Alright, here we go. The longest chapter I've ever written! Thanks to all the annonymous reviewers!
Now before I start, I want to clarify something. As far as pairing go, I'm only having a bit of Supermartian (Megan will kiss Conner on the check in one chapter) and a bit of Spitfire (as in, they won't hate each other all the time.) This is gonna be mostly family and Friendship, so only the pairings that are above will be included.
Part the First: Captured
Plans.
Megan slowly opened her eyes, feeling like her eyelids weighed a ton. She took a shallow breath, the warm air drying out her throat as she inhaled.
"Where an I? What happened? Where's the team?" she thought groggily, closing her eyes to try and remember. After several minuets the realization came to her, causing her eye's to jolt open, and her body become tense.
"I'm at the Watchtower! Uncle John put a barrier into my mind! And he was so disappointed in me, but he wouldn't tell me why." Megan thought gloomily, "I'm so weak, so tired. I don't think I cam sit up, but maybe I can see if the barrier is still there." Closing her eyes tightly, she pulled up all of her reserve strength. She accessed her mental powers, and was very relived to see that there was no barrier.
"Uncle John must be sleeping, or he must have had something better to do than keep up a barrier in my mind." Megan thought, the neutral words stinging for reasons she did not know.
Taking a deep breath, she reached past where the barrier had been, and mentally approached the five multicoloured bobbles that were the mental presence of her friends.
The Green bobble and the Yellow bobble appeared to be melting, the Red bobble was slowly dripping, and the Blue bobble and the Black bobble were calm.
"Conner and Kaldur are unconscious," Megan noted, "Artemis and Wally seem to be sad, and Robin looks…" Megan paused, trying to find the right word for her friends' emotions, "slightly less than traught."
Megan debated over herself whom to contact first.
"I could contact Robin first. Since he seems to be the most calm. But Artemis and Wally are heartbroken; maybe it would make them happier if they knew how everyone was. But I wouldn't know how everyone was until I contacted the others. Conner and Kaldur are going to be the hardest to contact, since I have to wake them up. They'll take the most energy, and if I do them last I might not be able to wake them." Doing a last minuet inventory on her strength, Megan decided to wake Conner first, then, once he was awake, wake the others at intervals of a few seconds. Her hope was that when she broke through the thickest head, she would still have enough energy to contact the others.
…
Batman and Flash walked into the briefing room and took their seats. The other mentors trickled in slowly. When they were all seated, Red Tornado spoke.
"Black Canary wished to know how the interrogations went."
From a dark corner of the room, Black Canary walked stoically into the centre of the room. Only her pick, puffy eyes and the tear tracks running down her face broke her indifferent mask.
"I need to know," she said in a broken whisper, "I may not be their mentor, and I know that only the mentors are allowed to see the interrogation videos, but… I need to know the state they're in. I just…" She started sobbing so deeply that she couldn't continue. Green Arrow walked over to her and sat her down in the empty chair next to him.
"If you're up to it," he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, "then I'm sure you can watch." He shot a pleading glance at Batman, who nodded.
"We should start now." Superman commanded gently. "But brace yourselves, if yours went as badly as mine did, this isn't going to be pretty."
So the eight heroes tensed and watched as a video screen was lowered into the room. Megan's startled face appeared on the screen, and looked wildly around. John told the other mentors what he said into her mind as they watched her expression turn from startled, to scared, to confused, to miserable. Halfway through, John began to cry. Immediately as John left the screen, his final words to his niece drowned out by her sobs, Conner's face appeared. Superman placed his head in his hands, not wanting to re-live the torture he had put this child through.
"I'm sorry," he said when he felt the cold glares his comrades were giving him, "I let my temper get a hold of me. If I could take back every single word I told him, I would."
Conner's cries were the last thing they heard before Kaldur was shown, sitting despairingly against the wall with his eyes closed. During the play back of the interrogation, Aquaman turned his head away from the screen, unable to face what he'd done to the poor boy without breaking into tears. In the second before he hit the ground, the scene changed to show Artemis curled up in a ball, obviously fighting panic. Green Arrow slunk down in his seat, wishing that the floor would swallow him up. As her frantic pleas rang in the ears of the other heroes, the view was abruptly switched to that of Wally sitting up on the ground. Flash's hands immediately began to shake, faster and faster until they were no more than a bright red blur. Clasping them together in an effort to control himself, his whole body began to tremble. The screen made one final switch, showing Dick facing the wall. Batman remained calm during the playback, but inwardly he was distraught. Even knowing that he'd given the boy a chance to redeem himself, the world's greatest detective hated himself for causing so much pain on the boy he'd come to love as his own son.
They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a very long time after the video's ended. It was Black Canary who finally broke the ice.
"So what now?" she asked, barely able to contain the fresh tears that threatened to flow.
"What else can we do?" asked John, "We've already broke their spirits, and they still won't tell us what they did."
Superman sighed, he'd been the one to find the first shred of evidence, and he'd been the one making decisions ever since.
"Obviously, Flash's idea to let them tell us on their own to 'lessen the sentence' didn't work, so now we try it my way." He stated angrily.
Superman was taken aback by the horrified stares that he got from every person in the room. It took him a couple of seconds before he realised what they thought he meant.
"Oh no! Not anything physically damaging! That's not what I meant at all! I meant that we should tell them what they did and demand that they tell us why. Besides," he stated sadly, "I think we've hurt them enough."
Nods of approval came from everyone but Flash and Batman.
"I don't know Clark." Batman said, "I don't think they know anything about the crimes."
"Ya" Flash agreed, " They all seemed to genuinely believe that they were innocent. I've interrogated enough people in my 'day job' to know what a falsely accused person looks like."
"But we all know they did it Barry! We have enough evidence to convict all of them ten times over!" Green Arrow yelled.
"And," Aquaman stated quietly, "that could just be your relationship with the kids talking. You've always been involved with all the kids' lives, it might be that your feelings are overtaking your common sense."
"He's right." Superman said, "You and Bruce may be the ones with the most experience as far as interrogations go, but you're also the ones with the strongest relationship between all the kids."
"Look," Batman said darkly, "Robin is the only one who can lie to me. The other can't. They have to be-"
"Bruce, as much as we all want to believe that, we simply can't." Superman stood up, placing both hand on the table in the middle of the room in an attempt to control his temper, "The evidence is more than enough to convict them, and evidence doesn't lie. Tomorrow morning we tell them what they did and the consequences of it. As much as I hate myself for saying this, they are going to jail. Whether or not they confess. It's a bitter truth, but one we have to except."
"At least let them see each other!" Flash exclaimed, rising as well.
"No!" Green Arrow screeched, jumping up with such force that his chair fell to the ground.
"GA is right." Aquaman stated calmly, rising to his feet.
"Letting them see each other will be a mistake." John continued the broken sentence, also standing.
"If they're allowed to see each other, the chances of them telling us anything will decrease! And it's not like we owe them! We are going to do it in the same manner as the interrogations, one after the other so that they can't contact each other between the questions." Superman finished, earning nods of approval from all but two of the mentors.
"But they're probably panicked and worried about each other! You heard Wally; they're probably all like that! We-" Flash was stopped mid rant by a gloved hand placed on his shoulder. He turned around to see Batman standing beside him.
"It's a lost cause Barry." The Dark Knight whispered at a low volume so that the other heroes wouldn't hear, "These imbeciles are convinced that the kids are guilty." Flash blinked when he realized that Batman's mouth didn't appear to be moving, "Meet me after the meeting in the cafeteria. I need to know what you found in the evidence room."
Batman glared at each of the other mentors, before speaking.
"If anyone talks to their protégé alone, they'll suffer a fate worse than death." With those words, he turned and walked out of the room, leaving everyone speechless.
….…
"Conner?" Megan called gently into the slumbering mind of her friend, "Conner, please, wake up!"
"Megan?" Conner's groggy voice entered her head, "Megan! Are you all right? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine Conner, how are you?"
"I'm, umm…"
"Conner? Megan? What's going on?" the tired voice of Kaldur asked.
"Hey Kaldur. I'm not sure what's happening, but I'm glad that you're okay. You are okay right?"
"Yes Megan. I'm fine. Where are the others?"
"Kaldur! Artemis' voice entered the conversation, "You're alive!"
"Yes Artemis. I'm alive. But I don't know why I wouldn't be."
"It's a long story."
"Artemis! Are you okay? Anything hurt?" Wally's cheerful, but worried voice shouted.
"Yes, yes, and no. Why would I be hurt?"
"Uh… Let's just say that certain things may have happened to make me think that"
"Hey Wally." Robin's calm voice made itself known. "What's up?"
"Not much. Just layin' here, takin' to a bunch of people through a mind link. What's new with you?"
"Same as you. But I'm sitting."
"Now that we're all here," Kaldur's voice interrupted, "we need to talk. I think that we've all got a basic idea of where we are and why, but does anyone know what our mentors are talking about?"
A chorus of 'no's' was heard in each member's head.
"Okay then. Does anyone have any information at all?"
"I've got something." Conner said, "What ever it was, we did it to more than one person, and it was really bad."
"Haven't the league ever heard of 'innocent until proven guilty'?" Artemis huffed.
"As far as they know, they have proven us guilty." Robin sighed. "Batman told me that they have" Robin paused, trying to remember the list Batman had given them, "DNA, eyewitness', and video that proves it to be us."
"DNA can be stolen and copied." Wally stated, "eyewitness' can be wrong, and video can be faked. The league should know that.
"He also said that the criminals had moves that we only used during training, and that they had some of the knowledge that we had. Whatever that means."
"But we should still have the benefit of the dout!" Artemis argued, "They can't just show up out of the blue with a bit of evidence and tell us that we did something!"
"How much evidence could they possibly have?" wondered Megan.
"They've been gathering evidence for four months." Robin clarified.
There was an uneasy pause.
"But the team hasn't even been in commission for that long." Conner mused.
"It's only been a year and a month since independence day." Kaldur said.
"Well, sitting here talking about it isn't going to prove our innocence." Artemis stated, "We need to escape and find out what we did."
"As much as I hate to say it," Wally grumbled, "Arty's right. When we know what we did, we can work on clearing our name."
"But first," Megan contemplated, "we need to get out of our cells. And that's almost impossible for me.
"Impossible for everyone." Conner groaned, "The league isn't stupid. We probably are all in cells that make moving next to impossible."
"That's not entirely true." Artemis reasoned, "Me and Robin don't really have weakness' so if one of us can get out, we can let the rest of you out."
"I have a way to get us all out, but it needs to have certain elements to work. First off, does anyone know the date?" Robin said
"It's still the same day as the comic con," Wally piped up, "Other wise, I would have passed out a while ago from lack of food. It's probably only been a few hours."
"That's good, it means Flash and Batman have monitor duty. With luck, they'll be at each other's throats long enough for us to make our escape. Megan, can you get the exact time?"
"Probably, but I'm not sure." Megan said doubtfully.
"Don't worry, you'll be able to." Conner assured her.
" Keep your mind open. Someone is bound to walk by, and as long as it's not your uncle, we should be able to the time and get out without them knowing. Now, for the last piece of the puzzle. At least the last piece we can do while we're imprisoned. Does anyone have a place we can go after we escape?"
"I have one." Wally surprised everyone by saying, "No one knows about it. Not even Uncle Barry. It's-"
"Wait!" Kaldur commanded, "It is best if we don't know yet. If in between now and our escape, Martian Manhunter comes and reads our minds, it is better if only you know about it. That way it will only seem as a passing fantasy, and not part of an escape plan."
"Alright," Robin declared triumphantly, "here's the plan..."
…
Bruce sat across the table from Barry, watching him with uncertainty. The speedsters sat stirring his hot chocolate slowly. Bruce briefly wondered why no one had come to ask what was wrong, but decided that it was probably due to the fact that the fastest man alive was going at normal speed, and because the only thing Barry had ordered was a hot chocolate. No food, just the drink.
"Barry," Bruce questioned, "I need to know what you saw in that folder."
"I didn't see anything new." Barry replied uncertainly.
"But?"
"But I did notice something amiss."
Bruce lifted both of his eyebrows, silently asking Barry to continue.
"The evidence is solid, but there's so much of it." Barry explained.
Bruce waited in silence, until he understood the hidden message in the words.
"When someone commits a crime," Bruce mused, "they try to make sure that it can't be traced back to them."
Barry nodded slowly, "Especially Robin. You trained that kid so well he could take the cape off of Superman's back and no one would be able to prove it was him. For him to suddenly leave tons of evidence…"
"Would suggest that there's more to this than meets the eye." Bruce finished.
"We should look this over more tonight when we have M. D." Barry stated. Bruce nodded.
"I'm going to check on the kids." Bruce said, getting up and leaving the cafeteria.
"They may be curious as to how long they've been here."
Whew. Lot's of dialogue in that chapter. But I couldn't just have them break out, since Robin is the only one capable of doing it and he's being watched. So, I hope you like it!
Oh, and if Superman tells the kids what they are going to do, you'll find out to! So it looks like you'll find out next chapter!
Review and vote! It may be the last chance you get.
