Notes: Almost done! This fic is only fifteen chapters long :)
Reina Grayson: He still won't appear in the sequel either. Maybe when the muse slaps me with an interesting trout.
jayfeather63: If you had problems signing in, that's alright. Leave a semi-anonymous review and I'll respond in the next chapter ;)
dv: No, that wasn't the last chapter.
ajas136 and KaliAnn: Just a few more chapters to go and I'm still keeping things intense :)
They gathered at the coordinates Batman sent: Flash, Green Lantern, Capt. Marvel, Black Canary, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, and Superman.
At first, the kids were overjoyed at the sight of two of their mentors and their trainer but their enthusiasm was quickly curbed when Batman stepped out of his jet.
"I called you all here because of two things," Batman began. "One, the League of Assassins has been busy recreating the enhancements given by the Kobra Venom formula plus several other drugs. There is a high probability that we will be facing genetically modified humans; stronger, tougher, but highly unstable."
The seven League members' faces quickly went from curious to grim. Experience had taught these heroes what it meant to meddle with nature - oftentimes, nature bites back hard. It was always distressing to have to fight humans gone berserk from unnatural mutations.
"And the second thing?" Superman asked, studiously avoiding looking at his clone. Bruce knew he'll still have to take drastic measures for the Boy Scout to take an interest in Superboy - later. When he had his own partner back.
Batman's tone turned grimmer as he announced, "They have Robin."
The resulting gasps went unheard as a frantic beeping sound rang through the air. Batman grabbed the tracker from his belt, frowning suspiciously at the blinking dot to their west. He felt a surge of hope but just as quickly suppressed it. For days, that one dot had remained silent. That it would show up now could mean that Ra's has set up a trap or...
"What is it?" Wonder Woman stepped closer, eyes curious.
"Robin's tracer."
With those two words, he was immediately swamped with heroes wanting a closer look, other heroes demanding questions and the rest declaring that they'll go right over and see...
"No!" His scream silenced everyone in the vicinity, and maybe even some of the wildlife. He glared at each and every hero who answered his summons, dropping his voice into the tone he uses when he needed to scare off lowlifes. "No. We will not go about this mission half-cocked. Until now, Ra's al Ghul still holds all the cards. I will not allow him any more advantages over us. Understood?"
Shaky, wide-eyed nods all around.
"Good." He turned to the elder Martian. "Manhunter, I'll need you to-"
"Look out!"
Whatever his instructions were, were blown off in the face of Superman's shoving him away from the path of a laser. And all at once, mechanical turrets suddenly sprang from the ground, shooting a hail of bullets or power blasts at the assembled heroes.
Everyone scrambled to evade/take cover/or deflect the projectiles. The quiet that Batman commanded was shattered into chaos as heroes fought or defended against the robotic traps. And it didn't stop there.
Hulking figures were also bursting from the trees, their vaguely human frames made grotesque by overdeveloped builds and exposed muscles shown by hideous, gaping wounds. Like the Blockbuster formula, the mutants' skin proved to be too paper-thin to hold the rapidly growing bulk before hardening into the stone-like skin that covered them now. The beasts roared as they launched themselves into the fray, smashing into less-strong heroes until the ones with metahuman strength kept them at bay.
Batman took cover behind a ruined turret to assess the situation, and he wasn't happy at what he saw. Every cape was engaged in a fight with either a mechanized trap or a mutated human. At this point even if the sudden appearance of Robin's tracer signaled a trap, the heroes would be too worn down to take quick action. And if it wasn't a trap...
His eyes scanned the heroes until finally meeting a silver gaze. "Aqualad! Take your team and go find Robin! We'll handle this."
He watched the kids as one by one they retreated from the fight and ran towards the west - where Robin's signal came from. With the Justice League around, the kids' team was practically unnoticeable. Enemies tended to first take down the bigger perceived threat, not knowing that the smaller threat usually held their ace in the hole. In this two-pronged mission, it was best to send the kids to retrieve their teammate while the adults engaged in distracting the enemy.
As Batman leaped back in to take out a laser turret, he inwardly told himself to have faith in his missing partner...but it didn't stop the fear of what the kids might find on Robin's signal: whether that of a dead body or a Robin permanently changed.