Parents mentioned in the chapter are comic (and cartoon) canon. Mark Logan’s guitar is the same one mentioned in 99’s Cheap Date. Cyborg’s personal history is mostly intact, but I did end up making up a middle name for him. (I know how the name is usually spelled; my rationale is that his mother loved poetry.) All science-babble in the first segment is accurate to the best of my abilities, though not at all necessary for understanding the story.

This chapter happened because of DoctorEvil99 (whose fanfic name is read as a website by ffdotnet, and summarily deleted), TheyCallMeOrange, and Kayasuri-N. They kept me at my current level of (in)sanity, and stray remarks in conversation with RabulaTasa got me on the right track for Jinx’s scene. DoctorEvil99 helped flesh out the "Slade is a manipulative jerk" portion of the story.

Chapters will be delayed during school (my two-credit class takes sixteen hours per week), but they will remain in progress. If you think I'm bad now, just wait until I'm actually in medical school. I'm already accepted into my top choice school, I am going to have an epic case of senioritis, and I can now semi-relax and write some fiction now that part one of a major life goal is set. Happy reading! The next chapter is in progress and in draft.

Chapter Nine

Saturday June 13, 7:40 P.M.
Marie Logan loved the office she shared with her husband. This area of the sprawling lab space was a nearly sacred in one respect: absolutely no paperwork was allowed to pass through its doorway. That kept their workspace from becoming hopelessly cluttered, and left the timid interns and rotation workers standing outside the office with papers and forms. It wasn’t that Marie didn’t like their interns, or didn’t want to help them reach their full potential. She simply didn’t want gawking workers in her office.

The “no paperwork” rule had started when both of their eight-foot desks had been entirely lost under stacks of articles to be read, fellowships that merited applications, and press about the Logans’ work. The solution had been Mark’s idea, and had been inspired after some hapless rotation student had nearly stepped through his guitar. Luckily for all concerned, the instrument had survived without a scratch, so the student survived with a warning. The student had been carrying two boxes of fresh paperwork, and hadn’t been able to see a thing. Marie had been supervising the latest batch of interns, at the time, or she might have been able to keep the explosion down to an angry simmer. Mark loved that guitar, and any intern that lasted three weeks in the demanding lab quickly learned why. Whenever Mark was stuck on some new aspect of the research, angry, frustrated, or two days out from a deadline, he would play. Half an hour later, he’d return to work with a vengeance.

There was only one part of the office that she didn’t like this week. It was her turn to answer their cell phone, and the thing always rang when she was in the middle of some new angle. She was ten minutes away from transferring her new concept for controlled alternative splicing to paper. The idea in her mind was too nebulous to describe just yet. Mark might be able to make out her vague descriptions and accompanying gestures, but it was his turn to supervise a fresh PhD graduate on fellowship. Marie could write out the idea, and the concept would be enough to snag at least the new NSF grant. If the idea worked out half as well as she thought, she could get three grants devoted just to this project… maybe this would interest Garfield. She noted that at the top of her blank sheet of paper, closed her eyes for a moment to picture just what she wanted to accomplish with this latest set of experimental protocols, and began to write.

There were perhaps four figures left in the explanation when the cell phone began to ring. Marie held onto the ideas, and the images of interfering with RNA processing, as she glanced at the caller ID. Victor Stone, perfect. He’d understand.

“Victor, hello!” she greeted. She never ignored a call from Victor. Really, there were several small things she did for her son’s best friend, but she would never call attention to the different behavior. Victor had lost his mother in the same explosion that had nearly killed him. Marie and Elinore had been close, as the mothers of best friends often are. If it had been her son left grieving… Marie knew that Elinore Stone would have looked after Garfield. “Can you give me just two minutes, please? Thank you.”

“Mrs. Logan—”

“Just two minutes, Victor,” she said, her attention already on the figures and explanations. “I’m nearly done, I promise, but I finally have a way to draw out that idea I had last week… if this works half as well as I think, we’ll be able to control alternative splicing events in yeast culture DNA processing by December. That includes time to apply for the new NSF grant heading and charm the genetics supervisor into giving me a few new pieces of equipment.”

Marie didn’t like to keep people waiting, but this idea wouldn’t come back. Victor was waiting, but without his usual patience. Marie finished the illustrations quickly, and with much more shorthand than she usually liked in a proposal. She’d just make a neat copy later. “I am sorry about the wait, Victor, but you know how it is.” Marie had glanced at the clock to confirm the time, but she hadn’t known it was so late. Fifteen to eight? Neither of her boys called in that late. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know where to start, Mrs. Logan.”

Marie must have dropped her pencil, because she certainly wasn’t holding it anymore. Victor had never sounded so uncertain. “Are you and Garfield alright?”

“I’m fine, and I think Gar’s still okay. We were out to dinner at Scheherazade’s with Trigon and a representative from Wayne Industries, and this really isn’t the way I’d planned to tell you that I’ve had a job offer. Head engineer for a tech start-up, joint venture between Trigon and Wayne.”

“You better not turn that down, Victor Eliot Stone, or we’ll have words. What happened to Garfield?”

“The Brotherhood of Evil kidnapped Trigon’s daughter, Raven. Garfield and the Wayne Industries rep thought her chances might be better if she wasn’t alone.”

Marie frowned, and allowed several seconds for her mind to process that strange fact. “We know that Garfield has a few options, in any case. Mark and I will keep our eyes open for any ransom demands, extortion attempts, anything like that.” Garfield could transform. He didn’t like the ability, or the loss in control that came with it, but to protect someone else he would take even his most dangerous form.

“You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would,” Victor said cautiously.

Victor couldn’t see the way her hand gripped the phone, and didn’t know that she was shaking slightly. “I can’t control the situation, and can’t do much to change it,” Marie said frankly. Her voice, at least, was unaffected. “The best that I can do is to find some positive aspect to focus on, and trust that Garfield can take care of himself and others. Perhaps Mark and I should have encouraged his special talents a little more, and…” Marie glanced at her notes, and the small designation at the top. This wasn’t going to be the dissertation that earned her son a doctorate. He didn’t have the patience to spend months chasing after an elusive nucleoprotein complex, or years of his life inside with no change in scenery. “Well. When Garfield comes home, we’ll all have a good talk. Mark and I will expect updates about how your new work is going, Victor.”

“You’ll have them. I’ll call back when I hear something.”

Marie erased the note from the top of the new idea. Garfield would be interested in hearing about this latest idea, but it was past time that he found what he really wanted to do for a living. This would be her latest pet project. It just might replace casually meeting all the young female interns, and occasionally fixing them up with Garfield. She had really thought that the young girl from the geology research wing had been the one, but… well. Garfield and Tara Markov’s breakup was still legendary. Marie would just have to trust that her son would find his own direction, and his own dates.

Marie stapled the four pages together, labeled them, and put the idea into the top drawer. It would still be there when she came back to work, and this was the kind of conversation she and Mark really should have at home. Something in her expression had drawn him into the office, even from across the lab.

“Marie?”

“Mark, Victor just called. I think it’s time to head home for the night.” Marie took a deep breath. She had managed to partially distract herself with the pleasant idea of Garfield meeting a girl, but Mark was much more likely to focus on the important detail of ‘kidnapped by the Brotherhood of Evil.’

“Bring your guitar.”

Saturday June 13, 7:54 P.M.

On the other side of Jump City, Jinx was only one hundred yards or so from Mark and Marie Logan’s only son. Unfortunately, she was only one yard from Slade.

The situation was not what Jinx had hoped. Slade was doing much better than expected. No major mistakes, no big flaws in wording, and no sign of moving on to his second wish. Jinx was going to run out of batteries before the jerk ran out of ideas.

If she managed to twist events around to her satisfaction, she was going to give Victor Stone a piece of her mind for leaving his jacket unattended on the back of his chair. Informal dealings or not, Slade hadn’t had a lick of trouble stealing from him.

He’d made one wish, and that was for her to follow orders like a nice little genie. Jinx was going to find out just how far her powers extended, because she felt tired for the first time in ages. She was still blocking Trigon, Koriand’r, and Raven’s powers. If he’d had better goals, Jinx wouldn’t block the power. She would be draining those three to the point where a demon-lord, a Tamaranean warrior, and a half-demon weren’t any sort of concern. Jinx would be fresh as a daisy, Slade wouldn’t have a thing to worry about as far as enemies went, and everybody would be happy (except the trio missing their powers.)

Slade, however, thought that she was an idiot incapable of pulling a rabbit from a hat without a clearly labeled diagram. Jinx didn’t plan on enlightening him.

It wasn’t likely, but Jinx might have sided with him for a brief period of time. She could have at least edited Slade’s game plan to something better than kidnapping. As criminal money making schemes went, it was messy, high-risk, and low-yield. Jinx could have told him about alternate options, but neither Slade nor the Brotherhood of Evil duo wanted her opinions. They wanted her magic.

Something bigger than a kidnapping was going on here. Jinx knew it. Slade was no idiot, and he wasn’t out for a ransom. He knew that Trigon would get revenge the instant Raven was safe. If Raven got so much as a paper cut, Jinx wouldn’t want to be in the same city. If Raven was hurt, Jinx was switching states. If Slade was stupid enough to kill Trigon’s only daughter…

Slade was planning something, because this was not the way that you went after money when you had a genie’s bottle in your pocket. Jinx wasn’t sure what he was after, but she had a bad feeling about all of this. He had been studying her without a word for the last two minutes, since he’d summoned her without a word. Slade was the ultimate control freak. If he wasn’t actively supervising, he liked knowing that she wasn’t sabotaging his plans. He had one way to be sure that she wasn’t doing anything naughty, and that was making her sit around in bottle-land while he planned for the next stage of his grand whatever—very smart, very annoying, very quickly getting old.

She lasted three minutes of silent scrutiny before interrupting his stare-fest. “So, what do you want now? I went mechanic on an entire company of your creepy robots, I’m tired.”

Slade’s eye narrowed. “We both know that you do not tire, but I have no immediate task for you. In time, I will ask you to kill someone for me.”

“Not tire as in need to sleep, tire as in run out of juice,” Jinx corrected warily. He wanted her to kill someone, and he was playing games with the biggest fire-demon out there. Trigon didn’t play well with others. “You’re an assassin. Why are you farming out your work to me?”

“Killing Trigon the Terrible is no task for a mortal.”

Jinx had maybe three seconds to make this work. The first two seconds went to staring at him, blinking, and then staring again. “You do know that he’s a demon lord, right? He’s a demon lord, I’m a very minor demon that somebody bound to a perfume bottle. You want Trigon killed… tell you what, make wish number two a strong desire for nuclear weaponry and wish three for Trigon to stand very still on the Bikini Atoll.”

“Jinn warp the nature of reality in ways that other demons cannot. If you cannot face him directly, you will be able to create circumstances resulting in his death. He cannot be slain by mortal means, but all things can die.”

“All things can die, but if I need to kill Trigon…” Jinx shook her head. “We already went over the Bikini Atoll plan and you didn’t like it. I’m already too stretched magic-wise. I need all the magic I can get to kill somebody like Trigon, and most of my power is diverted into keeping Trigon and Kore from storming your castle. Another trickle is keeping Trigon’s kid from teleporting out or starting to throw things around with her mind. I don’t change reality and make everything happen perfectly. I make tiny adjustments that nobody outside my direct influence would notice, and continue to tweak the threads until everything lines up. To have enough power to do start working, I need to release all the blocks, and the instant I release the blocks, Trigon flattens me, because of the slight matter of Trigon outranking me in every way that matters.”

His jaw clenched at the conclusion of her increasingly rapid explanation. “Very well,” he said, as if addressing a child. “If you are incapable of ending his life, can you share other ways in which he can be removed from this world? Banished?”

“I’m not an exorcist and I’m not with the Ghostbusters,” Jinx replied on instinct.

Slade didn’t laugh. “Unless you wish to spend the rest of your eternity in that bottle, you will be of some use to me.”

Jinx thought that her flinch was hidden behind a furious glare. She had heard the threat before, and was nearly sure that it was impossible for a genie to go forever without someone else finding the bottle, but… it was the worst threat he could make. “I could have helped you before, but you had it all under control. You want to keep everything right in line and right as you say it’ll happen, and suddenly you want my input?”

“Trigon is not a creature of this universe. He does not belong here, and is being kept here by artificial means. How can he be sent back?”

“That’s a little harsh,” Jinx said disapprovingly, already recovered. Slade had figured out the downside of his one trump card. If he played the isolation game, he didn’t get any more wishes, either. They were stuck with each other a while longer. “He has his green card same as anybody, as you should know. You know more about Trigon’s business than I do, I just know things that pertain to the ways Trigon could squish me if I tried killing him. The element of surprise is out, so I’m not sure how I’d have a shot.”

“Tell me, then. A demon cannot normally exist in this world without some type of summoning or anchor, correct?”

“Yes.” She had to answer that one simply, since Slade knew the answer. If he hadn’t been certain, she would have lied. He hadn’t said to tell him honestly, after all, or to tell the truth.

“Someone summoned Trigon here, but needed knowledge of his existence beforehand. There was a prophecy.” Slade looked at her, as if she would instantly hop to her feet and begin reciting the exact phrases that would solve his dilemma. “You could produce the prophecy regarding Trigon, if ordered.”

“All of the prophecies?” Jinx asked. This, at least, wasn’t the time for insolence and teasing. Befuddlement would serve her much better. “I thought you were on a bit of a time crunch, and I’d need to find the things first.”

He glared at her, but didn’t seem to find the lie. “It is no matter. I know the location of one such set of materials, and the prophecy I require will be among them.” Slade had been pacing, but he froze, still looking at her. “Of course, the key to this problem is within this building. Raven has the answers I seek.”

“You think she’s going to help you? Raven’s not exactly the show-and-tell type, and isn’t likely to be convinced.”

Slade’s smile was enough to make Jinx shudder. “I can be persuasive. Should my methods fail, I have you.”

“Of course you have me, but you’re falling prey to the classic trap of overestimating the genie. Minor demon bound to a perfume bottle, with the gift of warping a few threads of reality, but I can’t mess with free will or bring back the dead or take out Trigon in a fair fight.”

“You have little appreciation for subtlety, and using the least amount of force needed. Raven herself need not be threatened. She had two companions who so graciously joined her. In face, should she hold out farther than expected, and one companion be lost… one will remain.” Slade might have been discussing the weather. “This will work even better than I anticipated.”

Jinx looked faintly green. “You can handle that on your own, or with Mallah and Rouge?”

Slade smirked. “The pair have their uses, and they are few. I might trust them to take out the garbage without supervision. I prefer to handle things my business directly.” He reached into the pocket of his dark slacks. “There is a library in Jump City. Below the library, there is a long series of passageways. There should be several volumes within. Bring back any books with this mark.”

He held out a piece of paper, marked with a broken S. Jinx committed the sign to memory before touching the slip of paper with the strange sigil. Her fingers ghosted through the paper, and the small square of paper burned with pink-tinged flame. Let Slade remember that she was a fire-demon, too.

“Got it,” Jinx said. Slade left the control room, and Jinx disappeared in a swirl of sparks as she concentrated. He had said to go to the library and check out a few books, sure, but he’d never said that she had to go directly there.

If Jinx had kept her eyes open as she dissolved into the air, she might have seen one of the shadows in the far corner of the control room disappear into the floor.