Sora Gaiden Chapter 1: Decisions Pt 1, a young justice fanfic

Author's Notes: So here is the third story that I'll be working on for a while. It was requested by Sketchywolf. It follows the YJ canon storyline with some extra twists and turns that are the result of the OC Sora Takashi being present. It will also be rated T with brief nudity (most likely doctor check-ups and such) and profanity. This will also be the first story that I have done that A) follows a canon plot and B) the main character has super-powers. More info will be dumped in the AN below, but until then, let's get on with chapter one of this new story; Sora Gaiden.

Sora Gaiden

Chapter One: Decisions Pt. 1

Cadmus Labs/ Washington D.C/ 12:13 a.m. /July 5, 2010

He remembers how he all began. He remembers how his parents had gotten into some trouble with a local small gang. How they went out and contacted the man known as Deathstroke the Terminator to fix their problem.

That was the beginning of the problem.

Deathstroke had done what he was paid to do, but he requested more payment. His parents were not rich and Deathstroke took the only thing of value that he could; Sora.

The teen took in a deep breath at that thought. His parents fought tooth and nail and eventually lost their lives in the bout. And for Sora Takashi, he was taken by the man his parents sought to keep him from. He had become property of Deathstroke the Terminator.

In the beginning, it wasn't so bad. Deathstroke had taught him how to utilize his powers and how to use his sword better. Sora was appreciative of that, especially at such a young age. Sword-play was cool back then and being able to teleport to that sword only made it seem more interesting. Deathstroke had shown Sora things that Sora never thought he'd be able to.

But that was in the beginning.

It did not stay that way and Sora did his best now not to remember all of it. For some nights that was easier said than done, but for now he had something else to focus on.

Despite ultimately escaping Deathstroke's grasp, Sora found himself still at the mercy of his occupation. In order to survive, he would still have to take odd jobs from people, similar to how it was with Deathstroke. And while killing was a no-go for the hooded teenager, he was willing to do other things for the right pay. It wasn't the ideal life style but it was really the only one that worked for him so far.

Though this was a bit different. He had been called to "check out" Cadmus Labs only for someone to come and apparently destroy all evidence. The place was set ablaze and the wrongdoer had apparently escaped before the authorities and firefighters appeared.

He was seconds from walking away until he saw a rather interesting sight. Three heroes- sidekicks to be more precise- breaking into the burning building as if there was something still left to investigate. His initial thought was that they had come to find clues about the fire-starter.

…But that was ten minutes ago. Now Sora was beginning to think that something major going on behind those closed doors.

"…" Sora was certain that there was something bigger than just an office fire taking place at the moment. Normally his curiosity wouldn't take this much control over his actions but today was something different.

With that in mind, he turned and left the small crowd of people. His black hoodie and blue jeans kept him from standing out that much, though the katana strapped to his back was sometimes a dead giveaway that he was not as normal as he seemed. Not that he wanted to be "normal" by any stretch of the imagination as normality had left his life years ago.

Now there was just this hellish day-in and day-out routine that he endured until he avenged Ally's death.

Another pause in his thoughts. Of course, every other day he is haunted by the thoughts of his parents' and friend's slayings. Half of the time, he pushed those thoughts aside for later. The other half, he used the anger to fuel his motivation and continue forwards in life.

Climbing up a fire escape on a nearby building, the teen focused on the task at hand. By now, his job was officially over as the facility looked pretty much destroyed. Any evidence that he would have found was probably burned to a crisp or worse. Yet he still wanted to enter the place to find out what happened to the sidekicks. A building of two stories should have been swept clean by a speedster in seconds. It's been ten minutes.

Something was definitely up.

Reaching the roof without causing a scene, Sora moved to edge closest to the street. His black eyes scanned the crowd below before locking onto the Cadmus building. Grabbing his blade from its sheath, he held the grip tightly in his right hand. With great aim, he launched his blade over the street and onto the Cadmus Labs building. A second later, he was on said Cadmus Labs building picking up the blade.

'Teleportation had its uses.' Sora mused.

The black haired teen found the door that led to the stairwell and touched the knob with the back of his hand. After concluding that it was cool enough to grab, Sora entered the building via the stairwell.

'I'm getting a bad feeling about this,' Sora thought to himself as he began to descend the steps.

The ominous feeling was not misplaced. In just a few minutes, the building had gone from typical corporate laboratory to burnt haunted mansion in the vibes department.

Carefully reaching the second floor, which was presumably the top floor, Sora quietly crept down the wide hallways. He was trained to sneak around, an ability obviously taught to him by his mentor, so he was not initially worried about if someone was still within the building. In fact he knew that there were at least three bodies somewhere inside.

'Two stories aren't really big enough to hide three loud sidekicks.' Sora thought. 'If anything I should be able to hear-'

His thoughts were interrupted when the building shook.

"What the…?"

Sora did not finish his statement for multiple reasons. For one, the building had just taken damage from a fire. He would rather not see if it could withstand an earthquake of any size. The second main reason that the tremble had gained his attention related to the three missing sidekicks.

They had to be behind the tremble somehow, someway.

Disregarding the shake for a moment, Sora found himself wandering the top floor of the building. He was no architect, but he assumed that the fire did not damage the support of the building, which was good. The last thing he needed was for the building to suddenly come down on him.

Soon he came to an odd scene, an open elevator shaft.

'They used the elevator during a fire?' Sora mentally questioned as he stepped to the shaft and looked downwards. 'I guess that answers where the sidekicks went. Now I just have to find a way to get down there.'

Sora stared down the deep tunnel in thought. Given that he was prepared to sneak into a two-story building to snoop around and then exit, he had foregone grabbing any rope or grappling hook that would aid him for this sort of descent. Now he was regretting that decision.

'Jump.'

Sora looked around, his eyes attempting to pick up the source of the voice. He clearly heard someone or something that told him to jump.

'It's fine. Jump.'

Normally, listening to a mysterious voice inside one's mind was a sign of a guilty conscience or insanity. Sora has dealt with both before but this was different. This was a voice unlike any others and offering him clear instructions.

'I'm probably going to regret this later…' the teen said as he pulled his hood over his head and removed the sword from its scabbard strapped to his back and looked down the shaft. 'Let's go.'

Fearlessly, the teen stepped off of the floor and began to plummet into the darkness.

His trained eyes picked up on flashing images as he descended. He knew that if he could teleport to safety before the worse could happen, but he had to find a safe place to teleport to. The key to doing such a feat was patience. The moment he got too anxious was the moment he tossed his blade too soon or too late and that would result in his demise.

And just like that it happened. The world around him seemed to slow down as he spotted another opening, just like before. With great precision, he tossed his blade between the opened shutter doors and listened to the metal slide clang loudly against the linoleum floor.

Soon, Sora was standing beside his sword, picking it up while scanning to see if the noise brought any sort of attention.

'Coast is clear.' Sora thought as he crept towards the end of the hallway. 'Where am I?'

It was a question that he could answer at the moment. Then again, when one falls forty-four levels down a two-story building, logic goes out of the window and unanswerable questions occur. Seeing these sub-levels made Sora question just what his current employer wanted him to find.

'Something tells me that it wasn't on the first two floors.' Sora begrudgingly thought.

Rounding a corner onto another seemingly empty hallway, Sora kept a sharp look out for any security machinery of any kind. This would include cameras or motion detectors, both common in a place like this, but neither to be seen.

The oddity did not stop there. There was still the fact that he had seen no one since arriving on the floor despite the pried open doors signifying that someone had to open the doors and be on this floor somewhere.

Taking another turn down another hall, Sora mentally made a recap of his movements.

'First I took a left, and then a right,' he recounted. 'No other exits seen. And…'

Sora's thoughts slowly halted when he spotted something that should probably be on a distant planet or extinct. The large grotesque creature seemed to be the size of a mammoth, if not bigger, and apparently it walked on its hind legs and arms like a gorilla. Its tusks sprouted from the cheek bones of this large creature. Sora spotted another alien-like creature, this one smaller than Sora himself, that rested on the mammoth's head as the two beings glared at the boy.

'What in the…?' Sora thought as the behemoth let out a deep rumbling growl. 'No time to figure that out. I got it get out of here.'

The beast let out a loud roar that caused Sora to immediately backtrack. Seconds later, Sora was running full speed down the hallways in an attempt to find an exit of any kind. The loud rumbling behind him told him that the large creature had taken chase, something he was not fond of.

'The elevator.' The voice came into Sora's mind again. 'Use the elevator.'

At this moment, Sora could not care less who or what the voice in his head belonged to. He did not want to honestly combat the beast chasing him for several of obvious reasons. Worse, he had the strangest of feelings that he had set off an alarm someway somehow and was now going to have that much more of a problem leaving this place.

'Last time I take a job from a text.' Sora vowed in his head.

Skidding around a corner, Sora's eyes landed on opened shaft doors that he had used earlier. His legs seemed to gain a new burst of energy as he pushed for the exit. He came close to the edge of the floor, stopping before falling down the shaft, before seeing two figures fly by.

And then another pair.

'The sidekicks.' Sora thought as he watched the four bodies zoom for the top. He could see Robin using a grappling hook to pull himself and Kid Flash up while someone who strongly resembled a white-suited younger Superman flying by with Aqualad.

It was then that Sora caught something quite odd. The Superman look-alike began to descend as if he was not flying at all. With the rumbling growing behind Sora and two teens slowly beginning to pick up speed in their descent, Sora quickly used his abilities to appear next to Aqualad, catching the Atlantean's outstretched hand.

"Whoa, who are you?" Kid Flash voiced. "And how'd you do that?"

"No time for introductions," Robin announced as he eyed the elevator car lowering on them. "Let's move!"

Sora watched as Aqualad and, who he assumed to be, the spawn of Superman tear open the shaft doors and allow them to enter onto sub-level fifteen.

"Come on." Robin ordered as the group began running down a hall.

"Split end." Kid Flash noted.

"Go left." Sora glanced at the younger Superman but did not argue, the group following his lead now. "Now right."

'How does he know where he's going?' Sora thought. 'He's either been here before… Or he's guessing.'

The group continued to follow Superboy's directions until they came to a dead end. Sora's eyes landed on a grate and figured his next move, his only goal now being to escape with or without the sidekicks.

'No, I'm not like him.' Sora mentally reprimanded himself.

"Hey new guy," Sora glanced to see that Kid Flash was speaking to him. "Are you coming or what?"

Seeing that the group was heading into the ventilation system, Sora only nodded.

Maneuvering through the vents was something Sora had done time before. When done properly, it was the best way to sneak up on unsuspecting targets or make for a well needed escape. He presumed that Robin, being a student under the elusive Batman, relied on the vents as much as Sora did.

"Hacking into the motion sensors," Robin quietly announced. "It'll buy us some time, but we need to get out of here fast."

"Dude, we still don't know who the third wheel is." Kid Flash not-so-quietly whispered as they continued their trek through the ventilation system.

"I'm not here for any of you," Sora announced. "And I don't work for Cadmus either."

"Then why are you here? And who are you?" Kid Flash shot back.

"I'm Raijin and you don't need to know why I'm here." responded the Japanese teen.

"We kind of-"

"Not important," Robin cut the speedster off. "Time to get out."

Sora found himself following the group out of the vent, now in the stairwell. He had to admit that crawling through a tight space alone was bothersome by itself, but with four other guys, three who obviously had done very little travel like that, was quite the task. He was certain that whoever was running the facility knew that they had escaped into the vents and were closing in on them.

"They'll be coming soon," Sora told the others. "We need to move fast."

"I agree with the new guy." Kid Flash stated as he pulled his goggles over his eyes. "So just sit back because I have room to run."

Before anyone could say anything, the boy in yellow and red dashed off quickly up the stairs. Sora, along with Aqualad and Robin, ran after the speedster, stepping over some smaller unidentified creatures that Sora had yet to see until then.

"This way!" Sora heard Robin call over the sound of an alarm.

The next minute came as a blurry rush for Sora. His goal, his main goal, was to escape and he knew that the floor that they had just reached would either grant him this goal or keep him trapped inside of the hidden levels of the building. And as he and the others dashed for the end of the hall, he noticed that his need for escape had pushed him in front of Robin; Kid Flash being the only one out-speeding Sora at the moment.

But just for that moment.

Spotting the large panic wall sliding down to prevent escape, Sora used his teleportation abilities to appear on the other side of the wall.

'Freedom…' Sora thought with relief.

Turning his head, he saw the wall slam firmly into the floor, a thump being heard moments later that was undoubtedly Kid Flash smacking into said wall. Staring at the wall, Sora realized that the sidekicks were on the other side, stuck there. He, however, was free to leave and finish what he was called to do.

There was no pay in saving the sidekicks. Plus, their mentors were sure to come to their rescue. So he could just walk up the last flight of steps onto the first floor and walk right out of the door. He could finish what he was paid to do and leave it at that. Or he could save the four he had left behind from whatever fate they may experience.

Sighing, the young Japanese-born teen looked up at the ceiling and recollected his earlier thoughts. It was always easier in the beginning. In the beginning he just had to find out some secrets about Cadmus Labs. Now he was left with this choice.

And he was going to have to live with it for the rest of his life too…

Author's Notes: And bam, first chapter. A lot of character info being dumped into the second chapter which is why I chose to cut it off here. The second chapter should be up sometime this weekend or Monday with new chapters coming out every other week. Again, this and Eli's story will not take a main concern until Arkham Rising is finished. However, because it's already been asked on the other story, I may do a one-shot of all three characters meeting if more people request it. Also, this story will have a review corner like the other two around three or four chapters apart. Anyway, after the second chapter of SG we'll jump back to the Jake Cross universe with the Artemis showcase and a new chapter of Arkham Rising. As always, for any thoughts, questions or comments that you have, leave a review or PM and I'll catch you later. Peace.