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With my eyes closed, I breathed in deep through my nose, trying to pick out all the smells. A mixture of old exhaust, warm asphalt, and several food carts of dubious quality. It wasn't quite my home New York, but Keystone City had that same old American city smell to it. It's strange the things you find yourself missing if you don't have them for long enough, I mulled, opening eyes to look out at the low skyline. It didn't go far before I saw the break where the river cut the line between Keystone and Central City.

"Alright, sound off people." I said, my gaze sweeping over the skyline.

"Team one has secured the last of the cultists," Starfire responded. "They're packaged together and the local police are on their way."

"Team two has recovered all of the equipment and files they had at the warehouse, what little there was." Aqualad said next.

"Team three's picked up all the field generators across the city." I said, the pile of electronics already loaded into Moya, the ship floating cloaked behind me.

"Affirmative. Everyone, regroup at rally alpha."

I cut the comm and flew up to the ship, passing through the hole in the underside to be greeted by Kid Flash and Miss Martian. "Nice to have a mission wrap up no problems for once." Kid Flash said, leaning back in his chair.

"And if something comes up, I am now blaming you." I said back as I sat in one of the chairs, Miss Martian taking Moya out to the rendezvous point.

While I chided Kid Flash, he wasn't wrong. The Cult of the Kobra had been laying low since Santa Prisca, but we had gotten a tip that they were planning something for Keystone city. Flash had picked up a few cultists that had been stealing certain high tech items, but when they didn't give up anything concrete, he asked for us to investigate. Since we were dealing with an organization that was all about chaos and destruction, one of the first things we did was check the city utilities. And sure enough, we found several devices wired into the city's power grid at key places.

They emitted a novel energy field, the purpose of which I couldn't discern. At a guess it was only a component of Kobra's plan, and they would bring in something else to make use of it. Of course, none of us want to wait to find out what that was, so after tailing a cultist who had come to work on one of their devices back to their hideout, we formed a plan of attack.

And for once… everything went fine. We weren't spotted early, there were no sudden complications, no super powerful metahumans were fielded against us. We set the trap, they fell into it, and we took them down before they knew what hit them. We had spent the last two hours doing clean up and now that we were done, it almost felt unreal.

It wasn't long before we picked up both groups of our teammates, and we parked over the river that flowed between the sister cities. "A job well done," Starfire said, looking over us with a smile on her face. "We've probably saved a lot of lives today."

"Not that anyone will ever know," Superboy remarked, but there wasn't any heat in it. "What was Kobra even trying to do? If they wanted to do some damage, bombs would have been easier."

"I'll have to get back to you on that." I said. "I could list off the properties of those field generators for you, but their actual purpose? Not sure."

"I was hoping we'd get another shot at big man Kobra himself," Robin slumped back in his seat. "This looked like a big enough operation that he might show up."

"Maybe he was busy with something else. They haven't been making a lot of headway since we last ran into them." I paused before shrugging. "Welp, there'll be plenty of time to speculate during the debrief."

Kid Flash spoke up. "Hold up. We don't have to head back to the Mountain for that till nightfall, and we finished this one pretty quick. Come on, we can hang out in my home city for once!"

"Not a bad idea, KF." Robin said, sitting up in his seat. "It's been awhile since the whole gang just hung out, at least outside the Mountain. Kaldur, you up for it?"

The other teen paused for a moment before he said "I'm fine with it, though I think the reason we haven't been doing this in public is that our numbers have increased considerably in the past few months. Not to mention the difficulties of us being together in public." He cast a glance towards Starfire.

Yes, our leader presented a bit of a problem there. The rest of us had ways to look like ordinary humans, but she was out of luck. None of the holograph tech I had was good enough for a realistic disguise, and my Mask nanites weren't designed for sitting on flesh (especially organic eyeballs).

Starfire looked crestfallen for a moment, but straightened back up in her seat. "Well, I suppose you'll have do it without me."

"You and me can still go out together," I offered. "I've been meaning to go on a food journey anyway, it'll be great." I would have done it sooner, but for the past few days I had been pretty much trapped in Kori's bed, ensnared by the unbreakable cage of love, sex, and cookies. We… may have gone a bit overboard, but I think we successfully made up for lost time.

She perked up a little. "That sounds good, though I do wish we could be a group in public. It's upsetting to think of all we can't do together, because of this need for secrecy."

"Well... what about Donna?" I offered.

"Me?" The woman in question asked.

"Yeah, you don't wear a mask, and you are known, if not very well. I don't think there's much of a problem if you hang out with us in public." I think. I still wasn't very sure how Donna handled her identity, but I had to assume that since the woman didn't bother covering her face on the job she'd be fine with it.

Donna waffled for a few moments before she nodded. "Sure, I could go with you guys."

"Well if you're going-" We looked at Artemis, who stopped for a moment before she started again. "I mean, I could go with you guys too. I'd have to get another mask first, but..."

I was honestly taken off guard by the suggestion. I had assumed Artemis of all people wouldn't want the extra attention of being with us in public. Even if she was disguised, she would get a lot of questions from people passing by. It probably wasn't a good idea to have a team sized group in public either because, well, people would assume we were a team. And yet, I saw Superboy and Miss Martian glance at each other, and I could tell they were concerning it too.

But before I could say anything, Robin yelled "No! I don't want to split the team! That's what always happens! And it's always you guys and us!"

I looked at him in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"You guys who live at the Mountain! And now you two!" He pointed at Artemis and Donna. "Me, Kid Flash and Aqualad started this team, but it feels like… like we're on two different teams sometimes."

I continued to be confused, but Artemis said "Hey, it's not his fault you guys barely visit."

"It's not our fault we've got other superheroes to partner up with!" Kid Flash shot back. "Me and Rob can't just ditch the Flash and Batman! And Aqualad's got… I dunno, stuff to do back in Atlantis!"

Aqualad looked uncomfortable, but said "It's no one's fault that we have different responsibilities… but I think Robin may have a point."

I felt an old, familiar pit in my stomach, one I had hoped I would never have to deal with again. Ah, social anxiety my old friend, I thought I had killed you. "Guys, come on, let's-"

I was cut off mid-sentence as I got a very specific alert from the Mountain's monitoring systems. My eyes widened, and I split my focus to dive into the internet to verify the alert. And it didn't take long to confirm it. "Oh. Oh dear."

"What is it now?" Robin asked.

I formed a hologram projector, making a screen at the front of the ship that showed a broadcast happening live. On screen was an attractive blonde woman standing outside of the Hall of Justice, a small crowd of other reporters at the doors behind her. "-is Kat Grant with a breaking news story. Several news outlets have just received information that the Justice League has been employing a secret team of non-League superheroes to do secret crime fighting and operations."

"Wait, what?!"Kid Flash yelled, though he was hardly the only one on the ship doing so. "S-She's not talking about us, is she?"

The reporter continued "The details are still being analyzed, but GBS News has several dozen pictures and videos of these superheroes engaged in acts that have not been corroborated by the local police or U.N, in clear violation of the Justice League charter. Here are some of the videos we received."

The screen changed to a picture-in-picture mode to show… us. Clips of the Team during our missions, clips that by all rights shouldn't exist. Kyoto, Louisiana, even Philadelphia. Most of them were from odd angles and didn't have the clearest view of us, but it was unmistakably us. After a moment, the reporter said "Evidence of this team's connection to the League is spread throughout the media, but it's most prominent in this clip here."

The screen changed to show a slightly shaky view of the top of a small building from an adjacent rooftop. Off to the left you could see a taller building that was smoking and had a few holes in it, and I recognized it as Cryptarch's headquarters, the night of the Fog incident. The lights from down below helped illuminate the center of the shot, which held me and Starfire with the rest of the team partially off screen. The audio was full of ambient noise from the street, and the audio quality wasn't great, but I could still make out my voice saying words I had never spoken. "Come on, let's go before someone notices us. The Justice League will have our hides if they have to explain us being here."

The screen switched back to the reporter. "We are attempting to reach out to the Justice League for comment, but they have yet to release a statement. Until then, we are only left with speculation. Are Starfire and Machina the ones leading this team? Are those sidekicks? Who are the rest of them? And if the League is responsible for them, what does this mean that they have been trying to work around U.N. oversight? We'll be updating this story as it develops."

We sat there in stunned silence, our world completely upturned in the last minute. Eventually, I said the only thing I could think of. "Damn... I was going to clear out an IHOP today."

"Explain. Now."

Batman was, predictably, unhappy.

By the time we had gotten back to the Mountain, the story had spread like wildfire across the internet. It was hard to pin down exactly where the first leak of information had come from, but it looked like the newscast was right. An information package had been dropped off at every major news outlet in the country simultaneously. With no clue as to who or how.

Something I would be looking into later, but right now I had to deal with an irate man in a bat costume. "Why do you assume we know more about this than you do?" I shot back. "We would have mentioned if we had seen cameras following us around everywhere. I might as well ask what the League knows about this."

I knew the answer was 'not much', otherwise the Justice League would have put out an official statement by now. I'm sure they already had some people looking into it, but at the moment we had Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman here in the main hall with the Team, to try to figure this out. I appreciated them coming to the Mountain, though I still didn't care for Batman's tone.

Batman scowled even more, but Wonder Woman stepped in. "Jacob, we are trying to get as much information as possible. If there is anything you know that might be useful..."

I looked at her for a long moment before I gestured, holographic screens coming to life around us. "If you're asking me 'how' this happened, I don't have a solid answer for you. I can only assume that someone noticed us at some point, and started to keep a closer tab on their operations."

" 'Their' operations?" Superman asked. "Don't you mean yours?"

"No, I don't. While our missions have gone sideways on occasion, I have no reason to think that anyone is specifically tracking our movements. More likely the missions that are being shown on the news are connected somehow, probably by who's behind them. After the latest one they probably figured that they had enough footage they could paint in the rest of it."

"Paint in?"

I pointed at one of the many holographic screens, a video of me moving the halls of the hotel in Kyoto, taking down crazed mages. "This angle's impossible, there would be a wall blocking the 'camera'." I pulled up another of me bursting through the outer wall of the Sunderland building in Louisiana. "This didn't happen like this." I pulled up the video of Cryptarch. "I definitely didn't say that. This isn't just someone watching us, we're being set up."

"But why now?" Troia asked. "And if they're willing to doctor evidence, why did they do it just to show the things they didn't have a camera for, or minor changes? Why not show us kicking puppies or something?"

Kid Flash snorted. "Come on, no one would believe that. Without any hard proof, no one would believe a superhero suddenly started committing crimes."

I nodded at Kid Flash. "Right. And this is just on the edge of believability. The footage that's going around is all in cities, where's it's feasible that someone looked out a window and saw us." And going by the rumors I had been tracking online prior to this, a few had. "The fake stuff is immaculate, I don't think any modern human systems would be able to detect it. Honestly, I think only the Kyoto footage is close to real, that may be when the observation actually started."

Miss Martian had been silently worried for a while, but now she spoke up. "I mean, even if it's fake evidence of what we actually did, it's still fake. Shouldn't we be able to prove that?"

"I don't think it's about proof, MM," Robin said. "None of this would actually hold up in court, but now everyone's going to be out looking for us. And even if it stays just a rumor, it damages the League's rep. Machina's right, this is the first move in a bigger game."

I grunted, my mind already elsewhere as I thought about possible countermoves. Silver lining, due to the locations chosen for our 'exposure', whoever was doing this wasn't using the really damning stuff, like Santa Prisca or Bialya (though that may come later if the public was receptive to this). Which meant if we moved quickly… I may have had one or two contingencies in place that could help.

I actually found myself wishing Red Tornado was here, he was always good at breaking down these sorts of problems into their base bits. Hell, I wished Rommie was here if just for her endless optimism, but she had gone to hang out with Red Tornado at Yellowstone.

But, I could dive into such plans after the current meeting. "So, the question remains… who did this?" I asked everyone present. "I'm pretty sure the Calculator is at least partly responsible, and we know he's working with someone in Bialya. Who wants to bet they've made even more friends?"

The three senior superheroes looked at each other before looking back at me. "You're talking about the shadow organization. The one that has been working against the League."

"It makes sense..." Starfire said, her hand cupped to her chin in thought. "The data released made sure to draw attention to your connection to us. To the point they even fabricated a conversation to reinforce it. This wasn't just an attack against us, it's an attack against the League."

"It's the League of Shadows." Everyone turned to Robin, who was holding his hands up. "Come on, it's obvious. They're the only organization that has the motives and is big enough to pull this off. The earliest video is a mission involving them, for crying out loud! I'd bet anything that Bialya and the Calculator have joined up with them."

Batman grunted. "The Calculator doesn't have the psych profile to join the League of Shadows, they only take believers. And they have never taken 'allies' before, just assets they can use and discard. But with the resources he showed in Kyoto, he is getting substantial support… It may be a different organization, the one that has had contact with the Apokolipians."

"Maybe, but why not both?" I said. "They could be joined by a mutual hatred of you guys. Enough to reach out to Apokolips, at least." We still hadn't heard back from the Miracles, god knew what was taking them so long.

Superman nodded. "Apokolipian technology has been a common thread as of late. From what I've heard, they often destabilize a planet through indirect means before making a bigger move, using many inside agents. You think this might be part of that plan?"

"We certainly can't rule it out." I grumbled, and I paused for a moment before clapping my hands, collapsing all the holographic windows. "So, back to the most immediate problem... what are we going to do about it?"

"You won't do anything." Batman said. "The League-"

"Yeah yeah, 'the League will handle it', we know." I cut him off. "We've been through this song and dance before, and we know how it turns out. Seriously, what are we going to do? Obviously we can't go running off without more information, and we can't take any more missions until this gets solved. If we work on figuring out exactly who-"

"Jacob." It was Wonder Woman who cut me off. "The Team is too close to this. We can't in good conscience send you out against an unknown enemy that is targeting you, even if it's to get to us. The League has to be the ones to take care of this."

"Then what the heck do we do till then?" Kid Flash protested. "No offense, but it takes you guys forever to get anything done."

The three looked at each other, before Superman stepped up. "We may have to consider the possibility… that the Team won't ever be able to do missions again."

Everyone on the team erupted in protests. "Quiet." Batman's voice cut through all of us, and in the following silence he continued, his tone surprisingly soft. "This team has done good work, but it's become too dangerous for it to keep operating. I'm sorry, but this could be the end of the line."

"Don't you see? That is exactly what these people want!" Starfire protested. "We have hindered their operations and foiled their plans. We can't simply give up due to this attack!"

"But it can't be helped." Wonder Woman said firmly. "In war, you must recognize where to pick your battles and when you are put in a bad position. We may have to accept that we've lost this one."

"What about us?!" Kid Flash yelled. "You can't just expect us to do nothing!"

"No one's saying that." Superman assured. "You can go back to working alongside your mentors. And we'll think of something for the others. It's just that for now, it's too much of a risk to have you together-"

Troia suddenly stumbled, her hand coming to her chest. "What..." she muttered, her face one of confusion.

"Troia? What's wrong?" Wonder Woman asked.

"I… don't know." She said, straightening up. "Something feels wrong, but I don't know what."

Everyone else present looked at her with concern, but no one knew what to make of that. I suppose it could have just been a dizzy- yeah, no I can't even complete that thought. Well, I wasn't getting any alerts from Mountain security, but I set it to do an internal scan while I checked police feeds, media feeds, even a few weather stations and satellites. I still didn't know what, if any, connections Troia might have had to cosmic affairs but it seemed prudent to check.

While the others continued to talk about the Team's future, I happened across weather satellite feed positioned over the Atlantic that was showing something odd. At first I wondered if something had drifted over the lens, but the spot was rapidly growing bigger. I watched it for a few seconds before I understood what I was looking at. "Guys!" I said loudly, grabbing the attention of everyone in the room. "There's a giant blob of dark something that's starting to cover the entire Atlantic ocean."

I called up a holographic screen that showed them what I was seeing, the dark blob already half covering the middle of the ocean, expanding at a blinding pace. It only took a few more seconds before it reached the shores, and I opened another screen showing the outside of the Mountain just as it hit. Across the sky, a curtain of night screamed from the horizon and swept over us. The once sunny sky was now blotted out by a wavering night, numerous stars shining with an almost sickly glow above us.

The shroud slowed as it hit the land, and came to a stop a few hundred miles inland. In under a minute, the entire Atlantic ocean and the coastline were covered in darkness.

Well… silver lining... everyone else would probably forget about us for a bit.

=====A=====