As soon as Deathstroke emerged from the cave, the rainforest's faint, pale-green sunlight fell across his armor again. He looked straight at Harley.
Little Sugar Bean raised one eyebrow and gave him a look.
The Sorcerer Supreme followed her gaze at once. His sharp eyes picked out several insects on a leaf that didn't look quite right, and Strangle sent him a message: he had caught a scent similar to the one in the cave.
The insects looked a little like ladybugs, though only in shape. They were bigger than Earth's ladybugs, about the size of a thumbnail.
What made them strange was that several of them sat on the same leaf without eating. They just watched the group through black eyes perched on upright stalks.
Every so often, they touched antennae, as though exchanging messages.
"Right. If they use psionic energy, they must have sensed suitable hosts like living humans arriving on the planet. Especially when Aphra, their 'benefactor,' was among them."
Deathstroke slipped an arm around Harley's waist, then tilted his head toward her.
"Against Psionics, the mind works better than a blade. I don't want to chop up bugs that'll splatter everywhere, either. Can you handle them?"
"Leave it to me. I'm Gotham's queen of the mind, after all." Harley confidently pulled the lollipop stick from her mouth, tossed it aside, and strutted toward the insects with a model's springy, catlike walk.
The insects watched her from the leaf. She crouched to meet their gaze, and neither side made a sound for a long while, as if waiting to see who would blink first.
Of course, a human couldn't beat an insect at that. Their eyes had only a hard outer membrane. They didn't even have eyelids, so how could they blink?
Having lost the staring contest,