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Watchtower
23 Mar, 23:06
Billy Batson, Shazam, is one of the frequent leaguers who gets paired up with the covert team.
And Billy has his fair share of time inside the teens’ head through the mind link.
There’s mostly good thoughts, mainly Kaldur trying his very best to keep the others out of doing stupid decisions (wiring the multiple of blast proof doors to close in the rhythm of Never Gonna Give You Up ‘Kid, Robin, for the last time no you little dip-’), going through with rash decisions (‘Rocket, Artemis, Zatanna please do not attempt to hurl me out of the facility I swear to-‘)
Well, half of the time Billy is trying to shut out the rather…inappropriate thoughts that unfortunately send across the mind link.
(‘So help me Poseidon-‘
‘Bonk!’ Zatanna suddenly shouts into the mind link, ‘For fucks sake, M’gann and Conner time out in horny jail’
‘Zee I don’t think that's gonna help one bit’ Artemis
‘Exactly,’ Robin, ‘You don’t put two horny people in horny jail and not expect them to—‘)
So yeah, it’s fun with the team. However it helps him reach a conclusion.
“Teenagers,” Billy sighs, “swear just so much.”
And he bumps right into Black Canary.
“You okay there Billy?” She asks, oh the wonderful angelic den mother, bless her heart.
Billy stands up right with her help, “Yeah, I’m good.”
“How’s your mission with the team?” She asks simply, there’s no harm in telling her mission details, she’s practically their second den mother right next to Red Tornado. Yeah, sure, no harm done.
“It’s alright,” And he starts recollecting how a normal Team mission would go, they go in covert and it always (well not always, Billy hopes) end up in explosions.
“But do you know,” He says innocently, again, there’s no harm in telling Black Canary about the Team’s antics, she’s not Batman.
“About the amount of swear words I have to hear in every mission?” Billy exhales, “It’s like a war zone up in there, they just don’t stop swearing. Uncle Ben tells me not to swear and I know it’s bad but I keep hearing this then I might slip and swear myself and…”
Dinah already lost track of Billy's rambling and took exactly a second to realize that Shazam, a superhero façade of a literal child ,Billy Batson is still currently youngest superhero and for god’s sake she would never imagine that it will be the Team, her kids, who are swearing in front of a literal child.
She needs a plan, something to tell them that it’s wrong to swear because they are still kids themselves, screw Kaldur being 17, he’s supposed to be the responsible one and keep them in line.
But still. They. Are. Children. And she has the greatest idea.
Sure it’s not the best idea but it will suffice. And what if her kids (God since when did that title stick? She ponders) doesn’t even care about it, she will make it happen.
Mount Justice
27 Mar, 14:50
The team finished a training session and they started filling into the kitchen area for snacks, Wally legit zoomed but that’s not the point, and it is the time for Dinah to reveal her great but also not so great plan.
She slams a big mason jar, one so big that it could marinate an entire human head, onto the kitchen island but with suitable force in order not to break it or it’ll ruin her entire plan and she’ll never hear the end of it from Ollie or from her Kids.
“Uhhh,” Wally stares at the jar, “What’s that?”
Black Canary again slaps a piece of paper on the jar and the teens huddle around and squint their eyes to read the letters.
Here comes the uproar.
“Are you kidding me?” Cries Artemis and a plethora of disagreements fills the room.
“I swear we don’t even swear that often!”
“I beg to differ,” Dinah taps on the ridge of the jar and then points her fingers to one of few security cams in the Cave.
The teens gawk at the small piece of circular glass, “You guys have time to review footage in here?” Wally furrows his brows in curiosity and fishes himself another chip from the bag.
And no, not since the Team has proven themselves to the league that they’re capable on their own, there is absolutely no need for the system, or Red Tornado for that matter, to review the security tapes.
Because 1, it’s borderline stalking and the kids wouldn’t like it one bit and honestly, Dinah just wants them to relax in a safe space, and 2, it’s really boring, like a long stake out kind of boring. ‘God these kids are rubbing off on her’
But the kids don’t know that, and in order to protect her inside man.
She agrees without hesitation.
“Batman said that you all cuss too much that it becomes a problem,” and now the ball isn’t in her hands. Ollie would be proud.
“Remember kids, be honest.” She gives them a warm smile on her way out, “Oh and remember to tell anyone that comes here to hangout, it’s susceptible to everyone.”
“So leaguers count?” Raquel chirps in.
“Especially leaguers!” Dinah shouts back before disappearing into the Zeta tube.
Once she lands herself in a dingy phone booth two blocks outside her apartment, she lets out a deep sigh.
“Fuck I need a long shower.”
Well thank god she isn’t in the cave right now.
Mount Justice
08 Apr, 17:48
The moment Dinah sees the empty mason jar and to say she isn’t disappointed is an understatement.
It’s an overstatement.
“Kids!” She already doesn’t care whether she addresses them as her children or the Team, the title slips out more that she likes but no party is complaining.
The main thing is that the Team comes to her calling and that’s what counts.
Conner groans and rolls his eyes, his head falls into his palms.
“We didn’t nothing,” Dinah remembers the gag birthday card Oliver got for Conner in hot pink glitter saying “Happy 2nd Birthday”, Ollie likes to mingle with the kids along with the ‘hip’ Leaguers to get on their good side, and tries her best to stifle a laugh at the card sitting on her dresser.
“This is bullshit!”
And the entire team stares at the poor soon-to-be 2 year old.
“Conner,” Dinah tone low, like how a mother asks for the kid to fess up the amount of cookies after bedtime, “That a dollar.” And taps twice at the jar.
He crosses his hands and pouts.
Conner, sort of biological son to both of the worst and best people on the entire planet, a freakin 2 year old teenager, pouting.
For the love of God, it takes her entire being to will herself not grabbing her phone and snapping a picture of it.
“We don’t even work!” He tries to defend himself, “I don’t have a dollar.”
Dinah rolls her eyes, “You think I wouldn’t know that Batman gives all of you a monthly allowance?”
That was a heated discussion during one of the league meetings. And one discussion that Dinah firmly stood her ground on.
“Wait, even we have one?” Wally points to the humans of the team.
“Where do you think half of your college fund comes from?” Dick chuckles, “He does it because he cares, but don’t tell him I said that.”
“Like you would get in trouble,” Zatanna grumbles and gets a slap on the arm by Dick.
While the human teens debate whether they are trust fund babies or not, Dinah continues to glare at Conner and motions the Swear Jar.
The clone groans and walks away from the kitchen only to come back with a coin.
The sound when the coin dropped into the jar was louder than any explosion.
Conner gives her a death stare and Dinah just smiles back.
“Thank you Conner.”
“Holy fuck she’s serious.”
“Wallace,” She raises her voice, “A dollar.”
“Oh my god!”
Metropolis
01 May, 19:23
It’s not uncommon for the Team to have random dinner nights on their day offs, hell if either of them don’t see each other for a week disasters are bound to happen.
None of them would ever admit it but M’gann thinks it’s cute.
What’s uncommon is for them to eat somewhere other than Happy Harbor.
“So are we here to stalk Superman in his territory or?” Conner asks the moment they stepped out of the zeta tube.
“Nah,” Dick shrugs and he starts leading the group out to the streets, “I think he has monitor duty on the Watchtower today.”
The group chatted as they walked through the city, mostly just normal day to day things like school, training and what not. There was a discussion on who’s on Wolf duty this week, but Conner paid zero attention, he was on Wolf duty for 2 weeks so it’s not his responsibility.
He turned his attention to M’gann, there was a little unease coming out from her. However, the look on her face says otherwise.
It’s the mixture between a frown and a smile. Conner can only describe it as the letter ‘w’. M’gann’s plotting.
‘M’gann?’ Conner nudges a little towards the mind link and the Martian responds with a ‘hmm?’
‘You’re plotting.’
‘What gives you that impression?’ She has the audacity to smile innocently.
‘It’s that look on your face.’ Conner really doesn’t have any other evidence, but for a person who lives with her every single second of the day, he’s bound to be able to read her.
‘Oh it’s nothing,’ M’gann shakes her head, ‘There’s something I’m gonna talk about during dinner.’
Conner glares and she laughs out loud.
“Ewwww!” Wally exclaims, “Can you two just get a room?”
“We’re not even doing anything,” Conner gives him an accused look.
“Yeah, tell that to the two voices I try to block out from the back of my head.” He then points both of his fingers to his head.
“We’re not doing anything,” Conner repeats with punctuation slowly, as if that can change Wally’s view.
“Shut the fuck up Wally,” Artemis slaps the back of the speedster’s head, “Behave yourself, we’re here.”
Lo and behold the infamous Bibbo’s fluorescent light blinds the teens.
“Finally, I’m so damn hungry.” And they sat in one of the booths.
And it’s their booth for that matter. Wally and Dick specifically etched the letters ‘JL’ onto the underside of the table.
Mind you, it stands for Junior League. It’s been used as an insult to a point that it became a running gag between the teens. No hard feelings.
(“Don’t you think that being pitted against the junior Justice League is more like a ‘you’ problem?” Kid Flash taunts as he evades ice beams shot from Killer Frost.
“Yeah,” Robin launches his birdarangs the moment the villain is distracted, “How does it feel to be reduced to child’s play, ego bruised enough?”)
They’ve grown past the point of being angry at such names, there’s no sense in dwelling on trying to rebut the name but instead they’re determined to prove themselves to be a younger version of the League, not a kiddie weaker version of the league. There’s a difference.
The group places their orders and continues the chatter even after eating two-thirds of their meal.
Conner has zero clue how the conversation suddenly made a sharp right and now landed themselves into a heated game of Fuck Marry Kill.
“Come on, like you can one up my trio of ice powered villains. I would fuck Killer Frost in an instant.” Zatanna said matter of factly, her face smug at her answer.
“Yeah,” Wally rolls his eyes, “And you’ll marry Captain Cold and kill Icicle Jr?”
Zatanna’s face is still smug.
“You’re kidding me! Why!”
“From what we hear from you and Barry, Central’s rogues care about whether they hurt civilians, so at least they have some redemption points.” Rocket extends a finger for emphasis, “And we have experience that Icicle Jr is a creep.”
Wally gawks at the two and slumps back into his seat, head sliding down to the middle of the backrest.
“Oh I got one!” Dick slaps his hand on the table and grabs the attention of everyone.
“Caillou, Aang from Avatar, and…” He drags on for dramatic effect and it’s working. He now has looks of anticipation (M’gann) to the ‘why am I here’ look (Kaldur and Artemis).
“Lex. Fucking, Luthor”
Chaos ensues.
“I’m telling you guys!” Dick pulls out 2 of his phones and Wally’s in his other hand, “You cannot, for the love of our life, not see the resemblance between the three of them. There is no way.”
Conner really tries to stifle a laugh when he sees a clear resemblance.
“You’re making us choose between 3 bald people!” Artemis exclaims, Conner can see a vein starting to show up on her neck, “And mind you, one is our arch enemy and the other two are literally children!”
As Dick attempts in making sure his rebuttal lands harder than the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kaldur drops his head and regrets his choice on following Aquaman to the surface world.
“Fuck me, I guess.”
M’gann suddenly shot up from her seat and shouted “Two hundred!” and the entire table froze at the statement.
“Sweetie, M’gann, what?” Raquel looks at her curiously.
“Two hundred swear words,” M’gann sits back down and sips on her smoothie, “It’s been two hundred swear words since Dinah placed that jar thing in the kitchen.”
She’s greeted with silence and questioning stares from her friends.
“You guys don’t put a dollar in for every swear word?” She asks innocently.
A chorus of No’s is her answer.
“I mean,” M’gann fumbles her fingers, “She said she checks the feed, so I thought we’re all being honest.” The martian pouts at the realization that she and Conner were the only ones following the rule.
“Come to think of it,” Kaldur pipes up, “I did see that there is a decrease in the amount for the cave’s allowance this month.”
“You mean they actually have the time to watch the footage?” Zatanna rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, I think they do.” Conner adds.
Dick groans and drops his head onto the table, “Alright, let’s get this over with. Megs, who has the highest number.”
“Wait, before that,” Wally snatches one of Raquel’s fries, earning himself a ‘Hey!’ and in turn she steals a sip of his almost-empty smoothie, “How did we even come up with 200 swears in the span of 2 weeks?”
For once Wally’s asking the right questions.
“Me and Conner keep track,” M’gann beams in honesty, “But mostly I keep track once we’re online.” And taps the side of her head.
“Ah…” “Yeah” “That makes sense”
With the amount of explosions and not but near death experiences and the times where things don’t go as planned.
Swearing is the go to reaction for all of them.
“Back to my question,” Dick sits up but then decides to lean onto Kaldur’s shoulder, “Who’s the sailor mouth amongst all of us.”
M’gann laughs and she points towards Kaldur, “82.”
“Jesus, Kaldur’s a sailor alright.” The team laughs at their leader's misery.
“I will admit that I use profanity a lot,” He lets out a heavy sigh, “But how about the others? We still have collectively 118 left.”
The night ended with the jar almost full and filled with coins and notes.
Star City
15 Sep, 02:06
“It’s a school night!” Kid Flash exclaims, “Why do villains attack on a school night?” As he dodged bullets shot by Onomatopoeia.
“Jesus, I fight him every other week and he’s still so fucking annoying” Artemis focus on her aim and releases her arrow, landing a bullseye on one of his guns.
“That is three dollars this night, Artemis.”
“Seriously?! We’re still doing this”
“Hey,” Robin flips over the villain and attaches one of his explosive birdarangs onto Onomatopeoia’s other gun, “If we keep this up, we can actually get ourselves a van by the end of the year.”
The explosion goes up moments after the villain tides away his guns and pulls out a knife from the inside of his coat.
“Jesus fuck, can you just stop?” Zatanna rolls her eyes and mutters out a spell.
“And that’s four for you.” They all could hear Conner chuckling in their heads.
“Come on, really Conner?”
“Rules are rules.”
“Killjoys”
The fight drags on longer than the team had hoped for, as mentioned, they have school in the morning, besides Raquel and Kaldur of course.
“We gotta wrap this up,“ Kid Flash zooms to rescue a civilian on the street, “I still have a paper to finish.”
“And who’s fault is that?”
“Eat shit Dick Grayson.”Robin cackles.
“Two dollars for Kid Flash,” Kaldur muses as he counters an assault, “But he is not wrong, this fight has dragged on for way too long.”
“Shit guys, and no, M’gann, now’s not the time to count me up but we have a situation.”
“Please don’t tell me it’s a bomb,” Artemis pleads, “We’ve gone 9 missions without an explosion, don’t let it stop now.”
“Sorry Arty, but we gotta evacuate everyone in the building.”
Swears erupt from everyone and commands are given as they execute said orders.
In the span of a minute, a record mind you, all civilians were outside the explosion perimeters and they all watched the building burst into flames.
Mount Justice
15 Sep, 0314
Once they are back to the Cave and before a debrief is needed, they huddled into the kitchen and placed the $25 amount of coins into the jar while M’gann rubbed off the number 9 from their “ x missions since last explosion” board
“Don’t any of you think that this is a bit concerning?” Conner asks as he throws his shirt onto the floor of the communal shower , “We’re almost halfway through our third jar.”
“Nope,” Raquel turned on the faucet on the girls side, “But it’ll be fun when we actually get a leaguer on it.”
“I made Green Lantern pay 5 dollars while training once, “M’gann said proudly, “Damn it we need more conditioner. Does anyone have conditioner?”
“I have some on my side,” Zatanna calls and M’gann appears in her stall and next to her in a blink of an eye, “Wait you got which lantern to swear ? And when was this?”
“You think John Stewart can swear?” “That time when you have that Geometry test.” Wally and M’gann both answered at the same time.
Zatanna makes a disappointed grunt and turns off her faucet, “Anyone else did anything remarkable for the scoreboard?”
“You make this sound like we are a clubhouse,” Kaldur sighs, letting his forehead rest on the tiled walls under the running water, he is so tired, “But no, I do not have anything to contribute to the scoreboard today.”
“Didn’t we bet on how many birdarangs I threw this time? Or was it Artemis’ arrows?” Dick wraps himself over a towel and crosses his legs on one of the benches.
One by one they finished showering and dressed into comfortable clothes, they filed out of shower and one by one plopped down onto the couch, burying Wolf underneath the dog pile.
It’s cozy like this. After many near death experiences later, they all feel safe cuddled up together in a bunch of limbs.
Although it’s very uncomfortable for someone’s bones digging into your skin, or not having your blood circulate to one of your limbs due to the pressure of someone sleeping right on top of you.
Or when you’re Wolf. The mutant wolf/dog tries to not care about the weird humans? Cubs? Pups? He still doesn’t really know how to address them after living with them for almost a year, but he usually calls them Pups if he has to think about it.
“Don’t you have a paper to finish Baywatch?”
“Oh my god, Artemis! Shut up!”
The pups tend to argue every other time they open their mouths. And it’s really late, Wolf thinks, even though he basically sleeps almost every hour of the day even with missions, he still likes to sleep at every given moment.
He loves the pups but their noise disturbs him.
Wolf gives out a huff and rolls his eyes, he’s had enough.
And he stands up, causing some of them to roll off the couch.
“What the fuck?” The small one. “Seriously Wolf, I was about to fall asleep.” The girl with the long yellow hair. “Son of a bitch.” The one with the metal piece on her nose.
“A dollar!” Kaldur grumbles into the crease of the loveseat he’s sharing with Zatanna, “Both of you go.”
Wolf decides he’ll crash into one of the pup’s rooms tonight, far far away from the lounge.
Mount Justice
17 Oct, 19:13
It became clear to the leaguers that they won’t be excluded from the Jar ™. And the teens made sure that they milk every dollar at every chance they get.
“Holy fuck!” A lot of leaguers actually, they counted 15 for the past 4 training sessions.
“Sweet Jesus shit Christ” That’s a new one, the kids pitied that they couldn’t get more out of Green Arrow.
They hit a motherload for a mission one time. They’re kind of proud that none of them have ever paid $20 in one go, not so much for Booster Gold. Pity.
They also have a few bets placed on who can make the Trinity swear, so far none of them succeeded.
However, there is one leaguer more susceptible to their shenanigans. Not an adult adult leaguer, a younger adult leaguer and has been in their line of work longer than some newer superheroes.
“God fucking damn it!”
All eight of them beam at the misery of a certain Roy Harper.
And the leaguers dare call the team a bunch of sailor mouths when there is a navy general in their midsts.
Sometimes Roy gets the roaster for looking after the team and although he hates it with a burning passion, he enjoys the company of the younger superheroes.
Some say that it feeds his ego, some also say that it’s because he misses his friends, which is cute although he will threaten to stab you with an arrow if you say it to his face.
“Tell me whose idea it was to pit Roy against the dumb duo in Mario Kart?” Zatanna asks, her back against the kitchen island, a potato chip between her fingers.
“Did you just fucking blue-shell me?”
“It’s fun to see the boys have fun together,” Artemis stifles a loud laugh, “Thank god Conner isn’t here though, we might lose a few controllers thanks to him.”
“And if you have to know Zatanna,” Kaldur calmly says as he adds seasoning to the dish he’s cooking, “I suggested the Mario Kart, Roy will not back down an attempt to prove himself in a game. You should have seen it in the arcade a few months back.”
“Yes!” Artemis adds, “It was a spectacular, easiest $15 if we had the jar back then.”
“Jesus fuck, you are sadistic.” Zatanna widens her eyes and eats another potato chip.
Kaldur gives her a look and executes a wok flip without even looking at the food.
The magician raises her hands in defense, “Hey I’ve put in $10 in advance earlier this week, M’gann can vouch for me, it’s my fourth cuss word.”
“Son of a bitch, best 3 out of 5”
Raquel enters the lounge area with Wolf in tow, giving questionable stares between the people on the couch and kitchen.
“Has anyone told him about the jar or are we waiting until he reaches a certain number?”
Kaldur, Artemis, and Zatanna looked at each for a good second before shrugging back at Raquel.
“Well, thirty is a good number, how about we stop at that?”
“He is 4 off from thirty,” Artemis smirks and she leans her head on Zatanna’s shoulder, “He’ll spew out a combo sooner or later, just wait Raquel.”
“What are we eating?” “Where’s Conner and M’gann?”
“I am trying fried rice today. Artemis,can you come here and help me taste?”
“Sure thing, Kal.”
“And I think they are somewhere in the cave and I hope to not learn much of what they are doing.”
“Ewwww,” Zatanna makes a face of disgust, “Baby ears, Kaldur!”
“Hon, you’re not the youngest here.”
“Eat shit motherfuckers!” Roy cries as his side of the screen announces his victory against Dick, Wally, and a NPC.
“Oh my god, Roy!” Wally whines but he’s really trying to hold in a laugh, “Language.”
“I don’t care about you bastards,” Kaldur sighs as Roy steps on the couch, “I. Fucking. Won!”
Zatanna slips off the kitchen island, making the bowl of chips fall over and causing everyone to stare at the young magician.
“Fucking hells,” She holds her stomach in laughter, “He beat Booster Gold!”
“Wait what?”
“Are you serious?”
“There is no way.”
“Really?”
“God damn it, I lost the bet.”
“Suck it, Walls!”
Roy looks at the group of teens in confusion before shouting “Guys!” which caught the attention of the 6 other people in the room, “Can someone please tell me what happened?”
“Anyone want to do the honors?” Dick says with a shit eating grin, Wally mirroring his look.
“Can you two stop for just one second!”
Kaldur proceeded with explaining the entire ordeal as crispy as possible.
“The League has mentioned to us that we curse too often,” He adds in the salt and lowers the heat, “So, Black Canary decided that in order for us to curse less. She implemented a Jar for us to put in a dollar every time we cuss.”
“But as you know,” Dick twirls the switch controller with the wrist strap, “In our own lovely fashion, we burn it to the ground and turn it into a shitshow.”
“Dick,” Kaldur draws on his name.
“Hey! I put in twenty 5 days ago!”
“So wait,” Roy tries to catch himself, “You little dip—… pricks counted how much I swore; knew that I had to pay a petty little fine, and didn’t try to tell me about said petty fine?”
“Pretty much,” Artemis nods, helping Kaldur plate the huge serving of fried rice into a large plate, “Can someone round up our dear old archer’s swear count?”
Zatanna happily raises her hand, “$30 your honor!”
“$30?” Roy shrieks, “I can buy a nice shirt or…or at least 2 meals with that amount of money. The actual fuck? Usually people charge a quarter per swear. Jesus Fuck Dinah. What the fuck.”
“And to add you, our protection fee; because we will definitely snitch on you to Black Canary, if you don’t pay us,” Raquel drops herself onto the couch, next to Wolf and the mutant wolf encourages head pats from her, “That will be a total of $40. And extra if you keep swearing in this nice establishment.”
The archer falls down and buries his head in his hands, releasing a muffled groan of pain. The younger team members stifled their laughter.
“Alright, with that out of our way,” Kaldur smiles and gives a comforting pat on Roy’s leg, “Can someone get Conner and M’gann from wherever they are in the cave before Dick reaches the PA system.”
Unbeknownst to him, Wally immediately volunteered and sped out of the lounge, a slight breeze flowing through the air.
Artemis cringes as she watches Wally leave, “Is anyone going to tell him that”
She was interrupted by the collective screams of three people.
“For fucks sake!”
Let’s just say, the Jar has $50 more than before dinner began.
Mount Justice
20 Dec, 23:28
Honestly, Dinah didn’t expect her kids to actually follow through with certain rules. Some ground rules to keep themselves from getting killed, sure those they follow to a tee; some training tips were used on the field which were great.
But no, she actually did not expect them to follow her Swear Jar Idea to this extent.
She already expected for the jar to go missing around two weeks in, it stayed for a month before disappearing; there were some leaguers voicing their concerns regarding the teenagers which solidifies the idea that it failed miserably.
However, she shouldn’t expect less of her kids, at least not in the general direction.
“Oh my god,” Dinah enters the hanger, not a lot of things out of place. The Bioship resting next to sphere, and there was Conner sitting between Sphere and Wolf reading a book.
Yes, no leaguer should expect less, or underestimate in that matter, the absolute chaotic energy bundled up with these 8 teenagers.
“Why is there a van here?” Dinah is shocked to see a white van, lounging near the hanger door, “Can any of you even drive?”
“You implying that without a licence?” Artemis’ head pops out of the front seat window, “If that’s the case at least half of us.”
“With a license, Artemis!” Dinah shouts back, these kids are going to make her grey hairs stand out from the blonde, “You don’t want us to bail you out of jail right?”
One of the doors slid open revealing Wally holding a pack of cheetos. “Theoretically, Conner knows about how to drive a car; M’gann can control the car with her mind; Zatanna can work her magic to put it on automobile; and Dick is literally half way through adding one of his old playstation controllers into the mainframe so us poor people without a license can drive without a wheel. He’s basically making a video game out of real life driving, literally.”
“Wally, please do not drop Cheeto dust onto the floor.” Dinah can hear Dick’s voice from within the van.
Artemis shrugs, “And you believe we’re not smart enough to have at least 2 fake ID’s each in the storage compartment?” In her hands are a stack of cards that Dinah doesn’t even want to inspect, “Besides, Kaldur and Raquel are almost finished with their licenses, I think. So yeah, we have 2 legitimate drivers out of 8 future vehicular homicide murderers. FUN!” The archer beams.
Dinah's shoulders sag in tiredness. “Can the four of you explain how on earth did you all get that amount of money to get a van? I mean, you guys have the Bioship, a sphere and Zeta tubes across the galaxy. Why on earth do you need a van?”
“Undercover missions?” Conner says matter of factly, “Nothing sounds more dangerous than a suspicious white van following you for the last 3 blocks.”
Dinah…doesn’t want to add onto that, but she’ll make note of it the next Conner has a session with her.
“Exactly!” Dick shouts out, “Besides, it fits all of us so we have a fun road trip.”
Now that’s an image she wants to see. 8 (or 9 if Roy wants to join) kids huddled up together within the confines of a small white box, the real question is which teen will be thrown out of the van first.
She’s getting sidetracked from the real question, “The money!” She exclaims, “Where on earth did you all get that money!”
“Thank you for not thinking that I bribed Bruce in buying this for us,” Dick commented.
“It’s the Jar,” M’gann walked into the hanger alongside Kaldur, “We have enough money collected from the jars you gave us; while Dick and Artemis found and bought this van off of Craigslist.”
“Also,” M’gann whispers to Dinah, “Most of them pay it in advance. Once they go over the prepaid amount, Conner and I hunt them down like loan sharks.” She then gives her a bright smile before walking towards the van.
“You must be glad that we did not buy this off of a dealership,” Kaldur gives her a smile, “If we are to do that, I believe you will not be the only one concerned, considering the amount it is to buy one.”
Dinah gives him a questionable gaze before heading back to the interiors of the cave. Making a beeline to the kitchen cabinets to grab herself a glass of wine.
There was debate on hiding the alcohol during the early months since the team’s establishment. However, the idea was quickly revoked because of the teens being absolute literal shits.
Turns out, the team thought that it’ll be a fun idea to curate their own brand of moonshine that would lead to half of them on the brink of alcohol poisoning.
She will never understand the reason for making alcohol instead of buying it from the store, it’s not like they haven’t forged IDs before.
Anyway, she takes a swing out of her glass. As she tilts her head back something on the ceiling catches her eye.
She wouldn’t call it a thing, because it decorated almost the entire kitchen ceiling. The big, glittering words of “The ScoreBoard” greets her eyes.
Without a doubt that it’s the work of Zatanna’s magic for it to be able to stay up there, if not… then she doesn’t want to find an explanation.
The scoreboard is designed like a child’s project on a big cardboard sheet but the size of the entire ceiling ; with different areas for different topics.
There were titles like : “ _ days since Conner lost his shirt” (it says 26 days); a “Covert vs Explosion” tally board (35:68), she finds it a little concerning; “Wolf Duty” ; a rather wholesome “A’s collected in this semester” (unsurprisingly Dick, Artemis, and Wally are the top 3) ; “Beat a leaguer in sparring” tally board, she haven’t know that they kept score this publicly; a “_ missions since last explosion” tally ; and finally, the ‘Swear Jar™’ milestone chart.
That took the biggest area out of the ceiling, with markers for “Ugly Christmas sweater set of 9” (‘Awww, the kids include Roy in their shenanigans,’ she thinks fondly), “Year’s worth of Streaming subscription”, “Every kind of gaming console” (Dick could easily lend out one of his old ones to the cave, why would they need that?), “Full reservation for Six Flags/Universal/Disney” and finally “The Fucking Craigslist Van”.
She pours herself another glass and calls Bruce.
“Yes?”
“Is it possible for you to hack into a van?” Straight to the point.
“What type of van?”
“You have to know that the kids got themselves a van.” She crosses her fingers and takes a sip, smooth velvet flows across her tongue and she hopes it does the same for her nerves.
“I’m surprised that they haven’t took it out for a test drive yet,” Bruce has the gall to laugh, that fucker.
The moment he finishes his sentence, Dinah can faintly hear tires screeching in the hanger, Wally and Dick’s laughter bouncing off the walls.
Bruce hums, “I know how many wine bottles are left,” Dinah takes a swing, “I’ll ask Alfred to order a few of your favorites. God knows how much of a wine mom you are.”
“I hate you so much,” Dinah says through gritted teeth, “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“You’re welcome, Dinah.”
And he hangs up.
Dinah downs the rest of the bottle.
(Five hours later, a sobered up Dinah dressed in civilian clothes sees the van enter the hangar with multiple dents and scratches.
But the teens inside were safe and sound. Well, as safe as the chaotic bunch they are.
Artemis leaves through the driver’s window, Dick hugging Wally on his back like a koala, Conner and M’gann hand in hand with a bucket of popcorn floating next to them and Kaldur holding a bucket himself while looking a little bit green.
“I swear to Poseidon, I will never be in the same car with Artemis as the driver. Mad bitch, I tell you”
“Holy shit, Kaldur said bitch!” Dick laughs with his entire body, “Made my night!”
Safe and sound. That’s what really matters anyway.)