Chapter Text
Ray was in Chicago for an academic conference. Since rejoining the land of those-who-weren’t-faking-their deaths, these were the sorts of things he had to start doing again. Above him, the new Hawkman and Hawkwoman that had become based in Chicago fly. Their wings were golden and stiff, unlike the ones Carter and Shiera had worn. Their uniforms were gray. They were circling a building above, low to a roof. They really did look like great big birds of prey. For a moment, Ray thought they looked like the skull-birds that had terrorized the Morlaidhans.
Suddenly, Ray found himself full of longing. He missed his Hawks. While he had been in South America, they had been swept up into Ragnarok and he hadn’t seen them at all. He hadn’t realized how much he missed them until he looked at these newer, younger aliens using their mantels.
Ray put his hand to his forehead as he stared up at them. The setting sun was glinting against one of the Hawks’ wings. Ray chewed his lower lip as he thought aloud under his breath. “I’ve heard a tiny bit about those Hawks even in the little exile I gave myself…”
Again, Ray’s heart ached. That little bit he had heard made them seem so different than who he had known. He’d seen the political cartoon after Hawkwoman had shot a man. Still… he had been the first Hawks’ best friend. And every new hero could use someone more experienced to be a helping hand and show them the ropes. There was no reason he shouldn’t meet them and every reason he should.
“They aren’t Carter and Shiera, but I should introduce myself nonetheless” he said as he made up his mind. He entered the building he had seen them circling and found the stairs.
I’ll let Ray Palmer get to the roof, he thought to himself as he started to take the stairs two steps at a time, incredibly grateful the building wasn’t a skyscraper but something more manageable. And I’ll have The Atom take it from there.
eanwhile, Hawkman and Hawkwoman aka Katar Hol and Shayera Thal were in the air. Shayera had a gun in her hand and scowled under her helmet. She was on the inside of their duo, scanning the ground below them.
“This is stupid and a waste of time and effort, and I hate it,” She said to her partner.
“We’re superheroes now,” Katar reminded her. They had split very recently from Thanagar and were adjusting to the new ‘branding’ they were being given. They patrolled the skies now not as emissaries of an alien planet, but as a man and a woman who had chosen to do good for their new, adoptive home. It was a change for both of them, but one that Shayera found more difficult to adjust to.
“Catching megalomaniac villains is what superheroes do,” Katar continued.
“Oh, shut it, peacock,” Shayera said, still scowling. But she couldn’t deny that that fit their prey to a T.
“What else would you call the seemingly random robberies where he shows up, boasts a lot and then uses some sort of transformation beam out of a cartoon?” Katar asked, also scowling a little bit.
“What’d he call himself again? I think I heard him say it after he turned Andrea Lencioni into a dog,” Shayera said as they circled even tighter around the building. She’d had no idea that that was even possible. And if the guy hadn’t been cackling about how it would only last twenty four hours, she would be concerned about if Lencioni would ever turn human again. Lencioni was something of a friend to Shayera and Katar. She’d never admit it, but she’d been worried.
“The Beamster,” Katar replied. He squinted through his helmet, thinking he had seen movement on the roof. “He called himself the Devious Beamster.”
“We don’t even know what he looks like!” Shayera exclaimed in annoyance and certainly not concern as they took another turn around the building, following Katar’s small gesture that they should rise up a bit.
The figure on the roof was Ray Palmer. He trotted to the edge of the building. Jumping onto Hawkwoman’s helmet wasn’t Ray’s best idea in the world, but he wasn’t sure how else to get the Hawks’ attention short notice when they were flying like this. All Ray could do was hope that the new Hawkwoman had Shiera’s good sense of humor. Though, Ray reflected as he stepped onto the ledge, he was pretty sure that of the pair the new Hawkwoman was the more hot-headed one.
But he was in for a penny and in for a pound. And the Hawks were starting to rise, quickly.
Well here goes nothing, Ray thought as he focussed on his size changing. He shrunk down as he jumped, adjusting his weight and density to be no more than an action figure’s. The shrink was almost instantaneous, though it was accompanied with the strange and pleasurable tingling feeling that had become so familiar to ray over the years. He stumbled a little on Shayera’s helmet, but it was no different than riding a skull-bird, really.
He even grabbed the wings on Shayera’s the same way he would a skull-bird, tugging on the metal a little to try to get her attention. He tugged a little harder. “Hey! I’ve been looking to talk to you!”
“Devils!” Upon realizing there was some little creature tugging at her helmet, Shayera’s eyebrows scrunched together in rage.
She reached up and grabbed Ray by the head, putting much too much pressure on his skull as she pressed. She dangled him by his head in front of her eyes.
“What are you?” She barked. “Are you the meat we’re tracking?”
Katar went for his weapon, backing Shayera up. He held his H-handled push dagger to Ray’s back. He wasn’t sure if he would use it and he didn’t want to, but it was good to have a threat. “You better answer her.”
It was hard to think. It was hard to concentrate on maintaining the size and weight he had determined. The new suit responded to his thought patterns, not dials like his old one had. Most of the time, this was better since it responded to Ray’s thoughts instantly. Right now though, all Ray could think about was how the pressure against his head felt so heavy. Unfortunately, the suit responded.
“Seven hells!”
Ray’s body density increased until he was like a 150 pound weight in Shayera’s hand. This jerked her arm almost out of its socket and made her drop him. Ray was still faint from the pressure as he fell, his size increasing on instinct until he was his normal height of six feet.
“Damn!” Katar said as he saw Ray start to go down. “He might have been a victim of our guy!”
Katar swooped down after Ray like a great raptor, catching him in his arms in a princess carry. However Ray’s density was still higher than it should have been, so Katar had to slow slightly as he used the Nth metal of his wings and its anti-gravital properties to counteract.
On a different nearby roof a shadowed figure stood, hood over face and something that resembled a very high-tech, possibly magical bazooka in his arms. He cackled at seeing the Hawkman swoop down and how he had an opportunity to mess with him.
“The Hawkman, if that is his real name, has not even realized that I, The DEVIOUS BEAMSTER, am on this roof and not the one he had been circling! The birdbrain! Just like all Thanagarians whose gene bomb turned me from a normal TWENTY FOUR year old to what I am now! The robberies were just for fun and to test my DEVIOUS BEAMS (and also because I want things), but those birds swooping me gave me a sweet, or dare I say DEVIOUS, chance to humiliate and take revenge on an agent of Thanagar!”
The Beamster rummaged in his coat for a pink crystal, holding it up to the light as if inspecting it for impurities before nodding to himself and inserting it into the mechanism and holding it up, balancing one end against his shoulder.
“Lets see how DEVIOUS the Hawkman finds this BEAM!”
He looked through the sight of the beam device and took careful aim at Katar’s back, wanting to make sure he hit the man and not the metal wing. Normally, Beamster preferred less long distance beams with his short range beam device, but in this case he was happy to have the distance.
The beam exploded from the device, wide and pink and sparkling. The Beamster’s aim had been true and it hit Katar square in the back, right between the shoulder blades. The Beamster cackled again and bounced on his feet, getting closer to the edge of the building to watch the effect of his latest devious beam.
Katar’s chest grew tight, heavy and throbbing. The pressure against his chest and nipples started to ache and his pecs started to balloon in size- right in Ray’s face where Katar was still carrying him. The weight on Katar’s chest kept growing.
“Seven Devils!” Katar swore.
His chest was getting slightly constrained by his suit and the heft started to sag a little from lack of support. Finally the rapid, painfully pleasurable growth stopped leaving Katar with respectable, wide, C-cup breasts. Katar’s back aches with the unexpected change.
He landed, Ray still in his arms. Ray was trying to look anywhere other than the new breasts that had grown in his face. Shayera swooped down after them in concern, having clearly seen the beam hit Katar.
And as soon as they were standing next to each other, she saw the effect since Katar’s flight suit was hardly baggy enough to hide it.
“What happened to you?” She asked, laughing slightly at her partner’s predicament.
“Jam it, Shay,” Katar said as he set Ray down. “The actual Beamster got me.”
Ray looked safely into Katar and Shayera’s faces and not at their chest. “You guys are fighting a villain? Maybe I can be of help. No one ever expects the Atom.”
“The Atom… the little guy who worked with the Halls?” Shayera asked, looking at him appraisingly.
Ray smiled at her, hands on his hips. “That’s me! I’d love to work with Hawks again.”
“Didn’t the Atom die?”
Katar and Ray stared at her with blank, disbelieving stares.
“What!” Shayera said defensively, crossing her arms over her chest. “I watch the news.”
Ray cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well. That wasn’t me.”
Sailing past whether or not Ray should be dead, Katar started speaking to Shayera. “Somone more experienced with Earth’s… bizarreness might be helpful.”
Before Katar could finish his last word Ray was tackling Shayera out of the way of a thin, sparkly blue beam. They hit the ground, Shayera on her back and Ray pressed up against her, his chin on her breasts. Shayera pushed him off of her. Ray was looking up at a nearby building, raising his hand to point at the shadowy figure and his beam-bazooka.
“I think I’ve got eyes on your villain.”
Shayera and Ray scrambled to their feet as The Devious Beamster started to run across the building tops. His trench coat trailed out behind him. He cackled and yelled down to the heroes on the ground. “Catch me if you can, birds! I'll ruin you yet!”
Ray shrunk down, hopping up onto Katar’s shoulder as he did, Katar knelt down a little so that Ray could hop and grab onto the strap of his wing-harness. Katar kicked off after Shayera while Ray climbed up to sit on Katar’s helmet. He gripped one of the wings on his helmet. Shayera was in the lead of the flight with a rifle in her hands.
Beamster shot another beam at her, the beam-zooka difficult to aim while running. Shayera dodged the shot easily. Shayera was a much better shot from the air and likely a much more experienced one too. But the Beamster was good at dodging out of the way of her shots and shooting wildly enough that she would have to jerk away at the last minute. Ray, holding onto Katar’s helmet, struggled not to lose his grip on his helmet wings as the two Hawks swooped and swerved out of the way of the Beamster. The Beamster shot various arrays of colored beams at them, easily leaping from building to building. Shayera missed another shot at him as he hopped another building.
“This’d be much easier if this was a flash zone,” Shayera complained as she lined up another shot. “But I don’t want to kill him if I can do anything to avoid it. He hasn’t done any serious harm…”
Katar looked at Shayera with a proud upturn of his lips.
The Beamster had slowed down, seeming to load another crystal into the beam-zooka. He was crowded against the chimney of a building. Shayera lined her shot up and got him by the feet, making him jump.
“Atom and I can get him if you keep him corralled on that building. You have the distance advantage,” Katar called to Shayera as he began to fly to get to the back of the building where the Beamster was trapped.
“You’re real bossy, you know that, peacock?” Shayera said as she took an opportunity to rload her own rifle.
“And you have a rifle,” Katar held up his small blade in reminder, curving around to the chimney.
“Do you two always argue?” Ray asked, somewhat surprised by their banter.
Shayera was able to balance distance and her aim to keep the Beamster trapped against the chimney. He stared around, realizing there was nowhere left to run. He dropped the beam-zooka, having been unable to reload it.
“You Thanagrians are all the same, waving your TWENTY FOUR gauge rifles around!” The Beamster shouted, curling his lip.
“Rifles have calibers, idiot,” Shayera said, making sure to keep the attention on her.
Katar turned the corner of the chimney to swoop the Beamster. As he did so, Ray leaped off of his helmet and onto the roof, shrinking to be even tinier as he did. The Beamster’s hearing had warned him of Katar’s coming though and with catlike reflexes he jumped back, pulling a pistol sized beam device from the pocket of his coat.
Doing so made his hood fall back. Revealed were two cat ears, twitching in irritation. They grew directly from the top of his head, merging seamlessly into his ginger hair. His hair covered a lack of human ears. The Beamster pressed the barrel of his beam-gun right against Katar’s exposed jaw. Katar had the tip of his blade pressed against the Beamster’s stomach.
The Beamster looked from Hawk to Hawk maniacally, but with slight fear in his feline-esque eyes. Despite this his hand didn’t tremble. The barrel of the beam-gun stayed firmly against Katar’s jaw.
"Well Hawkwoman, if that is your real name,” The Beamster monolouged. “Let’s see who can go first- my finger on the trigger of my DEVIOUS BEAM or your Hawkman’s blade. Certainly not your bullet. Even stabbing me, I may have TWENTY FOUR minutes of bleeding out. I don’t even remember what kind of DEVIOUS BEAM I have equipped! It has been over TWENTY FOUR hours since I used this. Even I, The DEVIOUS BEAMSTER, would be unable to tell you if this would simply change him like the last DEVIOUS BEAM I employed or if it will be deadly and KILL him.”
Shayera hesitated. She had only just gotten Katar back from their time separated while she was forced back to Thangar. And here Katar might get killed. She realized that the yearning for his company may have been something more. She couldn’t bear to be without him again. And if she took the shot, the Beamster definitely would. She couldn’t risk that whatever beam the nuisance had really was harmless. She couldn’t risk Katar on a possible bluff.
“Damn you…”
“They always forget the little guy,” Ray said softly to himself. “This should take them by surprise.”
He was by the Beamster’s feet, having gotten there from where he had leaped off of Katar’s helmet. He focussed on growing to his natural height of six feet. The suit and the power of the white dwarf star that was the source of his powers responded to his mental cue. He shot up.
C’mon Ray, he thought. You don’t want to lose a hawk you only just got.
Ray threw all his density into the force of his fist as he reached full size right next to the Beamster. He clocked the Beamster clean in the jaw just as he finished growing. The beam-gun dropped from the Beamster’s hand, clattering harmlessly to the ground at Katar’s feet. As for the Beamster himself, he had a glass jaw. The Beamster fell back, cold-clocked.
He was OUT.
Ray kneeled to pick up the two devious beam-makers. “I should get these to the S.T.A.R. Labs conference I’m in town for.”
Ray collected both items, grateful that he had thought to bring a device that allowed him to shrink him and put them in the pockets of his Atom suit. Luckily, neither of the beam-makers had any organic parts, so neither would destabilize and explode. Ray was looking forward to trying to figure them out.
Then he went over to the Beamster, checking him over for a moment. He didn’t seem to suffer any more head trauma than just a good punch would give you. Ray looked up at the Hawks. “What are you going to do with him?”
“He looks like a Netherworlder,” Katar said, gesturing to the cat ears and the stubby cat tail that was slipping out from behind the Beamster from how his coat had fallen open.
“Means all we can do is take his weapons and throw him back to that pit,” Shayera explained. “It’s like Chicago’s very own Underside. Cops won’t go there and won’t extend jurisdiction there.”
Speaking of police, there was a squeal of police sirens and lights. Katar’s face went a little red as he glanced down at his new chest and realized that if they stayed here to wait for the police to get all the way up the stairs before leaving they would certainly see his new developments.
“We should get going.”
“Can I at least take you two out to dinner?” Ray asked with a sincere smile. “I’d love to get to talk more.”
“There’s some good bars around here, good for music and dancing at some,” Shayera said as she slung her rifle over her shoulder.
“I haven’t been dancing since…” Ray let out a low whistle. “Probably since I got divorced. But I’m not so much of an idiot to pass up on dancing with a Hawkwoman when she wants me to.”
(He had learned that lesson with Shiera.)
Katar crossed his arms over his chest, unaware that all that succeeded in was making his new breasts stand out more, balancing on his forearms. “You two go ahead. I don’t need anyone to see me with these.”
Now that Katar had drawn attention to them, Ray and Shayera’s gazes both fell to them. Shayera raised her eyebrows a bit and chewed the inside of her cheek. He did look good with them. They were probably just around the same size as hers. She’d love to take him out like this.
“You look fine. Barely noticeable,” Shayera lied.
Katar frowned at her. She turned onstead to Ray.
“But if Katar insists on being boring, you can come back to our apartment,” Shayera said to Ray.
Katar nodded. “That would be nice. I really would be interested in talking more.”
“You can buy us a bottle of wine at the package store on the way back to ours.” Shayera threw an arm over Ray’s shoulder and shook him slightly. Then she lifted Ray into her arms. The three took off, Ray in Shayera’s arms and Katar flying beside her. Below them the police lights flashed blue and red. The Hawks were high in the sky by the time the police were on the rooftop to collect The Beamster.
The late afternoon air was already cool in the sky. Hawkman and Hawkwoman flew easily in the currents. Ray relaxed slightly in Shayera’s arms, smiling to himself.