Touch Of The Past

Chapter 39

Robin offers me an open granola bar, which I chew on absent-mindedly. Our game plan is laid out on the holo screen in front of me, filled with stats about the robot we'd captured and data collected from past missions. He's trying to chat with me and I'm murmuring vague answers, but I'm not really paying attention.

Suddenly, Robin's fist in underneath my ribs, which causes a spasm of pain to ripple across my torso. I react instantaneously, twisting around and turning intangible to avoid further hits. "Robin, what the heck?"

"You said I could," he responds flippantly, turning his back to me, probably to hide a smile.

"I didn't!"

"Actually," Tucker intervenes from a nearby seat, "You did. He asked 'Hey Danny, I kinda want to punch you. Am I allowed?' and you went, 'uh huh'." He mimics our voices and goes all slack-jawed when he's impersonating me. "Before that, he was giving this whole story about how this mission would never work because it's impossible to find Sam since he murdered her and threw her into the sun."

"That's what you were talking about?" Robin glares at my accusative tone.

"Oh, don't act all offended. I did it to get your attention, but it didn't work. So I made this elaborate tale of love, betrayal and my slow descent into madness that, unfortunately, ended up in my murdering of Sam and our adopted Nigerian child." My face must be showing some major shock and confusion right about now. "Mhmm," he affirms, taking my expression as a response and flipping onto an empty seat. "I'm gonna be a YA novelist."

"I was focusing on the mission," I defend, clipping my words to get my point across, "Something we all should be doing."

"This is me focusing!"

"Well, it sucks."

"Yeah, Batman doesn't like it either."

Before Kaldur can interrupt our budding argument, Robin and I both shrug and let it go. One of the biggest things I'd learned from the eight months in torture: how to choose your battles. And I don't think fighting with Robin leads to anything except a waste of energy.

"Looks like we're approaching the facility," M'gann announces.

Everyone stands, almost as if that'll prepare them for the upcoming battle. It's just the ten of us- at least for now. The Justice League views Vandal Savage as a top priority villain. They're ready to step in at any moment.

We prepare to attack. The first two teams are doing the initial attack, even though Kaldur, Jazz, Artemis and Wally are the alpha force. Once they draw as many out as possible, the beta team-Superboy, Tucker and Zatanna- attack the compound itself. While the alphas are fighting, the beta team will attack the enemy's back. If the enermies attempt to retreat, alphas have them trapped.

The gamma team-Robin, M'gann and I- will infiltrate. Robin hacks. M'gann fights. I search.

Jazz is decked out in her favorite Fenton invention: the ghost peeler. Or whatever ridiculous name it has. The Fentons have so many inventions, even I can't keep track. Tucker has gauntlets, guns, and a hovercycle. He's planning on riding around and creating havoc, which I can support. He may not be able to hold up a close-quarters fight with a one year old, but he definitely knows his way around long distance shooting.

I understand we've lost almost every fight that involved infiltrating this group. I mean, they did almost kill my clone on accident. But this time, we come with a secret weapon.

The Plasmius Maximus (with much sarcasm) is a device that completely cancels a ghost's powers for three hours. Furthermore, the samples (robot) that we collected from one of the facilities confirmed that the substance inside the metal death machines is, in fact, modified ectoplasm.