AN: I absolutely love the work that comes out of the DC Animation Department. Young Justice inspired some great fics on this site and I felt like typing some stuff out after watching Dredd. Basically, I was thinking of a young Judge being sent to the Young Justice DC world. Based on both the Karl Urban film and the Judge Dredd comics, it was meant to be another crossover story, but incorporating the idea of a super hero who not only had a grittier outlook but worked with law enforcement as much if not more than the Justice League.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from what I've written.

Judge Dredd x Young Justice Snippet 01

Agent Fulcrum struggled to keep his eyes open as blood loss started to take its toll on him. The lights of the town ahead glowed, but were still pretty blurry to him. Beside him and in the back of the van, his fellow agents were likely all dead. Givens had stopped moaning into the fistful of napkins he was holding up to his face and had gone limp beside him several minutes ago. Kibben and Summers had stopped making noise behind him some time before that.

He would in fact, like very much to close his eyes and let unconsciousness take him.

But he had to get back and report.

The cartel property they were investigating had led them to something much bigger than they could have imagined. He had no idea exactly what it was, but it was huge. Somebody had to be told.

He kept repeating that last thought as he crashed the van into the side of a Seven Eleven and wrecked their ice box.

I was stopped near an alleyway to eat a burger I picked up at a drive-thru when my Lawmaster's computer beeped an alert at me. Cramming the rest of the burger into my mouth, I swiped my hand over the screen and read the alert.

'Hmm…three DEA agents dead and a fourth in critical condition…multiple lacerations and…chemical burns?'

I read further down the report and saw that the agents were sent on an investigation to a suspected storage site for narcotics, but something had gone wrong. The van had contained a sample of whatever was being stored at the site.

'Chemical analysis…cocaine with crystallized traces of...what the hell is that? An unknown complex formula...Well, that's very interesting. I wonder where that particular product came from. Santa Prisca? Maybe...'

I checked the status of the agent in critical condition and got the hospital he was sent to. He was still touch and go, but might be able to provide something. I set the GPS to plot me the best course and I gunned it out of the alley.

I made it about halfway there when I decided that if I was going to investigate this place, I might need some backup. I activated my comm. unit.

"This is Judge calling Aqualad."

I only had to wait a moment. "This is Aqualad. Something going on?"

"I've got an interesting case I could use some help on. Reconnaissance on a suspected drug lab. I figured the Team could use a soft mission since we've been without an assigned mission for awhile."

It had actually been awhile since Batman gave us a mission. Three weeks of inactivity was weighing on the Team and making some of us antsy. For me, I had my regular patrols to keep me busy but even I was currently without a case to pursue. Aqualad seemed to be mulling over my suggestion.

"It would be good to get the Team on another mission. Anything interesting we should know about before getting involved?"

"…Two points of interest. First, samples of narcotics stored at the site contained traces of crystallized Venom. Also, the DEA agents who investigated the site were attacked and suffered serious injury. One of the agents was transferred to a nearby hospital for further treatment. I'm headed to the hospital now to ask him exactly what happened. The other three have already died from their wounds."

Aqualad went quiet again for a bit. "I'll call the others. Are you coming in after you visit the hospital?"

"Negative." I said, taking a tight turn as I headed up the ramp onto the freeway. "Better for you guys to meet me at the hospital. M'gann should bring the Bioship."

"Will do." Aqualad confirmed. "We should be there in about three hours."

"Confirmed." I said. "I'll meet you at the hospital."

It ended up taking me about an hour and a half to get to the hospital. A traffic accident had taken some of my time and I had stopped to get people moving again, but I was now standing in the morgue examining the agents who had already died.

It was certainly a gruesome sight.

Ugly burns and boils covered splotches of the agents' skin. A sickly smell was coming off that I thought might mean the chemical was still eating at the flesh. I made a note to get an analysis done on what exactly could do that. What's more, there were a number of brutal cuts all over them. The lacerations were thin and long, but they had at least a half dozen in dangerous locations on their bodies. Places where arteries and major organs were located.

It didn't paint a pretty picture. All of these agents had been in perfect health yesterday, but something had gotten the drop on them. Their job may have just been to investigate, but they were each carrying loaded weapons and were ready for a fight if the worst happened. One M4 Carbine was missing from their van and each of them had expended at least two magazines for their rifles and two for their sidearms, based on the empty magazine compartments on their vests when their bodies were recoverd. That's a lot of firepower, which meant that either they were hit by serious numbers or something that could take serious punishment and keep coming.

I examined one of the arms of the agents and took note of his hand. The bones in it had been broken, all the fingers and knuckles. Such injuries meant that this guy-his clipboard said 'Kibben, James A.'-had punched something about as strong as a brick wall. I considered the possibility that whatever could shrug off that much ammo could probably do this to a person's hand if they were punched hard enough by an unsuspecting agent. I spent a little over an hour examining each of the bodies and making my own notes from the mortician's report. I used the scanner on my helmet to record the state of the bodies for further reference and my own records. Thanking the mortician on my way out, I exited the morgue and headed up to where the last agent was resting after his surgery.

I nodded to the LAPD patrolmen who were guarding in the lobby and they both waved back. Both of them had been eager to help when I had arrived, but I told them that they should just keep guarding the lobby. They had both been very eager to please and had agreed at once with my suggestion to keep doing what they had been doing. They probably thought it would be a cool story to tell their buddies at the end of the day.

I took the elevator up to the second floor and I walked down the hall, people clearing a path for me as I went. I mulled over a few pieces of evidence in my head before I reached the agent's room.

Chemical burns and serious lacerations. A storehouse that seemed like more than investigators initially thought. Those agents encountered something that made them open fire and they got their asses handed to them in the altercation.

I needed to know what the hell they found before the Team and I went there. And we had to go soon or the whole operation might be packed up by the time we arrived and all the evidence along with it.

I approached the wounded agent's door and knocked softly before entering.

And then all hell broke loose.

A figure clad entirely in black extended their arm to press a sidearm against my head, but I caught the movement from the corner of my vision and ducked as a shot was fired from the apparently suppressed weapon.

I swiped my left arm out and knocked the weapon away as my right arm reached for my Lawgiver and brought it swinging around to point at my attacker.

The figure responded with a vicious kick that knocked away my gun before I could bring it up to fire. I stepped back quickly to avoid a swipe from a knife and again to gain enough distance to draw my own knife.

For a moment, my attacker and I were staring each other down and sizing one another up.

My attacker was female and pretty tall, about my height. She wore a black form fitting tactical suit with a baklava that covered her lower face and hair, with large reflective sunglasses covering most of her eyes and nose. She held her knife with confidence, but I doubt she could overpower me without some sort of meta-ability. And if she had one of those, she'd have likely already used it to attack instead of a gun.

I glanced at the DEA agent on the bed and bit back a curse. He had had his throat slit and based on the amount of blood, he was already dead. He probably hadn't even been awake to even try to resist his attacker. I didn't know if he actually knew anything important about what he saw, but clearly, somebody hadn't wanted to take the chance. My eyes darted right back to the assassin.

She lunged at me, switching to a reverse grip on her blade and bringing it down while stepping in and trying to catch a vulnerable spot on my vest between my collar and shoulder. Fast, but not fast enough to get me. I grabbed her wrist on its downward lunge and kneed her in the gut. She 'oof'd' aloud and I kicked her into the bed over on the other side of the room and triggered my comm.

"Judge to Team, I'm under attack and need assistance! I'm at the hospital! How copy?"

I broke off as the assassins lunged back at me from atop the bed she had jumped on. Her momentum allowed her to latch into me and she used the opportunity to climb onto my back and try to stab me again. Her blade bounced off of the shoulder guard and rattled her grip on her weapon, making her pause before trying again.

"Judge, its Robin! What's your situation?"

"I've got a damn assassin on my back! Requesting backup!" I yelled and ran backwards at the wall, where I slammed her into it several times before loosening her grip enough to throw her over my head at the wall near the window.

"We're en route, Judge! Just hold on!"

Before my attacker went flying, she managed to drive her knife a good three inches into my collarbone in the space between my armored plates. The knife however, was stuck there as I flexed and shifted to lodge it in place. I blocked out the sting with ease. She had made the mistake many do with a knife, getting it stuck in your enemy without striking a fatal blow. She couldn't recover the knife before I threw her and she slammed into a cabinet that spilled some sort of clear chemicals on her. When I sniffed the air, I could tell it was mostly rubbing alcohol.

That gave me an idea.

I pulled out my lighter from my belt and lit a flame before she could lunge at me again. She froze when she saw the small, but potent flame in my hand.

"That's right." I said, pulling out the knife she left in me with a grunt and tossing it off into a corner. "You know what you're covered in and what will happen if you get too close to me. Now, who the hell are you and what-"

I broke off as the assassin ran at me and tried to kick the lighter out of my hand. The move was so unexpected, that she succeeded and I dropped it while dodging her boot heel. Unfortunately for her, the results were not what she expected.

The lighter touched the liquid running down her pant leg and before either of us could do more than blink, she was on fire.

I heard her gasping in pain as the heat climbed up her body and burned through her suit, hitting her skin. Whatever her suit was made of, it certainly wasn't flame retardant. Still, she stumbled towards me but was in too much pain from her situation to do much more. I moved back and as she tried to lunge at me again, I kicked her back.

The kick forced her to stumble back hard since she couldn't catch herself. She hit the edge of the window and before I could finish my lunge forward to catch her, she had fallen out of the window.

We were only on the second story, so it was entirely possible to survive that kind of fall, but the fire certainly wasn't helping at all. I ran to the edge of the window and looked down to find the assassin, but she was already writhing on the ground.

Before I could decide on my next course of action, I heard a buzzing noise.

I looked up to see a UAV flying down to hover about twenty meters from my spot by the window. The UAV was round with a rotor keeping it aloft while four smaller propellers on the outside gave it direction. A slew of equipment covered the top portion, leaving the UAV with a sort of bloated half sphere shape to it, like a soap bubble resting atop a body of water.

I saw a small camera twitch and look right at me. Then I noticed a tiny missile, perhaps a foot long, pop out of one side of the UAV and one thought occurred to me.

"Ah, fuck me."

I turned and ran back towards the door to the hospital room, yelling for anyone still nearby to get the hell out. I made it to the door when I heard a hissing-sort of a 'whoosh'-noise. I lunged to my left and hit the floor as the missile detonated.

The blast echoed in my skull and made my ears ring like Sunday service was going on. The concussive force of the missile detonating shattered glass and knocked over trays and other objects in the hallway. The detonation had taken place close enough behind me to actually move me a short distance along the floor from where I had landed after my lunge. The fire suppression systems in the hospital activated and I pulled myself off the floor and turned back to the room. The explosion blew out the wall behind me that separated the room from the rest of the hospital and set a number of flammable items on fire. There was also a cloud of dust in the air from the blown apart concrete in the building's walls.

I peered around the corner and saw the UAV clearly hovering in the same spot. The damn thing twitched it's camera again, but I saw my Lawgiver on the floor next to what was left of one of the beds.

Before I could go for it and try to take the damned thing out with a HighEx round, my backup arrived.

Superboy came crashing through my line of sight and struck the UAV with a double hammer fist. The light attack drone never stood a chance against his fists and crumpled like paper-mache.

I sighed as I walked over to my weapon and picked it up. I was eternally grateful that Lawgivers were so durable, because mine still looked functional. I'd do a full maintenance check before firing it again, of course, but it looked alright.

I holstered it and walked to the huge gap that now existed where a wall once did in the room.

Miss Martian had landed the Bioship near the parking lot and the rest of the Team was getting out of it while it remained cloaked. The only reason I knew where it was was the slight visible distortion the cloak let off and the fact that the back ramp had extended down to let the others get off, thereby breaking the ship's camo.

I looked down, trying to find my assassin or at least a body to recover or rush to get medical aid for, but there was nothing down there. Nothing, except the wreckage of the UAV and Superboy looking at it while nudging a piece of it with his boot. I tried looking for some sort of getaway vehicle, but it was useless. There was no sign of her. I sighed as the Team saw me and waved, while I waved back and indicated I was on my way down.

Someone had clearly wanted to erase any leads into whatever it was the DEA agents had uncovered. Someone had sent an agent of their own to dispose of evidence and they had definitely done so. The only agent left who could have told me anything was dead and now his body likely wouldn't even provide any useful clues once it was recovered.

I sighed again as I started heading for the stairs to join the others on the ground.

And everything was going so well this morning…

"Time to get to work."