Disclaimer: Um. No.
A/N: Sorry for errors and whatnot. I probably got some facts wrong, but I'd appreciate it if any of you decided to correct me nicely :] Other than that, please just bear with me.
The Underrated
Chapter One
GOTHAM CITY
September 9, 6:56 EDT
"All ready to go, Master Richard?" Alfred asked.
Robin was currently double checking his utility belt, gloves, and other secret pockets that held tiny, deadly weapons. He then placed his mask upon his eyes and grinned at the butler. "I'm ready," he nodded his head. "But where's Bruce?"
"Master Bruce wants you to know that as of right now he is with the League, but he will give you your mission in a few hours," Alfred told Robin as the two swiftly walked up to the scanner that would teleport the young hero to Mount Justice.
Robin's ever-present grin faltered a bit. He raised his eyebrows in confusion toward Alfred. "He never told me about any of this last night. He even said that we were going to go out after my mission…" The Boy Wonder's voice somewhat trailed off before he cleared his throat and regained his easygoing posture.
"You know he would never lie to you. The League must have had a catastrophic emergency for Master Bruce to leave," Alfred said, trying his best to sound comforting as possible.
"Yeah, fine," Robin waved it off. He knew better than to whine and cry like a poor little rich boy. After all, Robin understood that Batman was, well, Batman. "I'll just hang out with Wally for a few hours then." Robin punched in the coordinates for Mount Justice. "See ya later, Alfred!" He smiled at his dear friend before stepping through the scanner. Alfred gave the young man a small smile in return.
MOUNT JUSTICE
7:01 EDT
In an instant second, Robin was walking into the living room of the area where he knew he would find Superboy and Megan. The two were sitting on the couch as they watched a TV movie and waited for everyone to arrive. And if Robin didn't know any better, he could have sworn that Megan was trying to get Superboy to put his arm around her. He almost started to laugh inappropriately, but instead he chose to simply smirk and play along.
"Hey!" He greeted his teammates before plopping down on the sofa next to the Martian.
"Hello, Robin," Megan grinned at him.
"Hi." Superboy said without taking his eyes off the TV.
"So where is everybody? I know Wally's always late, but Kaldur and Artemis usually arrive the same time I do," Robin said, looking around the empty room. It was eerily quiet.
"They're not here yet." Megan told him. "It's just been me and Superboy here all day."
"What do you mean by that?" Robin asked.
"Well, Red Tornado and Black Canary left a while ago. I don't even remember seeing them this morning actually." Megan shrugged.
"Yeah, Batman's gone too. Apparently something huge is going on with the JLA." Robin said.
"So who's going to deploy us?"
"He'll do it in a few hours. Probably when their big problem blows over."
The three then continued to sit in silence as the movie went on and on. Superboy was looking indifferent as always, Megan kept on subtly glancing back and forth at her sort-of-kind-of-not-really boyfriend and the TV every few seconds, and Robin found himself thinking so hard that his brain was ready to commit suicide.
Dull and dreary were just some of the many appropriate words to describe the situation.
Robin was left trying to analyze the JLA issue. Is there really something out there so bad that it requires basically every member of the Justin League to help? He quietly tapped his fingers on his leg. Who—or what—is causing this problem anyway? C'mon, you can figure this out.
An epic alien war?
A league of uprising super villains?
The earth is going to explode?
Robin kept on thinking for a few more minutes before he gave up and admitted defeat. He's a genius, and he's very well aware of that, but not even he can figure out something like this without any leads.
Well, this definitely hurts my ego…
The three teammates immediately snapped out of any trance they were in once they heard the scanner announcing Aqualad's arrival.
"Laaate!" Robin teased in a singsong voice. Everyone knew that it's better to poke fun at Wally, but a thirteen year old boy only had so much patience.
"I'm sorry, I know I'm late." Kaldur said. Robin, being the detective he was, noticed Kaldur's voice sounded fake, as if the Atlantian was pretending to sound calm and collected as he usually did. Robin scrutinized Kaldur until he said, "It's just that my king… He is no where to be found."
"I'm sure he's gone for a good reason," Megan assured him. "Robin said that the League are all doing, um, uh, er - well I know they're doing something important or else they wouldn't need so many of its members."
"Batman informed you of the Justice League operation?" Kaldur inquired Robin.
"He didn't tell me about it straight to my face, if that's what you were asking," Robin said. "Let's just say that he left me a note on the fridge."
Kaldur nodded, thought it didn't seem to make him feel any better. "Where are Wally and Artemis?"
Robin snorted. "Late. Later than late. So late, that it's way past unprofessional."
"Hmm." Kaldur murmured. He then took a seat and stared at the TV screen with the same emotionless look Superboy had. Instead of staring off mindlessly though, Kaldur began to go into the same thinking frenzy the youngest team member went through earlier, but his mind seemed to be more frazzled than Boy Wonder's.
Was he captured by a giant fish? No, of course not… That's preposterous.
Robin realized that there was nothing he can do to lighten this lifeless mood. He sighed as he wished for Wally to save him from this awkward mess or that Megan would say something cheery. Oh, how Robin longed for the happy people.
"Where are they?" Robin muttered impatiently underneath his breath.
He endured approximately eight more minutes of silence and TV before he felt like he was going to crack.
Out of desperation, Robin pulled out his wrist comm to track down Wally. After all, he told Alfred he could wait a few hours for Batman to give them their mission—if he was with Wally. Without him, boredom will murder him painfully. And the fact that the three other teenagers in the room weren't doing anything at all—they were basically increasing the boredom!—made Robin type faster in hopes of locating and contacting his friend.
"What are you doing?" Megan asked, peering over Robin's shoulder.
"I'm finding Wally. For the fastest kid alive, he's slower than moss." Robin said.
"You might as well search for Artemis too."
Robin also typed in Artemis's code, feeling a tad curious about her as well.
"Weird," Robin knitted his eyebrows.
"What's wrong?"
"They're…not existing?" Robin pulled out a wider spectrum of the hologram, revealing the U.S. country to his teammates. "Why aren't they on my map? They should be on there! I mean, all of your costumes have links to my computer, so they should be on the map. Where are the heck could they be?" Robin asked, looking absolutely stumped and a bit frustrated. He even pulled out a map of the world, but there was still no sign of the speedster or the archer.
"Maybe it's broken." Superboy said.
"My stuff's never broken." Robin quickly shot back, obviously offended.
"Now I'm even more worried," Kaldur sighed. "Robin, how does this all work?"
"All of your costumes have a microscopic bug in them so the signal for our comms won't jack up. It's supposed to be helpful, especially if we're out of Miss M's range." Robin explained while frantically scoping out every country for Wally and Artemis.
"And why do you have our links on your arm thing?" Superboy asked, making it sound like it was such a bad thing.
"Because I felt like it," Robin said, smirking a little.
"Well it's a good thing you did have it or else we would have never known about Wally and Artemis's disappearance." Megan said, feeling quite concerned for the two fifteen-year-olds. "Did you check again?"
"Yeah. Several times. They're still not on any of my maps." Robin huffed.
"It's broken." Superboy said.
"No, it's not!" Robin snapped. (And just to make sure, he ran a scan on all of his tech to make sure that it was still flawless.)
"Maybe it is broken…" Megan began, but one look from Robin and she quickly added, "But that's just an assumption. It's probably still in good condition!"
"Ugh," Robin groaned, still furiously typing. "I just don't get it…"
Suddenly, Superboy stood up. "Someone's trying to contact us," he announced. He closed his eyes as he listened more intently to the tiny noise only he was able to hear. "It's Red Arrow."
The four of them jumped up and ran up to the deploying room, which contained the master computer. They were honesty shocked to find that Superboy wasn't lying.
There he was, Red Arrow, on the computer, looking like he just witnessed a terrible bombing firsthand.
CENTRAL CITY
5:49 EDT
"Roy, is that you?" Wally shouted, recognizing his friend. Roy heard someone calling his name and began to look for the direction of the voice. "Dude, over here!" Roy turned to find a blur that was Wally running up to him until they were face-to-face.
"Wally? What are you doing here?" Roy asked.
"Uh, I kind of live here, remember?" Wally said with a smirk.
"I knew that. I mean, what are you doing here?"
The two were standing in a restricted area in the city, in front of one of the JLA's many hidden scanners. Roy seemed like he just exited the scanner while Wally looked ready to hop through it.
"Oh. Yeah. Batman has something he wants us to do. That kind of stuff." Wally answered easily. "What are you doing here though? Never saw much of you around here."
"It's classified." Roy said discreetly.
"Classified? You've got to be kidding me."
Roy raised an eyebrow and gave Wally a look that practically read, 'Do I look like I'm kidding?'
"C'mon, man. We're friends. Sharing is caring, ya know."
"That might have worked in kindergarten, but not now. Sorry, Wally, but it really is classified." Roy said with a frown. Wally continued to whine irritably though, causing the archer to say, "Don't you have to be somewhere?"
"Nah, I have time. I actually left early so the guys can stop complaining about me being late."
"Why waste your time then?" Roy scoffed.
"Jeez, just relax. I'll be fine. It only takes, like, a second to get there, and right now I have about nine minutes left until I'm officially late." Wally said, glancing at his watch.
Roy sighed. "Fine. I'll tell you, but I won't tell you everything."
"Sweet," Wally grinned mischievously.
"I'm here because I'm supposed to be following a certain someone. Someone from the Shadows."
"Why in the world would you go through that?" Wally asked. He thought spying on people constantly was extraordinarily boring, which was why he usually hated it whenever Batman would assign them to do nothing but spy on the enemy. Wally could only do so much until he fell asleep due to the lack of excitement.
"Because apparently the Shadows are working for someone else. Someone more powerful and—" But unfortunately, Roy found himself cut off.
"Now would you look at that? You brought one of your little sidekick friends." A voice said above the two boys.
They looked up to see Cheshire on top of a mountain of old boxes with knives ready in her hands. Roy instantly had his bow and arrow ready, aiming for Cheshire if she was to strike. The assassin tilted her head to the side, and though her mask hid her face, it seemed like she was amused for some sick reason.
"Kid Flash. Go. Now." He ordered his friend tensely.
"But what if you need help—" Wally began, but Cheshire threw a knife at him, quickly shutting him up. Wally easily dodged the knife and began to run at hyper speed when Cheshire continued to throw the sharp blades at him repeatedly, completely ignoring Roy.
"Run into the scanner now!" Roy commanded.
"I didn't even type in the coordinates yet! I'll phase through nothing!" Wally said.
Before Roy could even turn to the scanner to type the coordinates for Wally, Cheshire knocked one of the heavier boxes in front of Roy, which crushed him down temporarily. When Roy pushed the box off of himself, he found Cheshire jumping on top of him, keeping him down with one leg while throwing more daggers at Wally at the same time.
"Your friend is fast, I'll give him that. Though, he's starting to annoy me." Cheshire said to Roy, her leg pressing uncomfortably against his abdomen.
Roy reached forward to grab her leg and tried to push the assassin away from him, but Cheshire held a knife to his throat before his hands made contact with her. "Let's play later, alright? I need to deal with him first." She said in a certain voice that made Roy's skin crawl, in a bad way.
"Flirt much?" Wally scoffed, stopping for just a moment.
"You're one to talk. Rumor has it you're just the same." Cheshire said before throwing a knife that almost hit Wally this time, but he stepped out of the way in the last second. "Oh, so close."
"You're one twisted lady. And the mask is kind of lame, no offense. Try to pick something less dorkier next time."
"Don't give her fashion advice!" Roy roared at Wally incredulously. The knife was still against his throat, and it was starting to dig into his skin harder than he'd like.
"As much as I'd like to stay here and talk with you lovely boys, I still have my mission I need to accomplish. So let's make this simple." Cheshire said. She pointed one of her knives at Wally. "You're coming with me."
"What?" The two boys asked simultaneously, clearly confused.
"I'm sorry, did I stutter?" Cheshire asked rhetorically.
"What makes you think I'm going anywhere with you?" Wally challenged her.
Cheshire sighed. "Fine. I won't ask nicely." She pressed the knife deeper against Roy's skin to the point where it drew blood. "Come with me or I slit his throat."
"You wouldn't…" Wally threatened.
"I really wish I didn't have to. Your friend is just so handsome. But if you don't cooperate, I'll have to kill him."
Wally glared at Cheshire.
"Try it. I dare you."
Before Cheshire could even blink, Wally had his hands on her arm and he yanked her from Roy in less than two seconds. He proceeded to kick her with all his strength and sent her flying a short distance away. The young killer landed a good ten feet from the two heroes, her knives unluckily spilling out from her robes. She smirked at Wally behind her mask. "I'm impressed," she told him truthfully. "You're not that much of an incompetent idiot as I thought you were."
"Who said I was!" Wally demanded indignantly.
"Doesn't matter. Let's get out of here." Roy said, rubbing his throat.
"Sorry, boys. I tried to make this thing simple, but you just didn't follow my rules. I guess we have to do this the hard way." Cheshire shrugged. She pulled a device from her pocket and pressed a single red button.
All of a sudden, Wally and Roy saw nothing but explosions and fire before they blacked out.
Roy woke up about half an hour later with his body aching and covered in soot. He stood up as far as he could. What he saw was horrific: the whole area was either demolished or nonexistent. Even the scanner was pitifully destroyed. The worst part, though, was probably the fact that Cheshire and Wally were now gone.
The archer widened his eyes and immediately began to contact Mount Justice.
A/N: To make things clear: this story is mostly adventure, then friendship/romance gets squeezed in it, and mystery & suspense is somewhere in there too. Just trying to please everyone :) And I'm also trying to figure out a way to make sure that the POV's switch fairly between every team member, but we'll see how that goes. Buuut tell me what you thought of chapter one. Did it intrigue you? ;D