A/N So, I need reader input, should I do the 'cliche' chapter plots for some of the 'fun' chapters. I.e. One set in a gender-swapped universe, one set in a universe where Kara landed on earth at a different time, those kind of things, would that at all interest people?
Disclaimer; Nope, still don't own 'em. Both Young Justice and any character seen within this work of fiction belong to DC Comics and Warner Bros.
The Watchtower
February 22, 19:42 EST
Monitor duty. The League responsibility all seemed to dread. Kara didn't think it would be so bad, but oh how she was wrong.
She wasn't even scheduled for monitor duty. Somehow, the Flash and Captain Marvel managed to trick her into taking over their turn. She had been tricked by a ten-year-old.
She hoped Kal wouldn't find that part out, or she'd never hear the end of it.
The only bright side of it was that she had unlimited time to get her thoughts in order, and she could still help with missions. Batman had spoken to the team earlier, she was present at time, and sent them on a mission in Qurac, a place they were too familiar with.
Apparently Marie Logan, the wildlife activist/retired actor, had gone missing. Batman wouldn't usually send a force like the entire team to investigate, but Queen Bee had been implicated, and there were suggestions that Garfield Logan had something she wanted, and that the League didn't want her to have.
But the moment Kara had been zeta'd to the Watchtower, the two men on monitor duty set about tricking the Kryptonian, and here she was. About ten minutes before hand, she contacted the team and explained she could keep track of their mission from there, using the League's satellites.
She was currently watching a small blip on a radar fly to the drop-zone, while keeping in radio contact.
"When you reach drop point A, alpha squad will deploy. Maintain stealth mode, and engage all contacts. We have reason to believe Queen Bee will have soldiers guarding the Logan household" she spoke up.
"Copy" Aqualad replied. She could imagine him and Kid Flash switching over their suit modes to stealth now, ready to deploy with Superboy and Zatanna.
After she had calmed down following the fight with the Metallo Unit, Kara decided to give Connor a second chance, but not without a strong warning.
"Drop zone A in 10" Miss Martian spoke up.
"Beta squad, do you remember orders?" Kara asked.
"Drop zone B, infiltrate Queen Bee's palace. Garfield Logan is primary objective, Bee's plans are secondary" Robin answered, gently rubbing the cast around his arm. Batman had cleared him for the mission, but not without a stern, almost fatherly order to stay out of combat.
Kara doubted the boy would listen.
"Okay teams, good luck, and going dark" Kara then severed radio contact for the time being.
Qurac
February 23, 02:50 UTC+2
They were now only about two minutes out from drop zone A. Aqualad stood beside Connor, and behind them stood Zatanna and Kid. Kara had suggested the squad system, and the squad line ups. The Atlantean was unsure at first, but once she explained that it was to make sure 'inter-team romances' wouldn't compromise the mission, he relented.
The mission was strange, but Batman had seemed to be sure something bigger was happening. M'gann was also very nervous, but what he had heard from Robin, Kid and Kara about the Rumaan Harjavti mission explained it. She was nervous about the Logans, and if they were okay.
"We're here" M'gann announced, her face a stony mask to hide the worry she undoubtedly felt for the Logans.
The four jumped out of the back of the bio-ship, and landed with thuds a few miles from the Logan home.
Silently, they began the march to their destination, the night sky blending with the deep black of their clothing. Aqualad felt the comm in his ear crackle to life.
"I'm going to keep communications to a minimum, but League satellites are picking up ten heat signatures inside the target location, and three more outside."
"Copy" Aqualad whispered.
They continued on silently, with Kara calling in every now and then to warn them of Bialayan soldiers driving nearby.
Eventually, they made it to a distance where they could see their target. Two soldiers were standing by the open barn doors, talking, and the third was sitting on the hood of one of two trucks that sat parked outside the house.
Aqualad gave a wave of his hand as signal, and Kid ran forward towards the lone soldier, while Zatanna held her hands out to the others "etativel rieht snopaew" the rifles they held now began to float in the air above their heads, and they looked up in awe "pord meht!" They then fell from the air, and hit the soldiers in their faces, knocking them down.
Next to the trucks, Kid had smacked the lone soldier in the side of the head whilst running at full speed, and impact that would have done very serious damage, if he had've left his helmet off. The soldier dropped to the ground, and Kid redirected his path to finish off the other two.
With all three men taken out, Kaldur and Superboy moved in.
"Just saw a fourth heat signature collide with the external soldiers at inhuman speeds, I'm guessing that was Kid?" Kara asked suddenly.
"Correct, now moving on target" Kaldur replied. He and Superboy slowly crept over to the building, while Kid ran around the back, and Zatanna levitated herself onto the roof.
Bialya
February 23, 03:20 UTC+2
Drop zone B turned out to be not much better than A. As the remaining members of the team landed on the roof of Queen Bee's palace, noticeable increases in her security could be spotted.
Several trucks were making rounds along a high, double-layered fence outside the palace. Three teams of five soldiers stood on strategically located sections of roof, and guard towers peppered the outer fencing of the palace.
Queen Bee was scared, and they had to find out why.
They began by finding a way in via the roof. A large window took up a great deal of it, and Robin dropped to his knees beside the glass, while the girls cautiously looked around for guards.
A glass panel loosened with a pop, and Robin shifted the glass from it's position, to rest beside the hole he had just created. The rooftop guards didn't seem to be patrolling, only keeping watch, which meant they wouldn't likely spot the hole.
M'gann and Rocket hovered down through the entrance, while Robin and Artemis slid down a pair of cables they had dropped into it.
"Vent cover, opposite wall" Artemis called through M'gann's telepathic link once her feet were planted.
"Got it" the Martian telekinetically lifted the cover up from it's position, and her three squad mates quickly shot into the vents, with her following, placing the cover back over their entryway
"Question, how are we supposed to know where our target is?" Rocket asked.
Robin gave an awkward shrug in response.
He was planning on winging it, but from subtle characteristics of the building, he probably wouldn't have to do so for long.
He had noticed that, while security was strong around the entire palace, it was noticeably concentrated towards the back of the compound.
Hoping to confirm his theory, Robin stopped and placed a hand, his injured one, to his comm, and shut out M'gann from his mind.
"Supergirl, can you get any thermal imaging from Bee's palace?" He whispered.
"Hang on" she replied, and went silent for a moment "yes, I'm watching it now"
"Is there any noticeable concentration towards the rear of the palace?"
"Uh... yeah, there seems to be a lot- hang on" she stopped short "weird"
"What is it?"
"There's one signature I'm picking up in the south-eastern section of the palace, it's looks like someone... sleeping. Also, they're not alone. There're about six other signatures in the same room, but they're all awake and moving"
"Copy" Robin replied "going dark."
He continued leading his squad through the cramped ventilation system, the girls following close behind.
As he crawled, the small pressure in the back of his mind that signified M'gann's telepathic presence came back.
"Well?" She asked him.
"South-east section of the palace, security is stronger there, and Supergirl thinks something's up" he explained.
"You think it's the kid?" Artemis asked.
Robin didn't answer, only continued to silently lead them through the metal vents, trying to focus their approach south-east.
After minutes of silent crawling, Robin stopped at the head of the line.
"Vents stop here, but it looks like we should be near our target soon"
He pulled the metal grate covering their exit, and slid it to the side, opening the vents up to a hallway coated floor to ceiling with old paintings, not a small amount depicting Queen Bee in various scenarios of heroism.
He dropped to the ground, and looked down at a hologram projected from the glove on his uninjured arm for a moment while the girls followed.
"This way" he looked right, and began creeping down the hall.
Just as they reached a corner, he threw himself against the wall, and held a finger to his mouth as a sign for absolute silence.
Voices were echoing down the hall, and Robin was frantically looking for a better hiding place, when he felt himself suddenly being lifted into the air. Rocket had created a kinetic energy bubble around the squad, and was flying them over the heads of the oblivious guards, down the hallway, and around another corner.
She gently placed them all back on the ground, and Robin gave her a smile and nod as thanks, before schooling his face once more, and leading his squad down the halls again. Eventually, they came to a T junction.
"Which way?" Miss M asked, worry flavouring her voice.
Circles of light began to dance on the walls and floors at one branch of the junction, Bialyan voices echoing through once more.
"Left I guess" Robin replied, and ducked in the direction.
They slipped through another vent cover further down the next hallway, and M'gann pulled it shut just as a guard patrol came around the corner behind them.
They began to crawl down the vents, and after a short while, came up on another cover below them. Robin peeked through.
"Hallway, with four vent covers above it. About eight guards."
"We can take one vent cover, and two guards each" Artemis suggested. The boy wonder nodded, and quickly shuffled to the vent at the very end, Artemis behind him, and Rocket just before M'gann "be careful with your arm Robin" the Martian called after him.
"One, two, three!"
Qurac
February 23, 03:20 UTC +2
Zatanna dropped onto the roof with a light thunk, and crept over to the side of the house where the balcony hung.
Peeking over the edge, she saw a soldier walk out onto the balcony, an lean on the railing. He would easily notice the outside soldiers missing if she didn't take him out, quickly.
"Kaerb eht nedoow gniliar!" She whispered. Suddenly, the railing he was leaning in snapped, and her fell all the way down to the ground, onto his back "pord a gnilwob llab" a bowling ball then materialised in the air above him, and dropped onto his helmeted head. The helmet took most of the impact, but not enough to leave him conscious.
She swung out over the roof's edge, and onto the place where the soldier fell from, just as shouts and gunfire erupted from below her. The boys had clearly made contact with the rest of the soldiers.
Four men stood before her, and spun around at the sound of her landing.
One pointed at her, and yelled something in another language, while the other three started firing.
Thinking fast, Zatanna dove behind a couch. Fortunately, the only wounds she took were to her clothing, where bullets had slightly frayed the sleeves of her jacket.
The hail of gunfire seemed to stop for a moment, giving her time to peek out and cast a spell "etativ-" her spell was cut off when the fire began again, and a bullet cut through her arm.
She gripped the wound tight. It was only a graze, but she was on her own, against four armed soldiers.
The gunfire went on for a couple of seconds longer, before stopping. One soldier, no doubt the leader, whispered something Zatanna couldn't understand, and quiet footsteps on the wood followed. She tried to slow her breathing down.
A muffled scream broke the silence, and Superboy suddenly shot up through the floor between Zatanna and the soldiers.
She allowed herself another look over the couch, and saw them concentrating their fire on the indestructible teenager.
Behind the soldiers, Kid Flash and Aqualad ran up the stairs, and the Bialyan in charge seemed to figure out they were now outgunned.
He ordered something else in Bialyan, and three of them ran toward the balcony. On their way, the leader pushed the fourth soldier into Superboy, who was sufficiently startled by the act to stumble backwards, and inadvertently allow the three to jump off the balcony, run to a truck, and begin speeding away by the time the team recovered, and jumped to the ground after them.
Connor gave a roar, and seemed to be about to run after them, when their comms crackled to life with Supergirl's voice.
"Don't chase them down Superboy, we have priorities."
Bialya
February 23, 03:40 UTC +2
"One, two, three!"
At once all four shot through the vent covers below them, startling the guards below with the entrance.
At the end of the hallway, Robin leapt into the air as one guard tried to grab him. The boy wonder landed behind the stumbling man, and kicked him hard enough in the back to send him crashing into the guard opposite.
The men fell over, and robin threw a disc on the back of the guard on top. It lit up with a light blue, and released enough volts of electricity to flow through both men, knocking them out with the shock.
Meanwhile, Artemis had dropped directly into a crouch. The guard behind her attempted to attack first, but the archer swung her legs backward, and swept his out from underneath him. The guard fell forwards onto his face, and Artemis slipped backward, and onto her feet, avoiding his landing all together.
She pulled her bow off her back, and quickly fired an arrow at her second opponent, which exploded into a net of web that stuck him to the wall, helpless. To finish them off, she kicked the guard on the wall in his face, and stomped the floor-guard's face into the ground.
While this was happening, Rocket had apparently taken on the one guard smart enough to try firing his rifle. Thinking quick, she threw up a bubble of energy around him just as the first bullet left the gun. Stepping backward, she threw the bubble across the hall into the second guard, smashing him into the wall. She then repeated the move several times, until he was slumped over, unconscious.
Left with the guard inside the bubble, she allowed the energy to drop, and free him. The sudden loss of his kinetic prison startled the man, and gave Rocket enough time to dart forward, snatch his gun, and just as he realised what was happening, she swung the rifle like a club into his face, the impact of which left him, too, unconscious.
Finally, at the very rear of the group, M'gann dropped to the ground, and immediately shot backwards as a guard attempted to grab her. Going invisible, she flew around him, while he tried to attack, and the other guard joined in.
She turned herself visible again in between the two, and dodged just as they each threw a punch, allowing the guards to hit each other. Using her telekinesis, she lifted a taser she had noticed was strapped to one of their belts, and fired it at one of them, leaving him convulsing on the ground.
She then turned to the other, and reached out for his mind telepathically. Both froze, and both of their eyes turned a bright green, while she extracted the information she needed. Pulling out from his mind, the guard dropped to the floor, staring blankly at the wall opposite, his mind fried.
The squad regrouped, and Robin narrowed his eyes at the brain-dead soldier "what happened to him?" He asked her.
"That doesn't matter, what matters is that I know where Garfield is" she brushed off the question "he's through those doors, and then only a left-turn away"
Robin reluctantly nodded, and led his squad along the given directions.
They soon came up on a door that didn't exactly fit in with the rest of the palace. They looked like they would fit in better at a hospital.
Sharing a look with the girls, Robin pushed the doors open. The inside looked like a lab of some kind. On one side, Garfield lay sleeping in what could only be described as a prison cell. Three more soldiers stood next to the iron bars, and three people in lab coats typed on an array of computer monitors.
Sox heads turned to the door at the sound of it opening, and one Bialyan yelled something. Garfield jumped at the noise, and gawped at the heroes who had just entered.
Reacting almost instantly, Artemis fired an arrow at the soldier, who had placed his hand to the side of his helmet, no doubt about to call for reinforcements.
The arrow detonated, and fired a small web at the limb, pinning it to the wall behind him. He looked at the web, and began to try clawing through it, or pull his arm free, but it wouldn't give.
The other two soldiers raised their weapons to fire, but Rocket threw up a kinetic shield around all three men, preventing them from attacking.
Now helpless, Artemis nocked another arrow, and aimed it at them.
"Drop the shield, then replace it" she ordered Rocket, who nodded.
The pink barrier around the soldiers dissipated, and Artemis loosed her arrow, and Rocket threw the dome of energy up again as it entered the shield's boundaries. The arrow then burst into a thick cloud, which was completely contained within the dome, and when Rocket allowed it to drop, the three men were unconscious.
While the girls took out the soldiers, M'gann had turned to one of the scientists in the room, and entered his mind. Both her and the man's eyes glowed green, and he stumbled over to Garfield's cell.
Telepathically, she forced him to unlock the cell, and open the door. She then released him, and the scientist dropped to his knees, his eyes staring blankly at nothing, and a slow dribble coming from his mouth.
She rushed over to the opened cell, but Garfield was now looking away from the rest of the room, his shoulder shuddering, and light whimper coming from him.
With the soldiers incapacitated, and Garfield freed, Robin rushed the other two scientists in the room. One of them sprinted around him, and out of the doors. She would likely warn Bee's soldiers that the team was there, so her had to act quick.
The other scientist looked down at Robin with disdain, and lurched forward in some kind of attack.
As he moved, Robin side-stepped, and planted a small taser disc onto his back, which released it's payload, and knocked him out cold.
Robin then reopened his comms "We found Garfield, along with a whole lot of computers" he told the Kryptonian at the other end.
"Can you wirelessly patch me in?" She asked.
"I should be able to" within a few minutes, he was able to give Supergirl full access to Queen Bee's hard-drives.
From the Watchtower, Kara sifted through the mountains of information, hoping to find what Queen Bee wanted from the Logans.
She found it, among mentions of DNA splicing, records of Garfield's blood, and a report about Pygmalion, the secret project that had been hounding Kara since the previous year.
"Okay, I found it, and... oh"
"What's wrong" Robin asked, looking at the sobbing Garfield across the room.
"I'll... I'll get back to you... J'onn will want to see this" she said that last part to herself.
M'gann, meanwhile, had dropped to her knees beside her 'blood brother', and held him tight as heavy sobs shook his frame. He could tell her what was wrong later.
Robin brought her attention back with a hand on her shoulder.
"We need to keep moving" he reminded. She nodded, and gently lifted the boy in her arms.
The guards around the palace were just beginning to wake up again, so Robin and Artemis made sure to give each of them another kick to the head, just to keep them down, as the group of five sprinted back through.
All around them, screams, alarms, and Queen Bee's voice coming out over the intercom filled their ears.
Breaking back out to the roof by smashing through a window beside the one they had removed to enter, the squad soon discovered they had flung themselves directly into a storm of panic and bullets. Once they broke through to the roof, several squads of Bialyan soldiers turned to them, and began to fire wildly in their direction.
Fortunately, the moment they entered the bio-ship, M'gann had it rocket directly upwards.
Robin looked on as the girls helped Garfield, and heard his comm crackle to life, Wally's dejected voice filling his ears.
"Guys..."
Qurac
February 23, 03:40 UTC +2
"They're getting away!" Connor yelled back at his cousin through comms.
"No Connor, don-" but Kara's words fell on deaf ears, and Connor continued to follow the escaping truck.
"Kid-"
"Got it" he replied, and followed Connor under Kara's unspoken, but heavily implied, orders.
The clone wasn't too hard to follow, as every time he landed, the ground seemed to shake significantly. Wally just had to follow the mini-earthquakes.
Following the enraged teen, both eventually caught up with the fleeing Bialyans, who were skirting along a large river, toward a cliff where the river poured off.
Connor jumped high into the air, and arc back down, landed directly on the hood of the truck, causing it to flip and roll violently.
Connor grabbed the leader by the front of his uniform, and jumped off the vehicle, but didn't seem to be considering going back for the other two.
Kid groaned, and sprinted to catch up with the truck before the other two soldiers could be hurt, and jerked them off too. He pulled both by their upper arms, and was able to jerk them out of the truck, into the sand beside it.
Standing back up, he watched as the truck continued to flip and roll, shedding whole pieces of metal, and go off the end of the cliff.
The two soldiers began to rise as well, but the speedster grabbed them, and smacked their heads together.
Looking over, Kid saw Connor knock the leader out with a swift punch to the side of the head, and look over at the cliff they had just been moving towards.
Wally rolled his eyes, and began the long task of dragging the men together, so that he could bind them by their wrists.
After making sure the soldiers were all zip-tied together, Wally walked over to Superboy. He was standing on the edge of the nearby cliff, right beside the waterfall, staring down. He wasn't moving.
"S.B?" He called "hey, you okay?" The clone didn't reply, so he walked over beside him to look at what he'd noticed. A car was sitting at the base of the waterfall, in the shallow river it fed into. It was upside down, and if the pieces of metal that were strewn about the ground were any indication, it hadn't landed there gently. The redhead swallowed a lump in his throat.
Superboy grabbed Wally by the upper arm, and dropped them both down to get a closer look.
The car was a wreck. Pieces of metal were indeed scattered around the area, but it wasn't the crashed vehicle that worried Wally, it was the stench. It was the kind of smell that only one thing could create, and by the look of the bloodied body Connor was prying from the wreckage, that thing was the reason Marie Logan had gone missing.
"Guys" he radioed in. Supergirl, Rob and Aqualad copied.
He sighed "I think... I think I know what happened to Marie Logan."
Mount Justice
February 23, 12:30 EST
In the wake of the mission, things around the cave became unbearably sombre. The League allowed Garfield Logan to stay with his 'blood sister', and as soon as the decision was made, he and M'gann entered the latter's room. They hadn't left it since, and the last checkup on them confirmed that neither were dealing with Marie Logan's death very well.
Kara, meanwhile, had stopped contacting them all together. Either out of sadness or frustration with Connor's constant disobeying of orders, they didn't know what she was doing, but things would have to be dealt with, soon.
A/N so... This was an ordeal to write, and it took me a while, so yeah
Oh, and one more thing, I don't know if people feel like I'm just ignoring their reviews and messages, because I'm not, I'm just a bit unsure if you want me to project your names all over my Author's Notes as a reply.