And the first chapter, for reals. Oh, I don't own Young Justice.

In the farthest corner of Star City, just bordering the harbor, is a run-down, abandoned department store. It doesn't look like much on the outside. In fact, I think there's a petition going around right now to get the place condemned. That'll never happen, of course.

If you go into the store, you'll find yourself in a tangle of aisles. Clothes will be strewn everywhere; rats will skitter across your shoes, unafraid, and the whole place will reek like a sewage treatment plant. Since you're probably a sane person, you'll turn around and get your butt out of there as fast as your legs can take you.

But for those of you who have weak minds and strong stomachs, if you walk just a little further, you'll find yourself in the women's clothing department. Walk all the way into the back, to the clearance section.

A box in the corner is filled with woman's bras, neon pink with red lace and sequins, size DD. Your eyes will probably sting just looking at them. But persevere, it gets better.

And if, shoving aside your fear, you stick your hand in the middle of the pile (the exact middle, mind you) you'll feel a long, smooth stick. Yep, that's right, it's a lever. Go ahead and yank on it, if you want. I don't mind.

Oh, but be sure to jump out of the way as soon as you do. Because if you don't, you're in for a nasty shock.

The floor will pivot away, taking the box with it. The gap will reveal a hole plummeting downwards. A slide, actually. And if you jump down that, well…you'll find yourself in The Lair.

How do I know all of this? Because I designed it.

Oh, I'm Rowan, by the way. Resident supervillain and meta-human extraordinaire. Lover of puppies, spaghetti, and fiendish plots.

Right, back to The Lair.

The Lair (aka the Super Secret Lair of Awesomeness, though we don't call it that anymore) is the HQ that my team and I hide out in.

We didn't build The Lair (we don't know who did), but we sure modified it. I designed most of it, and though I didn't get everything I wanted (yeah, I'm still waiting on the coffee fountain), I must admit, it's pretty epic.

It's got all the normal stuff, of course: bedrooms and bathrooms and kitchens, etc. And yet, it has so much more, too.

There's the Strategy Rooms: two rooms filled with to-scale models of Gotham, New York, D.C., Central, Star City, and Chicago. They're perfect for planning our next route of attack or staging epic action-figure battles.

There's the Vault, a massive chamber chock-full of random crap that my team and I swiped from various labs, heroes, rich people, and villains. We've got everything from killer robots (two, "borrowed" from Lexcorp) to microchips (don't know what they do, but they're shiny!) to weapons. Heck, we've even got a couple lumps of Kryptonite (yep, we're villains, and we're damn good at it).

I live here, along with my team, the Renegades. There's only four of us, but when you live with a bunch of villains-in-training, sometimes the space can seem waaay too small.

First there's Charles. He's easily the best young computer geek in America, rivaling even the Boy Wonder himself. He's repeatedly hacked the files of the government, Lexcorp, the Justice League, and the pizza place to get us a free meat lover's special. Oh, and he's a chubby blonde nine-year-old who likes burritos way too much.

Next is Gadget. He's sixteen, and an expert in weapons and technology. No one knows his real name, but then again, no one cares. He's tall, dark, and brooding, with a knife scar running from his hairline to his jaw. No one knows how he got that, either. But what he lacks in people skills, he makes up for in smarts—this guy can invent anything. I'm serious. If I left him in the middle of the woods with only a toothpick and a wad of chewed gum, I could come back a week later to find that he'd built me a shopping mall. Or a death ray, as it were.

Then there's Bree. She's tiny, with flawless cocoa-colored skin and rich brown hair. At the tender age of twelve, she's an artist—at forging, that is. When I found her, she was sitting pretty, making flawless counterfeits that she would use to appease the local gangs. Now, she works for me, making flawless counterfeits of other things: diamonds and microchips and passports and portraits. Walking into her room is like walking into the Louvre, but messier: you have to step over three Mona Lisas, twelve Hope Diamonds, five Dead Sea Scrolls, and eight Holy Grails just to get to her bed.

Of course, it's great having geniuses on the team (you can't reverse the earth's rotation with just a high school diploma, folks) but without firepower, we'd be going nowhere fast. So that's where I come in.

You see, I'm what some very smart and yet very misguided scientists might call a "human magnet". That's sort of true, I guess. So, what do I do? I control metal—bending and twisting it to my will. It's weird, I guess, and pretty uncommon, but oh-so-useful, especially in the modern world.

Everyone on the team can hold their own in a fight, some freakishly well (Bree's this tiny, 4-foot 10-inch thing; it's not natural that she can take out a hitman twice her size). We've all been training since we could walk, and have sparring sessions every other day to keep in shape. But, being the skinniest and least muscular as well as the team leader means that I feel the need to put more hours than that into my training. Which brings me to The Lair's gym, where I am now.

"Huh!" I let out a little grunt as the side of my foot collides with the red canvas of the punching bag. I follow it up by swinging my fist around, slamming it into the center of the bag in a brilliant right hook. If the bag were a man, it'd be on the floor right now, begging for mercy. As it was, it just swung on its chain harmlessly, as if it were taunting me.

I'm panting now, but I don't let myself stop—there's a ping from the concrete wall in front of me, and I launch myself backwards into a somersault. On the wall behind me, the paintball that just whizzed over my head explodes in a shower of pink.

The paintball is a clever trick invented by Charles. Tiny paintball shooters are embedded in the concrete that's facing me and are programmed to go off at irregular intervals. Just another fun little gadget that we supervillains like to use for training.

Still panting, I pick myself up from my somersault and make my way to the wall, hitting the huge red button that will turn off the paintballs. There's a slight whirring noise as the system shuts down, and then all is quiet.

I make my way to a metal bench that's situated at the corner of the sparring mat, where I'd been practicing. I've set a towel and one of those stainless-steel waterbottles on it, and I extend my arm toward the waterbottle. I focus on the bottle, and I pull.

The metal cap pops off, and the waterbottle hovers its way over to me, its silver steel glinting in the harsh white light. Water sloshes all over me as I grab it, but I don't mind. I dump half the contents of the bottle over my head, rinsing off my sweat. The cool water feels amazing.

The water sticks little clumps of royal-blue hair to my head. I make a mental note to get it re-dyed: it's been about three months since I last colored it the eye-popping blue and my normal, brownish-blonde roots are starting to show through.

Exhausted, I stumble over to the bench and plop down into it. I glance up at the clock; the numbers read 3:30. I started at noon, so I've been in here…three and a half hours. Woah. No wonder I'm tired.

The door to the gym opens, and I leap up, startled. Gadget stands in the door frame, laughing at my jumpiness. I feel a hot blush, embarrassed.

Okay, I'll admit it. Even though Gadget is way too old for me, and even though he's dark and brooding and probably doesn't know the meaning of the word "happy", he's still cute. Really cute. He's got this perfect, milk-white skin and chocolate-brown eyes and high cheekbones and glossy black hair that any girl would be jealous of. He's tall, too, and muscular from so many years of training. Even his big feet manage to look amazing. I'm the leader of our little team, but around him I feel hopelessly stupid and incompetent.

But I do not have a crush on him. Not at all. Anyone who says otherwise had better have a fake name, passport, and a plane out of the country readily available, because I will hunt them down. And I've got giant robots to do it.

Anyway, now that he's here, I'm painfully aware of the way my sweaty blue Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt clings to my ruler-straight frame (yep, that's right—no curves. None) and looks so un-evil, the massive pimple that had sprung up overnight on my nose, and the way my face must be flushing.

I breathe deeply. Be cool, Rowan. Be cool.

Gadget is wearing baggy blue jeans with rips all over them and a ripped grey hoodie, both stained with motor oil and other unidentified substances, yet he still manages to look great. He doesn't smile at all, just says, "You're needed in Strategy Room One."

I give a nod. "I'll be there in a minute." He turns and leaves without closing the door or saying goodbye, and I immediately wish I'd had some cute, flirty response that would have made him stay.

I sigh. "Stupid, Rowan, stupid," I mutter. Why can't I just be cool and flirty like some girls? When it comes to snappy villain comebacks, I'm the expert, but around cute guys, I'm hopeless.

I loop the towel around my shoulders, drying the sweat and water off of my skin and hair, and sigh. Guess I'd better get going.

The gym is right next to the strategy rooms, so I'm not forced to navigate my way through a hopeless tangle of halls and corridors designed to throw off intruders. Instead, I just walk out of the gym and slip through a metal door and into Strategy Room One.

A tiny, red VW Bug comes sailing at me as I enter, and I dodge to the side. The model car embeds itself into the metal door where my head was just a second ago.

Model cars, airplanes, tiny streetlamps, even model skyscrapers are sailing around the battle zone I just walked into. Charles is huddling behind an overturned table, guarding a stash of model cars that the projectile I just dodged probably came from. His blue eyes and small mouth are wide with excitement, giving his pudgy face a cartoonish look.

Gadget is chucking tiny model superheroes at the table, trying to get to Charles. They just ping off of it, one by one, as Charles laughs maniacally.

Bree isn't worrying about hiding. She saunters up to me, a skyscraper in her hands, grinning happily. Her rich brown eyes are wide in the perfect picture of innocence. Ha. Like I believe that.

"What's going on here?" I ask desperately.

Bree grins. "Charles insulted Gadget's mother," she says matter-of-factly. "Things kinda just went downhill from there."

I roll my eyes. Boys. Charles and Gadget are forever getting on each other's nerves. It doesn't help that they're two competing geniuses, both with egos the size of Texas.

I stick my two index fingers into my mouth, under my tongue, and blow sharply.

A shrill whistle echoes around the room and Charles freezes like he's just been caught in the middle of murder. Gadget chucks his last figurine of Superman and it hits Charles's cheek, making a Man-of-Steel-shaped welt that flares an ugly red.

Charles stands up, rubbing his cheek and coughing nervously. "Oh…um…Rowan," he says awkwardly.

I put my hands on my hips and grin wickedly. "Care to explain this, boys?"

"It was his fault!" They both cry, each pointing at the other person.

I sigh, rolling my eyes and using my fingers to rub my temples. "As long as it gets cleaned up, I don't care whose fault it was. Now, I believe I was summoned for something?"

Charles , eager for the distraction, nods and heads to the one intact model left in the room: a table filled with a to-scale model of Star City, our hometown. He picks up a plastic figure of King Kong that's laying in the middle of the downtown area and chucks it at Gadget without turning to aim. The gorilla nicks Gadget's forehead.

"Hey, that—" Gadget began, but Charles cut him off.

"Our drones recently picked up some…interesting activity in Star Labs," he says, pointing to the familiar round building. I nod—the drones he was talking about were the robot birds we pinched from…who was it again? The Penguin? Or maybe it was Lex Luthor…eh, that doesn't matter. Anyway, these birds are insanely lifelike, with real feathers and everything. Their eyes are little security cameras that feed right back to our HQ, so whenever they see anything, we know it. Mostly, it's boring crap that they pick up, but sometimes, we get good stuff. Want a shot of Green Arrow picking his nose? We can hook you up.

So, knowing Charles, I just nod. "Go on."

He smiles. "Star Labs has recently formulated a neurotoxin known as the Dominion Serum. It's made out of an incredibly rare plant that grows in South America, combined with cobra venom and some other nasty stuff. Plant it in someone's food or water, and when they eat it, you have complete control of them for up to forty-eight hours. Naturally, this toxin is illegal in all fifty states and most other countries, so it's all been kept very hush-hush."

I smile. That kind of crap could be invaluable to supervillains like us. So the question of acquiring it isn't so much an if as a when.

"How do we get it?" I ask, absently tossing a Batman figurine from one hand to the other. I imagine the tiny figure screaming in fear and I smile. (Hey, don't judge, I'm a villain—the things I enjoy are different from the things you do.)

Charles sighs. "That's the problem. Even though that serum is top secret, breaking into Star Labs is gonna attract some major attention, and a spot on the Justice League's bad list is not what we need."

I nod. As much as I hate to admit it, Charles is right. Have you ever heard the saying, "No publicity is bad publicity"? Well, for a supervillain, just the opposite rings true. All publicity is bad publicity. Especially for my team. There aren't a lot of supervillains who think this anymore—just look at how the news is full of reports of arrests, and you'll see what I mean. But the Renegades have worked hard to maintain our anonymity, even passing up some great jobs to keep it. And I'm not about to sacrifice that, no matter how tempting the gig is. Still, my heart falls a little when I realize that the Dominion Serum—that beautiful, beautiful toxin—will never be mine. And worse, I know that if the serum's not in my hands, it's in the hands of some other villain, and eventually I'll probably be the one bowing to them.

Bree just smiles. "Then what if we're not the ones to steal it?"

Charles wrinkles his brow. "I'm not following you," he says.

"But I am," I say, suddenly grinning. "Charles, remember those robots we nicked from Lexcorp? We could use those to steal the chemical. I'm sure we can program the robots to take it. Then, they'd think that Lexcorp did it."

Charles shakes his head sadly. "We'd have to control the robots from here. The Justice League could trace the radio signal back to HQ and nab us. We don't want that."

I gulp, knowing what needs to be said but not wanting to say it. "Then…I'd bring the remote control and break into Lexcorp. I'd hide in a closet or something and control from there. Then the signal would be coming from the building, right?"

Charles rubs his chin as if he's thinking, but his eyes are lit up in a way that means he's just heard a plan that would work.

"You know…that just might do it," he says, smiling deviously and rubbing his palms together.

I turn to Gadget. "Do you think you can have those robots in working condition, ASAP?"

He smiles. It looks strange on him; the smile twists his scar so that he looks positively wicked. Which, by the way, is a quality I love in a guy. "Of course," he says.

I grin wickedly. "Perfect," I whisper.

So...did you like it? I can't wait to hear! Please let me know what you thought!