Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice or any DC characters depicted within this story. They are solely the property of their respective owners/creators.
This is a re-write of my first ever story on FanFiction. I am not changing much, other than fixing a few character issues as well as tidying up the grammar and punctuation. On that note I'd like to give a big shout-out to my long-time beta, Ansa88, for taking the time to review this story with me.
I just want this story to be a little more polished and to better kick off my AU that is currently five stories deep at this point. I initially wrote this just before season 1 ended, and in the update I have made the story fit the canon season finale. This story takes place four months after the finale.
To anyone who has read this before, I hope you take the time to review it again at the end. If you haven't seen this before, consider this a great opportunity to read, in my opinion, a very good story with a kick ass original character. Plus, once you read this I hope you will take the time to read the other stories that I have written or am writing in this AU. Those can be found on my profile page. With all that said and done, I have nothing else to say except:
Enjoy!
April 1st, 2012
Star City
11:30 p.m.
Roy Harper, better known to the world as Red Arrow, had been out on patrol for the better part of four hours. He had gotten used to the quiet during the three solo months after his split from Ollie. So far, he'd stopped a few minor crimes, including an attempted robbery by some punk, hopped up on God-knows-what, who tried to use a toy gun to hold up a 7-11.
And just another half an hour 'till Wally won't be trying to prank me anymore, Roy thought with a little smirk. Wally and Robin had been trying to mess with him all day while trying to teach Connor the concept of April Fool's Day. Too bad for them, he'd stopped by the cave earlier to deliver some intel on Sportsmaster to Bats and heard them planning some elaborate schemes. They were persistent little shits though, so he knew he'd have to stay on guard. Roy definitely didn't want a repeat of last year's incident with the pink-dye shampoo.
April 2nd
4:00 a.m.
Roy was just about to head home for the night when he got a call from Oliver. Apparently Watchtower's sensors detected an anomalous energy signature and he was the closet to its origin, an alley in the old town section of Star. As Ollie was out in Gotham helping Batman, the Emerald Archer thought Roy should see if there was anything to the incident. Begrudgingly, he told GA that he'd check it out, though he was on the other side of town and would take some time to get there.
4:00 a.m.
Just before Roy received the call about the energy reading, a blinding light was heard in a unlit back alley. The light was fleeting, but from its epicenter a man was thrown headlong into a garbage dumpster, his head colliding violently with the metal. As he lay on the ground, the man tried recounting how he ended up in the alley. He had been driving to the store to pick up some grilling supplies when a bright light engulfed him while he drove. What he couldn't fathom was why he could remember was being forcibly thrown at a metal dumpster in the middle of an alley at night! Struggling to sit up he took stock of the bleak surroundings he found himself in. This part of town, of whatever city he was in, was old; the faded and cracked bricks of the buildings were a dead giveaway.
Despite what felt like concussion he raised himself from the ground and walked down the alley towards the street he saw to his right. Whatever time it was he could tell that it was pretty dead. Must be pretty late, he thought, trudging down the alley on what felt like a sprained left ankle.
"Well, definitely had worse," he said to no one in particular. Given his state of confusion from thrown into a completely different environment, he failed to notice the pain stopped, along with the slight limp he had started with. After reaching the street, he pondered his surroundings. He was in a large city for sure, but so far couldn't place where he was.
I should probably know where I am before I call anyone to come get me, he thought to himself, walking down the street while pulling out his phone. When he did so, he found that his beat up phone wasn't quite the saving grace people often hoped it would be in case of an emergency. Great, no f-ing signal, what else could go wrong right now? Shit, did I just think that? Well, of course life is now going to be obligated to shovel more shit my way.
Feeling a presence above him he turned around quickly and looked up to find no one, though he thought he'd caught a glimpse of red. Dismissing the feeling, he continued to saunter down the street, hoping to piece together what the hell happened to him. While walking, he passed a 24-hour McDonald's and decided to grab some food. After ordering a McChicken and fries he was told that his credit card wasn't working. Without cash he couldn't eat.
"I could have sworn that I put money on it a few days ago!" He angrily stated, his attitude beginning to annoy the short red-head behind the counter. After being declined service, he turned around to leave. Pushing through the doors, he looked up in the night sky.
"What the hell is going on?"
I should go back to where I came to and see if there's anything I can see, now that I'm thinking clearly again. Guess that headache didn't last long . On the walk back, he was more aware of the temperature as the shock had subsided and was glad that he was still wearing his black fleece, though it fit a more tightly than he remembered. If he hadn't been thrown into these new surroundings, he probably would have noticed that his gray Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt and his nearly worn out carpenter jeans were straining to stay on his frame.
"Ha! I knew I was missing something!" He gleefully exclaimed upon reaching back into the alley. The reason for the excitement was the he'd spotted his Iowa Hawkeye hat lying underneath the dumpster and he'd somehow missed it when he first woke up.
Finally, something going right, he thought, putting on the slightly abused hat. He'd been born and raised in Iowa and bled black and gold for the Hawkeyes every year. Given his farm upbringing and love of baseball, he always felt like wearing a hat was necessary and the familiar hat with the large white "I" on the front had basically become part of his identity.
After getting his hat back on he decided to look around a little more, but didn't get very far before he picked up on the noise filtering down the alley from the street side. What he saw did not look good in any way, shape or form.
4:30 a.m.
Roy had finally reached the sport relayed to him by GA. Why did I even agree to do this little bitch quest, Roy thought in frustration, I shouldn't be picking up JL scraps; this is exactly why I left.
Roy pulled out the handheld scanner Ollie had made him grad from a nearby weapons cache and turned it on. The tech was registering no traces of the signal that had made the League send him to his current location. But when he peered down into the alley below he saw an interesting sight.
A ball-capped kid was sprinting down the alley and slowed up slightly to pick up an old baseball bat that some tenant must have thrown out into the alley without making sure it hit the dumpster. Looking further up the alley Roy saw the object of the young person's attention, a group of three men all of whom were armed and shaking a woman down. Roy instinctively drew his bow and reached for his tazer arrows, but he didn't even get the chance to fire them.
By the time that Red Arrow had notched his first arrow, the man with the bat had reached the attackers. After a shattering blow was delivered to the outside part of one of the attackers, they switched focus from the woman to the man. When the amateur hero took a swing at the second attacker, the bat was caught and stripped from him and he was stabbed in the shoulder by a switchblade. Roy fired his arrow at the third assailant and watched in shock as the young man simply looked at his right shoulder and the knife protruding from. Instead of fear or pain, Roy saw the man seemed more pissed than anything and in the blink of an eye the man with the stab wound drew his left arm back and threw a strong jab at the gut of the last target. Instead of staggering him, the punch sent the man flying 30 feet and he would surely need to be hospitalized if he lived through the concussion of the blow. Damn! Where the hell did that come from!
"Holy shit!" Roy heard the exclamation of the quasi-vigilante, who looked down at his hands, the right one being covered in blood that flowed from his shoulder. He had just punched a man 30 ft. through the air! The young man look around as the sound of a zip-line attaching to a wall echoed through the alley. His eyes settle on Roy as he checked on the attackers to see if they were still breathing.
"They're alive," Roy stated slightly agitated. He hadn't planned on anything like this ever happening when he responded to Ollie's request. "And how the hell did you do that?" He questioned the wounded hero, pointing at the man lying 30 feet away.
"Fuck if I know! One minute I'm driving to Wal-Mart, then I'm transported to God knows where without any idea what's going on and to top it all off I beat the crap out of the asshole who stabbed me! And just who or what the hell are you and where the hell am I?"
Roy, not thrown in the slightest by the young man's outburst, quickly responded. "I'm Red Arrow and you're in Star City. How about you? What's your name, kid?"
"Star City? How the hell did I get here? Hell, I don't even know where that is! And since I didn't get an actually name, I ain't giving you mind." The man flicked the bill of his hat and smirked. "For now, just call me Hawkeye because I literally have no idea what the hell is going on."
Roy didn't like the kid's answers. He crossed his arms as he looked the kid up and down. "Alright then 'Hawkeye', what are you doing in this alley this late at night?" "
"Seriously dude…it's been…a…pretty …screwed up…d-." And just like that he passed out from what Roy assumed to be blood loss. That cut must have been deeper than I thought.
Roy hurriedly activated his comm to call for help, something he didn't often do. "Red Arrow to Justice League. Tell GA that I'm going to be using his med ward at his base. There's a patient that you might to send someone down to help me look at."