A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action Please

A DCAU Plus fanfiction project

This adventure begins just after and during the Justice League three-parter "Starcrossed". Go watch it, it's awesome.

Cassandra

Two weeks ago...

The Thanagarian corridors were wide and high vaulted, allowing them to fly easily. There was, however, a catch to this. One that Cass easily exploited, as she ran up the bulkheads and leaped back and forth between them. Catching the Thanagarians in her blows, slamming them into one another, and bashing them with their own Nth metal weapons. She flipped through the air, slamming her weapons onto two guard's hard helmets, braining them. Using the leverage from the maces, she flipped over them and rammed her feet into another Thanagarian's bare belly.

Behind her, Robin was blasting away with Mister Freeze's gun, freezing Thanagarian limbs in blocks of ice. She pinned one to the wall with a blast, then threw a flashbang into the face of two others. It went off, making them stagger back. Unaffected thanks to her mask's lenses and her earbuds, Robin iced them to the deck and kept running.

"Okay... It's rough, but based on the scans I can get you're only a hundred meters away from the bridge," Barbara told them over their earbuds. Cass threw one of her maces into the chest of another Thanagarian, and whipped herself around like a top. This built enough momentum to let her nail another Hawk in the groin. He howled in pain, a howl Cass cut off with a swing of the mace.

"That's great," Robin said, throwing a bolo around another Thanagarian and pinning her wings to her back. She fell out of the air and slammed into the deck, but got back up and charged with an axe. Robin ducked under the swing, and jumped over the next, flipping over her. The warrior turned around, smirking as she burst out of the wires with her enhanced strength.

"What was that?!" She scoffed. She then twitched and shuddered as the taser went off, dropping her.

"That," Robin snarked. She looked over at Cass, and touched her earbud. "Can anyone else get in?"

"There's too much interference. You drew a lot of attention off S, Wonder Woman and GL, but not enough," Barbara said. She hummed. "How far away are you from the jet?"

"Five hundred paces," Cass said. She leaped into a group of five more Thanagarians, busting through them with some difficulty.

"You guys had better duck and cover," Barbara stated. Stephanie let loose a batarang at a nearby Thanagarian: He was a big one, with a large beard and even larger muscles. He was spreading his wings wide, to be intimidating: And it was rather effective. The weapon burst into a bright light and bang, but the large warrior powered through. Robin barely rolled out of the way of the huge alien's mace, which shattered the deck plating underneath them like glass. He stood up and laughed.

"Two children?! That's the best this puny planet can muster?" He guffawed. He swung his mace again, and Robin stumbled backwards.

"Gah! Do you not know that Superman is outside? Doing actual hard work? You're not even worth his time!"

The Thanagarian chuckled, and feinted. Robin managed to dodge the follow up strike, but the rebound from the strike sent her tumbling into the wall.

"Guh," Stephanie grumbled. The Thanagarian towered over her, raising his mace.

"Pity... You had spirit, little one," he said. Stephanie quickly threw down a smoke bomb, the gas billowing out. The Thanagarian laughed, inhaling a few lungfuls, before he flapped his wings and blew it away.

"Smoke and tricks, little one! Nothing that...!"

It was some kind of monster, a bird, screaming and roaring at him that emerged from the smoke. Burning eyes and deafening shrieks. The Thanagarian gasped in horror, staggering back.

"N-No... No... NO! GET AWAY! GET AWAY!"

His limbs were frozen in place by the ice gun, leaving him screaming. Robin sighed behind her gas mask. She rushed past the raving warrior, who even now was crying and shrieking like a disturbed child.

"Good to know this stuff works on aliens, too," Robin mumbled, feeling a bit disgusted with herself. "Barbara, what did you mean by that duck and cov-?"

The bulkheads of the ship shook around them, as something exploded some five hundred feet behind them. Stephanie staggered, barely being caught by Cass. Robin looked up at Cass, and she sighed.

"... Oracle, did you just blow up the Bat-Wing?"

"Bruce has plenty more," Barbara said dismissively. Stephanie groaned.

"How are we supposed to get home?!"

"Jump. Land carefully," Black Bat stated. Stephanie laughed.

"Glad to know your sense of humor is still intact," she observed. She looked around. "Everybody's suddenly got someplace better to be."

"Well, Wonder Woman did just find a way in," Barbara said, a bit smugly. Robin grinned.

"Let's not waste it then! Come on!"

The bridge wasn't too hard to get to. Cass was able to handle most of the stragglers... Yet it seemed too easy. A thought she shared with Stephanie. Robin nodded in agreement.

"Well, they aren't stupid," she said. She hummed thoughtfully as they made it to a long corridor. At the end was a pair of massive sliding doors: Their obvious destination. Stephanie pulled out a baratang, and threw it straight ahead. In an instant, lasers arced across the gray corridor, blasting the batarang into smoking shards. Shards that fell on the deck in front of them, clinking loudly against the grate. Stephanie nodded.

"Yeah, okay. Definitely not stupid," she said. She sighed. "We'd have had an easier time going in through the front! From the outside!"

"Why put bridge in front? Spaceship," Cass asked, as Stephanie began rummaging through her large backpack. "Vulnerable. Should be deep inside."

"I don't know, aliens can be so dumb sometimes," Stephanie huffed. "Like J'onn thinking we don't know he's the one always stealing Chocos-Aha!" She pulled out a set of razor sharp playing cards. "Okay..." She threw one through the corridor, and as before the lasers fired: But now Cass was able to discern a pattern. Each shot was in a straight line at varying heights, but regular intervals along the corridor. Stephanie kept throwing cards, lighting up the lasers. Each throw, she got a little further until one clattered in a smoking heap against the doors to the bridge themselves. Robin looked over at Black Bat, biting her lower lip.

"Think you can get through that?" She asked. Cass nodded. Robin grinned, and handed her a bag.

"Hang onto this. All right... And...!" She threw a card, lighting up every laser. "GO!"

Cassandra leaped, going into a handspring from her landing and vaulting over the next laser. She kicked off the ceiling for the next series, wall running three steps before diving through the next gap. She immediately leaped, the sizzle of the lasers filling her ears as she tumbled, flipped, and somersaulted through the lazing field. She made it to the double doors, and clung to the ceiling to avoid the lasers. She pulled out the first item: A cutting laser torch. She fired it up and began to burn through.

It was actually managing to cut through the alien metal, but that wasn't the point. The point was to make the Thanagarians open the doors. And this they did, two guards charging out as the portal opened. Cass dropped down, using one of her 'borrowed' Nth-metal bludgeons to slam them both into the deck. She turned, just in time for another Thanagarian to charge her.

"DUCK!" Robin screamed, and Cass dropped down flat. A split second later, Robin screamed overhead, rockets roaring, as she slammed into the warrior and sent him and herself flying. Cass got up, and pulled the pins on the devices in the bag. She threw it and dove out of the way as more Thanagarians tried to attack: Just as the fear gas bombs went off.

The smoke filled the air, and the Thanagarian cries of anger and battle turned to screams and whimpers of terror. Cass quickly leaped through the smoke like a ghost, finding cowering Thanagarians and striking their nerve clusters hard. One by one, she dropped them all, finally reaching the large observation dome that surrounded half the bridge. Robin had made it to a computer terminal, and was already typing away. The Thanagarian she'd rammed into was slumped, unconscious, against the glass: Firefly's jetpack, burnt out and spent, smoking beside him.

"Okay... I've spent a minute on this and I just realized... I don't read Bird," Robin sighed. "It's all chickenscratch to me!" She grinned at Cassandra. Cassandra would have returned the gesture, but her mask prevented it from being seen.

"Just put the interpreter module onto it," Barbara said, in a long suffering tone. Stephanie pulled out another bat shaped device, and set it on the console. It beeped, which Cassandra assumed was a good thing.

"All right... The shield control room... I've got it," Oracle reported. "I'm sending it to the others."

"Okay, and what are we supposed to do?" Robin demanded. "I mean, we could crash the ship now-"

"Free the prisoners," Oracle said. "Shayera's one of them, but a lot of other heroes were taken captive. You need to get to them, quickly. Security forces are already converging on your location."

"Are you absolutely sure we can't just crash the ship? Since you blew up my plane," Stephanie groused.

"Bruce's plane," Oracle reminded her. Stephanie huffed.

"I'm the one who did the maintenance on it! Who cleaned it! Who cuddled it and sang it bedtime songs!"

Cass stared. Robin winced.

"Forget I said that. Jail break it is!"

To be continued...