Ray and Leonard were disguised as janitors, wearing matching blue jump suits and carrying a pair of twin mops. Meanwhile, the League of Hotties were each wearing the clothing of agents, matching ties around their necks and twin hats on their heads. The only difference in the costumes were their shirts – Sara's dark blue, while Kendra’s was white and Deserey's was a tan sandy color. (She found it a little ironic and couldn’t resist.) Firestorm was flying around back, waiting to cut the power; Carter and Mick were waiting to cause a diversion. Rip was back on the Waverider, handing out directions like it was Halloween candy.
“Now,” Rip was saying through the comms. “The file we’re after is in a secure and locked room. In order to gain access we’re going to have to –”
“Knock and ask them politely to let us in?” Dez said, sarcasm evident in her voice.
“…Borrow a magnetic keycard…” Rip finished, sounding a tad annoyed at having been interrupted with another stupid comment. Deserey didn’t really care though. She considered it pay back for waking her up that morning. (Petty? Yes. Fun? Absolutely!)
“Because that’s so much easier than just shrinking down and stealing it,” Ray complained.
“Let me show you how it’s done,” Leonard said, sounding completely and utterly exasperated. “Old school.” There was a soft clanging noise, as he dropped his mop carelessly onto the floor. Deserey couldn’t see from where she stood, but she heard a woman gasp a moment later. Her heart began pounding in her chest at the sound, and her palms grew sweaty, her mouth becoming as dry as a desert.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Leonard asked. Deserey heard the woman's stammering response a moment later.
“I – I wasn’t watching where I was going.” It should have been impossible to hear the woman, considering she wouldn’t be wearing one of their comms. She would have had to been standing extremely close to Leonard. Close enough that their bodies would be inches from touching. Close enough that they might even feel each other’s breath on their skin…
Deserey gritted her teeth. She wasn’t sure why the thought bothered her so much, but the more she thought about it the quicker her initial anger from that morning returned, along with that insufferable headache.
“…thank you.”
“Just doing my job.” Deserey peaked around the corner as she and the other lady Legends started towards Ray and Leonard. She spotted Leonard holding the broad's hand, as she batted her eyes and smiled like the ditzy blonde she probably was. The woman let out a gross giggle, walking away, like she thought she even had a chance at getting laid. (Bitch.) But she didn’t see the way Leonard smoothly stuck his hand into her pockets, swiping both her card and her wallet.
“That’s a nifty little trick,” Ray admitted, as Len held up the card. And when he held up the wallet, the scientist sighed deeply. “Really? We’re trying to save the world, and you’re lifting wallets?”
“It’s called multi tasking,” Leonard shrugged. He turned carelessly to where the three ladies approached. “You're up, power couple.”
As they walked by, Leonard discretely passed the card to Sara. She took it, hiding it in her sleeve, until they reached the door to the room with the file.
“The records room has closed circuit cameras. We need a diversion,” Rip announced.
Not even a millisecond later, shouting could be heard from down the hall. Over the comms Deserey heard Mick challenging some other guy to an arm wrestle and Carter taking bets from anyone who had decided to watch. (From the sounds of it there was quite the crowd.) “Yup,” Deserey muttered. “Sounds like the US government to me.”
“You do realize that you’re trash talking your own government don’t you?” Rip asked.
Dez shrugged, as she followed Kendra and Sara through the halls, Sara swiping the card to gain access to the room they needed. “As an American citizen I reserve the right to criticize my own government.”
“I thought you lot were supposed to have an overwhelming amount of national pride,” Rip said.
“Common misconception. Americans are stupid, greedy bastards,” Deserey told him, gaining some rather concerned looks from Kendra and Sara, as they entered the files room and started looking for the file on Savage. “Our government has enough funding and resources to clean up the schools and decrease poverty, but instead they sit high and mighty, wasting space by building five mansion they’ll never actually use. Just empty pieces of garbage, while kids are starving on the streets and minimum wage workers barely get by. No wonder we have so many worthless crooks running around robbing people blind.”
Kendra and Sara simultaneously gave her wide eyed looks and shouted, “Whoa!”
“…I'm going to try and not feel personally attacked,” Leonard said.
“You shouldn’t,” Dez told him grumpily. “Because I’m personally attacking you…Not Mick though. Just you.”
“Uh, okay?” Leonard sounded confused. And honestly Deserey wasn’t sure she fully understood where her irritation was coming from either, but in the moment she didn’t care enough to apologize for what she’d said.
“…Wow,” Ray muttered.
Sara pulled the file from one of the cabinets near by. She looked at Deserey apprehensively before speaking. “We’ve got the file.”
“Uh, good,” Rip said, sounding relieved for an excuse to change the subject. “Now for the tricky part. All personal are subject to search upon exiting the building. Firestorm will divert the power long enough for you to exit.”
The three women waited a moment, listening for Jax (since he was the one behind the wheel of the Firestorm duo) to give them a green light. After a moment they heard him over the comms. “All clear.”
Dez, Kendra, and Sara slipped through one of the back doors marked Restricted Exit. They walked through the halls. For a moment all was fine and dandy, as the three women headed down a long, narrow hall. Then, out of the blue, Deserey heard Jax's annoyed voice through her ear piece. “Grey,” he hissed. “Shut up!” Deserey wasn’t sure what they were arguing about, (because they must have been arguing for the young man to say such a thing) but she figured it was nothing good. A second later an explosion could be heard from the other side of the comms, and Jax grunted. Alarms started blaring throughout the building.
“Tell me that’s not what I think it is?” Leonard sighed.
“…We hit the alarm,” Jax admitted.
“Guess that’s our cue to leave.” Ray sounded much too chipper considering their plan had just gone south.
“Been fun, fellas,” Mick said. (Deserey guessed he must have been talking to the guys who he’d been arm wrestling with.) Dez sniffed the air, as she and the other two ladies stepped through a metal door. Was something burning?
“Where is that smoke coming from?” Rip asked apprehensively.
“Rory set the room on fire with his gun,” Carter answered. He seemed mildly annoyed by it but not at all surprised.
“We're in the Jump ship. Hurry up and get here or we’ll leave all of you,” Leonard threatened. Deserey wondered if he was on edge because of her comment from earlier.
A security guard spotted the three women, as they were hurrying towards the door for the outside. He stopped them before they could get anywhere near it. “This is a restricted exit.”
“Sorry,” Kendra said, smiling like ‘oops look at us silly girls haha’. “We must have gotten lost.” She tried to move past the guard, but he stepped in front of her.
“Ma’am, I need to see your keycard,” he said. She glanced at Sara and Deserey behind her, before looking back at the guard. He held his hand out for the guard. “Ma’am.”
Deserey took the card Len had stolen for them from Sara, handing it to the guard. She grinned at him, when he looked back at her suspiciously. “This isn’t the correct card,” the guard said. “You don’t have clearance to use this exit. Who are you?”
“We’re uh…” Sara hesitated. She looked at Dez and Kendra for help. Kicking butt she could do, but coming up with a clever lie on the spot was another story.
“We're called the Revengers,” Deserey said.
“Revengers?” the guard repeated skeptically.
“That’s right,” Dez nodded curtly. “Sent by Director Nicholas Joseph Fury.” When the guard gave her an absolutely befuddled look she went on with her pop culture reference. “But we only call him Fury. Not Nicholas. Not Nick. Not Joe or Joseph. Fury.”
The guard raised an eye brow at her, and she was pleased when he unknowingly continued the reference with her. “Then what does his mother call him?”
“Fury.”
“What does he call her?”
“Fury.”
He stared back at her skeptically, like he just knew she was messing with him. Kendra and Sara shared a look, each clearly thinking Deserey's MCU quotes wouldn’t be enough to get them through this one. “…you’re coming with me,” the guard said after a moment’s pause. He reached out, grabbing Kendra’s arm, as he spoke into his walkie talkie. “We have a code seven viala – omf!”
That last part was because Kendra had decked him in the face. But unlike when she’d punched Rip back in the seventies, she didn’t just look mad. She looked absolutely insane. Her eyes had turned a filthy blood red, her lips curled into a snarl like a rabid animal with rabies. Hawk wings sprouted from her back, violently sending two more guards flying into the wall as they ran to help the first man. When their bodies made contact with the floor again, Deserey heard a sickening snap! and she knew they’d broken at least half a dozen bones. She cringed at the thought. (Dez had always been squeamish when it came to that sort of thing.)
Kendra's finger nails had grown into long, thin talons, edges as sharp as one of Sara’s knives. She turned to the first man, scratching his face with her talons. The man screamed in pain, turning his head so that Deserey could see the deep gashes on his cheek. Her stomach churned slightly, her head pounding worse than it had that morning. Hawkgirl flew out the exit and into the parking lot with an alarming speed. Mick and Carter rounded the corner, just as she did so.
“We’ve got the file on Savage,” Rip said, clearly watching everything from the ship’s monitors. He sounded utterly exasperated and tired. “What the hell does Kendra think she’s doing?”
“Bashing punks faces in,” Mick laughed, like this was nothing more than entertainment to him. Carter, Sara, and Deserey simultaneously shot him an annoyed look.
“What?” he asked, like he genuinely didn’t know how insensitive his comment was. Dez rolled her eyes at the arsonist, following Kendra outside, Carter and Sara on her heels. Hawkgirl was on top of another guard, clawing his eyes out with her talons.
“Alright, wonderful!” Rip bitched through the ear pieces. “We've got a demigoddess who’s gone completely berserk! Abort! I repeat abort! Get back to the ship right now!”
“Roger that,” Firestorm said. Deserey's head snapped upwards, as a loud crash sounded from above. She heard Sara groan, as she spotted Firestorm flying through the air towards the jump ship.
“I meant use the door…” Rip sighed. “But while you’re at it, can you help return our winged avenger to her cage?”
Wordlessly, Firestorm changed direction, swooping down and taking Kendra in his arms before flying off again. Dez glanced at the guard, screaming and writhing in pain on the ground as others swarmed to help him. Sara grabbed her arm, dragging her off to the jump ship where Leonard and Ray were waiting for them. They entered the small ship right after Carter and Mick.
When Firestorm and Kendra were on board, Ray told Gideon to bring them back to the Waverider. No one spoke as they flew back to their main ship. The tension was too high, as Kendra slowly came to, her appearance returning to normal: brown eyes, small nails, normal teeth, and no wings. She seemed a bit foggy, everyone looking at her with disapproval or worry respectively. Except Mick, who seemed more than a little amused. Dez fumed, tapping her arm rest irritably. Rip was definitely going to give them an ear full when they got back…
{~}
Deserey was wrong. Rip didn’t lecture the team, because they took care of it themselves with the argument that took place almost immediately once they entered the bridge. (She was mildly ashamed that she took part in it.)
“Instead of focusing on what went wrong,” Ray said, trying to keep everyone calm. “Let's focus on the positive!” Leonard rolled his eyes at his optimistic attitude, as he sat down. Dez scoffed, not really in the mood for positivity either.
“What are you talking about?” Mick asked. “That was awesome.” Dez wondered if he was being sarcastic or if he just really loved chaos that much.
“In the same way that tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters are awesome,” the professor huffed irritably at the arsonist’s comment.
Kendra shrugged, looking a bit annoyed herself. It was a bit uncanny, really. From the way she held herself, the way her eyes rolled every time someone said anything, how her arms were folded over her chest. It reminded her a bit of Anita, when she thought Deserey and Darryl were being unfair. “We got the file on Savage!” Kendra huffed.
“Despite the hiccup with the alarm?” Stein asked. He shot a look at Jax, who immediately jumped into defense mode. And he, again, reminded Deserey of her son, when he got to his feet, shaking his head in disbelief. “Oh, so it’s my fault now?” Jax said with a bit of attitude. “You know, maybe if you weren’t always yammering away in my head, I could actually focus!”
Ray awkwardly scratched the back of his head, as the arguing grew more and more hostile with every passing moment. Rip sighed, leaning against the console, looking a bit like how Darryl did when Anita and Daren wouldn’t stop arguing: completely and utterly warn out.
“You have access to sixty years of knowledge and experience,” Stein told Jax, sounding just like a dad trying unsuccessfully to get his uncooperative son to listen. “Why not just take advantage of that?”
“Because it’s my body on the line out there!” Jax yelled. “Not yours!”
“Hey!” Sara shouted from where she was perched in one of the chairs. She just barely leaned up to lazily look at Jax. “It’s not your fault. Everything would have been fine if Big Bird here hadn’t freaked out.” She nodded her head at Kendra.
Kendra started forward, glaring at the assassin. “Excuse me?” she hissed.
Deserey shrugged moodily. “You're not the only one,” she told the demigoddess. “Leonard just tried to get laid the whole time.”
Leonard shot her a dangerously icy look, but at the moment she didn’t really care if she was pissing him off or not. “What are you talking about?” he asked, sounding utterly offended by the idea.
“That dumb broad,” Dez told him, rolling her eyes. Like he didn’t know who she’d meant. She batted her eyes fakely, imitating the ditzy lady from earlier. “Uh, uh, I must have fell. Oops!” she mocked in the fakest voice she could manage.
“…I was robbing her?” Leonard said, still sounding confused and offended.
Dez snorted, rolling her eyes. “Of what?” she muttered. “Her virginity?”
“Enough!” Rip yelled finally. Everyone turned their heads to him, either exhausted or moody. “There's plenty of blame to go around.” Dez couldn’t help comparing him to Darryl again. Both men had similar tones when speaking, stern and strict, yet somehow still soft and caring. Perhaps it was a dad thing.
“Fortunately, Gideon was able to generate a low-end EMP, which erased all the Pentagon's magnetic media,” Rip went on, standing a bit more upright.
“Like security footage?” Ray asked.
Rip nodded, taking a deep breath before giving a small lecture of his own. “Look, you’re just lucky that the Department of Defense likes to keep incidents like this under wraps.”
Deserey raised an eyebrow at him. “Incidents like this? What do you mean by that, exactly? Have you tried robbing the Pentagon before?”
Rip ignored her, turning his head upwards towards the ceiling. He addressed the AI instead. “Gideon, any luck with our purloined secret file?” And from under his breath he muttered, “Please say yes…”
“Oh my god. You have, haven’t you?” Deserey gaped at the captain.
He continued to ignore her, as Gideon responded to him. “Yes, Captain. According to the Pentagon, Savage has defected to the Soviet Union.”
“So, the most powerful evil the world has ever known has just gone red at the height of the Cold War,” Stein nodded slowly, still looking a bit miffed from his argument with Jax.
“Now he’s going to help them cook something up that kills the future,” Ray put in. He was a lot more chatty now that the arguing had died down, and Deserey began to realize that perhaps arguments just made him uncomfortable.
“Gideon,” Rip said tiredly, “set a course. And you lot.” He turned back to the team. “Stop arguing like bloody five year olds. You’re grown men and women.”
“Yeah, but –” Sara started, only to be cut off by the brit again, when he held up his hand.
“No buts!” he told her. “Now, go. All of you. Go do whatever it is you do to calm down and make nice. I’ll call you when we’ve reached Russia.”
“You are such a dad…” Deserey complained, as she and the others stalked out of the room.
I had fun with this bit, haha. It’s great amusement, writing chaos. Do you like Dez's addition to the Pentagon robbing? How do you think Russia will go?
I’m really lazy so I don’t have much to say this time around. So…hope ya liked it!