-Robin POV-
The Team's latest mission had been… two steps away from a disaster, if he was being honest with himself.
Batman had been right to call them out on their mistakes as much as Robin hated to admit it, and while the praise for managing to adapt after everything had gone sideways helped, he also knew they never should have been that unprepared in the first place…
So even though there were no hard feelings between the Team, no one was exactly in a great mood.
Nothing was said out loud, but everyone seemed to agree to split off from each other for a little while. Either heading back to their respective homes or finding a secluded area in the mountain base to just unwind for a bit.
Not an option for Robin though, considering he lived with Bruce and had no desire to face the man after the verbal lashing – mild as it might have been – so soon afterwards.
But as he headed into one of the lounge areas, Robin quickly discovered the Team wasn't the only ones having a bad day when he spotted Donna scowling angrily at a computer while looking like she had been punched through a building or seven.
Part of him really didn't want to deal with whatever she had going on, but after that last mission the lure of a quick win by helping the Amazonian with whatever tech issue she had going on won out.
"Hey Donna, need a hand with that?" he asked as he made his way over and peeked at the screen.
She was in the League database looking for… something, but Robin honestly couldn't tell what based on a glance.
"Robin!" Donna actually brightened up a bit. "And, yes, I need assistance. I tried asking Red Tornado, but he refused."
That was odd. Tornado was usually happy to help with requests like that.
"Alright, what are you looking for?" Robin asked, taking her spot at the keyboard and navigating back to the main page.
"Two things, I need information about the Sphere of Atlas. And I need to find out Califa's location."
Robin's hands froze on the keyboard. The sphere of what? And Califa was involved? He hadn't even started and already he knew this was going to be more complicated than helping Donna look up some information.
"Alright, I already know I'm going to regret asking… but how are those two connected?"
The Amazon's scowl returned in full force. "Because the moron decided that running off with the artifact while Princess Diana was distracted with another foe was a fantastic idea. And of course she refused to listen to me when I tried convincing her it was too dangerous to play around with."
Ah, that explained the state she was in.
"I'm guessing Califa managed to beat you before Wonder Woman could catch back up?" Because while the Saiyan was slowly getting faster, she was still nowhere near as fast as the founding League member.
"I'd almost rather that. She distracted me and escaped when she sensed Diana was on her way."
That made sense. "Solar flare?" Robin guessed, because the monkey brained idiot took an unreasonable amount of glee blinding people with her stupid flashbang technique.
"Worse. She faked the technique and then blasted me into a mountain with an energy beam when I closed my eyes." Donna growled. "Now will you help me or not?"
"Alright, alright. I'll help. What am I looking up first?"
"The Sphere first. I need to know how dangerous the artifact Califa took is and how to turn it off when she does something stupid with it. We can focus on finding her later." She decided.
Robin shrugged and started searching. But truthfully, he wasn't expecting to find a lot in the League database. Not only was the mystical side of things very rarely documented, they also only tended to do so after whatever artifact or ritual caused an incident that the heroes needed to respond to.
Luckily, that wasn't the only source of information he had available to him.
When Califa had that accident with the mirror, Bruce had compiled a lot of information about ancient Greek artifacts. Most of it had obviously been about mirrors or the designs on the back of the one they had, but Bruce had also gathered information about other rumored artifacts and mystical objects just in case the mirror was mentioned alongside them.
Information Robin could access once he created a secure connection back to the computer in the Batcave.
"Anything else you can tell me about the Sphere? It might help me narrow things down." He asked.
But Donna just shook her head. "Only that it is incredibly dangerous considering how Princess Diana refuses to discuss it at all with me and that her foe believed it was key to breaking the curse placed upon her."
Not much to go on, but Robin had worked with less. It also helped that Bruce had streamlined the whole process when they were trying to figure out what happened the first time Califa dealt with an ancient Greek artifact. This time he at least had a name to work with.
Unfortunately, spheres were kind of common. The ancient Greeks used them in models for outer space, iconography for some of their gods, as tools in rituals… and a bunch of other stuff. Nothing specifically about a magic sphere or what it could do. At least according to what Robin had access to.
So he changed gears and started focusing on things referring to Atlas specifically.
And once he filtered out the stories and references to the Titan specifically, he had something resembling a hit.
"Okay, I think I have something." Robin said, delving into the entry. "Nothing specifically about the Sphere, but there was a robbery a few months back that included several artifacts and a tablet. According to this, the translation included a warning that the objects could 'summon the Titan's curse'." He brought up an attached picture of the collection before the theft which included a pair of daggers, the tablet the translation was taken from, a couple bronze ritual pieces, and an orb that could possibly be what Califa had taken. "Not seeing anything about it being able to lift curses, but that could have been from an untranslated section or even another tablet the archaeologist just couldn't find."
"Is there an image of the tablet itself? I can't read the inscription from this angle." Donna asked, and Robin almost wanted to smack himself for forgetting Donna could actually read ancient Greek.
"Anything?" He eventually asked when it became clear she was re-reading the tablet for the third time.
"No." The Amazon said with obvious frustration, "But then again if its secret was easy to discover, the Sphere would have been hunted down much sooner than now."
She paused and recollected herself, "Still, I can understand now why Princess Diana didn't want to discuss this. Messing with a Titan's curse, even adjacently, isn't something one should do lightly especially if they want to avoid angering the Gods. Which means that I need to find Califa and stop her soon, before she offends Zeus somehow and is struck down for hubris."
Robin raised an eyebrow. "You need to find her? Not going to take this to the League?"
Normally he wouldn't have thought twice about it. The older heroes kept sidelining them whenever they thought things would be too big or dangerous, but after getting called out on exactly how unprepared they were on that last mission he was just a little less willing to let one of them just run off on their own – even if Donna was more of an honorary member of the Team.
"You can't go off alone."
"I don't have a choice. Califa can sense people around her. If she feels one of the Justice League members coming towards her, she'll run off before they can get the Sphere back if she feels outmatched. With me she will at least be forced to confront me. Her pride won't let her run from someone on her level."
"Oh, no. I totally get that." Robin assured her. "So instead you need backup that won't cause her to run off. Not without giving up something more than temporarily bruising her pride."
Donna looked confused. "How would that work?"
Robin grinned. "Simple, you bring the Team with you. If Califa decides to run after that, we'll never let her live it down. And she knows that."
Donna smiled back. "That would do it. I'll make the call while you track her down?"
"Works for me…"
-o-
Not long after that the rest of the Team was assembled in the hangar next to the bioship, minus Kid Flash who was dealing with something in Central City when Donna had made the call.
While the Amazonian was giving the others a quick summary of what was going on and who they would have to fight, Robin was watching for his teammates' reactions.
Part of why he had screwed up so badly on the last mission was because he just blazed ahead thinking that everyone would keep it together and follow his lead like what happened whenever Batman let him run things. But after going over some things in his head, he realised that it was a bit unrealistic to expect a bunch of younger heroes still learning like he was to handle things like Batman just because he took charge.
He needed to watch his teammates and figure out how to work with them too, and part of that was figuring out if they were on the ball or just going along with things.
Aqualad, for instance, was stoically listening to Donna's briefing and seemed perfectly okay at the thought of fighting the Saiyan. Not surprising, considering he had met and fought Califa before and knew what he was getting into.
Miss Martian seemed much more nervous about the whole idea, but Robin didn't see anything that hinted the martian was actually against their plan. Just equal parts nervous and excited about going behind her uncle's back to take an unsanctioned mission.
Superboy was the surprise.
Robin had half expected him to be eager to get another shot at Califa after his frankly humiliating beatdown the last time they fought. But to his credit, Superboy was listening almost as calmly as Aqualad.
This wasn't the same team that had stumbled almost blindly through Santa Prisca.
They were better now. And a certain stupid monkey was about to learn just what that meant.
-o-
-Califa POV-
I sneezed as some dust from my latest round of training irritated my nose, but couldn't actually bring myself to be mad about it.
Why?
Because thanks to the Sphere I felt like I was finally making real progress with my physical training again instead of just creating new and slightly weird ways to move rocks around!
In fact I wasn't even using weights at all and I could feel my muscles burning under the effects of the Sphere's bubble of increased gravity! Something that meant even on the outside edge of the increased gravity effect, I was already dealing with around ten times Earth's normal gravity.
Way stronger than when I first found the Sphere, but still something I could handle no problem.
…well, no problem besides the ones I gave myself.
This was still training after all, and I smiled at the thought.
Whoever I fought next was going to be in for a big surprise when I showed off just how much stronger I was getting and I couldn't help but feel excited about that fact.
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