3DPhantom: Hello people! Good ta see ya! (But not really because I can't see any of you, so….) I hope you enjoy this chapter, and please review if you can!
Everyone tensed. The air was still, the only sound that of the salty sea breeze and half a dozen car doors opening and closing as Black Mask and his goons exited their SUVs.
Blood pounded in Nightfall's own ears, his heart hammering hard. He shouldn't be nervous; after all, this was only a recon mission. But somehow he knew what was coming. They probably all did. With Red Arrow here especially, there was little to no chance that they wouldn't be engaging the enemy soon...
The air was silent for another few moments before the loud creaking of the warehouse metal tin doors being slid open was heard. Kid Flash and Red Arrow managed to throw the tarp back over the crates and duck back into their hiding spots just in time as nearly two dozen men dressed in black from head to foot walked in, and at the front of the pack was Black Mask, his onyx face almost invisible in the shadows, his white suit clearly giving away his position. Of course, Nightfall could see it all in perfect bat-eyed clarity.
Black Mask and his goons were approaching the crates at a steady pace.
"They're going to set off the explosives!" Violet thought over the link.
"No they're not," Red Arrow replied quietly. "I never turned the detonator back on..."
Kid Flash did a silent face-palm, seen only by the bat-boy amongst the balks.
Black Mask and his goons approached the crates. Black Mask stopped a safe fifteen feet away, perhaps suspecting that there could be traps, whole two of the goons in black pulled the tarp off.
The grey tarp fluttered to the ground, revealing the crates- two of them open, and grey C4 still strapped around the containers.
"Someone else has been here," Black Mask said in a deep baritone voice. "It's just as well; they've deactivated the explosives. Didn't even close the crates," he said, now looking around the dark warehouse floor. "Search the place."
"They know we're here," Superboy thought.
Kaldur, sensing what was coming next, commanded "do NOT engage."
Red Arrow stiffened subtly. "They already know we're here! Why shouldn't we engage? Because the League said not to?!"
"I..." Artemis began, hesitating momentarily. Nightfall could sense that she probably didn't want to agree with Red Arrow, her rival archer, but that she also agreed with his sentiments. She took a deep breath. "I agree. They're here, we're here, we should stop them! That's league DNA they're stealing!"
"They're right," Violet thought. "We have no way of knowing if they've ever stolen anything as important as League DNA before! With that they could..." She paused.
"They could make more people like me," Superboy concluded for her, knowing that she didn't want to offend him.
"Then it's settled," Red Arrow thought, officially hijacking the role of leader from Kaldur; even if only for this mission. "Nightfall, you've got the upper hand. Use your powers to draw the fire skyward while we attack from down here."
'So risky,' Nightfall couldn't help but think to himself. He didn't have great amounts of room to fly up in the beam-filled rafters. His wide wing span would make things difficult, though he had been thoroughly and painfully drilled into being sufficient at flying in cramped spaces. A dozen and a half guns being pointed at him still didn't sound appealing, but he also had the shadows on his side. Besides, he was part of a team, and they'd soon all be risking their lives, just like him. This was no time for self-preservation. These were the only friends he'd ever had, and he would protect them to his dying breath if need be.
Without further hesitation, he opened his leathery wings and flapped hard, sending a gust of air downward and producing a ruffling noise. Before Black Mask's goons could fire, he dodged quickly to the side, watching with wide eyes as a spray of bullets hit the air where he'd been only moments before.
As the sound of guns being fired filled the air, Aqualad, Superboy, and Artemis came into the warehouse. No sooner than they had did Miss Martian and Violet attack the group of goons from behind, each taking one of them out.
"M'gann, stop as many bullets as you can from reaching us," Red Arrow commanded. She nodded and stopped a large number of bullets in mid-air with her mind, letting them drop to the floor like beads, echoing little clanging sounds through the room as they hit the concrete.
Artemis shot at two of the thugs, one of them dodging and the closer one being disarmed before challenging her in hand-to-hand combat.
Kid Flash sped through the room and disarmed five goons at once while Aqualad took them head-on. Superboy was swinging wildly, bullets sometimes hitting him in his straight-forward attacks. The pellets didn't simply bounce off like with Superman, but they also didn't draw blood, simply sticking into his skin a bit and staying there until shaken off, as if they had enough force to push into his skin, but were unable to break it.
Red Arrow was taking out more thugs as Nightfall continued to draw their attention, knocking several of them down with powerful gusts from his wings.
Black Mask ducked as one of his goons flew off above him. He hadn't come prepared to deal with super-powered beings, even if only children. Luckily for him though, he had back-up he could call in.
Black Mask ducked behind some crates and pulled out his phone, sending a quick text to his back-up plan.
"Let's just hope this doesn't backfire," he said quietly to himself.
"Hope what doesn't backfire?" Kid Flash asked out loud as he grabbed Black Mask by the front of his jacket and threw him toward the middle of the room.
All of the other goons were knocked out now, half-hazardously strewn across the warehouse floor.
The team stood around him, most all of them smirking except for Kaldur and Nightfall. Nightfall felt more comfortable perching on the railings of the walkways he considered to be the second floor and had yet to settle back to the ground.
"It's over. We caught you," Red Arrow said smugly. "Now where are the other shipments you've stolen? What was in them?" He demanded.
"An interrogation, is it? And a pathetic one at that. Exactly what one can expect from mere children like yourselves." Red Arrow growled, but Kaldur held him back.
"We're NOT kids!" Violet said indignantly, her voice high in frustration.
"Just tell us what was in those shipments!" Kid Flash demanded again.
"I assure you, I wouldn't know. That's not what I'm getting paid for, anyway."
"Paid for?" Miss Martian asked. "Paid for by whom?" Black Mask seemed to laugh at this, his face stoic, unmoving, and hard-set, despite the sound of his deep chuckle.
"Cadmus, of course."
Just then, the team was startled by the sudden sound of metal doors opening on either side of them, the fifteen or so armed Cadmus workers from before suddenly bursting into the room and taking fire. Nightfall flew at the left half and with a strong beat of his wings, all seven were sent flying back out of the warehouse. Nightfall slammed the door shut.
While the armed men wouldn't last long against the team of young superheroes, they were a sufficient distraction. Before the team could finish taking out the new enemies, Black Mask pulled a device from his suit pocket and pressed a button.
"What's that?" Artemis asked, aiming one of her arrows at the villain while Superboy threw another two men across the room behind her. Black Mask chuckled again, a deep sound in his throat that never reached his face.
"This is a gift from my good friend Doctor Desmond," he said. "It would have prevented the explosives from going off, had your lot not already deactivated them. And, it also serves one other purpose..."
Superboy and Nightfall both stared at him in cold shock. Doctor Desmond? Free and working with Cadmus again? But that wasn't possible! He was supposed to be in the Supermax prison, deformed and shackled to a wall!
'How could he have escaped?' Nightfall wondered. 'Does the League know? If they do, why wouldn't they tell us?'
Their thoughts were cut short as they remembered that Black Mask had just used the device for a purpose other than disarming the explosives. What had he done now? The team tensed, M'gann and Violet taking out the last two Cadmus men before turning their attention to Black Mask as well.
For a moment, the warehouse was fully silent. And then, a light scratching noise, like claws against wood. All eyes turned to the crates still present in the center of the room.
"The embryos!" Kid Flash suddenly shouted, putting two and two together. "Half the crates had Genomorphs or Endomorphs or whatever-they-call-them-s inside! He must have woken them up!"
Black Mask was smiling smugly now, they were sure, even though his face made no movement, no muscles twitched and no lines creased. The scratching, clawing sounds persisted, and then the sound of breaking wood.
Nightfall jumped into the air as they came out. Hundreds of small creatures, seemingly without eyes or noses or ears, came bounding out of the now tattered and shredded crates, some still covered in bits of soft animal stuffing, yet looking no less menacing. They were each no longer than a foot, thin, and with long, outstretched limbs. They reminded Nightfall of small grey alien cheetahs without tails. Each of them lifted their smooth light-gray heads before deciding on various targets and attacking.
Black Mask cringed for a moment, Nightfall noticed, as if he were afraid they would attack him as well, but when several passed right by him he relaxed once more.
"Try not to damage them," he teased. "I'm still supposed to deliver the cargo."
The team leapt into action as they came, the creatures easily springing upward with long extracted claws, razor-sharp and aiming for the face, vital organs, and veins; anywhere they thought might be a weak point, they attacked.
Nightfall and Miss Martian watched it all from above, hitting as many of them as they could and throwing them off balance, but not being able to do any apparent damage. Even as Superboy punched one into the metal wall of the warehouse, making a large dent, the creature still got immediately back to its feet, hissed with a mouth full of straight sharp teeth, and lunged back into action.
Red Arrow and Artemis found a truce amongst the battle and were fighting back -to-back, each firing arrows in rapid succession, but the creatures were fierce and resilient; none of the arrows could penetrate their tough hides, and no restraints lasted long again their sharp claws and teeth. The archers were the first to go down.
As always in times of peril, the team sought aid amongst themselves, each of them sticking with someone nearby and fighting diligently by their side. Despite that, the battle was quick, and didn't last too very long.
Kid Flash went down next. For Kid Flash, it was like running in a room full of razors. No matter how fast or carefully he went, the slashing claws would catch him because of their excessive numbers, and soon he was facing more cuts than even he could heal without downtime.
Violet held her own surprisingly well. She used every trick she had up her sleeve; literally. She threw pellet after pellet of gas, foam, and many more explosives and Bat-a-Rangs, scratching them back, dodging and kicking where she could, but unlike Kaldur and Superboy, she didn't have nearly-impenetrable skin, and at some point, the slashes started reaching her.
Before five minutes was up, there were only four left. Nightfall and M'gann were still in the air and throwing as many of them off as possible, but the numbers seem endless when the enemy won't stay down. By now, even Black Mask's goons and the Cadmus workers were waking up, picking up crates and carrying them out without anyone capable of stopping them.
Nightfall made to block their exit, but he lost track of what happened next around him as some of the Cadmus creations had climbed up into the rafters and now jumped down at him. Their claws sliced the thin skin of his wings in spots, making him bite his lip again the pain, and their surprisingly very heavy weight instantly began to drag him toward the ground. He tucked his wings around himself to soften the impact as he collided with the warehouse floor. One of the creatures clawed at the back of his neck, drawing blood, and Nightwing stretched his wings further so that they fully encompassed him and took the bulk of the damage.
'This is never going to work,' he thought, daring to glance from between his wings at his other friends. Some were bleeding, or if not were still fighting. M'gann had fallen to the earth as well and was now standing beside Aqualad and Superboy, the three of them fending the creatures off but also not making any headway. 'We need backup. We need to get the others out of here,' he thought, deciding quickly on a course of action.
Nightfall spread his wings out and flapped them as hard as he could, simultaneously sending a pulse or energy out from his body, throwing the creatures off of him and making him surge upward. He spun in mid-air and sped toward the ceiling above him, sending a pulse ahead of him and thus blasting a jagged hole in the metal roofing.
He tucked his wings in at the last moment and slipped threw the hole, snapping them back open again as soon as he was out into open air. He surged upward...
And crashed straight into the invisible Bioship.
Inside the warehouse, M'gann winced a little, both because she could feel the ship's pain and because she knew that Nightfall must have hit it pretty damn hard to cause the ship itself pain. She was tempted to ask what it was, exactly, he was doing, but the battle at hand was all encompassing.
Nightfall hated to distract, but he needed help for what came next; just a little bit of assistance. So over the mind link he thought "M'gann, I need you to open the Bioship.' Once again, M'gann was tempted to ask what he was doing, but once again, logic overpowered her curiosity and she simply did as he'd asked her, almost getting dragged down again in her moment of concentrating on the ship.
Nightfall sped in as soon as a hole in the ship appeared and went straight to the control panel. He pressed in the same spot he'd seen M'gann press before and thought as hard as he could 'call the League.'
Down in the warehouse, a fatigued M'gann rolled her eyes. "It doesn't work that way," she told him through the link, and Nightfall was surprised to hear tired humor in her thoughts. It almost made him want to smile in return, though he's sure the blush made it to his cheeks. Superboy and Aqualad were momentarily surprised, not knowing in the slightest what was going on, but they didn't have the time of energy to dwell on it anymore.
Nightfall refocused his attention as the communication in the ship started up, linking directly to the Watchtower and projecting the stoic-as-ever Batman onto the screen.
Before he could even speak, Batman scowled and said "we're on our way" before ending the connection. Nightfall wondered for a second how he could have known they needed help, but then he remembered that not only was this the World's Greatest Detective, but he was also probably covered in blood and sweat, with tears in his wings and pain no doubt shadowing his face. Nightfall wouldn't be surprised at all if the League was there before the minute was up.
Either way, he wouldn't just be sitting here waiting when they came; not while his friends were still below him. He swooped back down through the hole in the bioship and then through the hole in the warehouse roof, painfully snapping his wings open to slow his descent and not slowing down nearly as much as he thought he would, his wings not catching as much air as usual due to their battered and hole-riddled state. He still managed to land on a support beam, though coming down on it a little too hard for comfort, and began blasting away at as many of the creatures as he could whenever they approached the other remaining conscious team members. He had to stop on several occasions to ward off the ones that had climbed up into the rafters with him.
He didn't know how long it was, maybe forty seconds, before he was slammed into hard from behind, falling forward and this time landing on one of the metal walkways that made up the 'second floor' of the warehouse. Before he could retaliate or defend himself, there was a sharp pain in his side, and he knew he wouldn't be standing up again any time soon.
'Guess I didn't last until the League got here,' he thought to himself as his vision began to fade, 'but that's okay. They'll be here soon. M'gann and Kaldur and Superboy won't go down; no way in hell will they fall. The League will come and everything will be okay….'
Nightfall couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, so he let the grace of unconsciousness overtake him, praying with all his might that all the others would be okay.
Now the final part of this 3-part story arc...
