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Make more friends, Anita. Talk with girls your own age, Anita. It'll be sooooo fun, Anita.
Admittedly, her dad probably had something very different in mind when he'd mentioned this to her. Probably he was envisioning something closer to Disney Channel sleepovers, painting each other's nails and doing each other's hair and coming closer together in female solidarity. Probably he was hoping that Anita would not immediately go out and get herself involved in Some Nonsense.
Probably he should have known better.
Anita had stumbled into dubious superheroism with the approximate grace of a tranquilized elephant. A fateful glimpse of a special news feature on the Arrowette had led to an anti-climatic oh shit, I like girls realization and a slightly more climatic revelation of there's more I can be doing, which had, somehow, culminated in her donning the armor and the weapons and going out there all on her own.
The initial plan had been to follow Dad and Uncle Maad around. Surely, amongst all their weird secret agent bullshit, there would be something for a young upstart hero to do. And, well. There most certainly had been! It had been something about…a car? And also a volcano? Who knows, the whole thing was a blur, but Anita had stumbled out of the mess with a freshly minted membership of what has to be the most disastrous girl group of all time.
So she's a superhero now. She's got the outfit and the team and even a slightly tragic backstory, for flavor. The rest of it should be a breeze, right?
It is not a breeze.
"Empress!" Wonder Girl—Cassie—shouts out. "Stop, drop, and roll!"
Anita grits her teeth as she drops, narrowly avoiding another burst of nonsense from the fucking multi-dimensional chaos being that's decided to make her life more difficult this fine evening.
He has a name, but it's stupid and dumb and Anita has elected not to learn it. Sounds like somebody slammed their hands into a keyboard and called it a day. He couldn't be called Bob or something, oh no. That would actually make Anita's life marginally easier.
Wonder Girl is currently tied up in a lasso that's actually a string of balloons, bouncing between the walls and cursing viciously. Arrowette—the Arrowette, the real life actual Cissie King-Jones—keeps on trying to fire off arrows that dissolve into bubbles. She is also cursing viciously. Between, they're covering every possible four letter word combination.
Secret or Suzie or some other name that nobody knows is having the best luck thus far. Mr. McWhatever is having a harder time with her, ephemeral as she is. Nothing he tries seems to stick, as Suzie billows in and out of existence. Good girl.
Mr. McWhatever's stupid little ugly face is getting redder and redder by the minute. Not so fun-loving now, apparently. When he had crashed the Halloween party, he had been a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young scientist, fucking with teenaged partygoers for the sake of intellectual advancement. Cassie had said, hey, you're that one C-list Superman rogue, and Mr. McWhatever had very snootily claimed he was a scientist, and that he would certainly never become a villain now. This had all been well and good—great, even—until Cissie had glanced outside and said, oh shit, the timeline. Because apparently a stable timeline absolutely needs this weird fucking guy floating around and fucking shit up. Hooray. Suzie had come up with the idea of having him watch old, goofy tunes, which had apparently convinced him of the merits of lighthearted villainy and unfucked the timeline while newly fucking the present.
At least that's what Anita…thinks is happening? It's hard to get anything coherent out of a guy whose whole thing is making the world as weird and needlessly complicated as possible. As much as Anita hates to say it, he's succeeding.
She doesn't want to risk using any of her actual powers when Mr. McWhatever is doing his damndest to ensure that reality stays on the fritz. It's time to resort to good old-fashioned violence and swing her sticks around with the pent-up frustration that only a teenaged girl can manage. McWhatever had decided to get her by turning the tile beneath her feet into quicksand. A little basic, but could be worse. Anita grits her teeth and pulls her way out of it. Mr. McWhatever is so distracted being spittingly mad at Suzie that he doesn't seem to notice. Excellent.
Across the room, Cissie seems to come to a similar conclusion, winding her arm back with her bow in hand and literally throwing it McWhatever's way. Wow. What a woman. McWhatever is so distracted by Susie's refusal of corporeality that it actually makes contact, hitting upside his stupid cartoon head. As in all things, Anita simply takes inspiration from her heroes: lobbing her baton across the room and getting him right across the nose; which makes a clown-ish squeaking nose.
"Ha!" Cassie says from the ceiling, shaking an arm free of the lasso. "Take that!"
Mr. McWhatever is slowly turning red, red as the sun at the end of a hot, heavy day, cheeks ballooning up as he makes a long, loud frustrated noise, angrier than ever.
Cissie pulls a new arrow out of her quiver, even though her bow is still laying haphazardly across the room. She'll figure out something to do with it, Anita is sure. Cassie drops down from her entanglement on the ceiling, somehow managing to pose herself in way that tells the whole world that she means business. Anita, for her part, readies herself with her one remaining staff out in front of her. This could be a long, long fight.
Mr. McWhatever's face splits into a truly terrifying, manic grin. "Now you'll see—"
Suzie comes up from behind him, passing straight through. "Oh, are we over here?"
"Secret!" Anita shouts. She's been handing McWhatever just fine so far, but he's reaching some kind of critical anger overload. What if it's too much? Anita barely knows Suzie, but she's sweet. She doesn't deserve any of it.
But when Suzie comes out the other side, McWhatever is just—gone.
Anita drops her stance. Cassie and Cissie tilt their heads in perfect, unified confusion.
Suzie blinks, glances back behind her. "Oh!" she says. "Where did he go?"
"Did you…" Cassie starts, delicately. "Do something?"
Suzie taps a spectral finger underneath her chin. "I don't think so," she says, but she knows just as much about her abilities as anyone else. Which is to say: Not much. "Maybe he just left."
"Left," Anita echoes.
"I mean," Cissie says. "His whole modus operandi is not having a modus operandi. Maybe he got bored."
A moment of silence. Anita taps her staff against her kneeguard. Finally, Cassie blows out a sigh and puts her hands on her hips.
"Could be worse," she says.
Cissie shoots her a flat look. "We got our asses beat by an interdimensional clown."
"But we unfucked the timeline," Cassie says.
"Nobody's dead," Anita admits.
"And we got to go to a party," Suzie adds.
Cassie gives Cissie a shrug and a self-deprecating smile. "Sounds like a win to me."
Like Anita said. The most disastrous girl group of all time.
The members of Young Justice drag themselves back into home base with slumping shoulders and empty eyes. Cissie and Cassie collapse on a couch together, shoulders just brushing. Suzie floats in a lazy figure eight. Anita lays down on the cold hard ground, stares up at the ceiling, and reconsiders her life choices yet again. She reconsiders her life choices a lot for a high schooler.
There's the distinct clanking noise of Red Tornado entering the room. Nobody looks up.
"Ah," he says, metallic as ever. "You're back. I trust your outing went well?"
Cassie flashes a thumbs-up from the couch. "Well. We're not dead."
Cissie gives her a half-hearted elbow to the side. "Barely." Cassie elbows back. Anita does her best to tune out the ensuing slapfight.
"I'm probably dead," Suzie says, mournfully.
Cassie stops with a wince as Cissie gets another hit into her ribcage. "Ah, man," she says. "I'm sorry, Sue."
Suzie sighs, long and sad. "I've gotten used to it," she says, which makes Cassie wince again. But when Cassie finally picks up the slapfight with Cissie, Suzie looks Anita's way with a small smile and a deliberate, clumsy wink. Anita coughs into her fist.
Red Tornado says, "I saw the reports. All things considered, you did well."
All things considered is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Cissie waves off the compliment, even though her face goes a pleased pink. "Aw, it's all in a day's work," she says. "Thanks anyway—" A brief, barely perceptible stumble. "—Red."
Anita would bet two months of allowances that Cissie almost, almost slipped up and said Dad. It's bound to happen at some point. There's a small but constantly shifting ranking, invented by Cassie and regularly contributed to by Anita, determining who cracks first and officially Dads Red Tornado. Cassie thinks Suzie is the one who'll crack first, but Anita knows she's underestimating Cissie's seismic parental issues. The wild cards are, of course, Anita and Cassie themselves. Cassie doesn't have a dad, per se, but she's relatively well-adjusted for the cape set. Anita has at least one dad already—two, if she decides to count Uncle Maad—but it's possible this will make her more prone to misnaming.
Still. Just because Cissie's caught herself today doesn't mean Anita won't cash out her bet of fifteen dollars and seventy-five cents—Cassie's own allowance—tomorrow.
Cissie blows out a big sigh, blowing a strand of her perfectly smooth blonde hair up and around her face. "Anyway. What now? I'm bored."
"Cis," Cassie says, slightly muffled. "Your hair is in my mouth—"
Anita ignores her, lifting her head up from the ground to say, "You're bored? After all that?"
"Well, we finished with it," Cissie says simply. Childhood vigilantism, Anita's noticed fucks with your resting definition of occupied. "Now what?"
"Since it's a school night—" Red Tornado starts.
Anita automatically makes a face, reflected immediately by Cissie and Cassie. Even Suzie goes in, despite the fact that she does not go to school, due to the whole ghostly government fugitive thing.
"As team leader," Cassie says. Cissie shakes her head with great fondness. "I say that we're disregarding anything Red says next. Sorry, man."
It's difficult for a robot to look peeved, but Red Tornado manages it with uncanny accuracy. "Rest is important for adolescent development—"
"So is other stuff," Anita says. "Like—I don't know."
"Fighting interdimensional incarnations of chaos." It's also difficult for a robot to meaningfully inflect sarcasm, but Red manages it every time.
"We're building character," Suzie says.
Anita points up to Suzie's resting spot up on the ceiling. "Yes. Exactly." Suzie beams.
Cassie pounds a fist into her hands. "I've got it."
Cissie raises a platinum blonde eyebrow. "Do tell. Team leader."
Cassie nudges at her shoulder again. Cissie nudges back. Anita rolls her eyes. The flirting is weird and eternal and entirely unacknowledged by both Cissie and Cassie. Anita had only figured it out because she had made the mistake of getting buddy-buddy with Cassie back when she had first joined up, and Cissie had glared arrows right through Anita's soul. This hadn't helped with Anita's little crush on her, per se, but it had been illuminating nonetheless.
Anyway. Cassie looks like she's gearing up for some grand revelation. Cissie leans in even closer towards her. Suzie floats down from the ceiling. Even Anita finds the wherewithal to sit up, resting her elbows on her knees.
Cassie's grand revelation is thus: "We should have a sleepover."
Red Tornado says, "Oh no."
"Huh," Cissie says, grinning slowly. "Yeah. Could actually be fun."
"Sleepover," Suzie says, considering. "We sleep over—what?"
"It's like a type of party," Anita explains. "A bunch of girls get together and talk about—life and stuff. And they sleep in sleeping bags." Admittedly, a hundred percent of Anita's sleepover experience comes from watching teenybop shows she refuses to admit she's invested in, but the girls don't need to know that.
"Well, you're all a bunch of girls," Suzie says, tapping a knuckle underneath her chin.
"Sue, you're a girl too," Cissie says.
"Am I?" Suzie says vaguely. Cissie's face takes on a thoughtful cast.
"It doesn't actually matter whether or not you're a girl," Cassie says, putting off any impending gender crisises with a wave of her hand. "The point is that it's a bunch of cool kids hanging out and getting to know each other better."
"Are we cool?" Anita wonders aloud.
Cassie's resulting look is flat and unimpressed. "Suzie," she says. "You're closer. Can you pinch Anita for me?"
The next thing Anita knows, there's a cold, spectral twinge at her elbow. Betrayed, Anita looks over to Suzie, floating next to the offended appendage. Suzie shrugs.
"Sorry," she says, looking not very. "Team leader says."
Cissie nods. "Team leader says."
Anita lays back down in the floor. "I'm quitting the team. And moving to Canada."
"Why Canada?" Cissie asks.
Cassie cuts a hand through the air. "Okay. We're getting off-topic."
"I don't feel very supported in this environment," Anita says tonelessly.
Cassie ignores her. Probably wise. "We're doing a sleepover," she says, as if the decision is made. Nobody argues with her, so apparently it is. She leans over the back of the couch, gesturing over to where Red Tornado is still processing the conversation. "Yo! Red! Can you order some pizzas?"
Cissie also pops up over the back of the couch, tucking her fists underneath her chin and very likely batting her eyelashes. After a beat, Cassie copies her, and Suzie a beat after that. Anita doesn't. She has dignity.
Red's sigh is long, metallic, and awfully aggrieved for something that isn't supposed to have emotion. "I'll make the necessary calls," he says finally. "The usual orders, yes?"
"Go big or go home," Cassie says. "This is an event. A celebration."
Anita raises an eyebrow. "Of getting our asses kicked?"
"Well, we won," Suzie points out. "Eventually."
Fair enough. They'd persevered, they'd survived, and now they're all gathered together to make a new living hell for Red Tornado in the form of overly complex pizza orders and do…sleepover stuff. Whatever that may entail.
Red Tornado wanders off to blow the the GDP of a small nation on delicious slabs of grease and cheese. Cassie slides down from the couch to join Anita on the floor, Cissie sliding down after her. Suzie floats down, too. Now they're all on the floor together. Apparently, this is how sleepovers start. It's not like Anita would know. Having a secret agent for a dad—again, dads plural, if she feels like counting Uncle Maad—is less than conducive to a normal teenage lifestyle.
Then again, she could say that about anybody here. Cassie moved around a lot as a kid, Anita's pretty sure, even before all the Wonder Woman stuff. Cissie has all the weird child star bullshit. Suzie is, well. Suzie is Suzie. Suzie's had the craziest life out of any of them, and the standards are pretty high around these parts. High enough that it seems that nobody knows what to do next.
Cassie twiddles her thumbs together. "So," she says, after a dragging silence. "A movie. Right? They do movies at these things?"
"Yes," Anita says. All of the teenybop shows have girls watching movies and giggling over guys. "Like, girl movies."
"What constitutes a girl movie?" Cissie asks. Anita shrugs. She's just relaying information.
"Kissing?" Suzie offers, and then hides her face behind her hands, as if just saying the word kissing was enough to overwhelm her.
"For sure," Cassie says. Anita can't help but note she is very pointedly not looking Cissie's way. "Kissing. Kissing is great. I mean kissing movies! Are great. Um."
Cissie is a better teammate than Anita is, because she actually takes the initiative to put Cassie out of her misery. Her face is still so incredibly red as she says, "Anybody know any good, uh. Kissing movies?"
Anita shrugs. She and her dad mostly watch action movies from when he was a kid, with the cheesy special effects and everything. Sometimes Uncle Maad is there, although he normally falls asleep on Dad's shoulder like, five minutes in.
"I don't know any movies," Suzie says, seemingly unaware of how she's gone back to hovering a few inches above the ground.
"One of those period dramas," Cassie suggests suddenly. "Like, the ones your mom watches, you know?"
"No," Anita says. Susie gestures to herself, effectively encapsulating her whole deal.
"My mom would," Cissie says, supportive as ever.
Cassie nudges their knees together before moving away just as fast. "Those have kissing in them, yeah?"
"I mean, if moms watch them," Anita says, as if she's any sort of authority in what moms do or don't like.
"Okay!" Cassie says, clapping her hands together. "Kissing movie! Period drama. Sleepover. Let's go." A pause. "Anybody know any period dramas?"
When Red Tornado comes back in, they're hunched over a computer googling period dramas. It turns out, there a lot of them, and a lot of strong opinions on them. Red Tornado hovers over their shoulders for a second, before he says, "I recommend Pride and Prejudice."
They all turn to look at him. He stares back, characteristically impassive.
Cassie shoots him a thumbs-up. "Okay."
Turns out Pride and Prejudice is actually pretty absorbing. By the time the pizza comes, Anita is already begrudgingly invested in Elizabeth and her weird, weird family. The pizza tastes even better than usual too, although it's generally pretty easy to satisfy a bunch of hungry teenagers coming back from an adrenaline crash.
At some point, Cissie and Cassie migrated back to the couch and then pretty much immediately conked out. They're slumped into each other, intertwining arms and legs. That's going to be fun for them to wake up to. The obliviousness can't continue forever. Suzie, meanwhile, drifts closer and closer to the TV. Either she's just as invested as Anita is or she's sleeping with her eyes open. It's hard to tell with Suzie sometimes.
Anita, for part, rests her cheek on one knee and watches the strange, emotionally repressed British people play out their funny little stories. There's something like contentment settling over her shoulders. Heavy like an old quit, warm like a stew in her stomach. It's just—nice. To do what she does. To end the day among friends.
Somehow, Anita feels mostly unembarrassed saying, "This is a pretty cool team."
Suzie, apparently, not asleep at all, turns back to her and smile. Cissie shuffles. Cassie, voice heavy with drowsiness, gives a simple, effusive: "Hell fucking yeah."
