章節 3: The Brotherhood

AN: This story is always one chapter ahead on my Patreon.

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"Alright ladies and gentlemen, keep up the hustle! I want to see those legs moving!" Dinah clapped her hands as the herd of teenagers blew past her in a stampede of sneakers and sweat. Their footfalls thundered against the glossy, wooden gym floor as their new gym teacher stood awkwardly near the bleachers, shouting encouragement and doing little else. Coach Dinah Blake may have come with glowing recommendations and an impressive list of credentials but Dinah Lance didn't know the first thing about physical education let alone teaching it.

Truthfully, Dinah wasn't too worried about it. Living the superhero life as the Black Canary left her with a more-than-decent grasp on fitness. Surely that knowledge would translate into decent lesson plans that would help her keep her cover. For a week or two, at least. But for the first day, Dinah decided to play it safe: the kids would run laps and Coach Blake would oversee their efforts. From the bleachers.

They still run laps in high school, right?

There was one issue, however. The King of Creeps himself was in her class. Matthew Reston, the weasel who turned her friend Helena into his own personal sex puppet. And it took every ounce of her willpower not to tackle the little bastard to the floor and pound the snot out of him.

Of course, in this case "little" wasn't quite indicative of the object of her hatred. The boy looked much like he did on the video Barbara showed her: fair skin, brown hair, blue eyes. Tall, broad-shouldered, with well-muscled arms. But it was different seeing him in the flesh. He really was handsome.

And that just made the situation make even less sense. Dinah had lived through high school herself, endured the very same dreadful, wonderful years these kids were experiencing. Guys who looked like Matthew Reston couldn't keep the girls away from them even if they tried. It was true when Dinah was a teenager. Hell, it was true when her mother was a teenager. And it was still true today. So why would a young man like Matthew Reston need to use mind control on women? She knew for a fact that he didn't come up short in the manhood department - the video had made that abundantly clear.

Maybe Reston was a control freak. The Lord knew there were plenty of those types running around. Or maybe he was just pure scum like his MegaCorp stuffed-suit of an uncle. Whatever reasons Reston had for what he did, they didn't matter. Dinah swore she was going to pound the creep. Until then, though, she needed to keep her cover.

But that didn't mean she had to go easy on the little bastard.

"Don't think I don't notice you slacking off back there, Reston!" She bellowed across the gymnasium, blowing her whistle just to be a little extra obnoxious. The kid slowed to a jog as he shot her a confused look. She blew her whistle again, pointing directly at him. "That's an extra lap for you! Move it, pretty boy! If you're not breaking a sweat, you're not working hard enough!"

Reston, to his credit, didn't look angry or even annoyed. The creep had the balls to shoot her a smirk, the kind of smug, cocky look she'd seen far too many times on too many men - she'd sometimes seen the same look on fellow heroes! She watched him finish his current lap, running at a steady pace with clear ease while many of his classmates were visibly fatigued. Dinah was not impressed, however, as she had already seen video evidence of the boy's stamina.

On his next pass by the bleachers he slowed to a walk, perhaps out of defiance, and approached her. He walked with an arrogant swagger in his step that made Dinah's blood boil, the same kind of confident strut that few men could naturally pull off. She'd seen it in high school, in college, even on the Justice League. Those were kind of men that Dinah melted over. And that was the worst part of this fucked up situation. Besides Helena being hypnotized, that is.

The smirk plastered on Reston's stupid, handsome face didn't help one bit, pushing Dinah's willpower to its absolute limit.

If I'm not made a Green Lantern by the time this is over, I'm calling bullshit, she thought, forcing down a sneer as the young man came to a stop in front of her.

Matthew Reston planted his hands on his hips and gave her a genuine, heart-melting smile. The "Superman" look, Dinah noted with a purse of her lips. It was the first time she'd seen the guy up close - in the flesh, that is. The strong jaw, dimpled cheeks, the bright yet devious eyes, the arms, the chest, the abs, and the way his gym shirt wasjust tight enough to show them all off… The kid wasn't just handsome. He was gorgeous. Hell, he even smelled nice. And Dinah wanted nothing more than to break the fucker's nose right then and there.

"You take this gig seriously. I like that." He offered his hand to shake. "Our last gym teacher didn't give a shit about athletics."

"Watch the language." Dinah warned curtly, ignoring the hand in front of her. She locked eyes with her target and refused to be the first to break contact. If she made him uncomfortable, then it was all the better. Prey should never rest easy. "That'll be another lap." She added coldly.

Reston raised a brow and laughed, his eyes gleaming like he knew it was all a game, that he was charming fellow to melt the ice queen's heart. Suddenly, Dinah was extremely aware of her beating heart, the thumping in her chest now turned into pounding, thundering against her ribcage. There were thoughts in her head right then, unspeakable thoughts that she rightfully snuffed out the moment they came into existence. There was a fluttering feeling, the horrible sensation she hadn't felt since she was a stupid giggly teenager. She took it and buried it deep, silently praying it would stay there. This terrifying ordeal occurred in less than a second and now Dinah was back in the gymnasium with a rapist scumbag back in front of her.

Reston had his hands raised half-heartedly in mock surrender, doing a damn fine impression of a charming, handsome young man. "My bad. I'll watch my mouth next time. I still think it's good to have you here." He then blatantly gave her a once-over, drawing his hungry eyes up and down her body. She wasn't wearing anything revealing, but not even sweatpants could hide the Black Canary's sculpted, drool-worthy legs. "Maybe now gym class will actually be exciting."

And just like that, Dinah was back to being pissed. She would have admired the sheer arrogance the kid possessed if she wasn't already flooded with a sense of pure disgust - both for the sleazebag and for herself.

"Is that right?" She asked with a smirk of her own, masking malice and rage to the best of her ability. She could not stop some of it from creeping into her words. "In that case, when you're done running your extra three laps, you can go ahead and give me fifty push-ups. Does that sound exciting enough for you?"

Reston wasn't phased, jokingly wincing as if he'd been slapped. "Ouch. You don't mess around do you?"

Dinah batted her eyes, sweetness and venom dripping from her tongue. "I could make it one hundred."

The kid pressed his lips into a line and gave a half-bow of defeat. He may have been cockier than Guy Gardner but at least he knew when to throw in the towel. "Gotcha. Still better than the last teacher, though."

He turned to go back to his laps and that's when Dinah saw it. There on his right hand, resting on his middle finger, was a ring. A ring of dark, glossy stone.

"Hold it!" She called out a bit too loudly. Reston stopped dead in his tracks, turning towards her with a look of genuine confusion. But Dinah never took her eyes off the ring. "That's a mighty fine ring you got there, Mr. Reston. But you know the rules. No jewelry."

A moment passed. Reston looked from the ring to Dinah, his eyes unreadable. They both stood there as other kids passed by, still as stone. She saw him run his thumb over the black band then watched as he closed his fingers into a fist, drawing the hand to his side - away from Dinah.

The cockiness had gone from his face and his voice was firm and cold as ice. "I never take it off, Miss Blake."

Dinah frowned. "And why not?" She snapped.

Reston blinked. Another moment passed. The young man brought his hand up to his chest so he could look at the ring glimmer under the gymnasium lights.

"...Spiritual reasons." He finally told her.

Dinah thought about forcing him to take it off. She thought about sending him to the principal's office. She thought about kicking the bastard in the groin. She thought about doing a lot of things. But ultimately, she knew they wouldn't do her - or Helena - any good.

Coach Blake exhaled through her nose and smiled. "A hundred push-ups it is!"

- - -

"Reston's wearing a ring, too."

"I figured." Barbara kept her eyes glued to her computer screen, reaching over to the minifridge under her desk. She produced an ice-cold can of diet Soder Cola, setting it on a coaster a little way to the side of her keyboard. The crack and hiss that followed told Barbara that her guest accepted her gift eagerly.

As Dinah took a sip from her drink, she turned and planted her sweatpants-covered butt on Barbara's desk, crossing one leg over the other. Before the redhead could voice her displeasure - really, chairs were invented for a reason - the blonde was speaking again.

"Just like Helena, the kid refused to take the damn thing off." Dinah frowned, tapping the heel of her foot against Barbara's desk. "You think… He can only maintain control over her as long as there's a connection? Like, they both need to wear the rings for the mind control to work?"

Barbara exhaled in annoyance, blowing some air through her nose, but decided to hold her tongue. She tapped a few keys on her laptop and instantly the screen was illuminated by a digital dossier. The bold text that ran across the heading read 'Hypnosis Enchantments'.

"I don't want to make assumptions, but…" Barbara swiveled her seat to face Dinah. "I'd wager that's exactly how it works. Magic-based hypnosis channeled through a connection held between enchanted objects. One sender, one receiver. Or multiple receivers."

"Nasty stuff." Dinah muttered with distaste.

"Zatanna once told me that if she had a dollar for every time she's had to deal with this kind of crap, she'd never need to put on another magic show." Barbara said soberly. This was far from the first time the Birds of Prey had dealt with men like Matthew Reston, the predators who used their power and influence to manipulate and exploit vulnerable women. But it was the first time one of their own had fallen victim to them. There was a weight that settled in the pit of Barbara Gordon's belly, a sense of failure that no amount of daydreaming about smashing Reston's teeth in could fix.

"So what's the game plan?" Dinah's voice cut right through Barbara's thoughts, dragging her back to the real world. "We take the ring off of the kid instead?"

Barbara shook her head. "It's not that simple. I saw four more of those rings in my class today. One of them was on another male student. Andrew Westfield."

The redhead tapped a few more keys, bringing up half a dozen windows on her screen. Here, a driver's license. There, academic transcripts. Social media pages, forum accounts, web search histories, the works. All from this new guy, Andrew Westfield. Barbara had done her research well before Dinah had arrived.

"Eighteen years old. Solid grades. Star athlete. Comes from old money. It's like they make guys like him and Reston in a fucking lab somewhere." Barbara continued. "I've already told you about his father. Paul Westfield. A project director at Cadmus."

Dinah only looked mildly annoyed, like she had already been expecting the situation to get worse. "Right. This place really is supervillain high." She groaned, rubbing her temple with her free hand. "So Reston has himself an accomplice?"

"Or a ring of accomplices. Reston and Westfield are both members of the same campus social club. The Kingston Brotherhood." Barbara reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a yearbook. She was lucky the library allowed her to take this copy back to her room. Bound in dark brown buckram, the book's front cover had silver indented lettering that read 'Class of 1976'.

Barbara opened the book up to a marked page and presented it to Dinah, tapping her finger against one particular black and white photo. A group of young men standing around a large, round table, all posed to have their picture taken, all smiling. The text beneath was a series of names: Roland Desmond, Derek Reston, Paul Westfield, William Heller…

Barbara smirked as she saw the look of realization dawn on Dinah's face.

"And get this: the Kingston Brotherhood is old. As in 'founding of the country' old. This mind control stuff could be much bigger than we thought, Dinah. This isn't horny sleazebags living out playboy fantasies anymore. This is centuries-old conspiracy territory now. And we just fell ass-backwards into it."

The blonde powerhouse still had her eyes locked on the photo, slowly examining every scumbag's smirking face. With a snort of disgust, she closed the yearbook shut and flung it into the wastebasket.

"I actually needed to return that to the library…" Barbara muttered, but was interrupted as Dinah cut in.

"It doesn't matter if these creeps have been doing this shit to women for a hundred years or a thousand. It stops now, with us." She declared, her diet Soder Cola now forgotten on Barbara's desk. Barbara made a point to move the abandoned drink onto a coaster. The Kingston Academy was quickly turning out to as much of a cesspool as Gotham City, but that was no reason to act like savages.

"I absolutely agree with you, Canary." Said Barbara. "But we need to play this smart. This magic stuff is tricky."

The blonde was pacing now, the restlessness having long boiled over into clear frustration. "I just hate sitting on my ass like this. Reston was within five feet of me and I couldn't do anything."

"I know how much you want to go to town on that creep. I do too, trust me. Luckily for the both of us, that's exactly where my plan leads."

"Now you're talking my language, Red." Dinah said with a fiery glimmer in her eyes.

"There's a catch, though." Barbara warned. "We need to take them all at once. That's the tricky part. We could absolutely go over to Reston's dorm room, beat him to within an inch of his life, and take the ring with no problem. But if we sever one magical connection, it could alert the others. Some of these enchantments work like an alarm system: If one is broken, the rest are put on alert. And we don't even know how many others are in on this. It could be just these two or it could be a dozen. So if we tip the rest off by jumping the gun, who knows what they'd do? So we're going to play it safe. For Helena's sake. And for all the other women these creeps have ensnared."

"Fine." Dinah nodded. "For Helena."

"We stick to plan." Barbara insisted. "We stay undercover. We shadow Reston and Westfield. We find out who else is part of their operation. We confirm all of our targets. Get them all in one place. And then we shut them down. Completely."

The vicious smile that spread across Dinah's face told Barbara to pity the men who would soon be on the receiving end of the Black Canary's rage.

A soft ping from Barbara's laptop ripped them both out of their small moment of righteous fervor. The redhead furrowed her brow and tapped a key, bringing up a window that was playing slightly fuzzy footage. A clear downgrade from the woman's usual surveillance devices, but the site of live, streaming footage brought a small smile to her face. The video feed showed their friend, Helena, and judging from her nudity it was clear the woman had just exited the shower.

"You bugged Helena's room?" She heard Dinah ask, her friend sounding both impressed and perturbed.

"Microphones and camera. Finally got a decent connection established, too." Barbara bragged, shrugging at the blonde's wary expression. "We gotta keep an eye on our girl, don't we?"

The sound of someone knocking at the door made them both jump, putting Barbara especially on edge until they realized it was coming from the video feed.

"Sounds like she's got a visitor." Murmured Dinah as she joined Barbara in her intense focus on the livestream.

Together, they watched their dear friend slip on nothing but a purple silk bathrobe before moving to answer the door…