Well, I'm stuck with the Shelter-in-place order. Who else is stuck inside or quarantined? Let me know what's been going on. Anyone have any stories to share? What's your experiences been so far? What country are you in? Everyone stay safe!

April 13th, 2018 9:26PM

The mission debriefing was done in the medical bay of Mount Justice. Cassie curled inward; her shoulders hunched with the heated blanket wrapped around her. Other than the fact that she took a dive into freezing cold water, she was in good health.

"Despite the inability to stop the bombs before they went off, no civilians were at the explosion site and everyone returned to shore safely. The Joker has been brought back to Arkham," Batman debriefed. "I'm sure Black Canary could give you a list of aspects to be improved on, but the mission is complete and there were no casualties."

"That's a win in my book," Kid Flash grinned and held up a thumbs up.

"Renegade—" Batman started to say.

"It's not my fault the bombs went off! We didn't know the lifeboat control panel was the trigger!" Cassie tried to justify.

Batman waited a moment of silence. "I was going to say good job on your first mission."

Cassie's face blanched with confusion. "But… I failed. I didn't stop the bombs."

Batman shook his head. "You had two priorities; the first was to save the civilians and the second was to have your team members backs'. You put yourself in harms way to protect Red Arrow. You've proven you have what it takes to work with a team. Today we can count ourselves lucky that no passengers were on the lifeboats. That is after the fact though. All that matters is that the mission is now complete."

Nightwing looked across the room with a smile for Cassandra. "Well hey, some people get their feet wet on their first mission, others take the full dive. Glad to have you on the team."

Cassandra tried to smile back but felt flooded with guilt. She wasn't truly a team member, not one hundred percent; not when every night she reported back to Deathstroke.

Batman gave a slight nod before walking away from the group, in his own way, dismissing them.

Artemis raised her arms above her head in a stretch. "I'm beat. C'mon babe, let's go home," she said to Kid Flash before taking his hand in hers. The two love birds walked away with soft murmurs of 'goodnight' and 'later!' to the rest of the group.

"Thanks again," Red Arrow half mumbled to Cassie before leaving the room. Where Red Arrow always went off to was somewhat of a mystery, but Nightwing had a feeling he had been spending more time with Oliver.

With a light shake of her shoulders, Cassandra removed the heated blanket and stood up from where she was sitting. "You heading back to the batcave?" she asked Nightwing.

Nightwing shrugged, "In a bit. I have some work to get done around the mountain first. Are you staying here?"

It was Cassie's turn to shrug. "I'll be around." Nightwing nodded to her response before leaving. Now Conner was the only one in the room besides her. He hadn't said much the entire time.

Cassandra put the blanket away and took a few steps towards Superboy. "You're awfully quiet over there. Got something on your mind?"

Conner refused to make eye contact. "Just thinking about the mission, that's all."

"And?" Cassandra prompted, stepping closer but noticing Conner step back. "You're acting weird. You won't even look at me."

Conner whipped his head up quickly to look at her. "It's hard to look at someone the same way after bringing them back from not breathing. You could have died. Did you even stop to think about the consequences before getting that close to an active bomb? You should have called up to the bomb squad."

She expected this kind of lecture from Batman, but not Conner. "Whoa, hold up there. First of all, the bomb went off a few seconds after I spotted it. There was no time to even alert the bomb squad. Second of all, I was just doing my job as a hero, saving Red Arrow. Would you rather he be in front of the blast?"

"I'd rather no one had been that close!" Conner suddenly shouted. "The plan was supposed to run smoothly but everything went to hell when the bombs went off. You shouldn't have been there."

Cassandra's expression dropped. "What are you trying to say?"

Conner rubbed the back of his neck and ran his hand through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. "Maybe you weren't ready to be a hero yet. You've hardly had any training."

Cassandra gave him a hard glare. "I don't have time for this. Whatever issues you have, get over them. I have places to be," she said, nearly brushing shoulders with him as she walked out of the room.

April 13th, 2018 10:03 PM

Wayne Manor

Bruce and Dick arrived back at Wayne Manor about the same time. Tim had been siting in the den and practically bounced out of his seat when he heard someone enter. He had a delicately wrapped box in his hands.

"Bruce! We got mail. Well, you got mail! And I sort of opened it already," he admitted sheepishly. "I could have put it back together without you ever noticing but Alfred said that would be dishonest. It's chocolates!" He held out the box for Bruce to get a better look. "There was a note, too."

To the Wayne family, a token of our gratitude for your generous donation at the Museum of Natural History's charity ball last Sunday.

Now Bruce could see why Tim had gotten so excited. With a smiling sigh, he said, "It's fine, you can go ahead and have them."

Greedy little fingers reached out and took the closest candy and shoved it into his mouth. Tim gave the chocolate a thoughtful moment to melt in his mouth. "They're soooo good! Try one!"

Damian and Jason entered the den to see what all the commotion was about. "All this over chocolate?" Damian questioned, wrinkling his nose.

"Bet you want to try one," Tim egged on Damian.

Damian scoffed, "Chocolates are for children."

Bruce took one of the chocolates and looked it over. "Damian, you are a child," he said, then to everyone's surprise, he popped the chocolate into his mouth. They truly were good.

Damian hesitated. "Huh, well no one has dropped dead yet, so I suppose it's fine," he concluded and allowed himself to have a chocolate. He didn't want to admit it out loud, but they were amazing.

"Before you ask, no, I don't want chocolate," Jason seemed to read Tim's mind. "There's something I need to go take care of tonight."

"Dick?" Tim asked. Dick walked over and ruffled Tim's hair.

"Maybe later, I was thinking about going out on a patrol. If that's okay with you, Bruce," he turned to his mentor. Gotham was and always would be Batman's city.

"If you're still up for it after today," Bruce answered.

Dick grinned, "Always."

Jason had already left the room without a dismissal. He took out his com link as he crossed the threshold of the door. "Red Arrow, I could use an assist on a mission that requires some recon. You in?"

"What kind of mission are we talking about? You know I'm always down for the assist."

"I put a tracking device on Renegade. My gut feeling tells me it'll lead us to Slade Wilson's estate. If I'm right, we need to do something about the double crosser tricking Nightwing into thinking she's on the heroes' side. I don't want to be right but I'm always right. Meet me at the old harbor warehouse in 10 minutes."

"I'll be there in nine."

Cassandra stood face to face with a furious Slade Wilson. He even had his mask off so she could truly see the anger in his expressions. Each expression of anger came loaded with a punch, a hit, a kick, a jab.

"Do you know what I risked to save you during your little mission!" he snarled before snapping out the bo staff of choice. "I could have been seen!" he shouted before taking a swing.

Cassandra brought her arms up in a defensive stance in front of her face. The metal slapped at the flat surface of her forearms, but she felt a particularly painful hit across her wrists.

"I had to go on the mission to—" she jumped away from a second attack.

"Had to? HAD TO!" he became enraged. "You didn't have to save that sorry excuse for an archer! I'm beginning to think you care about those heroes!"

"No, it's not that!" Cassandra said, taking a step back but it was too late. Slade had her in a choke hold.

"I will say this for the last time. I will not tolerate lies. I will NOT tolerate disobedience. And let me remind you," he said with a pause. He continued the silence, knowing Cassandra was running out of air and that her lungs were starting to painfully burn for air. "You are not irreplaceable." He waited until the very last moment to release her, letting go swiftly and her body dropping haphazardly towards the ground.

Cassandra gasped for air until she felt herself stop shaking. She wanted to leave and never come back to this place again. She wanted someone to tell her it was ok, she did her part, but it was time to put a stop to the abuse that Slade put her through. No one was going to advocate for her, she had to do it for herself. Cassandra pulled herself up to her feet with determination. This was it; she would leave the mansion like she usually did, but this time, she wasn't coming back.

After a cautious glance around, Cassie slipped out the door and kept to the shadows of the mansion. Once she reached the gate, she soundlessly climbed over and dropped down to the ground fifteen feet below and rolled to absorb the momentum.

"Damn that hurt," she muttered to herself. She had used her hands to brace herself during the roll and her wrists were starting to throb from Slade's attack.

She suddenly felt an arm wrap around her neck but couldn't turn to see who it was. Did Slade already find her leaving? No, it wasn't Slade, she could tell when someone pressed a rag of chloroform over her mouth. This wasn't Slade's style. Right before passing out, she turned enough to see the Red Hood. Why?

"What are you," she tried to ask but the drug had taken affect and she started to collapse into his ready arms.

"I fucking told you," Red Hood told Red Arrow. "I didn't want it to be true but I mother fucking told you."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. No one ever listens to you. You're always right. I get it, but let's get out of here before Slade decides to reclaim his lacky," Red Arrow advised.

Red Hood picked up Cassandra in a firefighter's hold and carried her limp body away.

Instead of taking her to the mountain like Red Arrow had expected, they went back to Red Hood's hideout by the docks. Of course, being the deranged man that he was, Red Hood had a holding cell in his hideout that he none too gently dropped Cassandra off in and locked the door.

"So, do we go back to the mountain now?" Red Arrow asked. The others needed to know they had been double crossed.

"You can go back to the mountain," Red Hood answered, "But we're not going to tell the others about this. Not yet. Give it some time and see what conclusions they come to. It'll lessen the blow if they conclude on their own that Cassandra has gone back to Deathstroke."

"If you say so…" Red Arrow shrugged. "Keep me updated."

April 16th, 2018 1:21 PM

Things had been quiet the past three days. The only missions that came in were for specific Justice League members in their own hometowns. Young Justice had nothing to do. Regardless, it hadn't gone without notice that Cassandra had not been seen for three days. Conner was starting to worry, not only because it wasn't a good sign for someone to disappear for three days, but because he worried he had been the one who caused her to leave.

Conner had requested Black Canary come to Mount Justice to talk which drew the attention of Batman and the other Young Justice members.

"What's wrong, Conner?" Black Canary asked when she arrived. It wasn't often that anyone from Young Justice requested to talk when things had been calm.

"Cassandra has been gone for three days now. I'm worried she's not coming back. I said something to her, but I didn't think she'd take it so seriously," Conner admitted. He felt terrible now. What business did he have telling her she wasn't ready to be a hero? He let himself jump right into hero training and missions. How was he any different from her?

Everyone's attention within hearing distance was peaked.

"What did you say to her?" Black Canary asked with a mixture of concern and curiosity.

Conner shook his head, "I told her that her actions during the last mission were dangerous and she wasn't ready to be a hero. I didn't know she was going to run off."

Batman finally stepped into the conversation. "I don't believe you've done anything to scare her away from being a part of Young Justice. She'll be back."

"You know something about this, Batman?" Black Canary asked with an irritated quirk to her tone. Clearly, she didn't have the same insider information that he did and that annoyed her. She was a mentor to this team. And Cassandra was part of the team now, she had a right to know if something was going on with a team member.

Nightwing stood by with his arms crossed over his chest. He had been wondering where Cassandra went. It wasn't like her to be gone more than a day. She made it clear before she didn't like him to be out of her sight for long. They both knew it was only a matter of time before the Court of Owls tried to recruit him again.

Batman evaluated how much information to divulge. "I've been sending Cassandra, Renegade, out on missions assigned by myself. I suspect that's where she is now."

Anger flashed suddenly across Conner's face. "You know, I've been meaning to ask you about those missions. Cassandra brought it up once. I asked why she was leaving the mountain at odd times and she said she was on missions from you. But I've noticed she usually returns to the mountain in a bad mood. That day in particular her anger was like how she used to act when she first came to us. Just what kind of missions exactly are you sending her on?"

Black Canary and Nightwing were both starring at Batman expectantly.

"Batman?" Nightwing asked.

Batman's cold and stoic expression returned to his face. This was the Batman everyone at Mount Justice recognized, but it was foreign to Nightwing. Sure, his father figure was always on the colder side, but at what point did he become so soulless?

"I asked Renegade to return to Deathstroke under the guise that she was still his apprentice and she was double crossing Young Justice. While doing so, she was collecting intel on Deathstroke and reporting that information to me."

"You sent her back to Deathstroke!?" Black Canary beat everyone to the exclamatory.

"How long has this been going on!" Nightwing cried out. He couldn't believe his mentor would do something like this, that his father would be so careless with another young hero. Didn't he learn from him? Didn't he learn from Jason and Tim and Damian?

Batman's expression remained blank. "Since a few days after she came to Mount Justice."

Conner dug his nails into his palms. It all made sense now. Her random anger, the secrecy, the refusal to get close to anyone in Young Justice. He couldn't imagine how angry he'd be all the time if someone made him go back to Cadmus and play nice with them. And those injuries she was trying to hide, were those from Deathstroke? Did Batman know she was being hurt?

"I can't believe you'd put her in that type of danger, this isn't like—" Nightwing started to say but stopped when a searing headache burned at his temples. "Ah!" he grunted in pain. Sporadically memories started to come back to him, first in flashes but then full memories returned. The Batman in front of him no longer felt so foreign. This was a man he knew, a man that changed over the years into someone he could no longer call his father. "No….no, this is exactly like you. You were willing to use Cassandra for your mission. You were willing to risk her safety if it meant getting inside information on Deathstroke. Hell, you know what? Deathstroke probably knows Cassandra was only pretending to double cross Young Justice. Do you have any idea what kind of danger that puts her in? You're intelligent…of course you know the risks. And you took them anyway! Anything for the mission though, right!"

There was silence but it only took Red Arrow a moment to realize the old Dick had come back. "You remember," he stated.

"Yeah," he all but spat the word, "I remember. And I'm going back to Blüdhaven," he sneered at Batman and turned for the zeta.

"Nightwing, wait," Red Arrow tried to call out to him, but he was too late.

Dick found the spare key to the apartment. His apartment. The apartment he got when he went to Blüdhaven to get away from the person who was no longer the father figure he looked up to. When he opened the door to his apartment, he wasn't alone. He grabbed the hidden knife he always had on him and went into a defensive stance.

"Easy, boy," Deathstroke warned. He had something in his hand. Was that a trigger?

Dick stood down. "What's that in your hand?" he demanded to know. "Where's Cassandra?"

"You mean Cas? That's just what I wanted to show you," he said, stepping into the living quarters of the apartment and finding the remote to the tv. He turned on the screen and there was a video feed of Cassandra in a holding cell somewhere.

"What did you do to her!" Dick growled. He had plenty of anger to go around today.

"I didn't put her in the cell if that's what you're thinking," Deathstroke answered. "I'll surely find her and who did put her there soon. That is beside the point I'd like to demonstrate for you. You've been at the Wayne manor recently, have you not?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Dick snapped.

Deathstroke sighed as he was starting to lose his patience. "The Wayne family received a box of chocolates, did they not?"

The dots were starting to be connected. The chocolates weren't from the museum. "What…what was in them? Poison?" Was this the part where he had to do some ridiculous criminal task to get the antidote?

"Poison is beneath me," Deathstroke said but reconsidered, "Most of the time. It's better than a poison. Let me demonstrate," he said, then clicked the trigger in his hand.

On the screen, Cassandra began to stir. She stood up on shaky legs then collapsed. Her body began to seize in flailing movements on the ground.

"Cassie!" Dick shouted even though she couldn't hear him. "What is it?" He was ready to grab Deathstroke by the shoulders and slam him against the wall. But he didn't know what was causing the reaction to Cassie and harming Deathstroke could make it worse.

"Microbes are a miraculous thing. They can be hidden in anything. An injection, a pill, chocolates…I can even control individual sets of microbes. I've only activated Cas', but if needed, I can easily activate the others too."

Dick knew what Deathstroke was insinuating. The dangerous seizure causing microbes were in his family. "Just make it stop! What do you want!?"

"It's quite simple, really. Become my apprentice."