Young Writers Society

Tempest Briar frowned. He liked to think he was plenty good at blending in, considering those that don’t end up losing a few things. Like their lives. And Tempest Briar was very good at not losing hers. The only thing that would make Tempest Briar seem odd is the blue in her hair. But that was easily fixed.

“I usually wear a hat. But I lost it in the space between reality.” He sighed. “But it’s a lot easier to explain blue hair than whatever’s happening over there.” She gestured to the girl with cyan hair and definitely not white irises. “No offense, of course. Your appearance is quite striking is all.”

Dresden looked himself over.

"I don't stick out," he said. Alright, he did kind of stick out, but he wasn't that bad in comparison to the others in the group. He just looked a little shady. He honestly stood out more where he had been before, but that was the goal, wasn't it? Magicians were supposed to be showy pricks. That was their thing.

Still, Dresden patted himself down. He wouldn't have any dollars on him. He knew that much. But if he was right on what he had kept in his jacket's pocket last night...

There. He reached into his duster's pocket and pulled out a thick, misshapen bag. When he loosened the string around its top and reached his hand out, he pulled out a handful of small, identical emeralds.

"If we can pawn these off," he said, being careful with his words, "we can get some money to put towards clothes. I can also probably cast a spell that can hide less normal features."

The spell was actually just regular old magic, no chanting included, but Dresden wasn't going to say that. He also wasn't going to say the illusion would drop if he lost focus too much. He had done them countless times before. He could do them now, too.

One trip to a pawn shop and a secondhand clothing store later, and the group was ready for their trip to the library. Dresden couldn't help but feel a little smug when he looked at the others. He had done his best work in awhile, making them all look like a regular old group of humans.

He had even done the best he could do with his outfit, too, switching out the duster for a comfortable hoodie. The duster, and the supplies within, were now shoved into a cheap, flimsy backpack he had gotten for five bucks from the secondhand store. It had some weird stains on the inside that were probably blood, but Dresden would take it. He needed some place to shove all of his belongings.

And now they were here. Gotham City Public Library. The moment Dresden stepped inside, he realized how massive it was. Pres would have a field day in a place like this.

"Okay," Dresden said, as soon as they were all in. "We need to find out information on owls. I vote we split and meet back here in an hour."

Bobby made a beeline for the computers and got immediately to work. This DC-universe's version of the dark web was accessed pretty similarly to the one Briar had taught Bobby how to access back home, at least, some parts of it. But all Bobby needed were the forums.

He searched for mentions of the occult, keywords he'd seen on the papers, and slowly the results began to push more...conspiratorial. The Court of Owls came up over and over, whispers about how real they might be - which, in the DC universe, meant they were absolutely real, in town, and probably about to be responsible for something catastrophic.

Bobby wondered as he scrolled through discussions about how that anonymous users uncle was kidnapped by them, and how this user saw them, and on and on, if Bobby and all the other displaced people were placed into a story, and would therefore be subject to the tropes and will of whoever thought they created the story in whichever universe was consuming it, or if they were an interruption. Were they free actors in an unobserved version of the universe where they couldn't necessarily rely on comic book tropes to know what might happen next, or were they characters in some Nightwing comic or something?

If they were subject to the tropes, this was the set up, and someone here was going to find something that would lead them to the next step. Most likely they'd run into someone with their own line of comics who could cameo to help sell the issue, and they'd solve the mystery in the end. Of course, if there was going to be a tragic twist, the magicless kid was first on the chopping block for sure. Unless his self-awareness would save him?

A chill ran down his spine, and he glanced around. Most of the others had vanished to their own corners of the library, but Dresden could be seen browsing a shelf near the Computer Corner (it had a sign), looking engrossed in his search. Bobby's eyes darted back to his screen when Dresden shifted. Would someone else's character arc, their self-actualization, be the justification for Bobby's death in this story?

The cursor blinked at him from a black text box. The members of this forum went on with their discussion. Someone's sister heard about someone who was hunted down by the Court of Owls after witnessing a super-secret meeting. Probably true. In the real world that was crazy conspiracy talk, to be taken with a heaping mound of salt until it could be verified twice over. Then Bobby would sell the story. The information. But it was a story, they were all stories.

But this was Batman-land, and if they were part of the story, then this was probably important.

He memorized what he could, as many specifics as he could. Neighborhoods, addresses, names, and hints at any of those things. Then he got up and went to join the others to share their findings.

Tempest Briar felt increasingly glad that alis were still half-human as the day continued. Dresden didn't stress too much about them during the whole "humanization" fiasco, only telling him to modernize their clothes and muttering something about hair die. What dead hair had to do with anything was a little confusing, but if it explained away her hair, she accepted it.

Now Tempest Briar was in a very puffy jacket. It was so lovely that he almost felt bad privately taking a knife to it. But she didn't exactly have a choice. So, no one expected anything odd which was perfect. Now, he could wander around the library and pretend that he could read English. And no one would be none the wiser.

When Bobby glanced back in Dresden’s direction, Dresden was blissfully unaware of his gaze. Like Bobby had noted, he was in the middle of looking through the shelves and display by the Computer Corner. But while Bobby had been looking up information on the Court of Owls on the deep dark web, Dresden was busy staring at the display.

Gotham, unsurprisingly, didn’t have any occult books out in the open. He had tried asking a college-aged librarian with short, curly hair earlier, but had been informed that he would have to speak to the head librarian if he wanted to get access needed to get into any of the special collections.

So Dresden scrapped his plan of looking more into demon summonings. He already knew enough about them, anyway. Whoever had summoned them probably played around with some of the symbols on the pentacle. It didn’t explain how they had ended up away from a pentacle, but DC was weird. Demon summonings in DC probably were, too.

Back to the display.

The display didn’t have anything on demon summoning. It was actually a display on DC’s vigilantes, put together by a class at Maps and Olive’s school. Dresden knew he should have been researching the owls, but when he saw that display, he just stopped. Knowing which vigilantes were important. If Dresden really wanted to avoid the Batfam, he had to know who he was avoiding.

And there were a lot of vigilantes to avoid. Wayne Family Adventures amount of Batfam members to avoid. Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Red Robin, Spoiler, Black Bat, Batwoman, The Signal, and Bluebird. Oracle and Red Hood were missing from the lineup, but that made sense. Dresden remembered Pres mentioning that Oracle operated under the radar, and that Red Hood had spent a little too long as a crime lord.

So. Operating during the day really was the best call. If Dresden remembered what Pres had told him, once, Signal operated in the day. That was one vigilante compared to…

Dresden decided he didn’t want to do the math. It was a lot, and that was all that mattered-

Someone rolled a book cart behind him. He didn’t see it, but he heard the turning of the wheels.

“Hi,” a woman said from behind him, and Dresden froze up at the voice. A fact about Gotham’s libraries was suddenly coming back to mind. “Kathy told me you were interested in our special collections?”

Dresden slowly turned. He did his best to hide the horror threatening to flicker across his face.

Standing behind him was the woman who was, Dresden realized with even more horror, probably the head librarian. She was a redhead with green eyes and glasses. The wheels hadn’t been a book cart; it had been her wheelchair.

Dresden was looking at Barbara Gordon, also known as the former Batgirl of Gotham, also known as Oracle. The Batfam’s resident tech expert, and one of the people that was very high on his list of people to avoid.

Dresden awkwardly cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s me.”

“Why are you interested in them?” she asked, and the question was worded in such an innocent way that he couldn’t tell if she was onto him or not.

“Oh, you know,” Dresden said, vaguely. She kept watching him, waiting for a more detailed answer. “School project?”

“School project?” Barbara Gordon repeated, raising an eyebrow.

God dang it.

“For one of my college classes,” Dresden said, sweating buckets as he gave an awkward smile. “I was visiting the city and thought I could use it for one of my papers.”

“You want to use our occult collection for a college essay?” Barbara asked, bewildered and definitely a little suspicious. How could she not be, when Dresden had been staring at the stupid vigilante display for the past ten minutes?

“It’s an independent study,” Dresden replied, and Pres would have died of laughter on the spot if he could see Dresden stumbling his way through this whole thing. “But, now that I’m thinking about it, I think I found enough sources. I’m probably good now.”

He gave a tiny smile at that, then immediately booked it away. He had already made himself suspicious. Rushing off to the bathroom and hiding in one of the stalls until it was time for the entire group to meet up wouldn’t make things any worse.

So Dresden did exactly that, and when he finally did meet up with everyone by the entrance to the library, he kept an eye out for Barbara Gordon. She wasn’t anywhere near them, but she probably had eyes on them with the cameras.

“I didn’t find anything on the owls,” Dresden admitted when everyone finally met up, “but I did find out something about Gotham’s vigilantes. I hope none of you did anything too suspicious, because it looks like this library is run by one of Batman’s vigilantes.”

He kept his voice quiet when he spoke so Barbara wouldn’t be able to pick up on his words in the recording later, and kept his head ducked down, too, to avoid his lips being read. He might have been being paranoid, but he knew how good her tech was. He couldn’t risk it.

"You don't have to tell me twice to avoid that crowd," said Vankous, sighing heavily. "That pool party was far too embarrassing." Vankous' eyes widened. "And that was a joke. Joke. J. O. K. E. Not a reference to a real event."

Kate decided to ignore that. Either Vankous was horrible at covering up his accidental reveals or those weren't accidental at all. It hardly mattered to her either way.

"I have found out entirely too many things regarding owls, but none of them were particularly helpful on the topic of the specific owls we were looking for." Kate shrugged. "We might need to change our approach slightly. Oh and. I didn't do anything suspicious by my standards. I'm not entirely sure how suspicion scales relatively so I don't know if it would qualify as too suspicious in your view. But, no one gave me a second glance, so I think we're good."

Tempest Briar sighed. “Unfortunately, my search turned out rather useless.” She shrugged, as if she had really tried to look for a book about owls. There was every chance that he had walked right past a book that had every single answer they could possibly need, but he would rather die than admit that. Her goal was to blend in. Randomly announcing that you can only read a very particular dead language wouldn’t help.

He sighed, hoping he sounded the appropriate amount of disappointed. “What’s our next step? Is there a next step or is this when we throw ourselves to the ground in defeat?” She paused. “That was also a joke. I don’t know where this floor has been.”

Bobby shook his head. He couldn't have ended up with a less competent group. He missed Briar. Hell, he'd take Queenie in place of these people. At least he knew he could trust her to research. At a library. Was it really so hard?

He crossed his arms and shifted back against the nearest wall. They should move on. He really wanted to throw them all back in there and tell them to try harder, to find something useful before they came back. For a moment, a brief, terrifying flash, he imagined being able to do that. Just the tinyest bit of authority-

The thought fizzled out, replaced with the familiar ever-present cold dread. The buzz of oncoming panic sank into his chest, and once again he only wanted to run.

He spoke up then, stuttering, shifting, his eyes on the ground, he quickly shared his findings - leaving out his own speculations about them - just mentioning the forums, the cult, and then stopping abruptly and shuffling back to his place against the wall.

"So that's why the court sounded familiar," Dresden said after Bobby finished talking. He had heard about the Court of Owls once or twice from Pres, not that he had ever really touched anything that had to do with them. Now that he had gotten a description, Dresden vaguely remembered looking over Pres's shoulder when he was on Ao3 and seeing a fic or two related to them that had something to do with Dick Grayson being a thing called a Talon.

But that had been an AU kind of story, so Dresden seriously doubted that it would come up now.

"So our next plan of action is finding one of those secret meetings," Dresden said, which would be easier said than done. The court was seen as a conspiracy theory for a reason. They didn't really have a clear, traceable presence in the city.

If Dresden had been the magician he was pretending to be, he could have probably summoned up a demon to do all the hard work of searching for the court. But that would take time and Dresden wasn't a jerk, so he'd carry that burden instead.

"We also need to return to Maps and Olive," Dresden said, "considering that the two of them were also going to look up information."

Dresden couldn't remember too much about Gotham Academy, but he did hear that it was a name of a comic series. That had to mean something. Maps and Olive had to be good at finding out information.

"Breaking into secret meetings is part of my actual job," said Vankous. "That sounds quite fun actually. Much better than manually having to do research."

Bobby stared at Dresden. "You want to bring those two kids further into this?" he asked incredulously. Sure, he was a kid too, possibly younger than they were even, he could never really tell, but he had no choice but to be involved. They were just amateur sleuths who shouldn't be involved at all.

"Yeah," Dresden said without pause. It took him a moment to realize how bad this probably looked right now. It was different, when he wasn't stuck like this. To Bobby, he probably came across like Batman did to some people—the kind of guy who threw kids in danger's way.

But he couldn't just tell the truth. Not with Oracle theoretically watching, and not afterwards, either. He had to keep Pres—and the club—safe, and he couldn't take that risk.

So he recalculated everything he was going to say, not at all used to being in this kind of position of power and responsibility.

"They're comic book characters," Dresden said, keeping his voice so, so quiet. "I remember a comic named Gotham Academy. I never read it, but just look at Olive. She has to be one of the protagonists. This is what they do."

He paused.

"...Even if she wasn't," he relented, "they would still try getting involved. As of right now, all they're doing is snooping around their school and sneaking off campus to a city they already know how to be safe in. We're giving them direction right now. If we suddenly didn't show up, wouldn't they try finding us?"

All of what he said was true, but what had really made him think they should keep those two involved was that selfish little thought of his that they would fit in perfectly with the club.

Vankous promptly shrugged. "How much do you know about them to make the choice about their inclusion? Sure they look young, but very few people are what they seem. Unless of course you both know a lot more about them than you're letting on, which is whatever then. Keep your secrets but come to a conclusion quickly. We probably don't want to spend any longer here than we absolutely have to."

Bobby's growing dislike of Vankous was seeming more and more justified every time they opened their mouth. Whatever reality they came from, they must be a pretty dangerous person for anyone to tolerate their bullshit, which was all the more reason to dislike them. Magic users were never, ever good news, but a powerful one...no world was better off for an abundance of magic in the hands of any one person.