A/N: Enjoy!
Flashes
"What the hell is he?" Wally asked for all of them.
No one wanted to answer. They were unsure if the answer was one that they wanted to know.
They sat in silence for what seemed like an hour.
Robin broke the silence. "I think he is… a ghost."
LINEBREAK – With the Team~
"What do you mean 'ghost'?" Wally shouted.
"Didn't you hear Black Canary? She said that he had a ghostly wail, a ghost ray, and a ghost stinger. Did you not hear the ghost in all of those examples?" Robin snapped.
Wally threw his hands up. "That's another thing: How does he have all those powers, and why?"
Robin whirled around to face Wally. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"
Wally's eyes widened, but before he could answer, M'gann said.
"Arriving in five minutes, be prepared."
Kaldur nodded. "No time to deal with questions now. Stealth mode. We are only here to be backup, not front fighters."
Everyone nodded, albeit reluctantly.
"M'gann, is the mind link set up?" The leader asked.
Yes. M'gann replied through the link.
Everyone went into stealth mode; M'gann camouflaged the Bioship. They were to stay in the shadows until they were called to do so, not before.
The Team were on the edges of their seats; they were anxious. They haven't had a mission since a few weeks ago, when Red Tornado attacked.
There were no cameras to know how the fight was going. The only way they would know if they were needed was if they were called or alerted in.
It had seemed like hours, but it had only been 10 minutes before they were alerted.
The Team instantly arose from their seats. Finally, some action.
They ran out of the Bioship and looked around. There was a volcano that looked ready to erupt in front of them. To their rights and lefts, there was mass destruction. Where were all the Leaguers.
Something crashed in front of them.
It grunted and stood up to reveal Superman. He looked shocked to see the team.
"W-What are you doing out here?"
The team looked at each other before Aqualad replied.
"We were alerted to come out."
"By who? The League didn't call you out."
The team, again, looked at each other.
"Wait," Robin interjected, "Who, or what, threw you?"
Superman's eyes got wide and he mouthed the word 'shit', before the whole team was blasted by some sort of light.
LINEBREAK – Ace: Still testing out powers~
Black Canary was out of breath. She had been training with Ace to test out his other powers, but it was hard to keep up with him. Ace had barely moved an inch from where they started while Black Canary was being thrown around.
Man, this is embarrassing… She thought.
So far, they had tested out all of his powers except for his ice ones. Canary wasn't sure she wanted to because she didn't like the cold.
Danny, on the other hand, hadn't even broken a sweat. He had beaten her in hand-to-hand combat along with shriek-to-wail combat. There wasn't much else that Canary could do, so she would call in some other Leaguers who had similar skill. One that she called in was Jason Blood, otherwise known as Etrigan.
At the moment, Jason was busy with something, so he wasn't going to be here for a while. Most of the Leaguers were on a mission, along with the Team. The only ones that were still in the room were Dr. Fate, Wonder Woman, and Hawkman. Jasmine was also in the room.
Wonder Woman stepped in the arena floor. Ace turned his attention to her, taking his eyes off Black Canary.
He knew they were still fighting, a new opponent was added to increase difficulty.
Black Canary seized the opportunity and lunged at him to strike. Before her very eyes, he vanished. No, he didn't disappear, he turned into a cloud of smoke. A few feet away, Ace re-solidified. He, along with the others in the room, looked confused. Since when could he do that?
Wonder Woman snapped out of her confusion and launched herself at Ace.
This time, he didn't move. Once Wonder Woman was close enough to strike, she did. What surprised her a little was that she went through him. Grabbing her lasso, she waited. Ace still looked miffed when Black Canary attacked. Ace sidestepped her attack and Wonder Woman threw her lasso over him. This time, he was caught.
Wonder Woman pulled Ace towards her. He was caught off guard and Wonder Woman managed to throw him off.
Ace, once snapping out of his thoughts, phased through the lasso's hold, surprising all the people in the room. No one was able to get out of Wonder Woman's lasso so easily.
Ace was back in the game. He got into the position that he always used at the G-
No, don't think about them.
Anyways, Ace got into a natural fighting stance that was like second nature to him and prepared. He was mainly using defense because he knew what he could do in an offensive position…
(Flashback – 6 Years Ago)
Subject #1 was in his 'room'. It was more a cage or holding cell than a room, but S1 needed something friendlier to call it. It was one thing that kept him sane in this hell hole.
Yes, he is a 12-year-old, and yes, he does cuss. A lot, actually. The agents here had broken him a lot, but not to his insane point. He would do whatever they told him, but he would put in some of his own smart remarks. Can you blame him, though?
Anyway, S1 had just gotten back from one of his training sessions, mostly including robots, never real people. The agents would never admit it, but they were afraid of the power this kid possessed.
S1 had minor cuts and bruises, but there was one deep gash on his lower left leg that would take some time to heal. Maybe an hour or two.
Then, something unexpected happened. Someone came in the room holding a white box with a red plus sign on it. S1 figured that this was a new method of torture that his six previous years here hadn't seen. It was, in fact, the opposite of what he was expecting, but the mortal, a female around her mid-thirties, sat the box on the ground, opened it, and pulled out a rolled-up cloth of some sort. She moved towards the halfa, in which he shrank back further into his cell. Frustrated with his behavior, she reached out and grabbed his hurt leg, her nail digging into the already deep gash. S1 had felt worse, but he flinched a bit.
The woman proceeded to hold his leg, but she was still holding the cloth. She unraveled it and wrapped it around his calf and shin, tightly. S1 grunted, wondering what this contraption was.
Once the woman finished, she closed the strange box and walked out of the room.
Was that it?
Apparently not. S1, report to training area 2. A gruff voice said over the intercom.
S1 complied. He knew his way around the facility almost like the back of his hand. He wanted to escape, and he knew where the escapes were, but the collar on him would shock him, until he was back inside the building.
How did he know?
Let's just say it's from personal experience.
S1 waited for his 'room' door to open, which it did, and steppe out into the painful white hallway. He took a few turns but eventually ended up at a set of double doors with the words 'TRAINING ROOM 2' above them. He stepped inside and was greeted by, not robots, but mortals. The Guys In White had sent in 20 of their best men to fight him. They were armed with different guns and armor.
S1 heard whirring noises and noticed that the agents had fired up their weapons, all of them pointed at S1.
One agent, the one with the most armor which must have been the 'leader' raised his hand, palm facing S1. He closed it and brought it down, signaling for the others to start shooting.
S1 leaped out of the way of most, getting slight burns from others, and tapped into his powers. For training, the agents reduced the power in the collar so S1 could use his own powers.
S1 turned intangible and waited. He observed the agents, who had stopped firing, and decided the best course of action. Being tested for so many years get you in the know, if you know what I mean.
S1 spring into action. The leader was heavily armored, so he was saved for last. S1 used his ecto-blasts, which took out three men. He threaded through about four more and turned tangible. The agents, being the idiots they are, started shooting. The four went down because they were shot at, and those things packed a punch to humans.
S1 turned invisible and silent. Most of the agents fired up infa-red cameras, which locked on to his ghost signature, and fired using the cameras as a scope. They saw S1 be hit by multiple blasts and fall to the ground.
He turned visible, but the agents saw a smirk on his face.
The leader was the first to realize…
"GET DOWN!" He shouted. He was a little too late, and six of his men went down from green rays seemingly appearing from nowhere. The visible S1 dissolved into flakes, which reconnected with an invisible, and intangible, S1. There was only the leader and six other men left standing.
S1 appeared behind two men and he bashed their heads together, effectively knocking them out. The four others, not the leader, started shooting at him.
A few of the shots hit him, the most painful one being in his right eye.
S1 grabbed at his eye with his right hand, groaning on the ground in pain. The leader put up a fist to signal the others to stop firing, which they did.
He slowly walked towards the halfa with cautious steps. The leader was tense.
S1 stopped groaning when the leader was close enough and pounced. He tackled the leader to the ground and poured some gooey ectoplasm from his core into his hand. He stuck the leader's right hand, his shooting hand, to the ground and went off to fight the remaining four.
S1 overshadowed one of them and started shooting at the others before shooting at himself, in the man's body. The four were knocked out and most likely had some major-minor concussions.
The leader had grabbed a blood blossom knife and cut through gooey substance. His right hand was still sticky, so shooting was out. The leader decided to use the knife and his left hand. S1 had his back turned towards the leader so he didn't notice when the leader struck. TL (the leader, because I feel repetitive) stabbed S1 in the lower center back, which earned him a scream of agony.
S1 doubled over in pain. The blood blossom extract was already coursing through his veins, making them bright red and showing.
S1 was pissed.
His eyes turned red and he lost control of himself.
S1 furiously spun around, grabbing the knife out of his back, then strangling TL with one hand. The collar was shocking him, but the pain felt distant.
S1 grabbed T:'s hair with one hand, the other still strangling the neck, and proceeded to rip the man's head off.
S1 let the body fall limp to the floor but brought the head up to his face and spat on it. The face held a pained\shocked expression.
(End Flashback)
Ace stopped. The flashback had caused painful reminders that he went down a road no one should ever go.
Ace dropped to his knees and his face was still emotionless.
Black Canary and Wonder Woman, sensing the change in atmosphere, almost literally, stopped as well. They slowly approached Ace but felt colder with each step they took.
"Ace? What's wrong?" Black Canary asked.
Ace looked up, for once, there was an emotion in his eyes: regret. Something washed over his face and he now held the emotionless face he always wore.
Ace stood up and bowed slightly, proper etiquette as he was taught.
"I'm sorry, but I can't fight anymore."
The ones in the room were taken aback.
Wonder Woman spoke up. "Why?"
He looked her straight in the eyes and Diana felt a nervous chill crawl up her spine, something she rarely felt.
In a monotone voice that rivaled Batman's, he said. "Because I killed."
A/N: Dun, dun, DUHHHH! HEYO MY PEOPLES! How's it going? How is life? Please don't kill me. What is up? Hehe. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Summer actually has been busy for me. I think I wrote more in school because my mind always wandered, and it came up with this ludicrous story. I started driver's ed, so that's fun. Again, sorry for not posting sooner. On my other story, it should have a new chapter sometime this week, and I'm doing a couple of one-shots to keep the creative writing juice flowing. I already posted one called 'Too Late', so go check that out if you wanna. Anyway, tell me what you thought about this chapter, and yes, I know' it's short, but I wanted to post something for you guys. Questions, Comments, Suggestions? Hope you enjoyed! See ya real soon!