Yue

  January

09:27 GMT -5

Kara can barely stop herself giggling as we head towards the training room.

"…sound conceited about this, but last time I helped a young woman out like this… Things got a bit-"

"It's okay."

"-awkward, and while you're a perfectly pleasant-."

"You're not my type either."

I stop, regarding her curiously. She comes to a halt a moment later. "What?"

"What is your type? Because I know a lot of people-."

"Ah-. Look. I'm.. not really-" She shakes her head. "-looking for a relationship right now."

"Glad to hear it." Artemis walks out of an adjacent corridor, eyebrows raised in my direction.

"I was offering to act as a matchmaker. Or at least do some vetting."

I get a mild eye-roll as Artemis steps up to Kara, right hand extended. "Hi, I'm Artemis. You're Supergirl, right?"

"No, I'm Kara Zor-El." Kara cautiously takes Artemis's hand-.

"You don't need to be that careful. I've used the Danner Formula. You don't have to worry about accidentally hurting me by squeezing too hard."

Kara smiles, slightly reassured, as the two of them shake hands. "I'm not a superhero. I don't intend to fly around calling myself 'Supergirl'."

"Oh. Ah, okay." Artemis turns to lead the way towards the training room and we follow on behind her. "How did the thing with Match go?"

"As well as could be expected. He was a little.. 'spaced out', but he wasn't violent or aggressive."

"Kon and M'gann are off the active list for at least a week while they help him settle in."

Artemis glances back. "Is he.. gunna be living here?"

I nod. "Yes, though Kal-El's going to be mentoring him rather than Diana."

Kara frowns uncomfortably. "You're not… Going to make him a 'super hero', are you?"

"No. Being a superhero takes training. We can't just… Throw people out there, whatever super powers they've got."

"And he's effectively new-born, and doesn't have the same programming Kon-El did making him want to fight people. It would make sense for him to take part in some of our training, but only in the same way you are. If he wants to join up later, that's his decision."

"And he's going to be educated in the same school that Kon and M'gann attend?"

Artemis frowns. "I thought they were just gunna use the g-gnomes?"

"Probably, and that's Match's decision. It might work out better if he started school next autumn, give him a chance to acclimatise a bit first."

Artemis doesn't look entirely happy with my answer. "But he's physically a teenager. If he doesn't want people to know where he really came from, it's gunna look kinda weird if he doesn't know-"

We walk out into the training room, where Kal-El is waiting for us with the rest of the active team. Richard and Kaldur look around as we come in, while Wallace-.

"-basic stuff."

Wallace dashes up and halts in front of Artemis. "Hey babe!"

"Hey Wally."

I press on as they embrace and Kara flies over to talk to Kal-El. Robert and Beryl are here, as are Raquel, Tula, Garth and Leonid. Canis-.

"Orange Lantern." Kaldur heads my way. "Canis Minor has not returned from Ungara."

"Still?" I would have thought that he would have come back by now. "Is that.. critical?"

"No, but it is difficult to plan for team exercises if I do not know who will make an appearance."

I nod. "I'll head over to Ungara after we finish whatever Superman has for us. See what the hold up is."

He nods. "Thank you. It is most likely that he has merely been struck by inspiration and is spending his time painting or sculpting, but he has not returned to the Mountain for several days."

Roy walks in from the direction of the showers, Wolf and the Sphere close behind. Looks like a full house, then.

Kal-El looks around. "Aqualad, is this everyone?"

"Yes, Superman."

"Alright then." Kal-El calls up a holographic screen as all of us -including Kara- fall in to our accustomed arc. "Last year the Justice League became aware of a effort by a group of demons to sell-" He hesitates, his eyes rest on me for a moment. "-a narcotic based on demon alchemy on Earth." Screenshots from our first encounter with the jizzers appear on the screen. "Since then, police worldwide have been fighting to shut down production and distribution facilities. Unfortunately, the alchemical potions they use can grant the people using them short term superpowers, meaning that they're often more than capable of fighting back."

Footage from a fight in Mexico which occurred while I was off founding the Orange Lantern Corps. A vaguely wolf-like jizzer tears first through members of a rival drug gang and then through a police blockade, bullets… Hitting, but failing to stop it.

"The substance in question was created by a demon lord named Satanus, known to the world as the media tycoon Collin Thornton."

An image of him in both forms appears on screen.

"With his arrest and imprisonment last year-"

And after what happened with The Demon Constantine, Waller quadrupled down on the magic defences and convinced the committee overseeing Belle Reve to authorise a round the clock presence of Atlantean mages. Constantine's alter-ego is cunning, but as far as I could tell he doesn't have much more raw power than the regular version. Or… Less, now, I suppose. So I don't think there's anyone with a strong motive to attempt to liberate Collin Thornton, and I'm reasonably sure that he can't escape by himself.

"-we hoped that the supply would be cut off, or at least reduced. Unfortunately, he had already passed responsibility for that over to one of his allies, a demon named Rosacarnis."

The picture of Satanus vanishes, replaced by one of the ones I took over New Year of the woman herself.

"Usually, a demon lord would play his cards close to his chest. The fact that Satanus was willing to share his knowledge with other demons means that we might not be dealing with a single supply chain any longer."

Which isn't exactly a novel problem. If only one person knew how to make heroin or cocaine the War on Drugs might actually be winnable.

The picture of Rosacarnis disappears, and is replaced a map of Virginia.

"State police in Virginia have uncovered what they think is a distribution network. They've made a series of arrests-"

Images appear on the screen, police leading various people away in handcuffs and in one case standing on guard in the aftermath of their SWAT team shooting a transformed Jizzer dead.

"-but they're a little concerned that they're going to run into harder resistance when they close in on the ringleaders. They've asked the Justice League for help, and that's where you come in. You'll be assisting police departments in Richmond, Midvale and Leesburg with detecting users and suppliers." He turns his attention to the team's magic users. "They've already been granted the warrants they need for using magic-detection spells, so you won't need to worry about whether your tests are admissible in court or not."

A minor grimace from Tula and Garth. They were called to testify on a case a few months ago, and the uncomfortable place magic occupies in the American judicial system gave the defence lawyer an avenue for trying to get their testimony thrown out.

"Your mission is to aid them in the detection and apprehension of anyone associated with the network. Your secondary objective is to see what you can find out about who in Hell is in charge of the supply side, so that the Justice League can try and do something about that side of things."

"Does anyone have any questions?