Young Justice:
THE CROW SAGA
Chapter Two: Fish out of Water
"Lobo, Secret, let's move!!" Robin yelled as she hopped onto the Super-Cycle. This was the fourth person to wear the guise of Robin. She was the first female... maybe that would eventually go down in a record book or something. She was strong, talented and possibly better than the third Robin, her boyfriend until he disappeared. She was now helping out on Young Justice, a team of superpowered teeangers. Right now the team included Superboy, Wondergirl, Impulse, Arrowette, Lagoonboy, Empress, Lil Lobo, Secret and chaperone Red Tornado.
The super-cycle, as it was called, was a remarkable construct which seated nearly all of Young Justice, in addition to boasting some monstrous amount of firepower and technologically marvelous abilities. Superboy, Wondergirl and Empress hopped in front, Impulse, Arrowette, Lobo and the ethereal Secret leapt into the back.
Lagoonboy was about to hop on...
"Lagoonboy," Red Tornado stood away from the cycle, toward the direction of the war room. "You're staying here to help coordinate the team's efforts in case they get separated.... And Arrowette, your mother would not allow me to send you on this mission..."
"Awww, man..." He scampered away from the cycle towards the room, promptly putting on the headset and punching buttons, as he had been trained.
Arrowette on the other hand was more quiet, and far more upset. She stormed out, throwing her mask and bow on the ground, leaving her quiver at the door, mumbling the entire time.
"Okay, Rob," Lagoonboy's voice came over all the coms, "get outta here, kick some alien tail..." He punched a button as Red Tornado sat down next to him.
The Super-cycle blazed into the air at speeds which would crash even the most sophisticated supercomputers. It didn't take long however before the kids realized they were in over their heads. The Super-cycle, landing a safe distance from the crisis site was rocked by a devastating blast. The occupants were thrown into the surrounding shrubbery, except for Robin and Superboy, who were squarely in the center of a small clearing.
Superboy was up and hot first. "Robin, Wondy, where are you..."
"I'm right here, Kon." Robin stood up. Her voice was decidedly dark now. A very Robin and Batman type warning of impending danger.
Superboy looked in the same direction she had been. Before them stood a strange white creature. It's eye glew in red and it began to change. It became a twisted form which could only be refereed to as a white version of the Martian Manhunter.
"That's him..." Robin said in a now even more ominous verse.
"The white martian?" Superboy asked incredulously. By this time Wondergirl had landed next to them.
"A strong as Superman?" She asked.
"As fast as the Flash?" Empress asked them from a distance, using her telepathics.
"As tough as Wonderwoman?" Secret asked as she invisibly flowed around Robin.
"TelepathicAndShapeshiftingLikeMartianManhunter?!" Impulse said as he stopped on a dime next to Superboy.
Robin simply nodded. "Yup."
The monstrosity spoke. "Children? I am to defeat mere children?"
"What are we gonna do?" Wondergirl asked the question on everyone's minds.
"Frag 'im. That's what!!" Lobo appeared out of the forest. He was boasting two very high-tech looking guns which he was already firing at the white martian.
The rest of the team bounded into action just as quickly. "Empress, link us!" Robin called out. It seemed she was asserting herself as a leader of sorts, though Superboy and Wondergirl may not be so quick to agree. "Superboy, Wondergirl, keep pressure on him if you can, Impulse, defend Empress as she works, hit-and-runs!"
Even as she said this it was becoming part of their own thinking as Empress linked the minds of the teams together to a certain degree to improve teamwork in this dire situation.
The martian laughed as he absorbed the bullets. To him they weren't much more than a 20 mph wind. Lobo paused for a minute, cranked up the power and found that he was able to achieve the effect of a 35 mph wind on a person with round after round of bullets. The martian was having trouble moving forward now. Superboy and Wondergirl came pounding down on him. He blocked some hits, but the two youngsters were so intense that they kept getting in little quick hits. Suddenly the thing spotted Robin.
"Lets see how you do without your team leader..." He whispered to Superboy.
The telepathic link picked it up and Robin understood she was in danger, but what could she do about it? The white martian moved at speeds beyond the speed of sound at Robin. In the moment of a pico second he had slipped under the hits of Wondergirl and Superboy, walked out of the stream of bullets, leaving the two teens in the way and was lunging at Robin.
"Notsofast!" Impulse struck out at the martian, who was less than happy as he caught a sucker punch to the face. It reacted fast. Very fast. Before Impulse could block the first hit, the martian had struck Impulse in the gut, knocking him upwards, and downwards again by hitting him in the head and in the back. A microsecond had passed as he took an extra milisecond glance at Impulse and ran at Robin. He swung out at Robin and... his hand passed through. Swinging again, he glared at the image of Robin. There was a brownish haze... and... the image was fading. She was being smoked jumped by Secret!
The martian turned back towards his combatants, Lobo was now shooting at him again. With his new resolve to utterly decimate this team he caught every single bullet out of the air one by one, running at Lobo the whole time.
"You're going to die little man." He cackled.
"Die? The Top Teen?" He asked, as if the statement had truly shocked him. He ran out of ammo. The martian smiled.
So did Lobo. As Superboy and Wondergirl flew at the martian, Lobo lunged.
--
Back at the base:
Lagoonboy and Martian Manhunter fiddled with the controls rapidly.
"Something's wrong..." Red Tornado said. "Communication is out... all communication... no... just the output, we're still receiving..."
"If we weren't receiving, the JLA would probably be alerted." Lagoonboy commented on the computer's automatic emergency systems.
"Go check the main power converter..." Red Tornado nodded to the boy, who promptly scurried off around the corner.
At this base, the conference room was the center of everything, so Lagoonboy had to pass through there to get to where he had to go. He didn't expect someone to be standing on the table as he turned the corner.
It was a man in black. A young man possibly. He was wearing some sort of costume, but the most visible thing was his cloak and hood. It was this impossibly dark jet black which seemed to stink of death and doom. The hood covered the man's head completely, with the help of a dark eye mask. Only the stubbled chin was visible.
"Who the heck are you?" Lagoonboy asked, blinking stupidly.
"I..." began the dark stranger... "Am the Crow... and I'm here to kill you..."
--
On the field:
The martian elbow smashed Lil Lobo in the face first. The cackling martian swung around him as his momentum left he knocked Lobo into the ground before the little man could react. Lobo stood up with even more fury. "Now yer gonna get it, tall pale and ugly..."
The martian laughed as it dodged a punch by Superboy with a simple lean. The white martian palmed Superboy's chest with a suddenly enlarged hand and slammed the the boy headfirst through the ground. Superboy struggled weekly, upside down waist deep into the earth.
Wondergirl gasped as the thing reached out to do the same thing to her. With a practiced move she slipped out, grabbed the thing's wrist and flipped it. Normal physics however didn't apply as it simply righted itself and grabbed both of Wondgirl's arms. He began to pull at them, and Kon heard her skin rip.
"AAAARGH!!!" Lobo lunged towards the guy
Cackling the combatant tossed the dazed Wondergirl up in the air.
He struck out at Lobo. Not just any strikes, mind you, but his hands moved at rapid speeds and his hands became atomically sharp. He hit lobo in the temples, in the neck, in the shoulder, in the chest, in his abdomen twice and all over his arms. As Lobo finally got close with his immortal self, the martian turned his hand into a brick of incredible density and brought it down on Lobo's head, too fast for the last czarnian to do anything about it.
Lobo hit the ground hard and bounced. Twice. His chest, neck head and arms were all covered in bloody gashes, cuts and bruises. He moaned ever so faintly and tried to lift up his head. His head dropped pitifully and weakly. The martian caught Wondergirl by a leg then. And grabbed one of her arms with his free hand and began to pull again.
"LOBO!!!!!!!!" Anita Maad screamed. Empress was a mystery woman of sorts. She drew them from a certain spirit, and though some members of the team may not have felt too comfortable with it, they had to admit that they weren't so orthodox themselves. Secret was kinda dead, Superboy was a clone, Wondergirl was a product of greek mythology, and Robin was well... the Suburban legend. Add Impulse, the result of illegal tampering with the time continuim and you've got a bunch of kids who shouldn't necessarily exist.
She practiced Vodoun... what many uninformed Americans may call voodoo, but there were not dolls or chants here. Empress' powers were very literal and not nearly as mysterious as their origin. When she fought, none doubted that she was empowered by both something supernatural in addition to her own spirit. Nothing however was more forceful than her mental abilities. She wasn't a conventional telepathic, but she had ways to attack the mind. That she did. Unleashing an onslaught of power on the white martian she screamed. Lobo and her had been growing very close, lately, and seeing the man whom she literally thought was invincible fall hard was a bit too much for her.
The white martian yelled with her as the onslaught attacked his powerful telepathic brain. The pain was intense but he began to fight it, still trying to pull a screaming wondergirl apart. Superboy pulled himself out of the ground. He was coughing, gagging, barely breathing. He looked up and saw the scene unfold before him.
"Caaaaaaassssssssieeeeeeeeeee!!!" His superspeed had never been faster... the pupil literally erased from his eyes. They flared white as he flew at the back of the martian monster. The being began to cackle as Empress fell to her knees from the mental strain.
He grinned evilly as Wondergirl and Empress moaned. "Now, young ones, as cute as you are by earth standards you..."
"DIE!!!"
Superboy grabbed the martian in a full nelson from the back. His powers seemed to be erupting from him. His hands glowed blue as the same powers which pushed him through the air and could cause explosions along the ground began to shake the insides of the martian. Even as he got a firm hold on the thing he fired.
Superboy fired his heatvision.
White beams tore through the back of the head and out the eyes of the white martian as Superboy's tactile teleknesis shook the martian hard. He quaked, bubbled and then, as Empress gave a final push of mental strength and the thing detonated.
'SPLAMMMMMM!!'
Superboy knelt next to Wondergirl, holding her close as Robin and Secret and Impulse tended to Lobo and Empress.
Young Justice returned tiredly that night. They were injured and dizzy. Impulse and Secret were doing a great deal of the work, helping keep everyone physically and mentally stable. No one was prepared for what they saw when they entered the conference room.
Red Tornado lay, charred on the ground. His legs were not connected to him, and were nowhere to be seen in the room apparently. Attached to his back was a small gray device, apparently used to overload the android's circuits.
The horror was still to come when Robin, who had been looking around the room frantically suddenly stopped and looked up. What she saw reminded her that she was part of the Batman system now... and in this game, sometimes people get hurt. Hurt really really bad.
A drop of blood dropped onto the ground and the rest of the team looked up. Lagoonboy hung there, suspended by two strings from the ceiling, one attached to his arm, one to his leg. In his chest was cut deeply what, from this angle, appeared to be a Z shape... like Zorro would have done to someone hanging sidewards.
Robin looked at Superboy, who closed his eyes and bowed his head in agony and sadness.
Robin, once again, took over...
"Impulse, get Red, find his legs, Secret, go check Lagoonboy's pulse, now. Empress, scan for any intruders still here."
She turned and walked towards the control room.
End Chapeter 1.
THE CROW SAGA
Chapter Two: Fish out of Water
"Lobo, Secret, let's move!!" Robin yelled as she hopped onto the Super-Cycle. This was the fourth person to wear the guise of Robin. She was the first female... maybe that would eventually go down in a record book or something. She was strong, talented and possibly better than the third Robin, her boyfriend until he disappeared. She was now helping out on Young Justice, a team of superpowered teeangers. Right now the team included Superboy, Wondergirl, Impulse, Arrowette, Lagoonboy, Empress, Lil Lobo, Secret and chaperone Red Tornado.
The super-cycle, as it was called, was a remarkable construct which seated nearly all of Young Justice, in addition to boasting some monstrous amount of firepower and technologically marvelous abilities. Superboy, Wondergirl and Empress hopped in front, Impulse, Arrowette, Lobo and the ethereal Secret leapt into the back.
Lagoonboy was about to hop on...
"Lagoonboy," Red Tornado stood away from the cycle, toward the direction of the war room. "You're staying here to help coordinate the team's efforts in case they get separated.... And Arrowette, your mother would not allow me to send you on this mission..."
"Awww, man..." He scampered away from the cycle towards the room, promptly putting on the headset and punching buttons, as he had been trained.
Arrowette on the other hand was more quiet, and far more upset. She stormed out, throwing her mask and bow on the ground, leaving her quiver at the door, mumbling the entire time.
"Okay, Rob," Lagoonboy's voice came over all the coms, "get outta here, kick some alien tail..." He punched a button as Red Tornado sat down next to him.
The Super-cycle blazed into the air at speeds which would crash even the most sophisticated supercomputers. It didn't take long however before the kids realized they were in over their heads. The Super-cycle, landing a safe distance from the crisis site was rocked by a devastating blast. The occupants were thrown into the surrounding shrubbery, except for Robin and Superboy, who were squarely in the center of a small clearing.
Superboy was up and hot first. "Robin, Wondy, where are you..."
"I'm right here, Kon." Robin stood up. Her voice was decidedly dark now. A very Robin and Batman type warning of impending danger.
Superboy looked in the same direction she had been. Before them stood a strange white creature. It's eye glew in red and it began to change. It became a twisted form which could only be refereed to as a white version of the Martian Manhunter.
"That's him..." Robin said in a now even more ominous verse.
"The white martian?" Superboy asked incredulously. By this time Wondergirl had landed next to them.
"A strong as Superman?" She asked.
"As fast as the Flash?" Empress asked them from a distance, using her telepathics.
"As tough as Wonderwoman?" Secret asked as she invisibly flowed around Robin.
"TelepathicAndShapeshiftingLikeMartianManhunter?!" Impulse said as he stopped on a dime next to Superboy.
Robin simply nodded. "Yup."
The monstrosity spoke. "Children? I am to defeat mere children?"
"What are we gonna do?" Wondergirl asked the question on everyone's minds.
"Frag 'im. That's what!!" Lobo appeared out of the forest. He was boasting two very high-tech looking guns which he was already firing at the white martian.
The rest of the team bounded into action just as quickly. "Empress, link us!" Robin called out. It seemed she was asserting herself as a leader of sorts, though Superboy and Wondergirl may not be so quick to agree. "Superboy, Wondergirl, keep pressure on him if you can, Impulse, defend Empress as she works, hit-and-runs!"
Even as she said this it was becoming part of their own thinking as Empress linked the minds of the teams together to a certain degree to improve teamwork in this dire situation.
The martian laughed as he absorbed the bullets. To him they weren't much more than a 20 mph wind. Lobo paused for a minute, cranked up the power and found that he was able to achieve the effect of a 35 mph wind on a person with round after round of bullets. The martian was having trouble moving forward now. Superboy and Wondergirl came pounding down on him. He blocked some hits, but the two youngsters were so intense that they kept getting in little quick hits. Suddenly the thing spotted Robin.
"Lets see how you do without your team leader..." He whispered to Superboy.
The telepathic link picked it up and Robin understood she was in danger, but what could she do about it? The white martian moved at speeds beyond the speed of sound at Robin. In the moment of a pico second he had slipped under the hits of Wondergirl and Superboy, walked out of the stream of bullets, leaving the two teens in the way and was lunging at Robin.
"Notsofast!" Impulse struck out at the martian, who was less than happy as he caught a sucker punch to the face. It reacted fast. Very fast. Before Impulse could block the first hit, the martian had struck Impulse in the gut, knocking him upwards, and downwards again by hitting him in the head and in the back. A microsecond had passed as he took an extra milisecond glance at Impulse and ran at Robin. He swung out at Robin and... his hand passed through. Swinging again, he glared at the image of Robin. There was a brownish haze... and... the image was fading. She was being smoked jumped by Secret!
The martian turned back towards his combatants, Lobo was now shooting at him again. With his new resolve to utterly decimate this team he caught every single bullet out of the air one by one, running at Lobo the whole time.
"You're going to die little man." He cackled.
"Die? The Top Teen?" He asked, as if the statement had truly shocked him. He ran out of ammo. The martian smiled.
So did Lobo. As Superboy and Wondergirl flew at the martian, Lobo lunged.
--
Back at the base:
Lagoonboy and Martian Manhunter fiddled with the controls rapidly.
"Something's wrong..." Red Tornado said. "Communication is out... all communication... no... just the output, we're still receiving..."
"If we weren't receiving, the JLA would probably be alerted." Lagoonboy commented on the computer's automatic emergency systems.
"Go check the main power converter..." Red Tornado nodded to the boy, who promptly scurried off around the corner.
At this base, the conference room was the center of everything, so Lagoonboy had to pass through there to get to where he had to go. He didn't expect someone to be standing on the table as he turned the corner.
It was a man in black. A young man possibly. He was wearing some sort of costume, but the most visible thing was his cloak and hood. It was this impossibly dark jet black which seemed to stink of death and doom. The hood covered the man's head completely, with the help of a dark eye mask. Only the stubbled chin was visible.
"Who the heck are you?" Lagoonboy asked, blinking stupidly.
"I..." began the dark stranger... "Am the Crow... and I'm here to kill you..."
--
On the field:
The martian elbow smashed Lil Lobo in the face first. The cackling martian swung around him as his momentum left he knocked Lobo into the ground before the little man could react. Lobo stood up with even more fury. "Now yer gonna get it, tall pale and ugly..."
The martian laughed as it dodged a punch by Superboy with a simple lean. The white martian palmed Superboy's chest with a suddenly enlarged hand and slammed the the boy headfirst through the ground. Superboy struggled weekly, upside down waist deep into the earth.
Wondergirl gasped as the thing reached out to do the same thing to her. With a practiced move she slipped out, grabbed the thing's wrist and flipped it. Normal physics however didn't apply as it simply righted itself and grabbed both of Wondgirl's arms. He began to pull at them, and Kon heard her skin rip.
"AAAARGH!!!" Lobo lunged towards the guy
Cackling the combatant tossed the dazed Wondergirl up in the air.
He struck out at Lobo. Not just any strikes, mind you, but his hands moved at rapid speeds and his hands became atomically sharp. He hit lobo in the temples, in the neck, in the shoulder, in the chest, in his abdomen twice and all over his arms. As Lobo finally got close with his immortal self, the martian turned his hand into a brick of incredible density and brought it down on Lobo's head, too fast for the last czarnian to do anything about it.
Lobo hit the ground hard and bounced. Twice. His chest, neck head and arms were all covered in bloody gashes, cuts and bruises. He moaned ever so faintly and tried to lift up his head. His head dropped pitifully and weakly. The martian caught Wondergirl by a leg then. And grabbed one of her arms with his free hand and began to pull again.
"LOBO!!!!!!!!" Anita Maad screamed. Empress was a mystery woman of sorts. She drew them from a certain spirit, and though some members of the team may not have felt too comfortable with it, they had to admit that they weren't so orthodox themselves. Secret was kinda dead, Superboy was a clone, Wondergirl was a product of greek mythology, and Robin was well... the Suburban legend. Add Impulse, the result of illegal tampering with the time continuim and you've got a bunch of kids who shouldn't necessarily exist.
She practiced Vodoun... what many uninformed Americans may call voodoo, but there were not dolls or chants here. Empress' powers were very literal and not nearly as mysterious as their origin. When she fought, none doubted that she was empowered by both something supernatural in addition to her own spirit. Nothing however was more forceful than her mental abilities. She wasn't a conventional telepathic, but she had ways to attack the mind. That she did. Unleashing an onslaught of power on the white martian she screamed. Lobo and her had been growing very close, lately, and seeing the man whom she literally thought was invincible fall hard was a bit too much for her.
The white martian yelled with her as the onslaught attacked his powerful telepathic brain. The pain was intense but he began to fight it, still trying to pull a screaming wondergirl apart. Superboy pulled himself out of the ground. He was coughing, gagging, barely breathing. He looked up and saw the scene unfold before him.
"Caaaaaaassssssssieeeeeeeeeee!!!" His superspeed had never been faster... the pupil literally erased from his eyes. They flared white as he flew at the back of the martian monster. The being began to cackle as Empress fell to her knees from the mental strain.
He grinned evilly as Wondergirl and Empress moaned. "Now, young ones, as cute as you are by earth standards you..."
"DIE!!!"
Superboy grabbed the martian in a full nelson from the back. His powers seemed to be erupting from him. His hands glowed blue as the same powers which pushed him through the air and could cause explosions along the ground began to shake the insides of the martian. Even as he got a firm hold on the thing he fired.
Superboy fired his heatvision.
White beams tore through the back of the head and out the eyes of the white martian as Superboy's tactile teleknesis shook the martian hard. He quaked, bubbled and then, as Empress gave a final push of mental strength and the thing detonated.
'SPLAMMMMMM!!'
Superboy knelt next to Wondergirl, holding her close as Robin and Secret and Impulse tended to Lobo and Empress.
Young Justice returned tiredly that night. They were injured and dizzy. Impulse and Secret were doing a great deal of the work, helping keep everyone physically and mentally stable. No one was prepared for what they saw when they entered the conference room.
Red Tornado lay, charred on the ground. His legs were not connected to him, and were nowhere to be seen in the room apparently. Attached to his back was a small gray device, apparently used to overload the android's circuits.
The horror was still to come when Robin, who had been looking around the room frantically suddenly stopped and looked up. What she saw reminded her that she was part of the Batman system now... and in this game, sometimes people get hurt. Hurt really really bad.
A drop of blood dropped onto the ground and the rest of the team looked up. Lagoonboy hung there, suspended by two strings from the ceiling, one attached to his arm, one to his leg. In his chest was cut deeply what, from this angle, appeared to be a Z shape... like Zorro would have done to someone hanging sidewards.
Robin looked at Superboy, who closed his eyes and bowed his head in agony and sadness.
Robin, once again, took over...
"Impulse, get Red, find his legs, Secret, go check Lagoonboy's pulse, now. Empress, scan for any intruders still here."
She turned and walked towards the control room.
End Chapeter 1.