...
China
The two teens returned to the house under the cover of darkness, they made sure to move quickly and stuck to the shadows as much as possible, in order to minimize the risk of being seen. They forced their way in without too much effort, and were soon moving around within the living room.
Kid Flash immediately got to work rapidly scouring the room with his eyes looking for minute details only he knew to look for. Aqualad raised a quizzical brow at his teammate and friend's odd actions before deciding to voice his concerns.
"Kid, what exactly are you looking for?" He asked careful to keep his voice to an almost whisper in order not to wake what he presumed to be the family sleeping upstairs.
"Scorch marks on the walls or floor, burns on the carpet, foot imprints and friction marks or just about anything else that can be associated with high-speed movement. It's impossible to run as fast as me and Flash or at least fast enough to create 'lightning' without some sort of side effects on the surroundings, so we need to look for any signs like that."
"In that case I'll help look for–" Kaldur started to say before he was interrupted.
"Already done!" Wally announced.
Aqualad didn't even bat an eye already used to the speedster's antics, instead he raised a questioning brow at the ginger-haired teen. "And?" he questioned.
"Nothing, no signs of anything, there's no physical signs or traces that can serve as evidence of superspeed."
"I see. Does that mean that our work here is finished?" Aqualad asked, internally wishing for more to do.
In answer to his question, Kid Flash pulled out a palm-sized device which he'd been keeping on his person. He had a proud grin on his face while Aqualad stared at it curiously. "Nope, it just means that its time to use this." He answered.
"And what exactly is that?" Aqualad asked having yet to take his eyes off the unfamiliar technology.
"Just a little project me and the Flash have been working on. It's supposed to be able to detect speed force energy." Wally explained as he powered on the device
Aqualad took a few seconds to ponder the information he'd just been provided, however his limited knowledge on the particular subject hindered his ability to determine the best course of action, so he conceded to letting Kid Flash take the lead on this one.
"It's supposed to be a training device for me and Flash to measure our speed force output while running but it also works in detecting trace amounts." Wally continued, holding the device closer to himself to give a demonstration. The device glowed slightly as it began measuring the energy Wally was exuding.
Aqualad's brow rose significantly at the completely absurd number displayed on the screen and he stepped back a little in awe and slight fear of his friend. Wally seemed to notice and gained a slightly cocky smile.
"Pretty impressive right? This is nothing though, Flash easily has at least a hundred times as much." He stated casually, though he gained a slightly jealous tinge when talking about his mentor.
Aqualad though was stunned into silence after quickly doing the math and he barely managed a nod of acknowledgement at Kid Flash's statement.
He found himself wondering just how the Justice League's scarlet speedster as well as his own teammate hadn't been classed as WMD's. The amount of power they had was absolutely insane, and a nagging voice in the back of his head warned of how it could also be extremely dangerous if left unchecked.
He shook himself of those thoughts though and decided instead to focus on the task at hand. Kid Flash true to his nature had already started on the task of calibrating the device so it could properly scan the room without picking up stray reading of his own speed force energy.
"Wally, what are the chances of Mask being a speedster if the device doesn't detect any energy in the house?" Aqualad asked with a grave expression on his face.
The ginger-haired speedster paused in his actions and stared up to face his Atlantean leader with a stunned look like he hadn't even considered the possibility of that even happened. At Aqualad's inquisitive look though he started to ponder the idea.
"Well, I guess that Mask could still be a speedster even without having any connection to the speed force. He could have some ultra-advanced tech suit that helps him run super-fast or he could be genetically modified by some experimental serum, or he could have some advanced illegal alien tech. Or maybe it's 'magic'." Wally surmised, scoffing a bit at the last part.
"And that's just if he even has superspeed in the first place. All we really have to work on is the fact that they reported seeing lightning in the house. Flash and I might have reached a bit with that assumption, for all we know, he could just have some strange weather powers or something."
Wally saw Aqualad nod in agreement, clearly having thought in the same direction
"I suspected that could be the case as well. I believe that in the case where the device is unable to detect anything related to the speed force, we should conduct another search of the house for any other clues as to Mask's ability, so that our efforts aren't wasted." Aqualad stated and Kid nodded in agreement.
"This is of course all under the assumption, that the device doesn't detect any energy. Let's hope that it does." Aqualad stated to which Kid Flash gave a small smirk.
"Trust me, if there's even the slightest amount of the speed force in this place, the Speed Counter can definitely detect it." At Aqualad's deadpan, he gained a slightly sheepish look. "Flash came up with the name."
"I see…" Aqualad droned while Kid Flash went to work scanning the room.
Meanwhile the clone of the masked blond that had been tailing the two stood undetected in the shadows at the top of the stairs, silently eavesdropping on their conversation.
He was thankful that he had managed to exercise enough restraint so as not to give into his more childish urge to prank the two the minute they had walked in the door. Thanks to that he had been able to gain a lot of information that could very well come in handy later. He filed away the words 'speed force' and 'alien tech' for later. He'd need to remember to ask him to help him look into that when he went to collect the information on the three murderous red androids he'd given him to study.
He wasn't worried about them searching the house, since he had already made sure that he left nothing for them to find. All he needed to do now was to make sure that they didn't find him while they were still in here, which was pretty easy enough, stealth was pretty much his thing.
The masked blond silently created a shadow clone that immediately dispelled itself, in order to let the boss know all the information that he'd learned. He stepped back a bit more into the shadows, cast his transparency jutsu and blended in perfectly with his environment, practically erasing any chance of detection by the two downstairs.
He continued listening in on the teen heroes hoping to learn any more new information. He'd hold back on executing his prank for now until he was sure he couldn't get anything else out of them; then he'd have his fun.
Meanwhile in the prison visitation room, the second blond clone stood in front of Miss Martian. He had already finished his own mind dive in the girl's mind. He hadn't bothered with erasing the memories she had seen in Adam's mind since nothing there would possibly help them, but he did leave her with a little parting gift that could possibly make his life much easier in the future.
He was just about giving her back control of her mind when the memories of another clone popped into his mind. He took a few seconds to process the influx of information before a devilish smile spread across his face.
With a light smirk hidden under his mask, he implanted another suggestion into her head which was sure to make his fellow clone's plan come together more perfectly. He felt slightly bad for doing it but then he reminded himself that she didn't seem to feel all that bad when she'd forced her way into Adam's mind to get to his memories, so he squashed the slight feeling of guilt.
After he'd done that, he stepped back and released her from her suggestive state before vanishing from the room in an instant as she came to.
M'gann came out of it looking slightly confused and she seemed to have had no idea of what had gone on just moments before. She looked around and saw the unconscious form of Adam Zhao sloped over on the desk and came to the conclusion that she had done what she had come to do and it had just simply taken her a little longer than normal to return to her own mind.
With that thought and her mentally resolving to ask her uncle J'onn for more training, she morphed back into Li's form and woke Adam up, and after making sure he didn't remember what she had done, she proceeded to leave.
...
India
"Mask!" Superboy growled and Naruto quirked a brow at the name, wondering just how lazy they were at coming up with a name for him. Granted none of them save Artemis knew his actual name and she didn't seem to have told them, but he still wasn't quite sure how he felt about being called by such a goofy name.
Maybe he should consider coming up with an alias for himself like he keeps suggesting. He was so wrapped up in that line of thought that he almost didn't hear Artemis curse under her breath, right as Superboy charged at him.
"Get away from her!" he yelled jumping high in the air and coming down like a meteor with his fist cocked back.
The blond quickly shoved the green-clad archer away from him as he prepared himself for the attack. Just as he was about to react however, one of his clone's memories flooded his brain, stunning him momentarily and leaving him well open to the momentum-enhanced super strength blow to the sternum.
Naruto was blown back from the force of the punch, flying through about a good dozen trees before he finally started to slow in his flight, by that point though Superboy was already on him, bringing his hands down in a double-fisted axe.
Luckily for the blond, he had already started regaining his bearing, and so despite the searing pain in his chest he was able to throw one of his special kunai behind the black-haired boy, teleporting behind him right at the last moment.
Superboy slammed into the ground with a massive thud, blasting away a few trees and kicking up massive amounts of dust. He stared confused, wondering how the blond had suddenly disappeared, before his head snapped up as he heard a loud, almost mechanical whirling sound coming from behind him.
He turned and was greeted by a spinning blue orb right in the face.
Naruto pushed the orb further into the kryptonian's face but was surprised when the Superman clone stood his ground against the force of the spiralling orb, even pushing back against it.
Undeterred though, the blond simply continued to feed more chakra into the attack, increasing the speed and power of the Rasengan as well as its size. The blue orb went from being around the size of a basketball to covering well over half of Superboy's torso and it was still growing in size.
The black-haired teen was no longer able to simply tank the attack like he had been doing and was forced to use his hand to try and block the attack as best he could. He let out a loud grunt of exertion but it was ultimately drowned out by the sounds of the whirling blue ball and the upkicked winds. They seemed to be at a standstill for a little while, and then – boom!
Superboy was blown back through trees and rocks similar to how he's sent Naruto flying before he eventually crashed into a shallow lake. His shirt was pretty much gone at this point and he wasted no time tearing it off.
With his enhanced sight, he spotted Mask standing in the same spot as before, staring at him apathetically with the one blue eye he could see. It was rather unnerving even for the boy of steel but he pushed past it and ran at the blond again.
Said blond didn't move from his spot, and just continued to stare at him as he got closer. Superboy idly wondered why the blond hadn't taken the opportunity to go on the offensive, but he wasn't complaining. He was well within striking distance when Mask finally took a defensive stance.
He cocked his fist back and threw a wicked right hook at the blond. Naruto reacted quickly and caught the punch with his left hand, but immediately buckled from the destabilizing pain that followed.
Superboy through an involuntary use of his super hearing was able to hear the bones in the blond's arm shatter immediately in rapid succession up till the elbow. The shattering of each of the bones sounded like a mini explosion to the rage-filled teen, instantly dousing his anger in a cold bath of concern and guilt.
Naruto dropped to his knees with a loud groan of pain, cradling his arm closer to himself while Superboy watched him guiltily.
"I-I…" the superpowered teen had no idea what to say or do in this situation. He hadn't considered for even a second that the blond might not be invulnerable, having only fought with machines and other villains with super strength and endurance or some sort of invulnerability. He made to try and help but before he could take another step Artemis flung herself in front of the kneeling masked blond after coming up on the scene, arms spread wide in a defensive stance, as she stared down the Man of Steel's clone.
"Superboy! Stop! What the hell are you doing! He's hurt."
"I–I…um… I thought you were in trouble." The dark-head teen was noticeably caught of guard not only by what he'd done but also by Artemis' reaction. The blond archer paid him no mind instead focusing on Naruto who was trying to pull himself together. She herself seemed just as lost for what to do in this situation because she had never seen or sustained an injury this severe before.
You could already tell that it was extremely bad just by looking at it; he was breathing hard and haggard and he had some of the broken bones jutting through skin, and the entire left sleeve of his shirt and jacket was moist with blood. It was truly a horrifying sight, and an injury this severe wasn't one you could easily recover from.
So just imagine her surprise when she saw a viscous reddish-orange energy leaking from his pores and covering the affected areas. The two teenage heroes stared stunned, awed, and slightly horrified as they watched the energy relocate, realign, mend and reset the arm, bone by bone until the whole arm was fixed back to normal. The whole process took about a minute to complete.
Artemis who had drawn her hand back when the red energy had first emerged, testily reached out to touch the arm, and make sure it had actually been fixed. Sure enough it was, and Naruto barely even flinched even as she applied more and more force to an injury that should be a lot more than a little sore. Though she couldn't really say if that was because it had already completely healed or if he just had an insanely high pain tolerance.
She was spooked again when the red energy re-emerged, this time around the blond's chest, where he'd been punched the first time. They heard cracking sounds as the ribs reset themselves where they had caved in from the force of the blow. Slowly his breathing began to take on a more natural rhythm and the energy dissipated once more.
Naruto stood back up to his full height, calmly staring down Superboy, who looked slightly freaked out but also extremely cautious after the display. 'Note to self: His natural kryptonian physical strength is well above current capability, unsure about his physical peak.'
"We haven't met before, have we?" Naruto asked keeping his voice cold and indifferent.
"No, we haven't." Superboy replied regaining some of his attitude and crossing his arms challengingly as he stared down the other male, wondering where this was going. He stared Artemis out of the corner of his eye but she also seemed confused. He was still confused as to why she had seemed so worried about him earlier.
"Let me introduce myself then. I'm the person who's arm you just shattered." Naruto continued stretching out the same hand that had been broken for the other boy to shake. "My name is not Mask, and it's pretty rude to name someone without their permission."
The immaturity of the statement threw Superboy especially since it was said in a matter-of-fact manner by someone who was undoubtedly dangerous and who had more than enough reason to be hostile. Connor had no idea how to react and Artemis looked split between wanting to sweatdrop at the absurdity of it all and smacking herself in the face for not seeing it coming.
Naruto shook his outstretched hand slightly indicating that he was expecting Superboy to shake it.
Connor just stared at the hand for a while before staring back at the blond. Naruto took the hand back and placed it at his side. "That's also very rude."
"Sorry if I don't seem all that interested in being nice to someone who attacked my teammate and a member of the Justice League."
"You don't need to be nice to me, I'm only saying that you shouldn't be rude either." The blond replied. "Artemis isn't."
"Yeah, and could you one of you explain how that happened exactly." Connor retorted, staring at the both of them with accusation and suspicion; more accusation in Artemis' case, and more suspicion towards Naruto.
"Sure thing, Artemis will explain it on the way." Naruto said walking off, and completely ignoring the scathing glare that he knew Artemis was giving him for putting this all on her.
"And where exactly are you going?"
"Not just me, us. You're here because of the animals, right? I'm sensing something weird coming from that direction, so I'm guessing that that's where whatever caused all this is." He stated, not even stopping as he spoke. "You coming?" he asked despite already being sure that the two were going to follow, before he left their sight.
Artemis followed first with Superboy following afterward a little more cautiously.
With Captain Marvel and Robin
The two heroes had successful taken down the oversized elephants. After successfully taking down the first few of those elephants, the two had deduced that the collars were what had been controlling the animals, and they had been able to take out the rest of the animals with a lot more ease.
Unfortunately, this discovery led to the somewhat immature Justice Leaguer deciding to go on a little side quest of freeing all the animals from the control of the collars, while Robin struggled desperately to catch up to him.
Robin let out a long suffering sigh, as he wondered how he ended up in this mess, meanwhile Captain Marvel removed the collar off a massive tiger he'd just defeated.
This was going to take a while.
AN: And done. Managed to crank out a new chapter for the holidays. Only one more chapter left to complete this arc of the story and then we'll be moving on to the next.
I wanted to take this opportunity to appreciate everyone who stuck with this story despite the less than ideal update regularity. I'll be making sure to work on that so that I can upload the story faster from now on.
Once again thanks for sticking with me guys, till next time.