Tempest: Chapter Twenty-Eight: Within Cadmus
Wally couldn't help but be steamed as he watched Flash, Batman, Aquaman, Red Tornado, Green Arrow, and Martian Manhunter left the lounge in the Hall of Justice to assist Zatara with the sorcerer Wotan who was using the Amulet of Wotan to block out the sun.
"When we're ready?" Kid Flash said in annoyance, throwing up his arms into the air. "How are we ever supposed to be ready when they treat us like…sidekicks?"
"My mentor, my king," Aqualad said, his expression dropping somewhat. "I thought he trusted me."
"Trust?" Kid Flash demanded, pointing his thumb aggressively towards himself. "They don't even trust us with the basics! They've got a secret HQ in space!"
"What else aren't they telling us?"
"I have a better question," Robin grumbled, "why didn't we leave with Speedy?"
"Or," Kid Flash piped up, his annoyance clear, "why didn't we skive off with SC? Do you think she knew they wouldn't take us seriously?"
Robin shrugged. "I thought she just wasn't a fan of the publicity."
There was a moment of silence that was felt mostly awkward on Aqualad's part, being the one that knew Storm Chaser –formerly Oracle– the least.
"What is Project Cadmus?" he asked once a silent moment had passed.
"Don't know," Robin said before grinning slyly, "but I can find out." And then he strode towards the room's main computer, his fingers moving across the keys until a voice blared: "Access denied."
Robin sniggered. "Wanna bet?" His fingers tapped out a different sequence of keys, causing the screen to fade into green symbols.
"Whoa," Kid Flash uttered impressed, "dude, are you hacking the Justice League?"
Robin's lopsided grin was answer enough. "Well, it is the same system as the Batcave, so it can't really be considered hacking."
Aqualad's lips twisted upwards in amusement while Kid Flash snorted.
"Access Granted," the computer blared a moment later, a video file popping up on the screen.
"All right, Project Cadmus –also known as Cadmus Labs–, genetics lab here in DC…" He frowned. "That's all there is, but if Batman's suspicious, maybe we should investigate."
"Solve their case before they do," Aqualad said, intrigued. "It would be poetic justice."
"Hey," Robin grinned, leaning eagerly, "they're all about justice."
Aqualad gave a small sigh. "But they said to stay put."
"For the blotting out the sun mission, not this," Robin countered, resting his hands on his hips as he grinned.
"Wait," Kid Flash said suddenly, dropping his hand to Robin's shoulder, jerking his best friend's attention towards the red-head. "Are you going to Cadmus? Because if you're going, I'm going."
And then they were both looking towards Aqualad with wide grins on their lips.
"Just like that we're a team on a mission?" Aqualad queried.
"We didn't come for a play date," Robin pointed out and Aqualad smiled.
"Come on, let's go!" Kid Flash said, tugging his friends towards the exit with a newfound exuberance.
When Robin leapt through the window with a loud cackle after dragging Kid Flash up from where he was hanging, and it was safe to say that one was not more surprised than the other when they took in the vacant room, barring the figure tapping away at the company computer.
"What're you doing here?" Kid Flash demanded in surprise.
Storm Chaser gave him a flat stare from behind her mask before dropping her eyes to the screen once more. "Researching. What're you doing here?"
"There was a fire," Robin said. "It set off a League alert."
"I started the fire," Storm Chaser said before her eyes narrowed, "it set off a League alert?"
"What d'you mean you set the fire?" Kid Flash spluttered as Aqualad made it in through the open window on a funnel of water.
"I thought that was pretty clear," Storm Chaser snorted as Robin came alongside her to look over the screen with her.
"I appreciate the help," Aqualad said and Robin grinned widely.
"You handled it, besides, we're here to investigate, poetic justice, remember?"
"But she's the one that started the fire!" Kid Flash said, jabbing his finger at his cousin.
"For what reason?" Aqualad asked curiously.
"It's hard to conduct research when people are around," Storm Chaser mentioned, lifting her eyes to look at him. "The fire wasn't that serious, just enough to evacuate the last of the employees…of course, I haven't been able to find anything too out of place in the company computer, which is disappointing and now I'm probably back to square one."
"On what?" Robin asked, but she offered no explanation as Aqualad rounded the corner to see a strange creature within the elevator just as the doors shut, a creature that was definitely not human.
"There was something in the—" he started to say as Kid Flash rounded the corner with a frown on his mouth.
"Elevators should be locked down," Kid Flash said and Robin darted around them towards the elevator, Storm Chaser following after at a more leisure pace, suspicion clear in her eyes.
"This is wrong," Robin said, his gauntlets activating a holographic computer, scanning the elevator into the database. "Thought so…this is a high-speed express elevator, it doesn't belong in a two-story building."
"Neither does what I saw," Aqualad pointed out.
"They must have several floors hidden beneath the foundation," Storm Chaser said, snapping her fingers and grinning, "the blueprints must have been forged."
"Why were you researching them, again?" Kid Flash asked her and Storm Chaser rested a hand on her hip, jerking a thumb back towards herself.
"Product of genetics, remember? I told you I was looking into Cadmus at lunch, or did you forget about that?"
A dawning realization lit his eyes. "Oh, I totally did."
Robin snorted while Storm Chaser rolled her eyes and Aqualad stifled his amusement.
"What? I was helping Flash with Captain Cold! What were you doing?"
"I was casing the building looking for the perfect entry point!"
"They could have been brother and sister," Robin sniggered towards Aqualad who smiled until two pairs of green eyes were glaring at the pair of them. Robin reeled back sharply, but Aqualad moved forward to force the elevator doors open.
Storm Chaser peered down, her eyebrows raising behind her mask. "I wasn't expecting that many levels," she admitted, before leaping into the elevator shaft, whipping the air around her so that she was standing on a cloud within the shaft.
To Aqualad, who had never seen her use her powers, it was impressive to say the least.
She grinned at the three boys. "See you at the bottom!"
And then the girl on the cloud dropped down and out of sight faster than Robin could latch his grappler cable and swing down with Kid Flash and Aqualad sliding down on his line as it came to its end at sub-level twenty-six.
"What happened to SC?" Kid Flash asked, frowning.
"She must have gone right to the bottom," Robin said, hacking into the security system in order to allow the doors to open. He tapped his comlink in his ear. "SC, you there?"
"Sub-level fifty-two, how about you?" came her voice in his ear.
"Sub-level twenty-six," he returned with a snort. "Going to turn around and head up to us?"
"I'll meet up with you," Storm Chaser promised.
Amara shut off the comlink as she ripped off the covering at the side of the elevator doors, short-circuiting the controls on the doors to cause them to open.
She would probably join up with them at some point, but Amara had broken into Cadmus for a reason, and it wasn't to be a hero, it was to gather information.
However, she hadn't quite realized how curious Cadmus was until the doors opened and she looked inside with a pair of wide eyes. The long hallway was by far the strangest thing she'd ever seen. It looked like it was quite similar to a throat or a stomach with odd bulbs scattered around. Amara could safely say she'd never seen anything quite like it.
"You're not supposed to be here—"
The voice cut off sharply as Amara turned towards the speaker and they drew up short.
This woman was wearing a lab coat with the Cadmus symbol clear, emblazoned on her breast pocket. Her eyes were dark behind her glasses and her hair, as was her skin, and her kindly face was so very familiar to Amara.
"I know you," she said and the woman clutched her clipboard to her chest.
"Amara," she whispered, and it was a voice that Amara remembered very well from her childhood.
"Come on, Amara! Give me a jump, as high as you can!"
"Oh, sweetie, I know it hurts, but I promise it won't hurt so bad in a few minutes."
"One more minute of running, Amara! Yes! Good job!"
She wasn't sure how the woman had recognized her, but it could have been anything from the hair to the eyes, that was for sure.
"You gave me to Weather Wizard," Amara accused, her eyes flashing behind the mask.
The doctor grimaced, raising a hand to run her hand through her hair. "I did," she admitted with a regretful sigh. "I'd heard how Dr. Desmond was planning on upping the tests on you, putting you under more stress…but you were just a little girl…I thought at the very least your family could keep you safe. Then I heard what happened in Central City, what he did to you…I'm sorry."
Amara had gone through a period of thinking that the woman before her was mother. She was the only one in the facility that had spoken to her kindly, the only one that had truly treated her like the child she was. Of course, once she'd gotten a bit older, it was clear that the young doctor couldn't possibly be her mother; they shared no common characteristics or traits.
"Could've given me to my mother," Amara said shortly, looking around the hallway for a computer to hack her way into their files. "She actually seems to give a damn about me."
That caused confusion to warp across her face. "Your mother?" she said. "We never had that information."
"We'll see about that," Amara said slyly, moving past her towards where the computer was, and the doctor didn't even try to stop her as she tapped her fingers across the keyboard, watching as the Access Denied transformed into Access Granted in a matter of seconds.
She did her best to ignore the woman standing beside her, clearly watching her hack into the database of the company she worked for.
Amara flicked through the various projects Cadmus had listed: Project Kr, Project Match, Project Replacement, Project Amara.
She clicked on Project Amara, completely disregarding the other projects as she pulled out her flash drive to start the download process.
"Shouldn't you be calling security on me, or something?" Amara asked her, arching an eyebrow towards the woman, glancing towards the name on her ID: Dr. Amanda Spence. "I am stealing company secrets, after all."
"Oh!" Dr. Spence appeared startled at the very idea of reporting her to security. "Well, no, I'm not, but you really should leave, Amara, Dr. Desmond would like nothing more than to have you back under his monitoring…you were his favorite project."
Amara's teeth gritted behind her lips. Of course she was. Who wouldn't love to find out what a child of a villain was capable of? To see if evil was in her blood or if it was a learned habit. That whole nature versus nurture idea.
The screen gave a sharp ding, reading: Download complete.
Amara pocketed the flash drive in one of the pockets on her tool belt. "Well, you should still probably get some distance from me before anyone sees you with me."
The elevator gave a small noise in response, signaling an approaching elevator, and with it, Dr. Spence lurched away from Amara and the meta-human pulled her batons out of their holsters, twisting them in her hands as she positioned herself in front of the doors, waiting for them to open.
Kid Flash could count on one hand the number of times he liked to see his cousin in full-blown atmo-kinetic mode, and this definitely wasn't one of those times.
Seeing Storm Chaser with her teeth bared, eyes glowing with electricity, and her batons throwing off sparks from the very same electricity was enough to make him reel backwards.
"Whoa! We're friendlies!"
The electricity faded and Storm Chaser relaxed her stance in surprise. "Oh, it's you," she said before looking a bit bemused, "weren't you three up on sub-level twenty-six?"
"Yup," Robin said, darting out of the elevator and into the hallway with the other two following after. "I don't suppose you've had a good look around?"
"Not really," Storm Chaser said, and she would have said more, but she was interrupted by a call of "Halt!"
And four head's swiveled towards what could easily be categorized as an alien with odd horns that glowed red as two barrels close to it floated into the air, flying towards the sidekicks who had to dive to avoid being hit. Robin was faster, managing to throw one of his batarangs forward as a distraction before all the sidekicks ran down the second hallway, devoid of anything trying to kill them.
Kid Flash rounded the corner first and by the time Storm Chaser had, Dr. Spence had been tripped onto the ground and Kid Flash was propping the door open with a nearby heavy cylinder.
"Come on!" Kid Flash called and Storm Chaser and Robin leapt through the opening first, being the smallest of the grouping before Kid Flash followed with Aqualad kicking out the cylinder, effectively shutting the doors, leaving them inside and the others outside.
"I disabled the door," Robin said a moment later, "we're safe."
"I think that might be a bit relative," Storm Chaser said looking over her cousin's shoulder as he pressed a button to illuminate the room and suddenly they were all staring at a slumbering body in what appeared to be a capsule of some kind. "That," she said, pointing at the body, "is kind of freaky, admit it."
The likeness between the boy in the tube and Superman could hardly be denied. They could have been father and son and Storm Chaser would have believed it. He was even wearing the same 'S' on his chest.
"Big K, little R! Of course!" Kid Flash smacked his forehead. "It's the atomic symbol for Krypton."
"I think it's safe to say that Project Kr is definitely really not legal," Storm Chaser muttered as Robin hacked into the computer for information.
"Weapon designation: Superboy, a clone force-grown in sixteen weeks? From DNA acquired from Superman."
"Stolen from Superman," Aqualad corrected.
And Storm Chaser couldn't deny that there were certain similarities between how she had come into existence and how 'Superboy' had been created.
"The solar suit allows him to absorb yellow sun radiation twenty-four-seven. And the creatures on his shoulders? Genomorph gnomes, telepathic, force-feeding him an education."
"And we can guess what else," Kid Flash said solemnly, "they're making a slave out of, well, Superman's son."
Storm Chaser's eyes shifted towards the creatures. "I think they did the same for me," she mused thoughtfully.
"Huh?"
All three turned towards her in surprise and Storm Chaser realized she'd said that out loud and a faint pink brushed across her cheeks. "Well, I mean, I vaguely remember having something strange like that teaching me things without opening its mouth…but it was only day to day, nothing like this."
The horns of the genomorphs on Superboy's shoulder glowed red, but none of them seemed to notice.
"This is wrong," Kid Flash said.
"Caging someone has never been what anyone would consider right," Storm Chaser pointed out.
"We can't leave him like this," Robin agreed.
"Set him free," Aqualad said, nodding to Robin who drew his fingers over the holographic lever which caused the glass panels surrounding the boy to drop into the floor, causing steam to arise, making Storm Chaser think it might be the first time someone had opened the pod, since he'd been placed inside it.
For a moment nothing happened, but then he drew his hands into fists, his blue eyes snapping open just one second before he lurched forward to collide with Aqualad, knocking him to floor.
"Hey!" Storm Chaser snarled and a bolt of lightning struck Superboy in the back that knocked him off Aqualad, but it only served to make him angry and he lunged at her with a roar.
"He's crazy!" Kid Flash yelled, running between Storm Chaser and Superboy to grab his cousin out of the way, before a hit collided them painfully into the wall. Kid Flash took the brunt of the hit, his head knocking painfully enough to send him into unconsciousness.
Storm Chaser groaned as Robin leapt forward with an "I don't want to do this" as he tried a bomb of knockout gas, which hardly seemed to effect him, but then Aqualad moved forward, his water-bearer formed into a giant club, throwing Superboy back into the pod.
He was like a manic machine, Storm Chaser thought as she pulled herself out from under Kid Flash to pull herself to her feet to assist Aqualad –it looked as though they were the last two standing at this point.
She remembered Kid Flash mentioning something about how Aqualad could generate electricity, not to the same level as Storm Chaser, but enough for it to be shocking, so it wasn't a surprise when Aqualad grabbed Superboy from behind, lightning rippling off his body as Superboy yelled, and it only grew worse when Storm Chaser lurched forward to press her electrically charged hands against his chest, her teeth gritted together from the effort.
Based on his strength level, the best thing for them would have to be overload his system and knock him out, but neither of them correctly estimated his rage level, and the next thing Storm Chaser knew she was on her back, pain blooming at her side, her sight fading, barely catching how Aqualad was thrown into the ceiling before everything went black.
"I must say your return is most fortunate, it gives us the opportunity to start up Project Amara once more."
"Because that's what I'm here for, making your life easier."
When Amara had come to the boys were gone –it was likely that they were being held in a separate area of the facility– and her wrists were locked above her head, leaving her feet dangling in the air, and she found she was trapped in a pod not unlike the one that Superboy had been held in, and Amara was not pleased. And the fact that the metal her wrists were locked into was the least conductive of electricity only made that worse.
Amara was rage bubbling just under the surface of her skin, with eyes dark and every visible electronic short-circuiting in some way. Personally, Amara thought it would be a wiser course of action to run for the hills, especially considering she'd once caused a torrential downpour in the midst of a nightmare with very little training.
Dr. Spence had vanished, she'd probably been forced out after citing several valid protests against whatever reason Dr. Desmond had for locking her in her own separate and personal cage.
"I hope you know," Amara continued mildly, "my partner is a highly skilled archer, my friends consist of a hyperactive speedster that can easily run circles around you and an acrobat that likes blowing shit up, …and then, obviously, there's me, trained by Black Canary and an assassin…let's just say it's a very long list of why I'm going to make you regret stuffing me in this tube."
He ignored her and Amara's eyebrow twitched. If you asked her, that was a pretty impressive line-up, but, then again, Amara was hardly friends with anyone who wasn't trained in some kind of art or had a superpower of some kind.
"If I recall correctly, when you were younger, you had a rather debilitating fear of water," he continued and Amara froze, her heart beginning to beat frantically in her chest.
Amara wasn't afraid of many things, but Weather Wizard and drowning were definitely at the top of her list. It was a great source of irony for Amara, seeing as she loved swimming and owned a beach house, but electricity was killer underwater, and that was where she was the most helpless, the most useless. And without the rebreathers in her utility belt (where the fuck had he put it?), she was quite literally dead in the water.
"I'm going to kick your ass so hard when I get out of here," Amara said, struggling now to maintain her mildness, "that I'll damage your nervous system."
He should have taken her a bit more seriously, but instead, he grasped the lever and pulled it down.
Water flooded the bottom of Amara's tube and her fear jumped to new heights. She clenched her hands into fists where they were trapped in the metal, a small ripple of electricity coming off her as she drew her legs up to her chest before shooting them forward to batter against the glass.
It held against her assault, even as she dug her heels in, her panic mounting as the water rose and rose. In seconds it was up to her legs, making it harder for her to press her feet violently against the glass with the water slowing her down so much.
By the time it had reached her neck, Dr. Desmond had disappeared –no doubt because the boys were causing some trouble–, and by the time it'd overtaken her head, Amara had barely managed to gulp the last of her air, not even bothering to stop her attempts to shatter the glass, to no avail.
Her lungs were starting to burn with the desire for oxygen when the answer came from outside the pod. All Amara could see was a blur of dark skin and black hair, making a motion not unlike batting a ball, and then the glass trembled from the hit.
The second contact made small cracks appear, and the third causes the contained water to shoot out of the hole that was made.
Amara coughed up some water, looking at Dr. Spence in unabashed surprise, because in her hand was one of Amara's batons.
"I think we can both agree that there is something very different between murder and stress testing," Dr. Spence informed her dryly while Amara gaped. "Besides, you looked like you could use some help."
Amara wasn't one above asking for help when she clearly needed it. "That happens," she said dryly, taking in deep lungfuls of air like there was no tomorrow while Dr. Spence tapped a code into the computer to lower the glass and to unlock the binders at her wrists.
Oh, she was definitely going to kick Desmond's ass so hard!
The next time Robin saw Storm Chaser, she was puking her guts up and bracing her hands on her knees, breathing heavily.
"What happened to you?" he asked her, remembering what Dr. Desmond had said: "There will be no need to clone the girl when she was created by us, but the stress tests will be extensive." Robin didn't think he'd ever seen Kid Flash so angry.
Storm Chaser was completely soaked, with her grey hair plastered to her face and neck, looking far more ill than he had perhaps ever seen her.
"Drowning," Storm Chaser said, wiping her mouth on her arm, "ten out of ten would not recommend."
The next second Superboy, Kid Flash, and Aqualad were rushing forward with Kid Flash yanking Storm Chaser's arm to drag her along. "No time for explaining," he told her as she looked at Superboy with a bit of bemusement, "we've got a bazillion genomorphs on our tail!"
"What the fuck have you guys been doing?" was out of her mouth before she could stop it as they ran forward only to find their way blocked by genomorph trolls.
"Oh, you know," Kid Flash muttered, "causing chaos, what about you?"
"Crashing the mode, you know, the usual."
Superboy looked at them oddly, clearly not following the odd phrase that Storm Chaser used, but then he was punching his way through the trolls while the others maneuvered around them. He was very violent, slamming the trolls into the wall and ceiling.
"Superboy!" Aqualad called. "The goal is escape, not to bury ourselves here!"
A moment later there was an answering yell: "YOU WANT ESCAPE?!"
Then he threw one troll into the others, stopping them from coming after them.
"I think he might have a bit of an anger-management problem," Storm Chaser mentioned to Aqualad before they were all rushing towards the elevator shaft, Aqualad ripping the metal doors open and Storm Chaser ducking through first to stand on her cloud. She held a hand out to her cousin. "Need a lift?"
Kid Flash took her up on it, but Robin passed, much to the girl's amusement, opting for his own grappler, which Storm Chaser could understand, but personally she found a cloud was much better in that it didn't have a limited amount of cord.
Superboy, on the other hand, grabbed Aqualad's shoulders and leapt up into the elevator shaft, however his momentum failed and although he leapt high in a single leap and Robin was forced to throw up a batarang for Aqualad to grasp.
"Superman can fly," Storm Chaser heard the audible disappointment as she floated her personal cloud holding herself and Kid Flash up. "Why can't I fly?"
"Don't know," Kid Flash said, giving Superboy an easy smile, "but it looks like you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Still cool."
"As much as this bromance is very sweet, we'll be bro-pancakes in five seconds!"
All the heads tilted upwards as the elevator made its down to where they were. "This'll have to be our exit," Robin agreed as Superboy punched out the doors of sub-level fifteen, just missing the elevator, but then genomorph-elves started popping up and they were forced to take a sharp left.
"Bro-pancakes, really?" Kid Flash sniggered beside Storm Chaser as she huffed, rolling her eyes.
"Maybe it has escaped your attention that I'm the only girl sidekick around, so the bromance will have to do," Storm Chaser retorted before they were led to a dead end and were forced to make their escape through the vent.
Kid Flash muttered something, before following her inside with muffled complaints.
"It must be a pity for you three," Storm Chaser sniggered behind Robin as she looked towards their larger companions (of course, Kid Flash wasn't much bigger than Robin, as speed was his skill, not strength), "fitting into vents."
She bumped her fist with Robin's while he re-routed the motion sensors, keeping the genomorph-elves from locking onto them, his program working its way through Cadmus' system when Robin kicked out the covering of the vent they came out of.
"All right," he said a moment later, grinning widely up at them as Aqualad finally removed himself from the vent, "the motion sensors have officially been hacked."
"Sweet!" Kid Flash cheered.
"Still plenty of them between us and out…"
"But I've finally got room to move," Kid Flash said with a grin, situating his goggles over his eyes and dashing off in a blur of yellow up the stairwell.
Storm Chaser had the easy task of following upwards on her cloud, but the others weren't so lucky.
"I'm Storm Chaser, by the way," she added to Superboy, "resident atmo-kinetic in the group, and Speedy's better half."
"Speedy?" Superboy repeated, not even breathless as he ran, his eyes flicking up to Kid Flash.
"He's Green Arrow's sidekick," she informed him, "archer, bad attitude, has a thing for an assassin, you know good stuff."
"He so does not," Robin piped up, startled into speaking and Storm Chaser grinned widely.
"He'd never tell."
"Are all the sidekicks friends?" Superboy asked instead.
"Well, there aren't exactly a lot of us," Storm Chaser admitted, pulling a genomorph-elf over the railing when it tried to follow them. "Kid Flash is my cousin, Robin's like my second best friend after Speedy, but Aqualad and I had only met once before today…water and lightning just don't mix."
She shuddered and Aqualad gave her a smile as Superboy derailed the stairs behind them as genomorph-elves attempted to follow after them.
And alarm sounded beyond them.
"Shit," Storm Chaser muttered when they'd finally caught up with Kid Flash, who'd evidently run headlong into the now-locked doors.
"We're cut off from the street," Aqualad remarked in irritation.
"Thanks," Kid Flash said dryly, still rubbing his head, "my head hadn't noticed."
The combined strength of Superboy and Aqualad had no effect, neither did a sharp bolt of electricity or Robin's hacking skills. They were forced to duck into the nearby room, which unfortunately was full of genomorph-elves and genomorph-trolls and genomorph-gnomes whose horns glowed red.
A loud buzzing rang in Storm Chaser's ears, and that was the last thing she remembered before she fainted.
Storm Chaser decided she really hated Dr. Desmond, apart from claiming her as Cadmus property and nearly killing her with a drowning stress test, he'd gone and downed some clearly untested experimental fluid that had altered his human biology, drastically. He appeared more like monster than man now, which was debatably what he'd looked like on the inside all along, which provided a bit of an issue for four sidekicks and one Superboy.
Storm Chaser growled as Superboy crashed into the wall as Robin tried exploding some batarangs, but they didn't quite do the trick, so she drew out the flexible silver whip that Black Canary had gifted to her but that she'd never been able to use.
She flicked her wrist and it shot out to wrap around Desmond-monster's arm and he gave a roar as she sent an painful electric charge along metallic tendrils, which was a great idea until the monster realized that grabbing the whip and swinging the smaller body that was holding it into the wall stopped the sensation.
Storm Chaser groaned, pulling her throbbing body out of the rubble in time to see at least three out of the four colliding with large pillars, leaving sizable cracks in them from the force of it, making the level above them shake, and that didn't bode well.
But Robin wasn't moving, his holographic computer open, which looked as good of a plan as any, especially when he called her and Kid Flash over to his side.
"This is a terrible idea," Storm Chaser said a moment later.
"I love it!" Kid Flash said, grinning widely, then he was dashing off with a yell of "Come and get me you incredible bulk!" and Storm Chaser could only sigh in exasperation before lifting her hands and aiming towards the closest pillar, firing off a bolt of lightning that ripped through it without much effort with Superboy and Aqualad doing the same to the ones Robin pointed out to them while Kid Flash kept up the distraction, leaving time for Aqualad to spray water from his water-bearers over the spot that Robin had indicated, only a second before Kid Flash skidded through it, leading Desmond-monster to that very spot.
It was only then that Storm Chaser was allowed to give in to her wish to electrocute him into unconsciousness, like she'd so wanted to previously.
Then everything exploded and Aqualad threw himself over Storm Chaser to cover her from falling debris and the only thought in her mind was: Oh, fuck, Dad's really gonna kill me for helping blow up a building.
