Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/74059.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M, M/M, Other
  Fandom:
      DCU_-_Comicverse, Young_Justice_(Comics)
  Relationship:
      Anita_Fite/Cissie_King-Jones, Bart_Allen/Kon-El, Bart_Allen/Cissie_King-
      Jones
  Character:
      Tim_Drake, Cassie_Sandsmark, Greta_Hayes
  Additional Tags:
      Bodyswap, Genderswap, JBBS
  Stats:
      Published: 2006-12-25 Words: 10246
****** Hug-O-War ******
by cmshaw
Summary
     Some days you get big holes blown in the walls of your secret hideout
     by girls with ray guns. Those aren't always bad days.
Notes
     For Jamjar in the JBBS 2006 Challenge.
The trouble started with a shiny silver ray gun.
A lot more trouble starts with a ray gun of some color than you'd think,
assuming that you're the sort of person who doesn't think about ray guns very
often -- and if you are the sort of person who studies ray guns in your spare
time, you probably believe that most of the stories have been exaggerated.
Well, feel free to consider this another exaggeration; we're not in the
business of arguing with people who have access to ray guns, and anyway this
trouble came down to nothing in the end but another excuse for Robin to bitch
at them for being idiots, which is hardly dire (no matter what Superboy says).
Hopefully that hasn't ruined the suspense for you. There are many exciting
twists and turns to be revealed before we reach our story's conclusion, and we
haven't even told you yet what this particular shiny silver ray gun does. Young
Justice is, in fact, about to find that out the hard way.
So, back to the ray gun, and the girl wielding it, and the hole she'd just
knocked in the wall of the super-secret-yet-constantly-invaded Young Justice
resort-turned-headquarters, and the two members and one ex-member of Young
Justice who were staring at her in surprise. Bart was the only one with time to
react before the girl with the ray gun who'd made the hole attacked them, and
he wasted it stating the obvious. ("Whoa, she's got a ray gun!" he said.) Then
the alarms began to go off, the girl lifted her ray gun, and Anita yelled
"Stop!"
The girl jerked to a halt as she was bringing the ray gun around, and instead
of shooting two young heroes and a young ex-hero she shot their ping-pong table
instead. With a loud SHKWUNK the table disappeared, leaving only a little
citrus-scented smoke and the two issues of Teen People featuring Superboy
interviews that Bart had been using to prop up the table's bent leg. "My ping-
pong table!" yelled Bart. He blurred toward her angrily, or rather, from his
point of view (which is just as valid, if occasionally scattershot) he jogged
toward her while she slowed down to wait for him. He reached out to take her
ray gun away and realized two things just a little too late. First, this
particular ray gun didn't have a trigger, a button, or any other sort of manual
control for firing it, which meant that the girl didn't need to slowly move her
finger to fire it but merely needed to think the firing sequence, which he had
almost certainly left her time to do. And second, he had just stepped into her
line of fire.
The third thing he realized was that SHKWUNK hurts a lot when it hits you in
the head, and here we'll have to leave Bart's viewpoint, at least until he
recovers consciousness.
From Anita's point of view, Bart blurred toward the girl, there was another
sharp SHKWUNKing noise, and Bart went flying backwards to land on Cissie. Both
of them crumpled into the far wall and didn't move. "How dare you?" Anita
yelled, and she vaulted over the sofa with her sword-blades out. The girl
whipped the ray gun around and Anita rolled to the side, cursing, as the left
half of the sofa vaporized into orange smoke.
"How dare YOU!" yelled the girl, and Anita dropped into a crouch, ready to
dodge if that ray gun was pointed again. "Running around calling yourselves
heroes!"
"Yeah, mon, better than running around shooting people." Anita leapt to the
right as the girl blew another hole in the wall where she'd just been. "What
did you do to Impulse?"
The girl was about Anita's age, dressed in a tight black uniform. She bared her
teeth in something very close to Anita's own smile. "Slowed him down," she
said. "Where are the rest of you hiding? I've got some trouble to hand out to
everyone."
Kon flew through the doorway and landed between Anita and the girl. "Hand ME
some trouble!" he said, his hands on his hips.
"Superboy, look--" Anita tried to say, but there was another of those horrible
SHKWUNK noises and Kon spun around into Anita, who had also been lunging
forward to push Kon out of the way while she tried to warn him. Enough of the
ray from the ray gun made it around or through Kon to hit Anita with the same
realization Bart had had about the discomfort of an onomatopoetic sound effect
to the head.
We're going to have to switch viewpoints again, but only briefly, to tell you
that Robin took advantage of this distraction to introduce the girl with the
ray gun to the discomfort of a batarang to the head. She fell over rather
anticlimactically and dropped her ray gun, which shattered on the floor.
"Dammit," said Robin.
Since nothing else of interest is going to happen in the next few minutes while
Robin prowls around a room with several large holes in its walls, half of a
sofa, no ping-pong table, the remains of a ray gun, and five unconscious
people, let's jump ahead to the part where Bart wakes up.
Bart was lying on the floor, and it hurt. Someone was patting his face, and
that hurt too. He opened his eyes, and even that hurt. And then, suddenly, the
ceiling snapped into focus through Suzie's shoulder and he stopped hurting.
"Oh," he said, and coughed, and tried again. "What?" he said, and his voice was
high-pitched like other people's voices got if he slowed down too far.
"Are you okay?" Suzie asked.
"Yeah," Bart said. He pushed himself up on his elbows; everything was
definitely running too fast, and his breathing sped up as he tried to
compensate. "What hit me?"
"Oh, Cissie!" Cassie said. Cissie had been behind him when the intruder shot
him -- "Oh, Cissie, I'm so sorry!" Cassie said again, and she was kneeling next
to Bart and grabbing his hand. "Are you sure you're not hurt?"
"What?" Bart said. "What happened to Cissie?"
"Cissie?" Suzie said uncertainly.
"Uh-huh," Bart said. Maybe his head still hurt after all.
"Cissie?" Cassie asked.
"Yes!" Bart said. "What happened?"
"Do you remember the ray gun?" Cassie asked.
"Of course I remember the ray gun," Bart said.
"You got shot, a little bit," Suzie said.
"Can you be shot 'a little bit'?" Cassie said.
"I think when it's a ray gun you can," Suzie said.
"But what about Cissie?" Bart said. He rubbed his head and -- his arm wasn't
right. His hand was smaller and his wrist was bigger and he had huge muscles.
Also, bright pink fingernails.
"Cissie?" Suzie and Cassie asked again.
Bart looked down. Breasts looked back up. "Grife," Bart said. "I'm Cissie."
Cassie and Suzie exchanged looks. "Yes, you are," Cassie said encouragingly.
"Do you know who I am, Cissie?"
If he was Cissie, then -- Bart twisted around awkwardly. Yup, lying right there
behind him was his own body. He shuffled over and shook his shoulders. "Bart!"
he said. "Impulse, wake up!"
The Bart lying on the ground groaned. "Ow," he said, and blinked, and stared at
the Bart who was sitting up. Then he lurched upward and grabbed the sitting-up
Bart by the arm. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"I haven't got the faintest idea," Bart said to Bart.
The other Bart lunged for Cassie and grabbed her arm. Bart number one blinked
his eyes; he'd had trouble seeing the other one move, and he couldn't find his
speed to correct it. The other Bart said, in a voice even higher-pitched than
the first Bart's, "CassieI'mtherealCissie. Youhavetobelieveme. Heyanswerme.
comeoncomeoncomeondammit!"
Numbly, Bart said, "You have to slow down and wait for the answer. She can't
speed."
The other Bart blurred around to face him. "What?"
"You're speeding," Bart said. "You're speeding, and I'm not. You've got my
speed."
"I'mCissie!" the other Bart said. "I'm. Cissie. I. Am."
Bart swallowed. "I kinda think you're Bart now," he said. "I think I'm Cissie."
He flexed his hands -- it was so weird to feel the muscles sliding under the
skin in his forearms every time his fingers curled -- and, giving in to
temptation, poked the side of his boobs. They jiggled, but it felt a little
like poking a bruise. Maybe he didn't know his own strength anymore.
"Hey," the other Bart said, "stop touching my breasts!"
Bart put his hands down fast -- as fast as he could, anyway.
"I think they switched bodies," Suzie said.
Cassie groaned. Her hands were over her face. "Oh hell, Cissie, I am so so
sorry!" she said, but she wasn't looking at either of them so Bart wasn't sure
which Cissie she meant.
"Robin!" yelled Suzie. She swirled away from them. "Robin, Bart and Cissie
switched bodies."
"Yes," said Robin, and it was his grim Batvoice that meant Bart was going to
need to tune out somebody getting lectured. "I was afraid of that." He stalked
toward them.
"You knew this would happen?" Cassie said.
"No," Robin said. "Kon and Anita switched bodies too." He gestured toward where
Kon and Anita, or possibly Anita and Kon, were sitting on the floor. Their arms
were crossed and they had identical glares at nothing. Bart wondered how Robin
could tell they were switched.
"So, am I Bart or Cissie?" he asked.
"You're Bart, of course," Robin said. He loomed over Bart with his arms crossed
and no expression showing around his mask.
"Did the ray gun make you shorter?" Bart asked.
Robin sighed. There might have been a tiny frown, but Bart couldn't slow him
down enough to be sure. "No," Robin said. "It made you taller."
"Oh," Bart said.
"And slower, it would seem," he added.
"Yeah," Bart said. He stared down at the floor. "I don't like it."
"You think I like it?" the other Bart demanded. "It made me a BOY. My mom is
going to flip." He bit his lip. "Okay, that's not so bad. But the school is
going to totally flip."
"Oh wow," said Suzie, solidifying over Robin's shoulder to give the other Bart
a wide-eyed look. "It's a girls' school. You can't go there anymore!"
"We will get this fixed," Robin said. "Everybody stop panicking."
"No, no, I kind of want to panic," said Anita from across the room -- except
that it was Kon's clipped northeastern accent instead of Anita's southern
drawl. "I'm missing some pretty important bits over here."
Bart giggled. He put his (small, strong) hand over his mouth, but that didn't
stop it. "I don't think it's missing," he said. "It's probably right there." He
pointed at Kon, or Kon's body.
"Don't even think about having a look," Kon said in Anita's rounder voice.
They glared at each other, arms crossed, shifting uncomfortably.
"STOP IT," Robin said. "I've contacted Oracle. When our prisoner wakes up,
we'll see if she can answer some questions for us." He nudged the girl with the
toe of his boot, but she just flopped a bit.
"What happened to the ray gun?" Bart asked.
"Robin broke it," Cassie said.
"It broke in the fight," Robin corrected.
"Oh, this is just great," Anita said with Kon's voice.
"My head hurts," Bart said.
"My stomach hurts," the other Bart said.
"Bart, when did you eat last?" Robin said.
"I'm not hungry," Bart said. "Like, at all. Am I sick? Are we going to die?"
"You're not going to die." Robin pinched the center of his mask. "Should you be
hungry now?"
Bart thought about it. "Yeah, I haven't had a meal in an hour. I should really
be hungry. I think I'm sick, Robin."
"You're not sick," Robin said. "Cissie's going to be sick if she doesn't eat
soon, though."
Bart looked over at the other Bart. He looked worried. "You mean me?" the other
Bart said.
Robin held out a hand to the other Bart and pulled him up onto his feet. The
Impulse suit made his legs look really skinny, Bart decided. "You're suddenly
tapped into the speed force," Robin told the other Bart. "You're in a body that
needs to eat every few hours to keep its metabolism up. Until we fix this, you
have to eat every time you think about it."
The other Bart snorted. "Hey, it's the anti-diet. I could get used to this." He
turned around and pointed a finger at Bart. "I had better not need a diet when
I get that body back, Bart."
Bart opened his mouth to ask what he should be eating, but there was a thud as
Anita stood up, fell over, caught herself, stood up, and wobbled back and
forth.
"Kon?" Robin said.
Anita's arms windmilled. "Help!"
"Oh, this is so embarrassing," Kon said. "Kon, there's nothing wrong with my
body. Stand up straight."
"I'm trying!" Anita protested. "I'm -- top-heavy, or something!"
Robin sighed. "Kon, your center of gravity is actually lower than it was
before."
"Then I'm bo--"
"Don't even say it!" bellowed Kon.
"YOU stand up," Anita challenged.
Kon snorted and leaped up. And up, and up. Plaster fragments drifted down.
Suzie spiralled up through the hole in the ceiling and reappeared, falling
straight down with solidified hands wrapped around Kon's ankles. When they
reached the middle of the room, Cassie flew up to grab Kon's arms. "You okay,
Anita?" she said.
"Ow," Kon said.
"Flying is a little weird at first," Cassie said.
"You're telling me," Kon said.
"You're probably trying to fly, Kon," the other Bart said. "That's what's
wrong."
Cassie snickered.
"What?" Anita said belligerently, her hands on her hips.
"Do you seriously not know how to stand up without your powers?" Cassie said.
"Why should he?" Robin said. "He was made to fly, not walk."
"Dude, that's so true," Anita said.
"Still, this is a good exercise for you," Robin said. "What if you lost your
powers for some reason? This is good training. For you too, Impulse."
"I'm not Impulse," Bart said.
"Yes--"
"I've lost the speed force, Rob," Bart said. "Maybe I'm Bart or maybe I'm
really Cissie, but I can't be Impulse without the speed force!" He didn't try
to stand up after Kon and Anita's examples. "I mean, could you be Robin without
Batman?"
Robin really didn't like that, Bart could see. "Yes," he snapped, but he turned
away. "Kon, I'm not sure we should involve Cadmus in this."
"Whatever," Anita said. She seemed to have found her balance; now she looked
down and tentatively poked her own breasts. They also jiggled, and Anita also
winced.
"Kon!" Suzie said. "Don't poke Anita's breasts either!"
Anita blushed. "Sorry," she mumbled. "It's just," she cupped her hands in front
of her breasts and blushed harder, "you know?" She dropped her hands and
fidgetted.
Bart scooted backwards to the wall and pushed himself onto his feet while no
one was watching (except probably Robin, because Robin was always watching,
even when it looked like he was helping the other Bart walk at a normal pace
toward the kitchen). It wasn't as tough as he'd worried it would be; his center
of gravity was lower now, and having smaller feet didn't seem to be a problem.
He kept next to the wall walking toward Anita, though.
Above them, Cassie and Suzie were giving Kon flying lessons. Kon kept whumping
into things, doing almost as much damage as the original ray gun. Where was the
girl who'd brought the ray gun -- oh, Robin was dragging her into the kitchen,
too. Bart wasn't sure it was a good idea to put her where she could get more
things to use as weapons, but he guessed that "good with ray guns" and "good
with poorly sharpened kitchen knives" were different skill sets and Robin knew
how to tie people up so that they couldn't get free anyway.
"Bart?" Anita said. Now that Bart was right there, she did look a bit more like
Kon as she squinted at him. "Hey, earth to Bart. That is you, right?"
"Oh! Yeah," Bart said. "I mean, I think so." He'd forgotten that everyone was
moving at his pace, or that he was moving at everyone else's pace. It was
easier to listen to people, but he had less time to think about what they were
saying.
"I know what you mean," Anita said. She was looking down at--
"Are you looking at my chest?" Bart said.
"Um," Anita said. "No?"
"You totally are," Bart said. He bounced a little on his toes and he could feel
his boobs jiggling up and down. "Check this out. Do yours do this too?" he
asked.
"Uh," said Anita -- no, that didn't sound at all like Anita, even in Anita's
voice. Bart had not a moment of doubt that it was Kon who was, slack-jawed,
reaching out to grab his left boob. He bounced it gently in his hand, which
didn't feel at all painful like when Bart had squeezed it himself, and made a
little gesture with his thumb that didn't actually touch Bart's nipple even
though the nipple pushed out toward it through no intention of Bart's.
"Whoa," Bart said. Kon-Anita was fondling him.
"Hey!" hollered Cassie. Bart's head snapped up; she was hovering almost above
them. "Are you two seriously treating this like lesbian makeout time?"
Anita dropped her hand fast. "Hey, I was just--"
With a blur and a grunt, the other Bart had Anita pinned up against the wall.
"What the hell are you doing, Kon?" he said.
"Cissie!" said Robin, sharply.
"He was pawing my breasts!" the other Bart said. He huffed indignantly and let
Anita go, though.
Anita crossed her arms. "They're Bart's breasts."
Cassie and Suzie snickered.
"Really not," the other Bart said. Kon landed next to him, looking ridiculously
delicate with one foot tentatively extended toes-first and his arms out to the
sides as if he expected them to help like side-burner engines on a fighter
plane. "I mean," said the other Bart, "how would YOU feel if I did this with
your body?" He reached up, grabbed Kon by the back of the neck, and hauled him
down into a sloppy open-mouthed kiss.
Bart looked at Anita.
Anita looked at Bart.
"I feel pretty good about it," Cassie said. She landed next to them and leaned
in, staring. "Do that again."
Kon blinked and looked from the other Bart to Anita and back. "Yeah, that
would, um, serve those boys right," he said. He put his hands on the other
Bart's sides and opened his mouth for another kiss.
Bart didn't quite know what to do. Intellectually, he knew that it was Cissie
and Anita kissing each other there in front of him -- that this was, in fact,
the lesbian makeout that Cassie had accused him and Kon-in-Anita's-body of
having and that as a guy he ought to be staring at them. It was hard to ignore
the way it felt like he was watching a movie of himself making out with Kon,
though, and his skin kept shivering as he tried to remember what it felt like
to be over there kissing Kon when he'd never done any such thing ever. Those
were Kon's hands on his ribs, definitely, holding him steady as he skimmed back
and forth kissing Kon's mouth, trying each angle of attack at speed first and
then slower, bringing Kon's speed up to match his own to let Kon feel the kiss
too before dropping back into speed to try something new. Bart -- the other
Bart -- had a knee braced on Kon's thigh now, balancing himself between Kon's
planted leg and his sure (TTK-enhanced) grip to lift up higher so that his
mouth was above Kon's.
Robin cleared his throat pointedly.
"Shut up, Robin," Cassie said.
"Yeah," said Anita.
"Our prisoner is awake," Robin said loudly.
"That's nice," said Anita. Bart snuck a sideways look; she was goggling at the
other Bart and Kon like she'd done at Bart's jiggling boobs.
"We've identified her as part of an organization called Project Nine," Robin
said.
"That sounds familiar," Suzie said. She coiled around Robin, staring at the
other Bart and Kon over his head. "Who are they?"
"Oracle isn't entirely sure," Robin said. "They're new, with no clear source of
funding." He sighed, then whistled loudly.
Kon broke away from Bart when the Super-cycle crashed through the wall and
landed where the ping-pong table had been. The holes in the wall had been
almost big enough to let it through. Robin put one green hand over his mask and
sighed again.
Cassie sighed too. She settled her goggles over her eyes and vaulted into her
usual seat in the 'cycle. "Come on, Rob, we had to repair it anyway."
"You four should stay here," Robin said.
"No way!" Kon and Anita said simultaneously.
"I'm going," Bart said, and hopped into his seat.
The other Bart shuffled his feet.
"Come on, Cissie!" Cassie said. "You can't stay here by yourself. It's not
safe. Right, Robin?"
"I'm not--" said the other Bart, and then rudely vanished before finishing his
sentence. He reappeared a second later with Arrowette's costume and weapons in
his hands.
"Yes!" Cassie said.
"Is that going to fit you?" Anita said.
Bart found he was grinning. He ran over -- it was weird how everyone kept
moving while he ran, but he ignored them -- and threw his arms around the other
Bart, who was really Cissie. "I'm so glad!" he said.
"Ikeeptellingyou," Cissie said, and then shook her head at speed so that her
hair flew out in a bushy cloud. She hugged Bart back at speed, like being
hugged by family, and held out the costume. "You should wear it," she said.
Bart held it up. "Cool!" he said, and started stripping.
"Bart!" yelped the other Bart. "What are you doing?"
Bart frowned. "Wearing it?"
"You--" the other Bart said. "Oh. Right. Why don't you go change in the
bathroom?"
"Oh!" Bart said. "You can all see me naked now. Oops!" He tugged the teeshirt
back down over his stomach and dashed for the bathroom.
Arrowette's uniform was in several pieces, but they sorted themselves out
easily enough. Once he tugged the shirt down over his chest he discovered that
his boobs barely moved around at all -- it was like wearing a jock on his
chest. Neat! The boots were skinny and long instead of short and chunky, and
they looked really cool when he tried a few kicks, especially with the edge of
the skirt fluffing out around his thighs. He peered at himself in the mirror
and grinned. He looked just like Arrowette! Only Arrowette didn't usually grin
like that. She smiled more like Robin, really. Bart made a few faces at himself
in the mirror, but he couldn't get it quite right, even with the mask holding
the tops of his cheeks in place. He slung the quiver of arrows across his back
and grabbed Arrowette's bow.
"Ta-da!" he said, bursting back into the room. "What do you think?"
"Come on," called Cassie from the Super-cycle. "Let's go, Bart!"
Bart climbed in. "You should call me Arrowette," he told her.
"Man, that costume looks a lot easier than this stuff," Anita said. She was in
full armor and it was really hard to see Kon in her through the helmet, even
though Bart could hear him just fine when he spoke.
Robin lifted the Super-cycle up and took them out again through the hole in the
wall, carefully enough that hardly any more plaster rained down on their abused
rec room.
"You'll be fine," the other Bart said. "Here, pull an arrow."
Bart groped over his shoulder and managed to snag something. He pulled forward
a bright red arrow and held it out.
"Oh, not that one!" the other Bart said. He took it and leaned around behind
Bart. "Hang on.... Okay. Pull again."
Bart reached back again. The ends of the arrows seemed slanted now. He grabbed
another one at random and pulled it forward. This one had a white shaft.
"Okay," the other Bart said. "Now, hmm. I need--"
"Here," Robin said. He leaned forward and poured a handful of something into
the other Bart's cupped palms, then went back to driving. It looked like they
were somewhere over the Atlantic.
"Okay," the other Bart said again. "Ready, Arrowette?"
"Uh, ready!" Bart said. "Wait, ready for--"
"Shoot this!" the other Bart said, and tossed one of the things into the air.
Up and up and it was arcing now, the Super-cycle was dropping slightly below
it, and with a faint ting Bart's arrow hit the object dead center.
Robin looped the Super-cycle around so that Bart could catch the arrow as it
fell. There was a circle of metal capping the point of the arrow; the other
Bart took it from him and pried it loose.
Cassie plucked it out of his hand. "Wow!" she said.
Suzie leaned in. "You stopped on a dime, Bart! I mean, Arrowette," she said.
Cassie handed the thing to him. It was a coin, warped by the arrow he'd shot.
"I did that?" he said.
The other Bart looked smug. "I have great reflexes."
"Heads up," Robin said, and something round and much bigger than a dime was
whirring towards the 'cycle.
Anita stood up, and Cassie slapped a hand on her shoulder to push her down
again. "Oh, right," Anita said, and kicked the front of the compartment. "No
flying."
Cassie dove right and, after a moment, Kon dove after her. Robin swept the
'cycle around to the left and from around the other craft two identical circles
appeared. Suzie went straight upward and Bart adjusted his grip on Arrowette's
bow, wishing the fight scene wasn't swooping in quite so fast....
Now, we could tell you all the details of the heroics going on here. You'd
thrill to the daring exploits of Wonder Girl and Superboy in aerial combat and
wait with bated breath to see if Secret could lead Robin, Arrowette, and
Empress into the hidden bunker -- you'd be terrified as the bound prisoner dove
over the side of the Super-cycle to certain death, only to be caught in a
tractor beam and carried away by one of the flying objects that we haven't
identified yet -- but mostly you'd be confused.
You see, the enemies featured in this plot-line are the villainous cabal first
introduced in Nifty-Keen Comix #68-70, and you haven't read those issues, have
you? I didn't think so! Now, if you had, you'd probably be jumping up and down
in your seat right now, assuming you were sitting down to read this story, and
you might be making undignified noises -- that's the sort of obscure and
delightful shout-out we're using in this story. You philistine.
I suppose we'd better get back to our Young Justice protagonists, anyway.
Bart's actually paying attention to the conversation, trying to follow when
everyone is talking too fast, so we'll slip back into his point of view and let
you get on with the story.
"Well, that was useless," Anita said, pulling off her helmet and rolling her
head back and forth on her neck.
(Kon isn't a Nifty-Keen Comix fanboy either. Does that make you feel better?)
"No," Robin said, tapping his hands against the Super-cycle's handlebars as he
drove. "We learned something."
"Yeah," said Anita. "We learned they can kick our asses and get away clean."
"Hey!" said Cassie.
"Yeah, mon, maybe they got away but we gave them plenty of lumps," Kon said.
"I don't think sword-fighting is my thing," Anita said. "I'm more of a fists
kind of guy."
"Expanding your repertoire is never a bad thing," Robin said.
"So you're saying we learned things about ourselves?" Suzie asked.
Robin shrugged that aside. "About Project Nine: we learned that they have off-
planet funding, that they're involved with biological research that definitely
isn't cloning--"
"Or anal probes!" the other Bart whispered loudly to Cassie, who giggled.
"--And," Robin said firmly, "that their target on the initial attack may have
been Empress."
"Me?" said Kon.
"Yes. Although possibly not at the moment. They may have been after her piece
of the Anti-Life Equation."
"No, I still have that," Kon said.
Robin tilted his head. "Really?"
Kon squared his shoulders and said, "Lift your arms."
Robin's hands shot up over his head. Bart shivered. That had been Anita's
spooky voice and no doubt about it, but coming out of Kon's mouth it had
sounded almost more like Batman, or Superman when he was really taking charge
of something. Someday, Bart thought, when they were the Justice League -- it
was one of Cassie's favorite what-if games, but they all played -- someday,
Empress was going to be a really scary superhero.
"Huh," Robin said. He lowered his arms and folded his hands into his thinking
pose again. (Bart had tried it out a few times, but hadn't noticed that he was
thinking any better, and then he'd started wondering if he'd end up thinking
like a bat and stopped fast.) "So it transferred with your...consciousness." He
set one hand back on the 'cycle handlebars, to Kon's visible relief.
"My soul?" Kon said.
"Perhaps," Robin said. "At any rate, that means that if they were attempting to
capture your piece of the Equation by taking your body, they would have failed.
I wonder if they were aware of that."
"Secret," Kon said, "can you tell where our souls are?"
Bart shifted uncomfortably, and it looked like no one was really happy with
that thought, but Suzie was shaking her head. "No, I just know that all of your
bodies still contain living persons." She gestured, but Bart didn't
particularly want to interpret it, so he didn't try. "I'd know if you were
dead."
"Well, thanks, I think," Robin said.
Suzie beamed. "You're welcome!"
Anita frowned. "That doesn't make sense, though. I didn't keep my TTK."
Bart rolled his eyes. "Here we go again," he muttered, but nobody paid
attention to him.
Anita opened her mouth, but Cassie beat her to it. "Of course not," she said,
"because they built your TTK into your genes, right? That stays with your
body." She patted Kon's arm.
"What about the speed force, then?" Bart said. "Why is that hooked into my
body?"
"I don't know," Cassie said. "Didn't the Flash get his speed from a chemical
accident?"
"Wally and Grampa Barry did, but I inherited mine," Bart said.
"Let's not get into Lamarkian genetics," Robin said. "Apparently, Bart requires
his own body to tap into the speed force. So--"
"You know, I haven't really tried, though," Bart said thoughtfully. "Maybe I
should--"
"No!"
That was simultaneous from Robin and Anita. "Dude, don't do it," Anita said.
"Not without the Flash here to supervise, okay?"
Bart kicked one rebellious foot against the side of the Super-cycle. "I don't
need Wally looking after me," he said.
"Besides," said Anita, "there are more interesting things going on now, right?"
Robin landed the Super-cycle in front of their resort and everyone piled out.
"More interesting?" Bart said.
Cassie lifted up a few feet to inspect the walls. "It doesn't look like we've
had any more guests," she said.
The other Bart snorted. "They could have just walked in through the holes that
were already there. It's not like every villain needs to make a brand new
mess."
"Bite your tongue, Cissie," Cassie said, touching back down.
"Wonder Girl, Secret, can you check the outside walls? I'll check our security
system," Robin said. "The rest of you, get some rest. Cissie, don't forget to
eat again."
"Again?" the other Bart said.
"Come on," Bart said. "I could use a snack too, right?"
"I guess so," the other Bart said.
Bart led the way into the kitchen and piled potato chips, apple crisps, and
popcorn into a decent-sized bowl that he handed to the other Bart.
"Are we going to eat all of this?" he said.
Bart blinked. "That's just for you," he said. "Here." He handed over a six-pack
of Zesti Cream Soda. "I'll have the rest of the apple things, I guess."
The other Bart frowned down at the bowl. "Well, it's your stomach."
Bart dug into the crisps bag. He kind of didn't want to leave Cissie alone with
his body; it felt weird.
"Why don't we eat in my room instead of--" the other Bart began, and Bart said,
"Yeah, great!" before he even stopped speaking. Timing was still off. The other
Bart beamed at him like Cissie, though, so everything was okay. Cissie never
did smile enough. Bart bounced happily along behind his other self into
Cissie's room, which reminded him.
"Thanks for letting me borrow your uniform," he said. "It was cool, being
Arrowette."
The other Bart lifted the arrow quiver off of his shoulder. "It was pretty cool
being Impulse, too," he said. He pushed the cowl back, and Bart lifted
Arrowette's mask over his head. "Whew," said the other Bart. "I see the point
of lenses, but I miss my open mask." Bart held it out, and the other Bart took
it and folded it up with a sigh. "If I were going to wear a mask, I mean. Which
I'm not, Bart."
Bart looked down. "I know," he said sadly, and covered by working the boots off
of his feet. He cleared his throat. "These are awesome boots, Cissie," he said.
"Aren't they, though?" Cissie said from the other Bart's body. "They're what
make the skirt even a little bit practical. Great leg protection."
"And they look great," Bart said.
The other Bart blushed. "Thanks," he said.
Bart peeled the stockings down his oddly smooth legs and flipped them off of
his toes. Next was the top of the uniform. As he lifted it over his shoulders,
Bart could feel his boobs bounce free of the tight fabric. Quickly he wriggled
the rest of the way out of it and looked down. "I never really noticed my
nipples," he said. "Yours feel a lot more poke-y." Then he glanced back at the
other Bart, wondering if Cissie was going to be upset that he was talking about
her nipples.
The other Bart was staring at Bart's boobs, not quite the same way that Anita
had but awfully close. "I never realized how obscene that costume could be," he
said. "It definitely shows off my chest, though, doesn't it?"
Encouraged, Bart prodded one pointy nipple, and it responded by poking out even
farther. What was really funny was that from the inside it felt more like it
was pulling inward, and Bart, curious, pinched it in his fingers, intending to
move it back and forth to find out if the backwards sensation applied to any
other motions. He didn't get that far, though.
"Hhhhhhhhhng," he said, approximately, only in a much higher pitch. Suddenly he
felt as unsteady on his (Cissie's) feet as Kon had been on Anita's feet right
after the switch. He froze and, after a period of time whose length he had
absolutely no guesses about, relaxed enough to say, "What was THAT?"
The other Bart had both hands over his mouth trying to hold in giggles. "Pinch
your nipple again," he said.
Cautiously, Bart did. "Hhhhhhhhhng!" he squeaked again. When he let go
entirely, it didn't take very long to return to close enough to normal this
time.
"You've never made out with a girl, have you, Bart?" the other Bart said.
"I've kissed a girl!" Bart said indignantly.
The other Bart looked smug. "So, no, then?"
Bart started to cross his arms, realized that that put his arms dangerously
close to his naked nipples (NAKED! GIRL! NIPPLES!), and put his hands on his
hips instead.
"Look," said the other Bart, and he was blushing even brighter red now. Bart
hadn't known that his face could turn that shade. "Look," the other Bart said
again, "it's nothing but masturbation, and there's nothing wrong with that."
"Huh?" Bart said intelligently.
"Go ahead and, and feel yourself up," the other Bart said. He put his hands up
to his chest and rubbed at his own nipples through the Impulse suit. "I mean,
can I, too?"
"You, uh," Bart managed. He sat down on the edge of Cissie's bed, jumped up
because that was a little forward, and sat down again because he was Cissie now
and it was his bed now. Or his bed too. Or something. "The suit's catch is on
the left side," he said.
The other Bart tugged at his collar a couple of times and then, in a blur, he
was standing there in his underwear with the suit twisted around his calves
above the boots. Another blur, and suit and boots were halfway across the room.
Another blur, and Bart was starting to get a lot of the things people said
about his speed making their heads feel funny. The other Bart's underwear was
on top of the suit now, and the other Bart had one hand wrapped around his
dick, jerking frantically.
Bart could feel his mouth working. He wanted to tell Cissie that she was doing
it wrong, that his body wasn't supposed to look like pale stick limbs with a
bright red dick poking straight out, that she wasn't supposed to be making
silly faces while she jerked off, and that...he wasn't sure what. He couldn't
make any actual noises, so it didn't really matter.
The other Bart wrinkled up his nose and then bugged out his eyes and then
clenched his jaw. Bart couldn't even see his hand or dick any more until
suddenly the other Bart's mouth dropped open and he went stiff all over. Spunk
splattered onto the carpet. The other Bart's face twisted sideways and his hand
fuzzed out on the edges again and then he froze and shot a little more spunk
onto the carpet. "Oh," he said, and let go, swaying back and forth slowly until
he had to stagger a step sideways and grab the edge of the desk.
Bart's body had just gotten off, right there in front of him. Bart felt left
out. And dazed.
"Whew!" said the other Bart. "That's a rush. Is that all there is to it?"
"Pretty much," Bart admitted. "You have to wait for a long time if you want to
get hard again, like going swimming after lunch. Like, five or six minutes."
"That's not very long," the other Bart said.
"It really is," Bart told him.
"Aren't you going to try it?" he asked.
"Okay," Bart said, and took a deep breath. He knew where he was going -- he
brought his hands up and pinched both nipples, hard.
He was pretty sure that the noise he was making now couldn't be phonetically
rendered at all. His shoulders snapped back to push his boobs out toward his
hands, which overbalanced him, and he turned sideways as he fell, kicking his
feet out to stay on the bed. His main concern was keeping hold of those
nipples; it felt like trying to hold onto Livewire or one of the other
electricity-based villains, only in a spectacularly good way.
"I had no idea my nipples were so sensitive," the other Bart said.
If he turned his hands sideways and stuck his elbows out, Bart discovered, he
could twist his nipples and get the palms of his hands flat on the smooth part
of each boob. That kept them both pointed forward and also felt neat.
"Doesn't that hurt?" the other Bart said.
That might be a good question. Bart had no idea what else was going on in this
body behind the sizzle that was making him writhe against the bed. Reluctantly,
he eased up the pressure. He didn't want to let go, but if he just kept his
hands cupped over each nipple he might be able to sit up again.
He couldn't, quite, but he did manage to turn so that he could see the other
Bart. "Um," he said, and checked in with the rest of the body. "No, it doesn't
hurt." He peeked down and saw that he had one hand on each tit, which was a
view that made him glad for an eidetic memory -- if he had his memory still in
this body, but he couldn't work himself up to worrying about it at the moment.
"It's okay if you want to take the rest of your clothes off," the other Bart
said.
"I'm still in your uniform!" Bart said. Okay, that was worth letting go of his
nipples for.
"Yeah," the other Bart said. His eyes were a little glassy and he was getting
hard again. Bart wondered if it had really been five minutes already.
The uniform skirt came off easily enough, and then it was just a question of
the underpants. He'd avoided this earlier changing into the Arrowette suit; he
trusted Robin and he wasn't going to panic, but he wasn't entirely sure he
wanted direct evidence of his lack of dick. Even if he could see his dick just
a few feet away on the body Cissie was driving -- and now Cissie was stroking
it lightly, getting it hard again, and Bart decided that if his dick was having
such a good time over there, he'd let it take a little holiday and get by
without. Two thumbs under the elastic and the underpants slid down his thighs.
He rolled onto his back and lifted up his legs to get them off entirely, and
rolled back when he heard the other Bart make a choking sort of noise.
"What?" he said.
The other Bart shook his head. "No, no, keep going like that."
Here it was, then. Bart spread his legs and slid one hand down his stomach.
There were the springy curls and then...he was soft. And slippery. "I, uh," he
said. He pulled his hand back; his fingers were all wet.
"You really haven't made out with a girl before," the other Bart said
breathlessly. He was pulling at his hard-on steadily now. "It's all where it
should be, I promise."
Bart gulped and put his hand back down. Soft, and definitely slippery, and he
curled his fingers in and -- in. In. He had two fingers inside his body. He
hunched down and pushed and his fingers just kept going in. He wasn't sure he
liked that as much as the nipple thing. He pulled back cautiously and they
slipped right back out again, and he straightened up his shoulders.
This yowl was louder and even less transcribable than the one he'd made when he
tried twisting his nipples. His body flopped uncontrollably back into the
mattress and forward into the air, and his hands went flying. He didn't even
know swear words to express how much his hands needed not to have let go, so he
settled for wordless yelling. With one hand he got a firm grip on Cissie's
blanket and with the other, the wet and slick one that had been in his box and
so briefly up against what had to be the clitoris, he grabbed his crotch. Where
was it, where was it, where -- and then he had it again.
Bart moaned, trying to find just the right angle to get that incredible feeling
again. "Rub," the other Bart said. "Don't just poke!"
Rub. Rub. He could do that. Side to side and oh hell yes. He clenched his other
hand on a fistful of blanket and kept rubbing. He was making noises that, that-
-
That wasn't actually him. He turned his head far enough to see the other Bart's
hand speed and stop and speed and stop and now there was spunk all over the
edge of the bed, inches away from his thigh. The other Bart was groaning out
loud this time, whirring up to a buzz and back down to a low "huh huh huh" as
his speed came and went. It didn't look nearly as silly this time.
"Oh. God. That's. Incredible," the other Bart panted once he'd let go of his
dick again.
"Really is," Bart agreed, trying to rub himself faster. The other Bart was
wiping his hands dry with a corner of the bedsheet and Bart thought about doing
the same thing, because his fingers were slipping all over the place now.
"Bart, I," the other Bart said. "You're so-- let me--" and he zipped to the
other side of the room and back to the bed and then he reached over and pinched
one of Bart's nipples.
In Search for Omega XXVI, one of Bart's favorite simugames when he was
subjectively seven and a half, it's possible to be smashed between two of
Grabthar's hammers at once -- almost always a fatal situation. That's roughly
what Bart felt, if both hammers were replaced with PURE BLISS and he didn't
actually die from it, which they were and he didn't.
"Yes!" Bart yelled, as loud and as fast as he could.
"Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes--" He couldn't stop this body from
twisting and jerking around underneath the hands on it, and the other Bart was
leaning over him breathing in fluttering gasps. Bart's hand over his clitoris
kept sliding away, and with one frantic twist his fingers stuttered downward
and first-knuckle-deep into his box again. This time he liked it more, but he
really needed that rubbing over his clitoris back -- and then it was back, with
his fingers still up inside, and Bart opened his eyes wide to see himself bent
over his body, one hand on a tit and one riding down between his legs and
pounding over his clitoris faster than he'd been able to do himself.
"Yesyesyesyesyesyesy-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y--" he managed before his entire body
seized up around his and Cissie's fingers. The orgasm felt like it turned him
inside out.
"Whoa," he said when he could breathe again. If he'd had balls, they'd have
been wrung completely dry. "That was. Excellent."
He still had two fingers partway into his body. The other Bart was sitting on
the far side of the bed, blushing again. A little awkwardly, Bart pulled his
hand free. His fingers were even wetter now, and it looked different. Bart
frowned and peered at his hand.
"Uh, Cissie?" he said.
"BartIreallydidn'tmeantogothatfarandI--"
"Cissie, am I bleeding?"
"--hopeyouaren'tmadatmeand-- What?!"
Bart held his hand out toward the other Bart.
"Oh my God, let me see," the other Bart said, and he was back around to Bart's
side of the bed in an instant. He put one hand on Bart's thigh and reached for
Bart's crotch with his other hand. Bart twitched as the other Bart poked and
prodded and put one finger against the opening of his vagina. He grabbed for
the other Bart's wrist, but he was too slow; the other was up and on the other
side of the room by the time he was closing his hand.
"Don't--" he said.
"Shit, shit, you are bleeding," the other Bart said. "I'm bleeding. What did
you do to me?"
"I don't know!" Bart said. "It doesn't hurt or anything."
"Oh my God--" and then the closet door swung open and slammed shut, followed
almost immediately by the hallway door opening and slamming, and then Bart was
alone in the room. Naked and bleeding and slow, great. He poked carefully
between his legs and got more blood on his hand, but still nothing was hurting.
In fact, rubbing lightly at his clitoris felt pretty fantastic already, and he
was sure it hadn't been five minutes yet. He yanked his hand away and squeezed
his knees together when the door opened again, though.
"--blood!" the other Bart was saying.
"Calm down, Cissie," Cassie said, and she and Anita and Kon all trooped into
the room after the other Bart. The other Bart was wearing a pink bathrobe that
was too big for him -- it was probably Cissie's -- but Cassie and Anita were
back in street clothes. Kon was still in uniform, of course. Bart wondered how
Anita felt about that, because it distracted him from the way he wasn't wearing
anything at all. "Bart, where are you hurt?"
"I'm not hurt," Bart said. "I'm just bleeding." He pointed down at his crotch.
Anita covered her eyes and said, "Oh my God. You guys had sex."
"No!" the other Bart said. "Not exactly. I mean, not really."
"You're just bleeding?" Kon said. He crouched down next to the bed and put his
hand on Bart's knee, and then he stopped and looked up at the other Bart.
"Cissie," he said, "what time of the month is it?"
"Oh, you're kidding me," the other Bart said. He blurred across the room and
flipped back through Cissie's wall calendar. "Argh!" he said, letting the
calendar drop and thumping his head into the wall next to Lieutenant Tawny
Madison's smiling face. "Bart, you've got my period."
Anita wrapped her arms completely around her head. "Guys are not meant to know
this stuff," she moaned.
"No wonder you were so horny!" the other Bart finished.
"LA LA LA NOT HEARING THIS," announced Anita.
Cassie snorted. "And yet you're still in the room," she said.
"Have you got any pads for him?" Kon said.
"Yeah, yeah, hang on." The other Bart rummaged through Cissie's closet and
emerged with something that he stuck to the underwear that Bart had tossed onto
the nightstand. "Here," he said, holding this out to Bart. "Wear this."
The underwear now dangling from Bart's hand was padded through the crotch. "I
don't think I need padding," he said. "I'm telling you, it doesn't hurt."
Kon laughed. "It's not for that," he said. "It'll absorb the blood, that's
all."
"Huh," Bart said. "Okay." He stood up and pulled on the underwear. Now he felt
even more underdressed, somehow, and he'd gone way too fast from a "nipples and
clitoris" place to a "leaking blood" place. Maybe being a girl was sucky after
all, even with the boobs.
"You didn't really have sex with Bart, did you?" Kon said, turning to the other
Bart, who whistled and stared at the ceiling. "You did?"
"It was more like masturbation," the other Bart said defensively.
Anita peered through her fingers at Bart. "Seriously?" she said. Bart leered
back. "I don't believe it," she said enviously.
"What were you and Anita doing?" Bart asked.
"Talking about her family," Anita said. "If we don't get switched back soon,
I'm going to have to pass in front of Fite and Maad."
"Oh man," said Bart.
"I mean, I could totally do it!" Anita said. "It's just -- they're doing it
again."
"What?" said Bart.
Anita pointed. The other Bart was kissing Kon again.
"Man, I am the only one not having any fun," Anita said. The sulk looked weird
without Kon's bangs to hide behind, Bart decided.
"Why aren't you having fun?" Suzie said. Bart jumped, but so did Anita so it
was okay.
"I'm not having that much fun," Anita said, jerking her thumb at the other side
of the room.
"Ooh," Suzie said, and floated over to Cassie. "How long have they been doing
that?"
"Just started," said Cassie without looking around.
"Where are Cissie's clothes?" Suzie asked.
"She lost 'em to have sex with Bart," Cassie said.
"How come Anita's still dressed?" Suzie asked.
"I'm starting to wonder if that S-shield actually comes off," Cassie said.
Bart blinked. "Does it?" he asked Anita.
"Of course it does!" Anita said. She shuffled her feet. "I explained to Anita
how important it was. She said she'd take being Superboy seriously."
"How much kissing does that involve, anyway?" Bart asked.
Anita scowled.
"And do you want to make out or what?" he asked.
Anita grinned, grabbed Bart by the shoulders, and hauled him close enough to
kiss. This was excellent, Bart decided, for many different reasons. One, he was
for once tall enough to kiss just by tipping his head to the side. Two, he
still didn't have a shirt on so his bare nipples (and they were still NAKED
GIRL NIPPLES) rubbed against Anita's shirt and gave him shivers every time he
moved. Three, Kon in Anita's body was a really, really, really good kisser.
There was probably a four and maybe even a five, but Kon's tongue got between
his lips and then Kon pulled back a little and bit his bottom lip very lightly,
which gave him more shivers, and then came back with more tongue.
"Holy shit," he heard Cassie say reverently. "Go for it!" He grinned, and felt
Kon grin too, and looked up to grin at Cassie.
Cassie wasn't looking at them. Cassie was looking at the other Bart and the
other Kon, because the other Bart had lost the robe and pulled down the other
Kon's tights and was now pushing him up against the bed and rubbing against
him.
"Hey," Kon said indignantly in his ear, "how come you're on top?"
Not that it was them exactly, but -- it was like watching them kiss that
morning; Bart could almost taste it, what Kon's (real) skin would be if he were
the one trailing little bites along Kon's neck down to the line of his uniform,
and he could almost feel it, the heat of Kon's bare skin under his hands as he
rolled the waistband open and the way Kon's dick would push out into the air
until it rubbed against the side of his own dick--
Kon had asked him a question. "What?" he said.
"I'm bigger than you," Kon said. "I should be on top. Not Cissie."
"That's Anita, Kon, not you," Suzie said. The way she was staring made Bart a
little glad that she was noncorporeal from the waist down at the moment.
"Besides," said Bart, "you're not bigger."
"I am so!" Kon said.
"My dick is bigger," Bart told him. He ran his fingers across Anita's tits
until he found her nipples and pinched them carefully. Anita rolled her hips
into Bart's and gasped.
"Oh!" Kon said. "Do that again. And it is not."
"It's right there in front of you," Bart said, pointing with his chin so that
he could keep his hands on Anita's chest. "Take a look."
"You're-- He's-- She's moving too fast to see anything like that," Kon
protested. "Can I touch yours?"
"Oh yeah," Bart said, doing his best to push his boobs up into Anita's face.
"If you just--"
"EVERYBODY STOP RIGHT NOW!" bellowed a familiar voice. Everyone in the room
leapt back at least a foot, except for Kon who pushed Cissie's bed backwards
into the wall and skidded sideways behind the foot of it. The other Bart
suddenly had Cissie's robe back on.
Robin stood in the doorway, bo staff in hand. "What is going on?" he demanded.
"Are you all drugged?"
"We were just, uh," Bart said, realizing abruptly that he was naked except for
the padded underwear. He stepped behind Anita and leaned around to look at
Robin, who seemed pretty upset. "...curious?"
"We're just having fun, Robin," Cassie said.
"You are still responsible for your actions even when you perform them from
other bodies," Robin said tightly. "I suggest you all clean yourselves up and
get dressed; we have a new location on Project Nine, and I'm taking the Super-
cycle in ten minutes."
He spun around on his heel and marched out with a dramatic flare of the cape.
Bart looked around the room at all of his friends staring down at the floor.
Maybe he shouldn't've--
"Man," said Anita, slinging an arm over Bart's bare shoulders, "can you believe
that he's the one of us with a main squeeze? What is UP with that?"
Bart giggled. So did the other Bart, and then Kon and Cassie joined in, and by
the time Suzie offered a little snort Bart was leaning on Anita's arm for
balance as they both whooped with laughter.
After all of that build-up, you're probably expecting a big double-page-spread
fight scene, aren't you? Well, brace yourself for disappointment, because after
Robin's little interruptus the rest of the team dragged on their uniforms,
piled still giggling into the Super-cycle, and pounded the unprepared Project
Nine flat in the time it would take us just to set up a cut scene to their
secondary secret base. Arrowette's second arrow went wide (he was still
laughing too much) and glanced off of a windowsill, sliced through the backup
power cables, and took out the main lab's security system in one blow. After
that, Wonder Girl and Superboy simply crashed in through the wall -- taking, it
must be said, a certain glee in punching the holes -- and grabbed everything
that looked like a ray gun.
"Get the paperwork!" hollered Robin. "The paperwork!" He couldn't tell if
they'd heard him. Secret and Impulse had already taken off to try and corral
the scientists who hadn't made it to the escape route; he thought Cissie was
taking a little too readily to being Impulse after her vigorous retirement, but
there would be time to refuse to talk about it later, he was sure. Empress and
Arrowette stayed with him while he confirmed that the Boom Tube escape hatch
wasn't going to be traceable and passed that bad news along to Oracle.
"Got away clean again, huh?" Empress said sourly.
"Didn't kick our asses this time, though!" Arrowette reminded him.
Robin was doing his best not to think of either one of them naked in either
body, and it was distracting him. He switched comm channels to YJ's frequency.
"Impulse," he said.
"Yeah? Oh, right," Arrowette said.
"Robin," Impulse said. "We've got a couple of the bad guys treed here. I think
there were only two."
"Can you contain them?" he asked. "The JLA is incoming for pickup."
"The JLA wants our leftovers?" Empress said.
"With a Boom Tube involved?" Robin said. "Absolutely." He wished there were a
way to get a comm onto Secret; he didn't trust her connection to Darkseid, and
he wished he could be certain that her familiarity with Agape and Efate's
projects** was simply from overheard conversations in the DEO. There wasn't any
good way to tell Impulse to keep an eye on her, so he'd just have to be erect -
- alert. He'd just have to be alert. Dammit.
** See Nifty-Keen Comix #69. Or, you know, don't. Why should we care if you
appreciate all our hard work on continuity?
Wonder Girl and Superboy landed with armfuls of equipment and a few scraps of
paper which Robin fell upon gratefully. "Can you read any of this?" Wonder Girl
asked.
Robin flipped through their loot. Only one of the alphabets was recognizable.
"I'm pretty sure this wasn't written by a native Tamaranean speaker," he said,
"but 'Color the brain lines with the beast and the beast on their skin' pretty
clearly means 'Think the trigger while the subjects are in physical contact,'
which matches with our initial conditions..." he trailed off as he continued
flipping through the Tamaranean section of the Tamaranean-Daxamite-Monk manual
(and why Daxamite and not Kryptonian?). "Color the brain lines, color the brain
lines, ah-hah!"
"Did that sound good to you?" Superboy said.
"Not really good, no," Empress said. "I don't want my brain lines colored in."
"No," Robin said, "it's the trigger mechanism, I do it -- nevermind." He picked
up the silver ray gun. "Stand together."
Empress pulled off a glove and grabbed Superboy's hand, making sure their bare
fingers touched. "You'd better have this right, Robin," he said.
"I do," Robin lied, and with a harsh SHKWUNK knocked them back into the wall.
"Ouch," said Arrowette.
"Maybe you and Impulse should lean against a wall," Robin suggested.
"Shouldn't we wait to see if it worked on Kon and Anita first?" Arrowette
asked.
Well, there's very little suspense here to be milked, so we'll jump right to
the point where everyone has woken up in the right body again, Blue Beetle has
been and gone with prisoners, ray guns, and no suspicions that any Young
Justice members were not who they seemed, and everyone has piled into the
Super-cycle to return to their base.
"Do you all remember what happened while you were switched?" Robin asked.
"Yup," Impulse said immediately. "I was a little worried that I wouldn't,
because I didn't know if memory was like the speed force, but apparently it
isn't so I do remember everything."
"So much for that excuse, then," Cissie muttered. She'd taken off the Arrowette
cowl immediately upon awakening in it, to Wonder Girl's obvious disappointment.
"What do you mean, 'excuse'?" Empress said.
"This is exactly what I was afraid of," Robin said. He bit his lip and worried
about the team.
"Oh, stuff it, Rob," said Superboy. "You're the one who said not to panic."
"There were plenty of options to choose other than panicking and...that. What
you were doing." Naked, he didn't add.
Disconcertingly, the occupants of the 'cycle started giggling.
"What," he said flatly, but they didn't answer. Gritting his teeth, Robin
silently cursed aliens, their ray guns, their concepts of teamwork, and their
naked clones all the way back to Young Justice's base, dragging his hysterical
teammates behind him.
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