The next morning Deserey had trouble getting out of bed. It happened more often than not, especially on her bad days. She could spend a whole twelve hours just laying in bed, wasting away if no one bothered her. And she would be okay with that usually. If anything she’d feel a bit useless, since she wouldn’t get anything done by sleeping. But she’d feel useless either way.

She would have stayed in bed that day too, (screw the eighties and Savage. Sleep was much more likeable) if it hadn’t been for the shouting from down the hall. It sounded like Rip and Sara were arguing about something.

“—what I saw back at the asylum was an animal!” Rip was saying. Deserey cringed, shoving her head into her pillow, trying to block it out. Her head was already killing her, and the yelling didn’t do much to ease the aching.

“You are the last person on this ship to judge anyone!” Sara shouted back. It sounded like she was getting worked up, and Deserey felt bad that her first instinct was to inwardly call her whiny and burrow deeper into her pillow.

“This isn’t judgment, Sara,” Rip insisted, making Deserey growl in annoyance. Why couldn’t they just shut up? At the very least they could argue somewhere else. “It is concern!”

There was a pause, and Dez sighed in relief, thinking it was over. She rolled over, snuggling in her blanket, hoping to fall back asleep. Maybe her head would feel better if she got a few extra hours… And she was almost asleep when they started up again.

“I thought you knew how I was resurrected…” Sara muttered quietly. (But not quietly enough that Deserey couldn’t still hear it, unfortunately.) Dez sat up, groaning loudly, throwing her blanket across the room as she did so.

“I knew it involved something called the Lazerus Pit…” Rip told Sara, as Deserey stood up, grumbling under her breath. Moodily, she got dressed, her head pounding more violently as her irritation grew larger and larger. Clearly, this was going to be one of those days where everything irritated her, no matter how mild the situation was. Great. Just fucking great. 

“Yeah, well apparently there’s a down side to being brought back from the dead,” Sara complained, and Deserey rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help thinking that was obvious. Who the hell would want to come back to this shit hole once they were freed by the sweet release of death? But that wasn’t exactly what the assassin had meant. She wasn’t talking about depression or a few years of bad luck; she was talking about something far worse, as was made evident by her next sentence. “My friend Thea calls it a blood lust, but I think that’s putting it too lightly… And so is calling me an animal. I’m a monster.”

Deserey froze, as she reached for the button on the wall that would slide her door open. Blood lust? As in murder? Dez wasn’t sure why it was so shocking. She knew that Sara was an assassin, but she had never actually heard her talk about it before. Never mind phrase it in such a harsh and heinous way like blood lust. Deserey felt a pang of sympathy for her. (Though a great deal of the initial annoyance was still laying there beneath the surface.)

She took a deep breath, trying to get a hold of her nerves and take control of her emotions before she went anywhere. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if she walked out and started bighting everyone’s heads off, especially if Sara was already having a bad day herself. She would just have to shove her own problems down like she always did. (It wasn’t like they were that important anyway. Just her being a massive bitch to everyone in her head.)

Deserey sighed, running her hand along the wall and letting it slide open. As soon as Dez stepped out into the hallway, she and Sara collided, both women crumbling to the floor. Deserey groaned, her irritation rising to a nearly uncontrollable rate. She gritted her teeth, trying her best not to let something rude slip from her lips. Sara was one person she really did not want to piss off. 

Sara made a small groan of her own, but hers sounded more sad than Deserey's, like she wasn’t really mad at her. Just the world. (And Deserey would have been lying if she said she couldn’t relate.) “I’m sorry,” Sara said, helping Deserey to her feet. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. Rip and I were fighting and…” She shrugged helplessly.

“I heard,” Dez said, doing her best not to sound angry about it. “Wanna talk about it?” She wasn’t sure she was in the right head space to console the other woman, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to offer anyway.

Sara shook her head so quickly, Dez worried she might get whiplash. “No, no. I’m…well not good. But…I don’t really like talking if I can help it, you know?”

Deserey nodded in understanding. She was often the same way, especially when she was in a sadder mood. (It was strange. Normally, when she was angry she blew up, exploding at the littlest things and ranting about anything and everything that might be bothering her. But when she was sad, she shut down completely. She didn’t talk to anyone, despite their constant insisting that it would make her feel better. She’d stay in bed for days at a time, crying every moment she was actually awake.)

“I do feel like hitting something though, if you want to train,” Sara suggested.

“You know, I don’t think I can take you,” Dez admitted. “But I’m in a mood myself, so I’ll take that offer.”

Sara smiled lightly, and Deserey took note of how beautiful she was even if the smile was forced. She was absolutely stunning, and Dez couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. This woman…she was everything Deserey wanted to be. She looked exactly how she wanted to look. Perfect, straight blonde hair, beautiful pale skin, and gorgeous curves in all the right places. Her blue eyes were absolutely stunning, like the water at the beach when the sea was calm. Sara even had an amazing personality to go with her looks. And that only added to her perfection. Deserey wondered how someone like her could possibly think she was a monster…

Dez shook the thought away, as they walked to the training area Rip had offered them back in the seventies. (Was it weird that their first mission already seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago?) Sara picked up her bag full of knives and started tossing them at the target board across the room. Deserey wrapped her hands up as best she could and walked over to the punching bag Sara had set up the last time they’d been in here. (Though they had never gotten to actually use it then.) She started punching the bag as hard as she could, hoping to get all her aggression out before meeting any of the others.

Dez hadn’t noticed Sara had stopped throwing her knives, until she heard her impressed whistle. “Damn,” the assassin mumbled. “You were really holding back on me last time weren’t you? Where’d you learn to hit like that?” Dez glanced up to see her standing in front of her with her arms folded over her chest.

She shrugged, trying not to cringe as the memory came flooding back to her. But she couldn’t hold it back, and it did little to tame her anger. If anything, her headache worsened as she remembered her first time at the gym with her father. “My dad taught me when I was a kid.” She hit the bag again, making it swing back a little. “But it’s not that impressive, Barbie. Especially compared to what you can do. Anyone can hit a bag.”

“Yeah,” Sara admitted. “But you have to be taught how to do it right if you don’t want to throw your arm out.”

Dez shrugged. “Whatever.” She hit the bag again. Her head was pounding, screeching every time her fist hit the bag. She groaned, punching the bag harder, making it swing again… Which turned out to be a mistake, because the bag came back around, slamming Dez into the ground for the second time that morning. Sara frowned, as she helped her up again. “Are you okay?”

“Peachy,” Dez hissed, rubbing her face. Now her head really hurt…

“…You wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know, Sara. Jesus, what’s with all the questions?” She didn’t mean to snap, but the morning aggression had finally gotten the best of her. Fortunately, Sara's skin was a lot thicker than Deserey's, so instead of getting offended by her sudden attitude, she just stared back at her calmly and asked, “Bad day?”

“Most likely,” Dez said bitterly. And then, because she never really could keep it to herself for very long, she exploded. “It's just I woke up to you and Rip arguing, and I know it sounds really bitchy – and I’m sorry for that – but it annoyed me. A lot more than it should. And I couldn’t sleep last night, so everything is terrible, and I just want to go back to bed. I have a headache. I’m tired. I’m whiny. I want to sleep forever. But I already know Rip wants everyone to go out and do whatever in the eighties, even though we’ll probably just screw it up like we screw everything else up.”

Sara stared back at her, nodding slowly, and Deserey felt a little self conscious. Had she said too much? Was it too rude? This was exactly the sort of thing that made people hate her before…

“I get it,” Sara said. She didn’t sound upset or even hurt in the slightest, which made Dez relax a little. “I feel it too, sometimes. I mean, why are we still trying if we can’t get anything right? And sometimes the little things just make everything else spill over…”

“Yeah,” Dez said, because that’s exactly how it was. She shook her head, letting out a heavy sigh. “Whatever. It’s not that important. I’m sorry for snapping.”

Sara gave her a one armed shrug in response. “It’s okay. Sometimes you just need to vent. I get that.”

“Really? Are you sure?” Dez asked. She wasn’t sure why Sara's cavalier attitude was bothering her so much. Maybe it was just that no one had ever responded that way before. So, it was a little difficult to fathom.

“Yeah,” Sara promised. “I mean, I’m not thrilled about it, but I get it. So, it’s okay… But if you really want to make it up to me you can do my laundry for the next week.” She grinned cheekily, and Dez rolled her eyes.

“What am I? Your mother?” Deserey managed a small laugh.

“You’re my friend,” Sara said, smiling back at her. For a moment the anger had slipped away, replaced with a warm, fuzzy feeling that Dez hadn’t experienced in a very long time. It was partly because it was nice to see Sara smiling a real, genuine smile. (She hadn’t really done that since they’d boarded the Waverider.) And it was partly because Dez hadn’t felt she had a real friendship since her last one (in college)  crashed and burned so terribly. (It had been a few years ago. She’d been best friends with someone called Lucy, but they both had their own mental illnesses to deal with. So, they were driven apart rather quickly.)

“…Friends get tired,” Dez said, looking down, as the memories of Lucy overcame her. She had Dissociative Identity Disorder, Lucy. And in college she’d been trying to figure out how to deal with that. It had been much too difficult to manage that as well as taking care of Dez. Deserey had tried not to get in the way, tried not to be a burden to her. She wanted her to take care of herself first. Dez wasn’t that important really. (And Rip had confirmed that by forming this team.) But it hadn’t worked out. Lucy grew tired of taking care of the both of them. So, she had to let her go…

Sara shrugged once more, picking up her boe staff. “I don’t tire easy.” She swung the staff around, spinning it in her palms until it came to a gentle stop just below her armpit. “Hey, you got more sand in the fifties right? You wanna see if you have any more hidden abilities you didn’t know about?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Dez said. She was still processing the assassin’s words though. She wasn’t use to people being so stubbornly supportive. “I’ll, uh, go get my bag…”

Dez left Sara to beat up the mannequin, heading back to her room where she had left her sand bag. When she returned, she found that Sara was still full of energy somehow. “Alright, Barbie, let’s do this!” She wasn’t as enthusiastic as the blonde was, but she figured letting her beat her up was a good way to make up for snapping at her.

Sara smirked, holding up her boe staff. She swung her weapon at Desesrey, and Dez moved as quickly as she could, tossing a handful of sand at the assassin. The sand shot outward in a powerful blast, pushing Sara back a few feet; but the sand blast didn’t hit its mark before Sara’s staff met its. The metal weapon hit Dez on the knee and knocked her to the floor for the third time.

“Ugh,” Sara complained, rubbing sand from her eyes. “Remind me to get goggles for the next time we do this…”

“Sorry…” Deserey muttered, getting to her feet.

“It’s fine. Let’s go again.”

Dez nodded, raising her hands and lifting the sand from the floor. (It was better not to waste the supply she had in her bag.) She twirled her hands around, forming a small sandstorm around the assassin, taking care not to get any near her eyes.

Sara charged through the sand storm, slamming Dez to the ground once more with the butt of her staff. Deserey grunted as her back hit the floor. “Hey! I said I was sorry!” Dez complained, laughing lightly, because at first she thought the assassin was just messing around.

Then, she saw how the look in her eyes had changed. They went from calm, peaceful ocean to horrendous hurricane in a matter of seconds. Wild, dangerous… murderous. This was the monster Sara had been talking about earlier.
“Um, Sara?” Deserey asked, her voice squeaking a bit, as she jumped to her feet. She wanted to die, of course. But she didn’t want to be murdered by a friend.

Deserey slipped her hand into her bag, taking a handful, as Sara broke her staff into two batons. “Oh boy…” Deserey's heart sank, as Sara ran forward, swinging her batons like a wild animal.

Deserey did her best to keep away from her, moving as fast as she could, ducking behind the bench press and hiding behind the punching bag. She sent a blast of sand at the hostile assassin, forcing her to drop her batons to shield her eyes. Unfortunately, she recovered even quicker than she had when she had been coherent. Sara ripped one of the knives from the target board, holding it by the blade as she prepared to throw it at Deserey's head.

She groaned. “Seriously??” Grabbing  another handful of sand, Deserey wondered if she would be able to use her powers to put the assassin to sleep before she impaled her like Olaf from Frozen.

But before she could even try, Sara had tossed the knife. (The assassin had much better reflexes than Dez did. So, she moved much quicker.) Dez yelped, dropping the sand and holding up her hands by some sort of instinct.

She expected to feel something piercing her hand, jamming straight through her palm. Instead, her hand felt perfectly normal. When she opened her eyes, she couldn’t help the gasp that left her lips. Her hand had come into contact with the knife, but just like back in the seventies something unexpected happened.

Starting from the point of contact with her hand, the knife was deteriorating, transforming into sand and dropping to the floor. She yelped again, pulling her hand back as the last grain of sand hit the floor of the training room. For a moment, she forgot all about Sara, staring at the sand beneath her feet, absolutely stunned. Had she really just turned Sara's knife into a pile of dust? How? Dez couldn’t help groaning inwardly. She couldn’t master all of her abilities with her powers if she kept gaining a new one every two seconds!

When Sara groaned, Deserey looked back to her hesitantly, but she was glad to see that she was somewhat back to normal. The assassin shook her head, slowly coming to. She glanced at Dez, her eyes beginning to water. “It happened again, didn’t it? I went all blood lust on you?”

Dez's eyes widened in shock, as she finally understood what was going on with her. Quickly, awkwardly, she pushed a strand of curls behind her ear. “Oh, is that what that was?” At Sara's expression she quickly added, “Yeah. But on the bright side I did discover a new ability. See? Look, I turned your knife to sand.” She pointed at the sand pile at her feet.

Sara nodded meekly, flashing a wry smile that made Deserey really miss the gorgeous, genuine one she wore earlier. “That’s neat…” She sighed after a moment, and Deserey thought she might start crying. “I am so sorry, Dez…I knew this would happen. I shouldn’t have suggested that we…I'm so sorry…”

She turned, ready to run out the door, but Deserey crossed the room, for once moving faster than the assassin, grabbing her arm. “Hey, wait. Don’t go…”

Sara looked back at her, and Deserey felt her mother instinct taking over, outweighing the initial irritation she’d felt that morning, over taking all of her self loathing for a moment. She just looked so utterly broken, Deserey couldn’t take it. She had to fix it. Somehow. Even if there was nothing she could do. “C'mere. Sit down, hon…” She lead Sara over to one of the chairs lined up against the wall for resting.

Together, Sara and Deserey sat in the chairs, Deserey wrapping an arm around the heart broken assassin. For several minutes it was just like that. Neither of them said anything. They just sat, silently. Sara only started speaking again, when she heard some of the others getting up for the day. She laughed bitterly.

“Why is it every time we try to do this one of us ends up sobbing like a baby?” she joked.

Dez snorted. “Let's not make it a habit.”

“Agreed,” Sara nodded. She sighed before apologizing again. “I’m sorry, Dez. I don’t know what happened. Sometimes, it just happens. I just…I can’t control it…”

Deserey held up her hand, waving the thought away. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. I get it…Well, not really. But you know…”

Sara shrugged helplessly. “It’s just…my sister brought me back from the dead, and I’m grateful for that. I mean, how many people do you know who would do something like that for someone?”

Dez gave her own shrug in return. “Personally, if someone brought me back from the dead I’d be extremely pissed at them.” 

“Yeah,” Sara said. “But she risked everything for me. How can I not appreciate that?”

“I guess…” Dez couldn’t really picture it, despite Sara's explanation. Her relationship with her own sister had been extremely rocky since that argument with her parents. They hadn’t really spoken since they were teens, since she’d been kicked out…

“I actually lost my soul,” Sara went on. “Until she and our friend Oliver called someone to help get it back. I’ve literally been to hell and back, Dez. My sister risked everything, even her own life, to give me a second chance. And I don’t want to waste it…” She paused for a moment, blinking rapidly. “But this thing…this monster that I keep turning into… it makes it really hard…”

Deserey nodded, as she listened. She didn’t say anything. (What was she supposed to say? “There, there”? “Everything will be okay”?  Bullshit.)

“My friend Thea went through something similar,” Sara continued. “But she had it a little easier. Because the only way to get rid of it is to kill the person who killed you or to keep killing person after person. The person who hurt her was already dead, but with me it was a bit more complicated…because Thea was the one who killed me. And I can’t kill one of my friends. I just can’t…”

Deserey felt her heart sinking at the news. It sounded like something straight out of a comic book, some made up story people used to entertain themselves for a few hours and to forget about their own issues. But Sara’s story wasn’t very entertaining. And it didn’t make Dez forget about her own troubled past.

“My sister, Laurel, she’s made it a little easier. But I still…” Sara shrugged helplessly. “I don’t think I could do this without her. I’m not sure what would happen if I ever lost her…”

Deserey felt a lump form in her throat, and for the first time in a long while she found herself missing her sister, Jess. “She's the one who convinced you to come here?”

Sara nodded, smiling another one of those little genuine smiles. “Yeah, she is.”

“You two are close?” Dez couldn’t help feeling a bit jealous about it.

“We weren’t at first, actually. She hated me for sleeping with Oliver. For dying. For being the bad girl of the family. Usual sibling rivalry stuff. But recently we’ve gotten a lot closer.”

“Ah.”

Sara shifted uncomfortably after another moment or two.  “Yeah…um. On an unrelated note…I have to tell you something.”

Dez raised an eyebrow at her, and the assassin let out a heavy breath of air. “Back in the fifties, I kissed a nurse. Lindsey.”

“Um…okay?” Deserey made a face at her, not really sure why this information was relevant to her life.

“It’s just,” Sara rambled, sensing she needed to explain, “before you kissed me. And I shut you down. I didn’t want you to somehow find out later and think that I was just…you know?” She groaned, leaning forward and putting her head in her hands. “Why are actual feelings so hard?”

Deserey couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped. “Sara, it’s fine. Sleep with whoever you want. It won’t make things awkward between us. I promise.”

Sara sat up, looking relieved. “Okay,” she said. “Good.” She grinned goofily after a second, and Dez grinned back, glad that she was feeling better. It was enough to fix her own mood. (At least for a little while.) “You have to admit though. We would make a pretty hot power couple.”

“You know it,” Dez laughed, winking. She felt a little awkward, since she had always been a terrible flirt, but Sara didn’t seem to mind much.

“Oh! You know it would be even hotter if we got Kendra in on it,” Sara insisted. “What do you say? Polygamous relationship?”

“Definitely,” Dez grinned. Sara laughed, grabbing her hand and tugging her out of the room.

“Yo, Carter!” she shouted down the hall, as they spotted the hawks. “We're stealing your girl!”

Carter turned, looking genuinely concerned about those words. “Uh, what?”

“You heard me,” Sara chuckled mischievously. She turned to Kendra, snaking her arm through hers. “Come on, gorgeous!”

Kendra rolled her eyes, as Sara drug Dez and her away from Carter, but she was laughing and smiling so Dez didn’t think she minded all that much.

As they reached the galley, they spotted Stein, Jax, Ray, and the two crooks. Deserey couldn’t help noticing that Rip wasn’t present, and she knew that must have meant he was skipping the most important meal of the day. (She’d have to yell at him for that later, even if she had been planning on skipping it herself earlier.)

“Excuse us! Power couple coming through!” Sara shouted, as she, hands still linked with Kendra and Dez, made her way to the table. Jax laughed, as the three women took a seat near him and the professor.

“Isn't a couple just two people?” asked the youngster.

Sara shrugged uncaringly. “Trio. Couple. Whatever.”

Ray tilted his head, as he made breakfast for everyone. “Wait, you guys are a thing now?” He clearly didn’t realize this was all just for kicks and giggles.

“Of course,” Sara nodded. “We're getting married as soon as Kendra breaks it off with Carter. It’s been a long time coming and we all know it. It only took four thousand years, but she finally realized she’s just as gay as we are. And we just couldn’t help falling madly in love. I mean, look at us! We’re like a League of Hotties.”

The men (with the exception of Mick) shuffled awkwardly, not sure if they were supposed to agree or not. Women were hard to read, and Deserey had to sympathize with them on that. If you responded with an a agreement they may slap you. Or they may take it as a compliment. If you didn’t respond at all, she may get offended, thinking the men didn’t like her body at all. It was all just a game of chance really.

Mick was the only one who didn’t look uncomfortable. But he was never one to hide what he thought of someone’s body, was he? So, he raised his bottle of beer to Sara's statement, agreeing full heartedly. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, taking a sip.

“…It’s like 8AM,” Carter said, as he came into the room. “How are you already drinking?”

Mick shrugged. “I have a very serious medical condition,” he said and from the tone in his voice you would never be able to tell he was joking. “I need at least ten beers a day to deal with a team full of idiots.”

Carter rolled his eyes at the arsonist, but Dez and Jax laughed. “Uh, dude, you’re on that team full of idiots,” Jax reminded Mick.

Before Mick could respond, though, the conversation was redirected elsewhere, when Stein spoke up to stop Ray from putting jelly on his biscuit. “Oh, none for me, Raymond. I only like Crofters jelly.”
 
Dez nearly fell from her chair, and Ray dropped the spoon he’d been dishing the jelly out with on the floor. Both broke out into a fit of uncontrollable giggles, as the rest of the team stared at them like they’d lost their marbles.

“Ray, Ray!” Dez called, banging her hand on the table.

“I know I heard!” Ray laughed, practically falling all over himself.

“I called it! I freaking called it!” Dez laughed. “He is Logan! I called it!”

Leonard made a face and leaned over to Mick. “They're doing it again…”

“They’re clearly insane. Let’s put em in a mental institution,” the arsonist suggested.

Deserey ignored them, wiping fake tears from her eyes as her laughter died down. “Oh, man. I was having a crap day, but that made it a little better. Thanks for that, Doc.”

Stein frowned, confused. “Uh, well, I’m not entirely sure what I did…but you’re welcome, dear.”

The jaunty feeling of the moment was soon interrupted, when Gideon piped up. She sounded confused, maybe a little disorientated. “Doc?” she repeated the last word Dez had said.

“Yeah,” Deserey said, frowning at the AI's tone. “Because he’s a doctor of nuclear physics?”

“Oh,” Gideon said quietly. “Yes. Of course…” Deserey got the feeling that if she had physical body she’d be shaking her head, trying to clear her mind. She looked around at the others, and from their facial expressions she could tell she wasn’t the only one noticing the AI's off behavior.

“You okay, Gideon?” Sara asked.

“…Yes. Just fine,” Gideon said, but Deserey got the feeling she was lying. Before anyone could interrogate the AI further, Rip walked into the room, frowning at everyone. “You lot better not be breaking my AI,” he scolded them. 

“Bold of you to just assume she’s not in the League of Hotties,” Sara said. Judging from her casual attitude, Deserey figured she must have let their earlier argument go. Either that or she didn’t want anyone else to know about it. (Though, Dez wasn’t sure how no one else had over heard.)

“What?” Rip asked.

“You missed it. Dez, Sara, and Kendra are getting hitched,” Jax told him. Out of context it sounded hilarious, especially when Rip shot him a confused look.

“…Right well. Hurry up with that, then. We’ve got things to do.” Dez found it uncanny how much of a dad he sounded like with that sentence.

“Aye, aye Cap'n!” Sara saluted.

After breakfast, the team met back on the Bridge, just in time to see the ship coming out of the temporal zone. “Where are we now?” Leonard asked.

“Washington DC,” Rip said. “The year is 19 –”

“Debby just hit the wall,” Dez interrupted, breaking out into song. “She never had it all.”

“Who is Debby?” Jax asked, frowning.

“One Prozac a day! Her husband’s a CPA,” Dez went on. “Her dreams went out the door, when she turned twenty-four. Only been with one man. What happened to her plans?”

Sara joined in, now. “She was gonna be an actress. She was gonna be a star.”

“She was gonna shake her ass, on the hood of White Snake's car!” Dez sang. “Her yellow SUV is now the enemy.”

“Looks at her average life,” Sara continued. “And nothing has been alright since –”

Together the two women sang in harmony. “Bruce Springsteen, Modanna, way before Nirvana. There was U2 and Blondie and music still on MTV. Her two kids in high school, they tell her that she’s uncool. ‘Cause she’s still preoccupied. With 19 – 19 1985!”

Jax and Rip stared at the two, completely baffled while everyone else pretty much got the reference.
“Bowling for Soup,” Dez told Jax and Rip.

When neither looked as though that cleared anything up, Sara shrugged. “Eh, before their time.”

“No, I know the song,” Rip insisted. “I’m just not sure why you’re singing it. The year is 1986. Not 1985.” The two women shrugged, not really caring. They had had a bad morning, and they needed some cheering up.

“…We’ve landed at the height of the Cold War in a world poised for Nuclear annulation,” Professor Stein said, getting them back on track.   

“We've traveled here because I have a new lead on Vandal Savage's location,” Gideon reminded them, her blue head appearing at the center console. She seemed much better now that she had had a few minutes to collect herself.

“Yes,” Rip nodded, “Gideon managed to intercept this telefax containing Savage's last known whereabouts.” Gideon’s head disappeared, as she displayed the said telefax on all the screens in the room.

“Tele-wha?” Jax frowned, and Dez couldn’t help chuckling at how young he sounded.

“It’s like an email,” Ray explained. “…On paper.”

“Wow,” Mick gaped at the paper on the screens with fake amusement. “That’s totally useless.”

And indeed it was ‘totally useless.’ All the words on the paper were completely crossed out with thick black ink, only leaving a thick, red ‘Classified' at the top of the page and a ‘Top Secret' down at the bottom.

“Dude, the whole things crossed out,” Jax muttered.

“Redacted by the US Government,” Rip said, and Dez wondered if he had a word a day calendar. His vocabulary was huge.  “Which is why we are here. To steal back the original file on Savage from those who are tracking him.”

Rip walked to the front of the Bridge, bringing everyone’s attention to the big window in front of them. The team stared, shocked. Deserey started choking on air when she spotted the pentagon shaped building outside, and Ray had to pat her back before she could stop. “Uh..that’s the…” Ray said, when Dez's coughing died down.

“Don’t worry,” Rip said, like that ever made anyone stop worrying. “We’re cloaked.”

“You want us to break into the Pentagon?” Mick said. “Sounds awesome.”

“Sounds crazy,” Kendra mumbled.

“What's the plan?” Sara asked.

“The fabrication room will fashion you the necessary credentials,” the captain said.

“Ooh!” Ray giggled. “Don't forget our G-Man disguises!”  When everyone gave him a weird look he said, “I always wanted to be a spy.”

“I always wanted to be a reformed evil scientist working for the Organization Without a Cool Acronym, but I’m no good at science; and when my parents abandoned me, I wasn’t adopted by ocelots,” Deserey shrugged.

“Oh,” Ray said. “Wait. What?”

“Phineas and Ferb,” she told him.

“Yeah,” he said. “But…what?”

“I preferred Nickelodeon as a kid,” Sara commented.

“Alright. Off you pop!” Rip ushered them, sounding fatherly once again.

Sara lead them all out, shouting, “Are ya ready, kids?”

Only Ray and Dez responded, shouting, “Aye, aye, Captain!” The three of them sang the rest of the Spongebob theme song as the team got ready to invade a US Government building.

There’s like…at least three references in here. I’m sorry. I got reference heavy. Haha. In fact there’s so many references throughout this whole thing already…I’m gonna have a list at the end telling y’all what they are. See if ya can find em all!

And if you think that Dez is having another good day just because she was joking and singing…well you’d be wrong. Her days will generally end up being whatever mood she wakes up in. So, spoiler alert…she's probably gonna get pissy again later. Just a heads up, there will most likely be a lot of cursing because of that. I curse a lot when I’m mad. So do my characters. If that bothers you now's the time to yeet. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with it for the next few chapters. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!

Well I don’t have much to say about this chapter, but I have a question. If I did a watching fic for this (where some characters sit down and watch the events of the book like it’s a movie) would you read it? Who would you want to watch it? Let me know in the comments!

PS I changed my endcard thingies. Do you like em?