the robin & the canary; young justice

o25: Usual Suspects

W A S H I N G T O N,  D . C .
December 30, 09:05 EST

To say that the Team was antsy would be an understatement. 

Here they were, standing inside the Hall of Justice, on the same day that the League was going to be inducting their newest members, and ten minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start, the Team's two most experienced proteges hadn't even arrived yet.

Artemis, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Zatanna, Superboy, Miss Martian, and their newest recruit Raquel Ervin, a.ka Rocket, were dressed in civvies and milling about the library inside the Justice League's planet-side headquarters, watching the newscast on one of the large TV screens as Cat Grant readied herself to report on the event.

"They're not gonna get here in time," Artemis muttered from where she was standing, and Wally, who had been designated 'gorilla babysitter' while Silverbird and Robin stayed for a few more days in Europe, glanced over at the blonde from where he was standing, feeding Zira slices of banana.

The baby gorilla did not like bananas much, so as the speedster opened his mouth to say that it wasn't very likely that the two birds would end up missing this, Zira threw some of her banana slices at his face, pouting like the six-month-old baby that she was.

"Well, sorry," Wally muttered, snapping his head around to look at Zira as the gorilla glared at him for feeding her bananas when obviously, her favorite snack was strawberries. "How am I supposed to know what you like to eat when it's quite obvious that your human parents are spoiling you? What kind of monkey doesn't like bananas?"

"She's an ape, Wally," Zatanna corrected, and Wally groaned, throwing his hands up in the air.

"I know that!" he exclaimed, setting Zira's now half-empty bowl of banana slices off to the side and picking up the small gorilla before the redhead turned back towards Artemis. "And, they'll make it," he told the blonde simply. "There's no way Reese and Robin would want to miss this,"

"Then where are they?" Artemis asked, crossing her arms. "There's less than ten minutes before the ceremony starts, and those two have been in Bulgaria for what? A week now? No way they'll be able to get from the airport in Gotham to here in less than that time. Even with taking the zeta tubes,"

Even though he and Artemis were friends now, and even though Wally might have the teeniest, tiniest crush on her, she still wasn't privy to Batman and Robin's secret IDs, and until she was, Wally wasn't about to tell her that Dick and Reese weren't even flying home. Not technically, anyway.

Instead, they'd be flying to France from Sofia, then taking the Eurostar from Paris to London, and then zeta-ing to the Hall of Justice from the international WayneTech offices in the U.K.

All in all, the trip would only take about four-and-a-half hours total. But, once again, Wally reiterates, Artemis didn't need to know that yet.

Just then, as if the two youngest members of the Team had been summoned, simply by the rest of the Team talking about them, the doors next to the screens that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY slid open, the inside cavity glowing yellow as the zeta tube activated, thus announcing the arrivals of Dick and Reese.

Recognized Robin B-0-1, Silverbird B-0-3

It was one thing to arrive on time, Wally figured. It was quite another to arrive both on time and in one piece, an act that the two young lovebirds almost failed as, just as the two of them were entering the library, Dick's feet somehow got tangled up with his girlfriend's, and they both went sprawling across the floor.