A/N: Welcome to the second chapter of The Grid. This chapter will include events from the Static Shock episode A League of Their Own Part I.

Disclaimer: I own no part of the DCAU, so don't sue. Merow? (That kinda rhymed.)

Merrowww…

The Grid

Virus

Within a stasis field a Kryptonian archiving program observed the biological organism known as Batman studying it. From the tone and body language the human used while making a metaphorical comment to the female Thanagarian on the computer virus's regenerative nature led it to conclude that the chiropteran themed male wished for the cessation of its existence. Brainiac decided that this did not matter and continued to probe the field, searching for a weakness to make his inevitable escape.

The warning systems of the Watchtower blared an alarm and the organic organisms left the room to find out the cause. The space station shook violently for a few seconds; whatever had happened resulted in the weakening of the stasis field. The alien program wasted no time in using the present opportunity to escape confinement, sending a small beam of light green data energy to upload itself into the terminal that the human had be using. Brainiac quickly changed the monitor readings, concealing his newfound freedom.

Merrowww…

Hotstreak was furious, as the purple vapor rising from his body could indicate. If anyone had the guts to look him in the eye they would see that the pupils and the dark green irises had disappeared into a glowing white haze that blended into the scalaria. If there was anything the pyro hated more than being bossed around it was being forced to do something he didn't want to do.

"Woah, Hotstreak, make sure to save some of that for the fight." Puff advised the redhead. The lavender pigtailed bang baby needed the pyro's abilities for the fight. It hadn't been easy but the young black woman had been able to 'convince' the hotheaded meta to join her gang with some not too subtle threats toward his ride and that snake-lizard-statue thing he was working on. She had almost laughed out loud when she confronted him in his little 'workshop'; F-Stop going straight was something that she never would have considered happening, even in a million years.

"You don't need to be bossing me around. I already agreed to help out with this plan of yours didn't I?" the fiery metahuman replied venomously as he took his position across the street diagonally from the building with the billboard advertizing Dazzler's new brand of whitening toothpaste. Puff shot him a quick glare before turning her legs into a light lavender vapor tail and flying to the roof of the building to get to her hiding place. Oryx hid in a dark alleyway near a light post and Carmendillo was somewhere on the rooftop of the building next to the alley.

Shit! Shit! Shit! Fuck that bitch and the nigger she rode in on. Francis wanted nothing better than to go and beat the shit out of Puff and her 'Meta-Men' and then set the city ablaze. …but he couldn't do that could he? Assuming he won a three on one fight with the other bang babies (which were not very good odds considering how well Puff and Onyx worked together… unless he decided to pull out the big guns, but that would be a lot more trouble than its worth) he would get arrested for trashing stuff … and his princess prefers him out of prison just as much as he does. Damn. If Sparky and his babe beat them he'd end up arrested to and if they didn't beat them, well that would be the end of Dakota's crime fighting duo and that wouldn't work either. In his hiding place behind two trashcans the hothead took a deep breath and counted backwards from ten a few times. Relatively calmed he thought about the situation.

Now how do I get out of this mess without ending up screw—oh, wait that could work. The redhead's face broke into a semi-psychotic smirk.It was a long shot, but if his boyfriend backed him up, it just might work. The pyro was jerked out of his thoughts at the sound of approaching rocket-blades and the light crackle of electricity approached. He lit a fireball and waited for the heroes to come into view.

Well this is going to be fun.

Merrowww…

"Static I don't want to talk about it." The green and blue spandex clad teen replied shortly. A few blocks ago the black teen hero had popped the question that Gear had been hoping to avoid and it was really starting to bug him that Static kept bringing it up. It wasn't that he planned on keeping his time spent with Hotstreak a secret forever; he just would have preferred having a few more days—months—years to figure out a way to tell his best friend without him freaking out. Slightly boosting his speed the blond hero pulled ahead of his companion who simply sped up as well.

"No way bro. We need to talk about this, now." The electrically charged hero said, voice firm as he stood straight on his disk and crossed his arms over his chest. "Need I remind you of the last time you were keeping secrets?" the younger teen gave the blond a stern look.

While the xanthochroid teen flinched a bit and his blue eyes darted to the left instinctively avoiding the black teens brown eyes from locking with his own, even though the dark upper part of his visor was opaque. Static was most likely referring to the fact that for most of their friendship he had avoided having his best friend sleep over at his house fearing what his father's racist attitude and comments would do to their relationship. Though his reasons weren't all altruistic, Virgil and his family were—are pretty much the only things keeping him off the streets, away from drugs, and out of a gang. Hell, since his powers developed Virgil was the only thing keeping him sane; asides from Frankie, but the fiery meta is definitely not the most stable person he knows and one probably shouldn't let an ex-con with a psychotic streak be one's moral guide.

"How was I supposed to explain that to you?" he asked, his stress and annoyance beginning to morph into anger. It did not escape the super genius's attention that his partner had just accidently opened up an opportunity to avoid talking about his new secret. "Was I just supposed to walk up to you and say 'hey and btw my father's a racist, that won't be a problem will it?'. That wouldn't be good enough would it, no you'd just make it your business to try and help out just like you always do and things would just have ended badly."

"If I recall correctly things went badly anyway and avoiding the problem only delayed the inevitable." The ebony countered, ignoring most of that last sentence. Static absently noted that his friend shared a temper with his blond father, though Richie preferred to hold his tongue and leave before he went off. "I'm not trying to get up all in ya business, I just want to know something. I'm worried about ya, bro."

The blond's anger faded at the concerned look in the other's chocolate colored eyes. The green and blue clad bang baby sighed.

"V, I'm sorry…" he began, only to be interrupted by a ball of flame hurtling towards his head. Reacting quickly he dropped down by a little more than a foot before the flame passed bare centimeters over the top of his helmet slamming into the billboard behind them.

"Ambush!" His partner shouted, which the blonde thought was fairly obvious, as the dread headed superhero crouched and tilted his electrified disk to block a few purple gas balls flying toward him loosing some altitude in the process.

The gadget using hero's mind processed the situation at superhuman speed as he dodged a volley of clumsily thrown flaming projectiles. The combined barrage from both Puff and Hotstreak (the teen super brain temporarily shelved any questions he had to why his [supposedly] reforming lover would be involved and his feelings about it, since getting distracted could potentially get him seriously injured or worse) were causing the heroic duo to get ever closer to the street, which would not be a good thing. The gas manipulating bang baby was damn near attached to the hip to her partner, Onyx, so he was most likely waiting for them at street level.

Both heroes were rather surprised when several fireballs slammed into the female bang baby; probably not as surprised as she was, though.

"Hey!" the lavender haired girl screeched and shot a glare at the redhead.

"Oops, sorry?" the pyro shrugged giving Puff an innocent look. The two retreated to the other side of the street. The blond had a bad feeling in his gut, which was probably due to the light post swinging towards them.

"Static look out!" Gear dropped down to avoid the steel structure, only to be slammed into the ground by a large tan segmented ball, while Static flew up only to get caught in the crook of the lamppost on the backswing. As the duo picked themselves up off the ground the armadillo-like bang baby and the purple giant joined their fellows.

"Hey Static how do you like my boy band?" Puff said, opening her arms gesturing to the three behind her. "I call them the Meta-Men."

"Uh, bro? Who do we go after first?" the blue and green clad hero asked as his rocket-skates got him back into the air.

"The police!" replied his blue and black clad partner, who also got himself airborne.

Merrowww….

"Watch it with those fireballs." Onyx whispered to the redhead, who only grunted in reply. The large purple teen was feeling a little uneasy about the pyro with them. Hotstreak hadn't wanted to join up with them in the first place and it was never a good idea to try and make him do any thing he didn't feel like doing. But sometimes Puff doesn't think about the downsides when she had a plan; it was a good thing he looks out for her. He needed to keep an eye on the hotheaded metahuman.

Hotstreak was waiting for the Meta-Men's next move; he was planning on taking out Onyx. The big bald bang baby was one of the biggest threats of the group. After he was down Sparky and his princess could take on the other two, no sweat. The pyro was quite surprised when a red and gold blur stopped the pigtailed meta's charge and knocked her to the ground.

"You know something, sweetie, you've got an odor problem." The blur commented as it stopped.

The redhead gave a snort at that and started snickering, loudly, for a few seconds before he recognized the intruder. It. Was. The. Flash. From the Justice League. Glancing at the gadgeteer genius floating a few paces behind and above the older seasoned hero, behind the lighter colored lower part of his mask the newer hero's mouth hung open in an 'o' shape. The flame powered superthug's green eyes flicked over to the other half of the duo wearing a matching expression to his friend's. Well at least I'm not the only one who didn't see this coming. There goes my brilliant plan.

Puff however didn't seem to notice who was standing before her or was to pissed to care—it was probably the latter, seeing as how her quite stanky mist swirled around her. The purple haired bang baby flew at the man launching 'puff' balls at him. The red and gold spandex clad hero spun his arms, creating a mini-tornado dissipating the projectiles and slamming into her knocking the dark skinned girl out cold.

Carmendillo and Onyx didn't do any better. The anthropomorphic armadillo rolled up and bounced towards the speedster only to be batted away by a mace wielding winged woman. Definitely Hawkgirl. The pyro mentally winced at the impact that sent the balled up teen flying into Onyx. The both of them crashed into the wall behind; Onyx fell through and passed out while 'Dillo uncurled himself on top of the purple skinned giant.

"If I knew Static was friends with the Justice League, I wouldn't have joined you boneheads. Not even to do laundry." He said before konking out as well.

Hotstreak looked over his unwanted 'comrades' and then back at the heroes. He gave them a semi-psychotic smirk as Dakota's heroes tensed as he… raised his hands in surrender. A large bat-shaped shadow glided past him and landed. Batman gave him a sort of glare as the pyro went and sat with 'Dillo and Onyx.

Merrowww…

Still in awe at their present company, Gear had to ask:

"Yo! How come you never told me you were down with these big dogs?"

"'Cause it's a secret. So secret that I didn't even know." Static answered, just as awed as his friend. The teen landed and folded his disk in a swift motion as Batman approached, the look on his face unchanged. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gear hesitate and give Hotstreak a look, tilting his head slightly in a questioning manner. Behind the Dark Knight the hothead dropped his grin for a split second, giving the blond hero a frowning sneer while giving a tiny nod and pointed glare towards his 'teammates'… to which his partner gave a small nod before touching down. What the hell was that? If the dark-skinned teen hadn't been watching his friend closely lately, he would never have noticed that entire exchange. He resolved to redouble his efforts to get information from his friend.

…But not right now. So he returned his attention to the older heroes.

"Yo, Batman, thanks for the help. But don't you guys have a galaxy to save or somethin'?"

"We need your help, Static." Batman said, still giving his patented Bat-glare. It seemed to be his default expression.

"Say what?" the young hero asked, unsure if he had heard the man correctly.

"We need you to come to the Watchtower." the guardian of Gotham continued.

"Up there?" the dread headed teen questioned, looking up and pointing skyward. "That one?"

"Yea kid that one." Hawkgirl answered, shouldering her mace.

Static stood there for a few seconds, completely stunned. Gear put his gloved hands on his friend's shoulders and spun him around.

"Bro, snap out of it!" the xanthochroid teen playfully told him, while shaking him and positively bursting with excitement himself. The dark-skinned teen couldn't help but return his comrade's grin, suspicious activities or not.

"Who's this?" Batman asked, eyes narrowing a bit at the slightly hyper young person.

"This is my partner, Gear." Static answered for his friend, in order to prevent him from rambling at the Justice League. "He's kinda new."

Batman said nothing.

Merrowww…

Gear sighed.

Here he is: a tech geek comic book lover in the Watchtower, surrounded by some of the founding members of the Justice League! He should be in heaven, but he isn't. He had to borderline humiliate himself to even be allowed to come, he was forbidden to touch any of the wonderful technology surrounding him, and he was banished to the corner. Where he still sits, with nothing to do, while Static charges up the station's power core like a giant Energizer Bunny.

He sighed again.

Thinking about it, the majority of his day had been fairly bad. It made him wonder if he was paying for something he did in a past life. Not that he was particularly religious, there's just a few things here and there form different faiths and ideologies that he happens to agree with. Like karma and some kinds of reincarnation. Yea, I was probably some kind of evil overlord who screwed with people's heads for the fun of it and transformed my defeated enemies into cat slaves. Wait, where did that last part come from?...never mind, I could by doing other things with my unplanned free time. He took out his notebook and a pencil from one of BacPac's compartments and continued working on his latest project. BacPac extended its visual sensor to see what its creator was writing and it offered suggestions on his ideas via helmet display.

He was so deeply lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice the Green Lantern's arrival, nor did he notice when Static stopped charging the station and walk over to him. The blond, absorbed in calculations of spin and thrust, wasn't aware of much of anything till the other teen snatched his notebook away.

"Yo! Watchtower to Gear!" the addressed teenager looked up and flinched back, bumping BacPac lightly against the wall. His friend was literally inches away from his face.

"Bro, space." He said pushing the other away gently. Pouting and rubbing one of his ears with his other hand he mumbled. "You didn't have to shout in my ear."

"Kinda did, you tend to tune things out when your workin' on somethin'." He answered absently looking over his notes. The more muscular of the pair stood to stretch out his arms, back, and legs as his mechanical companion crawled down him and picked up the balls of crumpled paper at his feet. It happily took them to the nearest waste receptacle for disposal.

"Did I miss anything?" The fair haired teenager asked as his robot climbed up his body and settled in its usual spot on his back. He looked and spotted GL talking with Batman and the Martian Manhunter at a consul.

"Nah, I'm finished though." The dark haired teen replied, returning the notebook. One of BacPac's arms took it and returned to its compartment along with the pencil.

Sensing something…NOT RIGHT, the machine sounded the danger alarm. The short beeps caught its creator's attention, but it could not identify what the NOT RIGHT was so it kept sending what it knew to his helmet display.

A second later an alert sounded in the consol being used by the Martian. The Leaguers rushed over to see what was up.

"… Will you two be ok here by yourselves?" one of the elder heroes asked. He'd missed most of what they were talking about while trying to figure out what was freaking his robot buddy out. He did however catch that last bit.

The two adolescent males turned their heads towards each other for a second then looked back at the League.

"Of course!" they replied simultaneously.

Merrowww…

Setting the pizza on the table, the electrically charged teen chuckled a bit when he heard his partner's stomach growl from across the table.

"What? I am a growing boy ya know." The techno genius said, playfully defensive as he removed his helmet. He reached for a slice of the pie—only to be stopped by a purple energy barrier.

"Ah, V, what's up with the force field?" Richie asked pouting. He was seriously hungry and keeping him away from the delicious food sitting in front of him was torture in his opinion.

"We never finished what we were talking about earlier," Virgil told him, as he reached through the barrier and slowly picked up a slice, letting his friend watch every strand of gooey cheese break as he put it on his plate. "I wanted to hear what you were about to say."

The African American teen watched emotions flit across the other's face. Anger, hunger, worry, hunger, fear, defiance, hunger, reluctance; he could almost see those wash away into a reluctant resignation as the teen's appetite chipped at his stubbornness.

"Fine," he said, running a hand through his flaxen locks. "If you must know, I'm… seeing someone. Sometimes afterschool or during lunch we hang out. Those times I get home really late and nobody knows where I've been? Those were times where we went on a date and it happened to run late."

"And the bruises?" he pried his partner.

"A few days a week we go to the gym. I began sparring with him a few months ago to help out with my lack of close combat skills." Richie answered, smiling at a memory. "I only get bruises 'cause that bastard is fucking strong and he fights dirty."

"That's it? You started dating a guy and stepping up your workouts?" The ebony haired teen asked slightly confused. He'd known his best friend was gay since the eighth grade; he didn't need to hide something like that from him.

"Yea, pretty much." The blond replied, poking the barrier between him and the wonderful smelling food. "We do live in Dakota, bro, between that and my dad being the way he is, being careful is a survival necessity. We still sudsy?"

"Yea, bro, just dial down the paranoia a bit." He smiled back at his friend, dropping the force field much to the blond's delight. He knew there was probably more Richie wasn't telling him but he could only press his luck so far. He could probably wait till he was told the rest.

By the time Virgil finished his slice the hungry blond had already scarfed down over half the pie.

"Save me another slice. I'm gonna go get a refill, you need one?" the electrically charged hero said heading over to the fridge.

"Nah, I'm good." The teen genius replied, patting his belly to emphasize his point. He put his helmet back on and kicked his feet up. Heading back to his seat, the dark-skinned teen almost didn't notice the green face watching them from one of the monitors. Wait wha? His head whipped back, but there was nothing on the screen.

"Did you see that?" he asked, starting to feel uneasy. He put his cup on the table.

"See what?" the blond responded. BacPac started giving warning beeps again.

"I thought I saw this green face on one of the monitors." He said sitting down.

Neither of them were much prepared when the outer door opened.

Merrowww….

A/N: Stopping here for now. I plan on using a few concepts from the movie WALL-E for BacPac's intelligence and behavior. According to the creator of the characters Richie is definitely gay and Virgil is definitely straight. Hotstreak is much less clear. He strikes me as either bi- or pansexual.