A/N: Well, someone pointed out to me that I should already know what my Point C is. Of course, I wasn't psyched about hearing that (it almost struck me as offensive…) but it kind of did put things in perspective. I have had my Point C this entire time, just had no means of getting to it.
Good news: I storyboarded out the last of this story except for the final two chapters. I'm looking at either 29 to 30 chapters total. So like, four more? Something like that…?
Disclaimer: I don't own Young Justice or any associated characters.
"How can they even think of sending us on a mission without Rob?" asked Kid Flash as he pulled his mask down over his face. He was perched in his seat to the left of Miss Martian, his jade gaze on the seat where his partner in crime usually sat within the bioship. "It's torture! Torture, I tell you!"
"Just because you don't have anyone to crack a joke with?" asked Superboy as his azure gaze strayed over one shoulder with a questioning black brow raised in the direction of the ginger. "You'll live." The clone then resumed his staring out at the landscape that they flew over in the green girl's ship. His face resumed its stoic expression.
The redhead pouted a bit. He didn't want to go on a mission. He wanted to move his way on over to Gotham City and go talk with his favorite little ninja. He had to fix things with the Dark Knight's protégé. Usually, he was eager to be into a battlefield with his feet moving, but now he wanted to take care of other business. "How are we supposed to be a four person team? Robin helped us build this, and now he's not even here to bask in the glory of it."
"The glory of what?" asked the jade-skinned girl as she used her mind to guide the bioship over the thick jungles of South America. "We don't have much of a team without him. Just the four of us flying around over jungles. Not much going on around here." She moved one hand away from the controls to push a few strands of her red hair behind one ear. "We should have just stopped when we had the chance."
"We should have," agreed Kaldur'ahm from where he was sitting at the front of the ship. His silver gaze was searching the landscape for the point that they were supposed to land at. "I am the leader, I should have stopped it." The Atlantean shifted almost uncomfortably in his seat, not ever looking back over his shoulder at his teammates. He almost felt disgraced for not stopping them. What kind of a leader was he?
Megan was silent. She wasn't about to argue. She should've known better too, but she hadn't said anything either.
No guilt lay heavy on Superboy. He knew his mistakes. He took them like a man. That was all he needed. He knew what he did wrong. He accepted it as it came and then moved on.
"You know what, before we all go crazy with all this guilt crap," Wally finally stood up, the seatbelts morphing away from his chest, "it's totally my fault. Got that? Totally my bad. I'm an idiot, as we all pretty much agree, and I need to fix this. AS soon as we finish this, I don't care what the League says, I'm sneaking back to Gotham and talking to that birdbrain and getting him back here. This is his team as much as it is Kaldur's." The redhead was looking at the two older boys in the front who had actually spun around to look at him. Because how often was the West boy this serious? "My fault, that's the end of this. I started it, no one could've stopped it. I would've found out anyways, although I would've gotten my butt handed to me by Bats, I wouldn't have been alone and he wuld probably still been here with you guys even if I wasn't."
Superboy blinked. "We're suffering now, the past doesn't matter." He turned away from the redhead and let his stare fall on the jungle that they were still soaring over. "We'll just fix it later."
"Mission now," reminded Aqualad, also turning away from the speedster. "We'll just focus on this now, Robin later."
That was when the ship shook with an explosion.
Megan winced, her mind connected to the organic material that flew the ship. She had felt the missile hit the ship the same as if it had hit her. Her mind was whirling from the pain, making her lose track of her direction and how she would fly the thing. The girl's muddy, murky brown eyes shut as she reeled from this sudden flame of pain that had overwhelmed more than just her mind, but her body as well.
"M'gann!" called the dark-skinned leader as he bolted from his seat, the belts that had molded around him automatically leaving their position from where they had wrapped around his chest. The leader was followed closely by Superboy who was more worried about Miss Martian than the crashing ship. Kaldur'ahm's concerns were more with the ship. Because without a bioship, how would they land? How would they get back to the headquarters?
Wally was sprawled across the floor, having been standing when the explosion caused the whole ship to shake and for him to fall. The redhead had hit his head a bit hard and needed to keep a hand on the panels on the side of the interior to be able to push himself up off the ground. The support was the only thing that was keeping him up as his jade orbs stared out the large windows that stretched around the bioship. "Guys, we've got more than a few problems," he said with slightly slurred words as one finger pointed out the window to the dangers that resided below them.
It was Superboy who was holding Megan as she winced while another missile struck the side of her precious ship. A thin crease had folded itself into her forehead, a clear sign that she was in some severe pain. "What's going on?" he snarled, voice feral and furious. "What happened?"
The girl was barely able to answer, her scared and pained tone betraying how hurt she really was by the link that connected her to the organic material of her ship. The link was deeper than most would know. "We've been hit," whimpered Miss Martian weakly, trying to hold the connection with the ship so that they wouldn't end up falling out of the sky. She didn't want to be the reason her teammates got hurt. "I can't keep this up for too much longer. We have to skip the drop zone and just land before we crash."
"Then take us down if you can, M'gann," instructed Aqualad with a glance at where Kid Flash was pointing. His silver gaze found a compound in the heavy jungles, not unlike the one where Kobra had been selling his venom. It was a bit more evident though, beasts soaring overhead of it with glaring, demonic eyes watching the bioship as it passed overhead. It had been in camouflage mode, but no one could be sure if that was still upheld after the hit that had been taken. "We'll fight our way from-" He couldn't get another word in before the ship took another hit.
In Superboy's arms, the girl cringed again, unwilling to break under the fierce blows that her ship was taking. She felt fiery, searing pain rip through the ship and another rippled drove through her as well, the connection between her and her ship almost like that of two things that had been bonded for an eternity. "I have to drop the connection soon. We can't take another hit or else it'll cave!"
The ginger speedster watched as some of the circling beasts over the compound began to rise from their almost guard-like positions up higher into the air, gaining altitude to nearly the same point that the bioship was at. "We've got more company than just missiles," said Kid Flash, trying to figure out if they could just fall from the bioship and hopefully land without dying. That would be their best chance at this point. And if Miss Martian could levitate them all down…
A beast charged the bottom of the ship, sending it rocking again and sending Wally West to the floor once again and nearly knocking Kaldur'ahm off his feet as well; the only reason the Atlantean had been able to stay up was his grip on the back of Miss Martian's chair.
"We have to get down, now," said Superboy, a fierce tone hanging on the edge of his voice. "She can't keep us up much longer."
"Down, M'gann," insisted Kaldur, trying to keep his hand on the chair as yet another monster from below had crashed against the bottom of the ship. "Quickly." His gaze then flitted to the empty seat where Robin would usually sit. "Ro-" He only realized his mistake too late. If he'd had the ninja as part of his arsenal, he could've sent the Boy Wonder down into the treetops. The Atlantean knew he could've trusted the protégé of Batman to go down and not into the compound until the rest of them had gotten down as well. He only wished he had the little raven-haired boy around still.
"We have to get out o-" Kid Flash's frantic yell was cut off as he was again shaken off his feet after just having stood up. He was sprawled out on the ground again. "Just open up a window or something and let us jump! We can't land this anywhere, are you kidding?"
Megan cringed again. She was losing her grip on the aircraft. "You guys just jump," she said, telling the ship to drop the cables down from the ceiling of the ship. Three of them dropped and Aqualad was quickly moving towards them, hardly able to stay on his feet as the ship shook once again. "I'll put the ship down somewhere and join you."
His face hardening, Superboy insisted, "I'm staying with you."
"Come on, Supes," said Wally, pulling on the clone who reluctantly pulled away from the green girl. He had managed to get himself to his feet after his third or fourth fall (he had lost count after the second) and was trying to focus on getting out of the ship. "She'll be alright. Meg's a big girl."
The girl was able to open the hatch in the bottom of the ship after another monster had just finished crashing into it, figuring it was safe to allow her teammates out. "Go, hurry!" And another missile rocked the ship, hitting the back end this time and sending the whole aircraft in a circle. "I can't hold us up much longer."
Aqualad and Kid Flash were dropping from the bioship first, followed by a reluctant Superboy who hadn't attached himself to a wire. The clone just fell through the air, quickly falling to the ground of the forest. The two other teens had gotten their cords snagged in the treetops without a clear drop zone to be falling into. Both were trapped in the treetops, and it was evident that the beasts of the Central American jungles were closing in; the growls and snarls of what sounded like feral cats were echoing through the space as Superboy stared up at his teammates and then to the ship that was still spinning out of control, Miss Martian still inside.
What else could possibly go wrong?
The cords that were holding Aqualad and Kid Flash finally snapped from the ship, sending both hurtling down from the treetops to the ground, Kid Flash doing a faceplant and Kaldur'ahm barely managing to land on his feet with a slight skid through the dirt. It was the Atlantean whose gaze followed that of the Boy of Steel. "We'll track her as soon as we're to safety," said the leader with a hand on the clone's shoulder. "Let's move, quickly."
And the beasts of the jungle emerged from the treetops with demonic eyes glaring.
"Sheesh, Rob just had to skip out on the dangerous mission, didn't he?" huffed Wally just before one of the creatures struck out at him.
A/N: Woah, I feel like I'm kind of getting better with dramatic stuff. Maybe…? Also, not totally sure if that's how the link with the bioship goes, but I'm kind of assuming it works like that. The show hasn't specified, so just roll with it. Anyways, reviews are helpful!
~Sky