Work Text:
Cassie had been in the training room for three hours.
Technically it was longer than that, but she didn’t count nonconsecutive hours. Ever since she defeated Lycus she’d been practicing, trying and failing to replicate whatever it was she’d done during that fight.
Nothing seemed to work. “Training” the power mostly involved lassoing random objects and trying to will them to do… something. She didn’t know what she was doing, because despite beating Lycus soundly, she had no idea what she did. She’d used a power she didn’t even know she had when she took control of Ares’s lasso, and when she… discorporated Lycus? Vanished him? Whatever. When she told her nephew to go away, and sent him away.
Maybe she was approaching this the wrong way. She backtracked, searching her memory for everything she’d been feeling and thinking in the moment. Anger was a given. The fierce desire to protect her friends, to avenge Marvin and Wendy, was strong but unsurprising. Frustration, and under that frustration, a desire for change. She wanted to end the fight, for Lycus to go away, for her lasso and powers to quit fighting her. She wanted to change it all. The answer was there, she could feel it.
Literally feel it. She felt something shift, like a block she never knew was there had lifted. Her chest felt warm, like there was a ball of heat right over her heart. She latched onto the feeling. It was the same thing she’d felt when she unlocked her powers while fighting Lycus, the feeling that filled her hands when she changed the lasso from Ares’ possession — all rage and painful pricks of static like thorns under her fingers — into a weapon she could genuinely call her own. She kindled the feeling, encouraging it to grow, to spread. Through her chest, down her arms, through her stomach and legs.
Cassie was so focused on drawing the feeling out that she forgot she didn’t actually know how to control it. She had no idea where or how to direct it. It grew and grew until it filled her body. She felt like a tea kettle, boiling over but with no valve to release the pressure.
“Okay, that’s enough. Enough!” She tried to push it away. Her body felt like it was melting. The pressure increased, and Cassie knew it had to escape somehow.
Great, she thought. First thing I do with my new powers is explode myself. And then everything went black.
“There’s a bird in the training room,” Eddie said.
“Okay?” Jaime didn’t look up from the game he was playing on one of the monitors.
“No, not okay. There’s a big ass bird in the training room. How the hell did it get in the Tower?”
“Relax, Sizzle Shorts. Somebody probably left a window open. We had a bird get into our garage one time, and it took Mama three days to chase it out. Get this — Milagro looked up what type it was, and the thing was called a tufted titmouse!” He chortled, then frowned when Eddie didn’t laugh, aggressively button mashing the controller. “Okay, maybe it’s not that funny. I didn’t actually think it was funny, I just figured you would be immature enough to like it.”
“This isn’t a little bird. It’s like a goose or something.”
The pixelated character went up in a ball of pixelated flames, with YOU LOSE flashing on the screen. “Say what?” Jaime dropped the controller on the desk and leaned over to see what screen Eddie was looking at. Eddie had started flipping through the Tower’s security cameras out of boredom when his character in the game died, and stopped on the overhead for the training room.
Sure enough, there was an enormous white bird standing in the middle of the room. Standing was inaccurate; throwing a fit was a better description, what with all the flapping and hopping it was doing.
“What’s that?” Jaime asked, pointing to a pile on the floor near the bird.
Eddie zoomed in a little. Blue jeans, two boots, and a red and gold shirt. A familiar red and gold shirt, with a double W emblem.
Wonder Girl’s clothes, lying messy on the floor, with no Wonder Girl in sight. Only an angry bird, doing what now could only be described as a war dance in a place it had no reasonable right to be.
“Oh, shit,” Eddie said, “bird ate Cassie.”
“Call Amy,” said Jaime.
The Teen Titans assembled. Without their illustrious leader, they numbered just three. Jaime and Amy armored up, and Eddie grabbed a stun gun from the weapons locker.
“Wait. Run that back by me,” Amy said as they sprinted down the stairs to the training room.
“An evil bird broke in, and it’s in the training room,” Eddie said. “We think it got Cassie already.”
Amy snorted.
“It’s not funny!” Jaime said.
“No, you’re right,” Amy guffawed. “It’s hilarious!”
“I wish I had my powers,” Eddie lamented as they turned the corner. “We could have portaled right in and gotten the drop on the thing.”
“We can’t just go charging in there! What if it’s got superpowers?”
“It’s a bird.”
“It’s a bird that defeated Cassie!”
“Still just a bird,” Amy said. “And she’s not so tough.”
“She’s Wonder Girl!”
“So?”
“You are just impossible,” Eddie muttered. Amy didn’t know. She didn’t get why Eddie and Jaime were so worked up, practically shaking with nervous energy. She wasn’t there until afterward, the last time a strange animal got into the Tower, and by that time one teammate was irreversibly maimed and another dead.
They stopped outside the training room door.
“Anyone got a plan?” Eddie asked.
“Walk in and start blasting before it can attack?” Jaime suggested.
“It’s a bird.” Amy repeated. She punched in the access code and the training room doors flew open.
“Dammit, Bombshell!” Eddie cursed and rushed after her, with Jaime on his heels.
The bird was bigger in person. It stood tall, its wings raised. It was snow white all over except for its orange beak and mask like black markings around its eyes.
At the sight of them it rushed forward.
“Stay back, featherbrain!” Jaime blasted the ground in front of it. The bird skidded to a halt with a startled honking sound.
“What’d you do to Wonder Girl?” Eddie snarled, waving his stun gun threateningly.
It hissed at them.
Jaime raised his cannon, and the bird immediately scrambled behind a computer terminal.
“Come out with your wings up!” Eddie shouted.
Tap tap tap. A tapping sound emanated from behind the terminal. A strange scraping sound followed it, like the bird was dragging its webbed foot on the ground. Another three taps. The series of noises repeated.
Tap tap tap. Scrape scrape scrape. Tap tap tap.
“Is that… Morse code?” Amy said, disbelieving.
“Is it?” Eddie asked. “What’s it saying?”
“It’s the SOS signal,” Jaime said. “It’s signaling for help?”
Eddie tensed. “Reinforcements?”
A squawk came from behind the terminal. It sounded strangely indignant.
Jaime hesitated, another thought occurring to him. “Maybe it wants to say something, but that’s the only signal it knows.”
The sounds stopped. The bird peeked around the corner at them. The three Titans were tense, but made no move to attack. The bird slowly stepped out from behind its cover. When they showed no aggression, it waddled quickly to the pile of clothes laying in the middle of the room. It grabbed Wonder Girl’s shirt, raising it in its beak to shake at them.
“Is it gloating?” Eddie could swear the bird rolled its eyes at him.
“Nah, wait a minute.” Jaime had a bad feeling he knew what was going on.
The bird dropped the shirt and waddled back to the computer. It awkwardly jumped onto the terminal, which was the control panel for one of the simulation rooms. It brought up the computer screen meant for commands and started typing. The three Titans were all so stunned that they simply stood there and let it type, one slow peck at a time. The letters appeared on screen, and slowly resolved into words.
IM CASSIE
Amy busted out laughing.
“Cassie!? You’re a bird! Why are you a bird?” Eddie said
“How did you end up like this?” Jaime asked.
The typing resumed, with Cassie slowly and awkwardly locating each key to peck it with her beak.
I CHANGED
“Did someone cast a spell or something?” Jaime asked.
I
MYSEF
TRANSFO
“You transformed?” Amy translated before the painfully slow typing was complete. Cassie honked, a strangely affirmative sound. “You did this yourself, not someone to you?”
YE
“Yes, you’re saying yes, we get it.”
The swan glared at her with one beady black eye.
“You changed yourself into a bird?” Jaime said.
“So this is like… a new power?” Eddie asked. Another honk, accompanied by a slight raising of her wings that looked like a shrug. A clear I guess so if Eddie had ever seen one.
“Weird,” Jaime and Eddie muttered in tandem.
They stood staring at each for a moment, three human teenagers and one teenage swan, before Eddie asked the obvious. “Can you change back?”
A squawk. Cassie flapped her wings, but there was no change from swan back to girl.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Eddie said.
“Yup. Scarab agrees, that sounds like a no.”
“Scarab can speak goose?”
“She’s a swan, not a goose, dipshit.” Amy said at the same time Cassie squawked indignantly and Jaime said, “No, but it’s obvious she’s still not changing.”
“Swan, whatever. Crap. If she can’t change back, then we ought to call somebody, right?”
“Like who?”
“Beast Boy!” Eddie snapped his fingers. “Beast Boy’s a shapeshifter, he’ll know what to do.”
“Yeah, but he’s not a magic shapeshifter,” Jaime said. “Remember what Dr. Mid-nite said that one time? Cassie’s powers are mystical, not… whatever Beast Boy has going on.”
“Okay, so we need a magic user.” Eddie got a mischievous glint in his eye. “We could call Traci.”
“No,” Jaime said immediately.
“Traci has magic, we need some magic help, ergo—”
“No.”
“Come on!”
“No!”
“Dude, what is your issue with letting your girlfriend hang with your team?” Eddie said.
“I don’t have an issue, I just don’t want— look, it’s dangerous to be a Titan and—”
“So you think she can’t handle herself,” Amy cut in. “Chauvinist much?”
“No, that’s not—”
Before the conversation could devolve into an argument, Cassie leapt up in a fury of flapping and feathers. She battered their heads and shoulders with her wings and yanked Eddie’s hair with her beak.
“Ow!”
“Okay, okay! I’ll call Traci!”
“And Robin. Definitely call Robin.”
“You the boss, geeze.”
Cassie subsided, plopping back down to the ground with a satisfied honk.
It took Traci several hours to extract herself from a case and reach the Tower. In that time, the Titans relocated to the Tower common room, and Robin arrived in record time from Gotham City. With nothing to do but wait, they busted out the snacks and video games.
While Cassie had begrudgingly let Eddie carry her up to the common room, she settled easily next to Tim on the couch, out of range of Eddie and Jaime’s flailing elbows as they jostled each other while playing their game. She trusted all her current teammates, but she had felt relieved (and frankly, more safe) when Tim walked in the door. Years of fighting side by side and facing down all kinds of threats, from ridiculous to terrifying to traumatizing, did that. His presence made it feel like this was one more absurdity to add to the Young Justice Annals.
“I thought we were supposed to be Wonder Girl and her loveable sidekick Robin,” he said, “not Boy Wonder and Swan.” She nipped his fingers and stole his cheese puff, ignoring his chuckles.
Now that help was on the way, and her teammates weren’t threatening to attack her, Cassie found that being a swan wasn’t too bad. She liked the feel of her wings, and knew that once she got the hang of changing back and forth, she would love to give them a test run. Flying had always been a blast from the first time she put on the Sandals of Hermes, but with actual wings it would be so different and so, so cool. Maybe once she got good enough she could even use this in the field. Definitely not to fight, but perhaps as subterfuge or on intelligence gathering missions…
When Traci arrived, it only took her a few seconds to diagnose the problem and present a solution.
“Okay, I think I know what you did,” Traci said. “I’m going to pull your energy forward. You just focus on becoming human. Picture hands, legs, skin, everything that makes you human and not a swan.”
Cassie bobbed her head, and Traci gently touched her head and feathery breast.
Warmth suffused Cassie, similar to what she’d felt earlier, only not so wild and out of control. Feathers melted away. Her limbs stretched, lengthening as new skin covered them. Between one heartbeat and the next she was back, fully returned to her human form, crouching naked on the floor.
Tim was there in an instant, wrapping his cape around her bare shoulders. He helped her to her feet.
“Thanks, Traci,” Cassie said, her voice hoarse. Her throat was dry as a bone, and she felt like she’d just sprinted across the desert while carrying the whole Tower on her back. Eddie handed her a water bottle, and she gratefully gulped it down. In the time it took her to finish it, her teammates and the rest looked ready to burst with questions. Tim led the charge, trying and failing to look casual about his best friend turning into a bird.
“So. You’re a shapeshifter now.”
“Seems so,” Cassie said, flexing her hand. She would never take having fingers for granted again. “That is, if I can get it to work again.”
“I can give you some tips,” Traci said. “It’s not too different from the energy manipulation most magic users wield to transform things, except it’s focused on you and your body, not anything else.”
“I’d really appreciate that.”
“Where’d this power come from? It doesn’t fit with the whole strength-flight-and-lasso theme all you Wonders seem to follow,” Jaime said.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a demigod thing,” Cassie said. “Zeus can change into different creatures, and since he’s my dad, I guess it’s genetic. I never knew because I never really pushed the limits of what I could do before. I always thought Zeus only gave me strength and flight.” She had never really explored her powers. Never tested how fast she could fly, or tried to reach the upper limit of her strength. They got the job done, and with Artemis’s martial arts training, they got the job done better. She hadn’t once considered the possibility that there might be more to her powerset than strength and flying; that was usually all she needed, even if she did sometimes envy Diana’s supernatural endurance and her other Amazon gifts. Cassie’s lack of imagination had been limiting her this whole time. That needed to change; if this incident proved anything, it was that anything was possible.
“Can you turn into any animal?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”
“What I don’t get is why you turned into a swan. Like, of all things.”
“You need to brush up on your mythology, Eddie,” Cassie said. “Zeus frequently turned into animals to avoid Hera’s wrath when he had affairs with mortal women. He turned into a swan to seduce Leda, a Spartan queen. She was Helen of Troy’s mom, and her kids hatched from eggs.”
“Wait, was he a swan while they…?”
Cassie shrugged. “It’s unclear. The Renaissance artists certainly thought so.” She laughed at the disgusted and fascinated faces around the room.
“If you can turn into a swan like Zeus could,” Tim said, “then what else can you do?”
Cassie thought of lightning and thunder. Powerful winds and pouring rain. Zeus was the god of the sky, after all.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t wait to find out.”