The Witch

Kevin Grant's pov

"What the hell is your game?" I demanded as Cassandra and gang walked down the hall from the living area.

"Didn't you want platonic sex?"

"Um, you were serious?"

"Do I look like a slut to you?"

I scrutinized her up and down dramatically, trying to get under her skin, but answered, "Looks don't matter, but actions."

She gave me a bemused look.

"That's probably the nicest thing you implied to someone here."

"Yeah and you made sexual advances towards me out of nowhere." I deadpanned and she scowled. "Also, last I checked, platonic relationships don't have sex involved in them."

"No, you remind me of my ex too much. I was just getting under your skin."

We reached the exit at the end of the main hall and got outside. It was a cloudy day but it was almost noon. I thought aloud,

"So if Cyborg has the T-Car?"

"We fly." Megan said.

"Why is the first thing you say so-" I stopped talking when I saw the red head with freckles before me.

"C'mon," she bubbled, "let's go! I know you can fly!"

"I don't."

<You can>, she said but her mouth DIDN'T move. Now she's dropping crap in my head.

"No brain messages and who died and made you Peter-bloody-Pan!" I protested.

<Fine, only tactical messages.>

"Megan's normally like this," Cynella chimed in, "everyone is rather… dour whenever Batman is around."

"Besides the point." I replied, "Who's carrying me?"

"I will!" Cynella replied with a… uncomfortably sappy smile.

"Cynella," Cassandra big-sistered, "don't forget to change."

"Oh yeah!" She scanned her ring over her usual costume and came up with an old fashioned, green bias cut tea dress. Reminded me of the 30's.

"Hey," Cassandra added, "just lend him a ring, trust me."

"Oh…" the alien girl seemed disappointed, "didn't think of that."

The two hundred year old alien—who looks twelve—waved a ring onto my normal hand and I instantly felt the effects. Power. Like the power of creation was in my hand… and I can summon a few things already on my own. Without thinking I elongated the nail on my cursed thumb and touched it. The ring dissolved and Cynella's voice was worried,

"What did you just do?"

Not wanting to tell her, I replied after a vain moment to attempt at thinking up a good lie, "Nothing."

"The Corps is very particular about their rings and even though that was a copy I KNOW I felt it, you did something."

"Cynella," Cassandra groaned, "just give him the ring. Megan, you already know to throw up an illusion as we fly."

"Yeah put a ring on it already!" Megan laughed and leapt up into a hovering position.

Only then did Cynella relent to the peer pressure and give me the ring. Worry was in her eyes. Distrust.

***

None of that lasted long. Once I blasted into the air and hit the water hard enough to snap my neck the little alien helped me get used to the ring. They were worried at first but then laughed at my expense. I probably will as well… in fifty years. The blonde smiled the entire flight to our destination, acting as my co-pilot and training wheels.

"Did I hurt you when I separated you from Osiris earlier?" She said in my ear.

"No, keep your eyes on the air."

We flew on a few moments and she asked, "I haven't properly introduced myself have I?"

"Why bother?" I asked, getting vibes I couldn't quite place from her.

"Well I am Arisia Rrab, a legal Graxonite, and a veteran lantern; you are?"

I groaned but humored her, "Kevin Grant. Local, unlicensed, motorcycle riding dickhead." Then I added bitterly, "With no motorcycle."

"Aww I think I heard about that. Want me to get you another one?"

"For what?"

"A favor." She replied.

"Deal, I guess? Why are the aliens in this group so much nicer than the people?"

She laughed, "I don't know. I like your ascot."

She complimented my tie… I just got home from getting a tailed suit jacket, breeches err- slacks, and this ascot. However, I wasn't in my clothes two hours before I went headfirst into the bloody ocean and the salt in sea water can ruin them if not washed. Normally, complimenting someone's soiled clothes came off as backhanded but she seemed sincere enough. Sighing, I was nice and said,

"Well, while I am not given to flattery, thank you. I don't get compliments often."

"You don't?"

"Flattery wasn't good etiquette back then. So… I usually don't handle compliments well."

"It's okay, we're all learning."

Yeah… yeah we are.

***

"Well give me a pipe and call me Sherlock." I exclaimed nonchalantly at the crime scene.

Several bodies were dumped in a nondescript shack. A vinyl player sat in the corner and played a song I couldn't quite distinguish. We were distracted by the horror before us.

Professor Pyg was a talented surgeon. However, he was also an extremely dangerous chemist as well. In the pocket Bat computer device Cassandra had the file told us about his "Dollotrons". Kept in line through a drug, he made his patients addicted to his custom chemical aberration. The withdrawals, without Bat-level aide, pretty much recreates the end of the Russian Sleep Experiment creepy pasta.

Entrails were strewn about everywhere. Pyg-man, or the copycat or whatever, had sewn ANIMAL skins to these people. Cassandra gagged and croaked, "Turn the music off, please."

"Don't."

"Whatever, Batman just needs some pictures and he'll do his thing if he can. Robin will probably figure something out of it first though."

She started clicking pictures and I walked closer to the vinyl player. I listened to it for a moment.

"This is a poem, a symphonic poem."

"Do you think it's some sort of message?" Megan wondered aloud.

"Cass give me your phone."

"Why?"

"So I can ask Siri what song this is."

Cassandra brandished a bloody burner flip phone.

"What kind of drug deals you doing?!"

"Left my smartphone in the Tower because my business is my business."

"Jesus-"

Cynella held her ring up to it for a moment and it blinked green.

"It's the Noonday Witch by Antonín Leopold Dvořák. It's about a folk tale that goes like this. A mother warns her son that if he does not behave she will summon the Noon Witch to take him away. He does not behave, and the witch arrives at the stroke of noon. The witch, described as a horrible creature, demands the child. The mother, terrified that the witch has actually come, grabs her son, and the witch begins chasing them. Finally the mother faints, grasping her child. Later that day, the father arrives home, and finds his wife passed out with the dead body of their son in her arms. The mother had accidentally smothered their son while protecting him from the witch. The story ends with the father's lament over the terrible event."

Chills and goosebumps passed through my body and my eyes met Cassandra's and then the others.

"So… he's telling us to behave?" I wondered aloud, "Or he'll chase us and kill us?"

"Never wrong to take precautions with these psychos." Megan answered.

"What if," Cynella worried, "he's targeting you?"

"When were these bodies ehh murdered?"

"Not long after you became this week's news sensation I'd reckon." Cassandra surmised, after clicking one more photo, "Alright, that's it."

"So you guys are my loving mothers!" I exclaimed in falsetto, "Isn't that great!"

"Shut up before I beat you like a stepchild." Cassandra quipped with a humored smirk on her face. "Let's get out of here."