Pain of Loss (or) Someone's a Savior
The Team was standing in the desert, arguing about how to handle the Aqualad and Superboy situation. M'Gann felt a wave of painful nausea hit her hard. "No! Superboy's in pain!" she cried. She was about to fly off, when Robin caught her arm.
"M'Gann, you have to get Aqualad to the Bioship. I promise we'll all look for Superboy together when our leader is safe, but if we don't get Aqualad water and rest soon, he's going to die," he insisted.
M'Gann looked at Robin, then back at the sky in confliction. She lowered herself to the ground slowly, bowing her head. "You're right," she agreed quietly. "Superboy can hold out until we get there, right?"
"Absolutely," Artemis permitted without hesitation. "He's pretty much indestructible. He'll be fine."
With the rest of the Team speaking their consent, they made their way to the Bioship, M'Gann painfully aware that every step she took, took her further and further from the tough clone.

She watched as the soldiers tested on him. It hurt her to see someone, as dear to her heart as he was get tortured like that. She was quite certain he wouldn't remember, but she didn't care: Superboy was her best friend, whether she could dig the memories out of his ravaged brain or not.
With a new burst of confidence, she leapt into the tent with a tiger-like roar. Everyone stopped to turn and look at her, but by this time, her fists were already flying. She swung left and right, laying out anyone and everyone in range. She finally skidded to a halt when the psychic known as Simon came in to view in front of her. She narrowed her eyes at him, and before he could make some smart remark, decked him out with a single blow from her powerful paw.
Whirling around, she found the tent deserted. Smiling in satisfaction, she dodged over to the control panel that operated the machine that held Superboy to the wall and hit the only button that seemed safe to hit. The clasps around his wrists released and she watched him groggily open his eyes. He let out an animalistic roar and leaped at her. She raised a hand and stopped his fist without effort. He let out a cry of anger and tried to hit her with his other hand, which was also easily stayed. Then she whirled around and banged his head against the metal machine in the corner so hard, it split in two. She dropped him, muttering to herself, "Cognitive recalibration…" as if to justify her actions. (LOL, got that from Avengers 3)
She turned to snap the metal around the huge sphere in the middle of the room. It rolled down, blinking lights and making odd beeping sounds. After months of surveying the project, she'd come to understand the fascinating little creatures. She bent down so she was at the assumed 'eyelevel' with the machine and cooed at it. "Well aren't you just the cutest damn thing?" she murmured, patting it on the head. It made more beeping sounds, flashing red and pink lights. She smiled and beckoned it to follow her. She picked up the unconscious Superboy and threw him over her shoulder easily. Then, she launched herself into the air.
She looked down to see the sphere roll out of the tent to stop beneath her, flashing lights and making noises. She smiled, taking it as a 'lead the way' kind of gesture, and flew off into the night, never looking back, or stopping to consider the teammates she knew he had.

* * * * *

Batman called a meeting in the briefing room. It had been almost 15 hours since they'd brought Aqualad back, and the League had promised to search for Superboy while the Team took care of Kaldur. However, their efforts were not rewarded. The Team gathered around to see the Dark Knight standing alone in the middle of the room. M'Gann couldn't help herself. "Where's Superboy?" she asked, her voice quiet, and dreading what she unconsciously knew he was going to say.
"The League searched everywhere within the entire desert," Batman explained, skillfully dodging the question. "We scanned, checked security footage, and even used Superman's X-ray vision to check for an underground base as a precaution. All we found…" he turned and pulled up a video on the screen that always seemed to materialize out of nowhere. "Was this."
It was a security video of some kind. There was a blurred shot on a camera, focused on a tent in the middle of the desert. A figure flew out of the top, the unmistakable mass of Superboy thrown easily over her shoulder. She paused, looking down, then flew straight towards the camera. As she passed it, it short-circuited. Batman shut it off when there was only static left. The Team stared in stunned silence. "We cannot identify the person who's taken Superboy. She's not a registered citizen in any state, and we can't find any records of her. Of coarse, the video was very vague. We'll have to investigate further to say for certain where or where not to look for Superboy," he explained in his usual monotone.
The Team was completely and utterly shocked. Not only had someone taken Superboy, but the League couldn't figure out who it was. M'Gann was frantic. "We have to find him!" she cried, her hands already shaking. It had been her call to help Aqualad rather than rescue Superboy. And now, even when he wasn't being tested on like an animal, he was still out of her reach, and she felt helpless. It hurt her a lot to be in this situation.
"We will. The League is still searching. Until we find him, I expect you all to keep your focus on missions." And with that last heart-warming statement, Batman left, leaving the rest of the Team in a state of shock and confusion. They'd lost a teammate, and a friend. How on Earth did they fix this? M'Gann began (LOL, more rhymes! XD) to cry softly, holding her face in her palms. Artemis patted her on the shoulder comfortingly. The day had been traumatizing, and everyone was tired. They would help the League search as much as they were allowed in the morning.

~~(Elsewhere)~~

Superboy blinked his eyes open, sitting up from the cold concrete floor with a groan. His head spun, and his vision was blurred. "What happened?" he mumbled groggily, not really expecting an answer.
"A telepath. His name's Simon, I think. Wiped your guys' memories, last six months apparently. You didn't exist six months ago, so you were pretty much attacking everything in sight."
Superboy jumped, startled. He whipped his head around to stare at the girl across the room. She held herself very casually, not scared in the slightest of him. Her shoulder-length brunette hair was slightly untidy from sleep, or lack there of, and her eyes were a strangely familiar shade of grape-violet. Twin scars were laced over each eye, going down in a gentle curve before turning to one side abruptly and then returning to their downward twist, ending just above her jaw line. Her head had two large catlike ears attached to it, matching her skin color. Her feet were stretched and predatory, feline in origin, perfect for springboard movements. A fluffy tail was rested around her, four layers of color adding to its abnormality. Not that there was anything normal about a girl with scars, elongated feet, cat ears, and a tail. She cocked her head to one side faintly. Her upper half was clothed in a dark grey tube top and a blueberry-colored cat collar with a silver tag. Her feline feet were wrapped in white cloth, though now that he looked closer, her feet considerably more like a raptor dinosaur's than a cat's hind paws. Her legs were clothed in black pants that came down to the cloth wrappings, seeming to be hidden under some of it.
The two locked eyes, and he noticed that her pupils looked hollow, more like rings than the solid circles of black that were usually associated with pupils. Hers were neither solid, nor black; her pupils sported an odd color of very dark eggplant-purple. She flicked an ear at him.
"Did… Did I hurt anyone?" he finally got out.
"As far as I know, your teammates are all fine," the mysterious girl replied.
"How… If this Simon guy wiped our minds, how'd you get me my memories back?" he asked. "Are you a telepath too?"
She shook her head. "Cognitive recalibration," she responded shortly. When he gave her a clueless look, she smiled, and translated, "I hit you really hard on the head."
Superboy looked even more confused. "How could you hit me hard enough? I'm invulnerable!" he protested.
The girl let out a soft, vibrating laugh. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you're accusing me of it!" she said amusedly. "For your information, I could punch through this wall if I wanted to." She tapped one of her feet against the concrete wall. "However, I had to use one of the metal thingies that were there for it since there weren't any concrete walls around," she mused.
Superboy tilted his head to one side. It didn't make sense to him. She acted as if she knew him, even though he'd never met her in his life. However, her appearance was startlingly familiar. He could recall some time before the Team, he'd talked with someone, laughed with them, enjoyed their company. Someone had been his friend before he could even remember it. He was convinced that this girl was that friend. "Were you my friend once?" he asked, blunt as usual.
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "You catch on fast. Yes, we were friends."
"When? And why don't I remember?" he persisted.
The smile pegged down noticeably. "It was… It was a long time ago. When you were in Cadmus." Superboy stiffened at the name and glared suspiciously at the girl. How did she know about that? "I was there when you were first created. I was an experiment too." She brushed her brown hair off her left shoulder to reveal a number branded into the skin: 13-07. He stared in horrified fascination at the burned skin as she continued. "They told me to keep an eye on you sometimes, and I did just that the first few times. But then… One day I decided you shouldn't be held prisoner like that. I melted you out. I explained things to you, like the concept of reading and writing. I told you about the lunar and solar cycles. I think I remember bringing you a butterfly once. It was all secret though. Or at least it was supposed to be."
Superboy heard her voice tighten as she continued. "We were found out. Dr. Desman came in, and when he saw us, he was beyond furious. He ordered the Genomorphs on us, and they beat us up pretty bad, despite our joint super-strength." It occurred to Superboy here that that was how she preformed Cognitive Recalibration. Perhaps she'd been cloned from Superman too? "They scratched me over the eyes, and gave me the scars over my eyes. They tried to kill me, and I'm sure it looked like it worked. My heart did actually stop for about a minute. But when they got rid of my body, I was dragged through that place where their electrical bugs are housed, and a little bit of discharge got on me. It killed the Genomorph, but it brought me back to life. But… I couldn't see."
It dawned on Superboy. Her hollow eggplant-colored pupils were a result of injury. The Genomes had blinded her.
"I was scared at first, because I wasn't really looking at anything, and all I could see was black. Then I turned, and I could see white outlines in my black world. That's all I can see now. I've all but forgotten what I look like.
"But after I found out I could see, I went back to your room in the Sublevels. I found you beating the crap out of anything and everything in sight, until one of the Genomorph Gnomes got into your head and forced you to calm down. They changed your memories. They made it seem like the Genomorphs had taught you things. They suppressed your memories of me. But there was one thing they couldn't suppress: Your rage after my death. That's why you're always angry. Because somewhere in the back of your mind, your conscience just can't let go of the image of my body lying dead on the floor."
It all came back so fast it made his head spin.
He remembered the day she brought him that butterfly; it was midnight blue, with purple rings on its wings (yay, more rhyming!), spindrift streaks near the body, and small aqua dots inside the rings. Its body was an unnatural silvery color, and it had perched on her hand, the hand she held out to him to show him the bug. They'd laughed when it landed right on his nose, but that laughter had vanished when they were attacked.
He remembered seeing her fall from a massive slash to the neck; right after Desman himself had scratched her over the eyes. He recalled the fierce anguish and rage that followed. After a rampage, he evoked the memory of something invading his mind before it all went fuzzy. He blinked back to reality with his eyes stinging. Were those tears trying to force themselves from his eyes? All that tight, suppressed anger he always had buried at the pit of his stomach suddenly bubbled up and vanished completely. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel angry about something that had been kept from him. He felt relieved. And something else occurred to him. The name of his friend:
"Lynx?"