he didn't know if Dick's brothers knew that he and his friends were routinely kissy-kissy with each other.

"So?"

"So, they're assholes and we want them DEAD!" Artemis replied.

Damian almost had to respect her moxy- or stupidity- for talking back to him. "How?"

"We don't know!" Dick exclaimed. "Tim's trying to find their personal information now, but we don't know what to do with them."

"Have you considered dusting arsenic in their air vents?"

"No! We don't literally want to kill them! We want to get them back!"

"Plant drugs in their room and report them."

"Waste drugs AND call the pigs? NO!" Artemis exclaimed. "We need to keep thinking."

There were footsteps near the back of the cave. Bruce didn't even need to tell Dick that he wasn't supposed to have friends down there, he knew. "Richard, don't forget you have a semi-finals championship after school tomorrow."

He sighed. "I know..." He checked the time and turned to Damian. "We gotta hit the hay, it's a school night. I'll text the group chat if we think of something."

Artemis and Wally texted their guardians (Heroes) saying that important justice-business had come up, patrol was a no-go, and that they'd swing by via zetabeam to pick up their things before school. 

They all slept in Dick's room, Wally shedding his jeans and Artemis shedding her top. Dick had potential spare-clothes for them under the sink anyways, bats were always prepared. They didn't need a spare mattress, Dick's bed was huge, they all snuggled under the blankets and, lit by flashlight, they schemed... working on the seed of a plan they had.

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"Kaldur said I might find you here." Dinah slung the bag off her shoulder and kneeled down where Conner was laying, staring into the ceiling, practically buried beneath his monstrous beast of a dog. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Wolf raised his sleepy head to inspect their visitor, but realized it was just Dinah, who didn't warrant a bark. He snorted softly like a dragon exhaling smoke, and lay down on top of Conner again

The clone pat Wolf's head absently. "Which part?"

"Wherever you want to start." She sat there by him for a few minutes, watching the boy play emptily with his dog's ears. It soon became clear that he wasn't answering on purpose. "It's a school night, How about we get you ready for bed while we talk about it. Okay?"

Conner glanced at her for a second with his big soulful kicked-puppy eyes. "Okay." He squirmed out from underneath Wolf, who grunted in displeasure that he was being left on the floor. 
But the tiny one told him to watch his biped, so Wolf reluctantly dragged himself up, padding after them. He crept down the hall at a short distance,  eyes hovering protectively on the biped as his mother walked him To bed.

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Intimidation.

They'd settled on intimidation.

Jay had a good laugh when they told him.

"You three? I can see you poisoning someone, but threaten them? you're like cute little teddy bears!" He snorted at the pyjama-clad teens. "Intimidation can work, when it's like, Batman or me doing it. You three squirts aren't scary enough for that!" 

"We can be plenty scary!" Dick protested. 

Artemis crossed her arms. "You have no idea! You haven't even see us on missions."

"I don't need to." Jason pointed at Dick. "You're my baby brother." He pointed at Wally. "You're a jittery, freckly, redhead." He pointed at Artemis. "Your a little blonde girl with pigtails! You kiddos aren't scary from a bat standard."

"Well do you think we're threatening enough to scare a couple of normal grade elevens?" Artemis asked, hands on her hips.

Jason sipped his orange juice judgementally. "Eh, worth a try."

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"Ms. Martian."

"Awake." She moaned, responding to the robotic voice at the door.

"According to schedule, you and Superboy have school in an hour." Red Tornado added.

"Yep. It's Friday." She murmured.

"You are usually ready for school by seven-thirty am." The Android said. "Is something stopping you from going to school?"

"No..." She groaned, stretching. She got up and finally opened her bedroom door, face-to-chest-plate with their supervisor. "I'm not sick."

"That isn't what I asked."

M'gann sighed. "I guess I just don't want to go through everything I went through yesterday."

"If you experienced them yesterday, you cannot experience the exact thing today."

"I guess so..."

"Have you tried reflecting on what happened yesterday and creating a plan to avoid similar issues today?"

M'gann shook her head. "But I guess I can try."

"Good. Would you like me to wake Superboy as well?"

"No, Conner's probably awake, I'll check on him in a minute."

"Good, your school starts in 58 minutes, and from experience, it usually takes you thirty-to-thirty-five minutes to walk there." Red Tornado froze for a second, receiving a message, before reporting to her. "I have just been notified that Superboy is awake."

M'gann rubbed her eye sleepily. "I didn't know Black Canary's still here."

"Black Canary left earlier this morning." 

She frowned. "So who notified you?"

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M'gann found Conner in the kitchen, he still looked disheartened and upset, but it was hard to tell if he wasn't yelling. 

He was moodily feeding Wolf. The beast was still guarding him dutifully, nosing his breakfast with yellow eyes still locked on Conner. They'd been joined by a large metal ball, who was trilling needily to be recharged. Conner was brushing dog hair off her plating, looking a little depressed, leaning into the warmth from the robot's motor.

M'gann decided not to tell him that Sphere had made other friends. It was just a bad time.

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"Let's go." Dick went over their plan. Get himself, Gotham kid #2 and Wally out of school, and get flash-piggy-backed to Happy Harbour. They were now just pacing in front of Happy Harbour Highschool, unsure of how to start. "They have Home Ec and workplace math right not. They have English Lit. next period."

"I didn't know M'gann takes Home ec." Wally remarked.

"M'ganns in Workplace math, airhead." Artemis remarked. Got the stuff, Rob?"

He nodded, unzipping his backpack. "Sunglasses, incase things go south. Water, because safety. My belt and backup belt. And... Art?"

"Brass knuckles. I got them from your brother while you were practicing for this afternoon."

Dick shuddered. "Don't remind me. I've also got my uniform for later and snacks." He passed out the shades. "I also grabbed lanyards that look kind of like visitor's lanyards."

"Five minutes until period change." Wally reported, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Okay..." Dick zipped up and shouldered his bag. "Let's do this thing."

Dick had hacked into the school system early that morning. Yes, that was illegal, but he was the youngest of four misbehaving boys, so Bruce didn't really care anymore, so long as he did his training.

Anyways, Dick had worked out from this that both Conner Kent and Megan Morse had English Literature in room 115, under a mrs. Koyanagi. 

He quickly realized which floor this room was and lead the way, trying to blend in with the flood of students leaving their classes. He didn't, however count on Happy Harbour high apparently having a dress code. Either that, or the three of them just looked like big city kids. Either way, the patches, shredded jeans, and sunglasses stood out a little, but no one seemed to care so much.

"Here?" Artemis asked as they stopped at the door way. She didn't wait for a reply, pushing in the door. The class was about mid way through emptying and refilling for next period.

"Them." Wally muttered, pointing at a couple boys joking around in the them row. "I know it's them."

"Flynn? Dylan?" Artemis called. That confirmed it.

"What?" One if them asked. Wally recognized as Flynn Springthorp.

Dick took the lead, he was the smallest, cutest, and deadliest. "You shouldn't be saying the T-slur, or the R-slur nowadays."

Flynn looked between them all, a bemused look on his face. "What?"

"Yea, who the hell are you guys?" Dylan chuckled. "Are you a middle schooler?"

"We're here because  you've been picking on some friends of ourselves." Artemis growled. She wanted to say that they were picking on their dates, but she thought that might embarrass Conner and M'gann. 

"Hey, we haven't been picking on anyone." Dylan defended.

"Not even Conner Kent and Megan Morse?" Wally snapped. "You know, the kids you sit in front of you, who you've been bullying all year?"

"What? This is about that!?" Dylan snorted. "Those were jokes!"

"Wait, you know them? Can you tell us what its name is?" Flynn asked eagerly.

"What's name?" 

"The trans?the megan girl- not girl! What's her real name? Whats between her legs?"

"Chaos." Artemis said. "Who the FUCK do you think you are talking about megan that way?"

"What is she?" Dylan asked.

"SHE'S A FUCKING PERSON!" Wally yelled, gaining several glances their way.

"Look, if you know what's good for you, you'll leave her alone. You'll leave both of them alone." Dick warned, hand in his pocket, clutching his thirteenth birthday present from Damian. Bruce didn't know he had it. 

"We haven't done anything to the guy! We've never accused- we've only ever said the truth about him!"

That got to Artemis. "You-" he pulled her fist from her pocket, brass knuckles glinting. "Will NEVER talk to or about h8m like that again!"

"EVERYONE talks about him like that!" Flynn defended. "We just don't hide it!"

"Artemis? Guys?" All five turned to see Conner standing in the doorwaywith M'gann and one of her cheerleading friends.

"Conner. M'gann. Go." Dick ordered. He turned back to the vile teen's who had brought them there. "Megan is a wonder and Conner is a darling, and if you so much as think about the, again..." he pulled out the switchblade his brother gave him. "Don't."

"Guys!" M'gann exclaimed. "Stop!"

Dick kept glaring. "Artemis? Wally. Get them out."

"Sorry, dude." Wally pushed Conner out the door, Artemis doing the same with M'gann. Dick never stopped glaring. "You will NOT talk to or about Conner or M'gann again. You will mind your own business, you won't even WORRY about Megan using the bathroom, and You will never comment on Conner's behaviour or mental state." He shook his knife a little. "You know what will happen."

"Can I help you?" An adult woman asked behind him. 

Dick slid his knife back in his pocket. "Just a visitor. I'm heading out now..." he started towards the exit. "Have a good class, boys."