AN: I don't care if the chapter title bears only a passing resemblance to the plot, it a Rock Lee reference, dammit!


One, two, three, turn. One, two, turn. One, two, three, turn. One, two, turn. Thirty eight.

One, two, three, turn. One, two, turn. One, two, three, turn. One, two, turn. Thirty nine.

One, two, three-

"WOULD YOU CUT THAT OUT?!"

Beast Boy jumped so high, he nearly hit his head off of the ceiling. Which would have been a considerable achievement, what with the ceiling being at least three feet above him. Probably closer to four.

"Dude, you nearly gave me a heart attack! What's your problem?" he asked.

"You, loudly counting out each step, turn, and completed circuit of the four foot by five foot cell you are pacing in. After you unjustly complained about me quietly singing 'A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall'."

"Singing? You call that singing?"

"Hah! At least it was better than your rendition of 'The Song that Never Ends'! Does the phrase 'like torturing a cat' mean anything to you?"

The person Beast Boy was bickering with was occupying the cell directly opposite him. He was older than Beast Boy was, and taller, and had short, spiky black hair. His skin was pale almost to the point of being white but it also had a slightly bluish tinge. He wore a tight blood red t-shirt with long sleeves finishing just past his elbows, and a pair of black jeans, and on the t-shirt was a symbol like an upside-down y, coloured blue.

"Now, now, boys." Said a girl's voice coming from the cell on Beast Boy's left. "Play nice."

The cells that they were occupying consisted of three blank white walls, and one glass wall. The ceiling seemed to glow uniformly with a white light, and it seemed that this light was connected with the loss of powers of anyone inside the cell. For most of the day the cells would be completely featureless, with not even a piece of furniture to their name. Once in the morning and once in the evening a slot would open and a plate of food would be revealed. In the evening, part of the side wall folded down to form a bed. At periodic intervals during the day, a door would open in the back wall revealing a toilet and a shower. If this room was in use the glass wall would cloud over, leaving some measure of privacy, although no one doubted they could still be seen on camera.

Of course, they really had no idea if it was day or night, but there didn't seem to be any reason to debate the matter. The lights stayed on all the same.

From one cell, the opposite three cells could be easily seen. Reflected in the opposite glass could also be seen the adjacent cells. This made it relatively easy to converse with the people in the five cells around the central one, but beyond that, communication had to be passed on.

The girl in the cell to Beast Boy's left had the superhero handle Solenoid, although she was in civilian clothing; apparently she was visiting the States from the UK, and was grabbed when taking pictures of Jump's biggest tourist attraction (the T shaped tower). He could only see her by the reflection, but she looked to be in her mid-teens, with long brown hair and wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

Immediately to his right, the cell was occupied by a quiet boy of about the same age and height as Beast Boy. He wasn't even aware he was a metahuman and didn't have a superhero name, so he didn't feel self-conscious about giving his real one, Sean. He had been picked up coming home from school one day, and was shocked to find out he was a meta. He still didn't know what it was he was supposed to be able to do. He was fairly quiet, and mostly kept himself to himself.

Across and to the left was a girl who called herself Legend. She was very odd. She looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old, but when asked, claimed to be no older than four. Her mental age seemed to be about six. She had short black hair, and was wearing a black polo neck sweater and a pair of red jeans. When she was first brought in she spent most of the day crying for her mother, but after that mostly concerned herself with talking to a little stuffed bear she had somehow managed to keep a hold of. He seemed to be called Scruff.

The cell opposite and to the right was currently empty. Directly opposite, the person Beast Boy had been arguing with, was called Coatl. Which reminded him…

"Oh, I've got a couple more ideas for nicknames!"

"You mean you haven't given up and called it quits already?" Coatl groaned.

"Serves you right for having a name so difficult to pronounce." Beast Boy responded. He'd been attempting to find a good nickname for Coatl since he'd arrived, and had had an influx of ideas after Coatl had explained to him that his name meant 'snake' in nahuatl.

"So, I suggested 'Solid' already…" he said.

"Yes, and 'Liquid', but not 'Gas'. Instead you skipped to 'Solidus'. Whatever sense that makes." Coatl replied.

"Ask Hideo Kojima. Anyway, I tried Solid, I tried…I tried Plissken, but you didn't like that one either. Listing types of snakes wasn't working. I thought of Jormun…Jormunga…"

"Jormungandr."

"Yeah, that. But I can't say that either. You didn't particularly like the Medusa suggestion, or Nagini, but how was I supposed to know they were girls?"

"How did you know they were related to snakes, and yet not that they were female?" Coatl asked, exasperated.

"I asked one of the guards to look snakes up on the internet. You didn't think I'd actually heard of German gender, did you?"

"Jormungandr."

"Whatever, Coat boy."

"Coatl."

"Boys!" Solenoid inserted again.

Someone giggled, and they realised it was Legend.

"Scruff thinks you should be called Grey. No one else has grey skin."

"Grey?" Coatl said. "That's actually not…"

He was interrupted by the familiar sound of the main door opening.

There were two doors into the area where the holding cells were, one at each end of the long corridor. At one end was the main door, or at least what everyone assumed was the main door – no one had ever gone through it, but a number of armed guards were visible from the cells closest to it. At the other end was an elevator.

When people were first captured they would be brought in by the elevator. At the start of each day, not long after the first plate of food had been put out, a number of the cells would be gassed and once the occupiers were sufficiently under control the light would go off, and doctors escorted by guards would lift the chosen few onto gurneys, and take them into the elevator. Most people had passed out by then, but a few had clung to consciousness long enough to know that the elevator went down, not up.

Towards the end of the day, most of them would be returned to their cells, none the wiser for their little jaunt downstairs. Some people didn't come back though. Usually there was at least one in each group, sometimes more, sometimes less. Today's group hadn't been returned yet.

It wouldn't be them, because they would be brought in by the elevator. Occasionally the main door would be opened to allow a group of people in a hurry to pass through, but mostly it was only opened for Jamieson to 'inspect the stock'. The prisoners had long since stopped caring about his little visits and mostly just carried on with whatever it was they were doing, which was why now it was odd that the low murmur of conversation coming from the direction of the main door was slowly dying out.

Beast Boy's cell was closer to the main door than to the elevator, so he didn't have long to wait to see what all the fuss was about. A girl with purple hair, pale grey skin, and wearing a black leotard covered by a blue cloak, was being guided down the corridor by six armed guards.

"Scruff says never mind." Legend said to Coatl when she caught sight of the stranger.

The strange girl was walking slowly down the corridor, taking her time to examine each person carefully. Beast Boy thought he saw a strange look pass between her and Coatl, but he couldn't be sure, and then she had moved on. Coatl watched her go. When she had moved far enough away, Beast Boy spoke up.

"What the hell was that all about? Who was that girl? What was she doing here? Do you know her?"

Coatl stared after her for a moment.

"She's the girl I came here to find," he said, eventually.

Beast Boy had been in the cell for five days. Five agonizingly long, terribly boring days (only one of which he had spent unconscious after being gassed in the morning). Coatl had been there when he arrived, and they had had quite a bit of time to get to know each other. Coatl claimed to be a half-demon (or three-quarters demon or something – his family's names were as difficult to pronounce as his own, and Beast Boy's eyes had glazed over almost immediately) despite the lack of horns and a tail. He had travelled to this dimension in place of his father, who wished to make an offer to another half-demon that happened to be living in Jump City. Apparently, Coatl had arrived right in front of one of Raincoat's teams who had wasted no time in pumping him full of tranquilizers. Being half-demon seemed to amp up the immune system but Coatl was still hopelessly outnumbered and was eventually taken prisoner.

That was about three weeks ago. Coatl thought that whatever it was that the scientists were doing to them, they couldn't figure out his half-demon blood, because people didn't usually last for more than a week before they disappeared. They'd heard there was another person further down the corridor that was coming up on two weeks and seemed to be half-demon as well, but doubt was cast on this after they learned he had named himself after an angel, Metatron.

The sound of footsteps approaching indicated that the girl and the guards were on their way back, moving quickly this time and without glancing to either side. Beast Boy watched her go.

"So what do you think— Coatl? What's up?" The half-demon was looking dazed, leaning on the wall beside him to prevent himself from falling. He shook himself, and then straightened.

"So that's how she's doing it…" he said.

"Doing what?" Beast Boy asked.

"But how could she maintain it? Unless she chooses who to use it on, and only has to keep it up for those few. Which explains why I didn't see it the first time…"

"Coatl, doing what?" Beast Boy was starting to get impatient.

"Even still, to maintain it for any length of time would be a severe drain. She really must be powerful. Then again, daughter of Trigon and all that…"

"DOING WHAT?!"

Beast Boy's explosion pulled Coatl's attention away from his monologue, only then seeming to notice that the others will listening to him.

"Hmm?"

"Argh!" Beast Boy shouted, preparing an eloquent (albeit verbose) rant about why people should listen, but he was interrupted before he could begin by Solenoid once again defusing the situation.

"Coatl, would you mind enlightening the rest of us as to whatever wonderful revelations you've had? I'm afraid the anticipation will kill us before long."

"What she said," Beast Boy added.

"Sorry guys. As Raven – that's her name, by the way – as she walked past the second time, I didn't see a girl with purple hair and a blue cloak, but instead a woman wearing a business suit and a much less original hair colour. She must have cast a spell to make the guards think she's part of Raincoat. If she's going about under cover, that means she's working against them, and that can only mean good things for us."

"Are you sure?" It was Sean who asked, speaking for the first time in a while. Before Coatl had a chance to respond, however, a shout went up along the corridor.

"Roll call! Roll call!"

Almost as one, they turned to look at the empty cell opposite Sean, and it was he who spoke.

"Maybe he's just been moved."

Occasionally, when those taken in the morning were returned, the guards would place them in a different cell. No one knew if they did this for a reason or by accident, but it didn't seem to make much difference. To keep track of who was still in the cells, they would do a roll call at the end of each day, immediately after the prisoners had been returned.

If it had been called, that meant that the prisoners had been returned, and the cell was still empty. The previous occupant, Soul, had been taken that morning after only having arrived the day before. It was unusual for people to disappear so quickly, but not without precedent.

Whoever had Called first, who ever had first shouted 'roll call', would pass their name to the cell on the left, who would pass it on left, and so on, until the last person in the row would pass it across. It would then come back down the opposite side and cross again, before returning to it's owner, like an elaborate game of Chinese whispers (or in this case, shouting). When the person had heard their name come back to them, they would tell the person on their left, who would start passing their own name along. It would go on like this until everyone's name had circuited the room, and the roll call was over.

Conversations stopped once again as the names were passed up and down, and Beast Boy breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Soul's name going around. He had just been moved after all. Eventually it was passed along that the call was over.

"Karen? Karen, are you there? Has anyone seen Karen?" Beast Boy heard someone calling further down the corridor. There really wasn't any chance that the roll call would have missed her, but everyone passed on the message anyway.

"Nineteen." Coatl said. "We lost two today. That Karen would have been one, I don't recall the other. Dammit, I hope help comes soon."

It was at that exact moment that the lights went out. Not the fluorescent lighting in the corridor, but the intensely white lights that were the ceiling in every chamber.

Stunned silence descended upon the cells. It was a few seconds before Beast Boy had recovered enough to reach out and attempt to use his powers, but that was more than enough time for the glass doors to slide open of their own accord.

He cautiously stepped outside of his cell, joining the others in the corridor as they looked around in confusion.

"Um…" he started, but stopped when he heard the main door opening. He turned and watched in awe as two figures entered the room.

"I told you we didn't need to attack the guards," the shorter was saying to the taller. "It would only have drawn more attention to us."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. No need to rub it in. Besides, we still don't know what Raven was trying to tell us before you cut her off."

"Dudes!" Beast Boy said to those around him. "That's Robin!"

Other such whispers were being passed back and forth, and it seemed to catch the attention of the new arrivals.

"Yes, I'm Robin." The boy in question said. "And this is Cyborg. We're here to rescue you."

The door slid closed behind them.

"That wasn't supposed to happen." Robin said, a look of worry on his face.

"Oh crap."

Pouring in from air ducts on either side of the door was a cloudy gas.

"They must have had some sort of fail safe in place in case all the cells were opened at the same time. A special code required to be input within thirty seconds, or…this. That must have been what Raven was trying to tell us."

As Robin spoke, he had turned to the controls for the door, pulling the panel off and poking around at the wires. After a few second he threw the panel away in frustration.

"I can't open it in time," he said, and then raised his voice. "Is there any other way out of here?"

"Can't you just blast through it?" someone shouted from the crowd.

"This place was designed to hold metahumans. We won't be able to break through in time, and even if we did, there's another one just as thick no more than two metres away. Is there any other way out of here?"

"The elevator!"

The crowd parted to let Robin past, and followed him to the other door at the far end of the corridor and watched as he repeated the process of pulling the cover from the controls and examining the wiring. This time however, instead of throwing the cover away, he elected to kick the door.

"Dammit!"

He spun away in disgust, but stopped short as a black shadow rose up in front of him. Raven stepped from it and moved quickly towards the door.

"Why do I seem to be doing all the work on this mission?" she muttered, as she carefully replaced the panel covering and punched in a code. The elevator doors opened.

At which point the next problem became clear: twenty two people could not fit inside it. A sign on the inside wall said the maximum load was fifteen people, but even that would be a tight fit.

"Anyone who can hold their breath or has some other such talent, stay here. Everyone else, inside."

Beast Boy held back, and noticed Coatl and Legend amongst the others who were doing the same.

"Cyborg, you go with the first group. Keep them all together while you wait for us."

Cyborg complied, stepping into the elevator and pushing the button for the lower levels. Then, impatient, he repeatedly tapped the button to close the doors until they had done so.

Once the doors were closed, a boy with mahogany coloured hair and a green jeans-and-jacket outfit spoke.

"I can't stop it completely, but I can buy us some time," he said, even as his body dispersed into green gas. The gas moved to create a wall across the corridor, but it had to spread itself thin to do so, and as such was not completely effectual.

"I don't need much oxygen," Beast Boy contributed, as he shrank down to a rat.

Robin didn't say a word, but pulled a gas mask from his belt and pressed it over his face.

"Mr Scruff doesn't need to breathe." Legend said, as if that explained everything.

Raven, Coatl, and a boy with gold highlights running through spiky black hair were assessing each other.

"I thought half-demons were supposed to be rare in this dimension." Raven said.

"Are you Metatron?" Coatl asked the other boy.

"Yep."

"Isn't that a little…"

"Pretentious?" Metatron interjected.

"I was going to say ironic." Coatl replied.

"I suppose it's that, too."

They returned to silence, waiting for the elevator to return, conserving their oxygen. A clunking noise had indicated it was on its way back up when the green gas reformed into the red-haired boy, who collapsed to one knee panting.

"Sorry…couldn't hold it longer…powers are weak…"

Robin rushed forward, placing his small gas mask over the other boy's mouth. They all backed up against the door, trying to get as far away from the gas as possible. By this point it was pretty much impossible though, and all they could do was hold their breath, literally as well as figuratively.

After what seemed like eternity the doors opened behind them and they all stumbled into the elevator, Beast Boy returning to human form and reaching for the down button. He imitated Cyborg's action of repeatedly pressing the button, the doors closing in agonising slow motion. But close they did.

Robin and the gas boy were in the worst shape, panting heavily and leaning on the elevator walls. The rest were not that far behind them but at least were able to stand without support. Most of the elevator ride was spent recovering their breath.

"What's…your name?" Robin asked the boy with the green outfit.

"Phaesim." He replied, pushing himself upright once more.

"Thank you, Phaeism." Robin said.

"It's a good thing Cyborg thinks computer hacking is part of an essential introduction to earth culture, otherwise you'd all have been stuck in there." Raven said.

"Did you get time to look at anything else?"

"Not much. Looks like most of the experiments were an attempt to create a virus that would be passed on from metahuman to metahuman by touch, but the diversity of the DNA was giving them problems. A virus that would effect some would have no effect on others. It was pretty heavily stressed that the final product needed to work on all of them. Whatever they were planning on doing, they wanted rid of all of the metas at the same time. And one other thing: the only time they had adult subjects was in the first couple of weeks. Since then, it's just been teenagers."

"Did you send off the information as I told you?"

The elevator doors opened, and they all walked out into an empty corridor.

"I did it just before I teleported down. But in order to teleport, I had to drop the illusion. Their memories will remain the same, but if the see us now, they'll see us as we are. I used the last of my energy to teleport in."

Robin sighed.

"Well, I suppose there's nothing we can do about that."

"Actually…" Coatl interrupted, "I can transfer some of my energy. I don't really do anything other than throw energy balls anyway, teleportation would be much more useful right now."

Raven hesitated, and then nodded. Coatl closed his eyes and concentrated, stretching out his hand and forming a tiny ball of energy in his palm. He opened his eyes as the ball rolled down to the tips of his fingers, and he nudged it gently toward Raven. It hit her directly above her heart, and was slowly absorbed into her body.

"Thanks," she said.

"I'd have given you more but I don't seem to be as strong as usual." He replied.

"I noticed that too." Phaeism said. "Although now that I think about it, I feel a bit stronger now than I did before."

"It's probably just a side effect of whatever was suppressing your powers," Robin reasoned. "Your strength will come back gradually. We should move on, find where Cyborg has decided to hole up."

Beast Boy quickly moved to catch up with Robin.

"Mr Robin sir, can I just say what an honour it is to meet you. I'm…"

"Beast Boy, right?"

Beast Boy's chest swelled with pride. Robin – the Robin – knew who he was.

"Aren't you supposed to be with the Doom Patrol?"

"I used to be, but Mento refused to promote me from Team Mascot to Sidekick. He said it was because I wasn't ready, but I think he just didn't want to give me more pocket money. So I decided to go solo and prove that his excuse was just a load of bull."

"And how long ago was that?" Robin enquired.

"About a week ago. I came to Jump to be the superhero here, but the first crime I tried to stop didn't exactly go as planned. There was a girl being attacked by a group of soldiers, so I took care of them, but that's when the reinforcements arrived. There must have been hundreds of them. With weird powers too – some of them were like ninjas, or wizards, or some strange combination of the two, and there was a bear with lasers – lasers! – shooting out of its eyes. Also, there may or may not have been a siege weapon."

"Are you sure that wasn't just a hallucination brought on by the tranquilizers?"

Before Beast Boy could respond, a door opened up just ahead of them and Cyborg poked his head out.

"In here, guys!"

They hurried forward, and entered the room, which appeared to be used for storage. Beast Boy spotted an item on the floor.

"My belt!"

He grabbed it, and checked to make sure all the items were still attached.

"Lock pick, check. Hey Robin, you'll have to teach me how to use that. Doom Patrol communicator, check. Superhero Spotters Checklist, check – I'll have to remember and mark Robin off. I wonder if he'll introduce me to Batman. Okay, it's all here!"

The others were grabbing their own items and checking them before putting them on. Mostly it was utility belts or masks, the occasional set of armour and weapons.

"So, where next?" Beast Boy asked.

"There should be another way out of here." Raven said. "I caught a glimpse of a floor plan, but I didn't get time to study it."

"Can you teleport us out?" Robin asked.

"No, I haven't got nearly enough energy for that."

"Then we look for the exit. Is everyone ready?"

"I'm missing some important stuff!" Legend said, frantically searching the pockets of a long black jacket she had found. "No, wait…here it is!" She pulled out a pair of goggles and a stupidly large lollypop, placing the goggles on her forehead, and the lollypop in her mouth.

"Okay…" Robin said. "Before we go, I'm going to need names, and powers."

"Roll call," said a boy in ordinary clothing, a small smile on his face.

"Roll call," the others echoed.

"My name is Zach," the boy said. "I don't know what powers I'm supposed to have." He turned to look at the person on his left.

"Slyde, I can control friction."

"I'm Solenoid, I have short ranged telekinesis."

"Fever, I'm a pyromani— er, pyrokinetic." A girl in a yellow outfit beneath a red cape.

"Phaeism, I can become gas."

"I can't tell you my name because I'm not supposed to talk to strangers, but I'm strong." Legend said.

"You're strong?"

"I'm super strong. And this is Mr Scruff. He's a teddy bear. He doesn't have powers, so I have to protect him."

"Beast Boy, animal shape shifter." He said, grinning.

"Metatron, I throw energy balls and have improved speed and agility."

"Sean, I don't know my powers."

"Fiona, no powers."

"Leo Knight, electrokinesis." He was wearing armour that gave him the appearance of a lion.

"Coatl, energy balls and strength."

"I haven't picked a superhero name yet, but I'm invulnerable." A boy in ordinary clothes again.

"Bullet, as in faster than," a girl said grinning. She wore a black costume with a white lightening bolt around the waist.

"Neuroa, telepath." She was wearing a grey hooded robe.

"Photon, I control light." Another girl, with a blue and yellow costume.

"Soul, I can heal."

"Meteorion, energy discs." A girl said, emphasizing the difference. She was in ordinary clothes.

The last person before they had gone full circle back to Zach was a boy wearing a black trench coat jacket and beneath that a blue shirt with faded jeans.

"My name is Bloodborne, and I can use other people's powers…by drinking their blood."

There was a silence after that, a silence Beast Boy felt he was honour-bound to break.

"Okay, firstly, ew, and secondly, how the hell did you figure out that was your power?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know." Bloodborne replied.

Robin took charge again.

"Okay, we're going to head out, but I want everyone to move in an organised way. The three of you without powers – Zach, Sean, Fiona – you'll stay in the centre of the group. No Name, you will now be called Human Shield. If anything goes near those three, your job is to stand between it and them. Surrounding that group I want everyone without offensive powers. Then anyone with a long range attack. Finally, short range attacks. I'll lead the way, Cyborg will be at the rear. Any questions?"

Silence.

"Okay, move out."

That's when they heard the scream.


AN: Ahhhhhhhh! Chapter 4 is over, the longest chapter yet, and the most fun to write. Possibly because there was proper conversations happening instead of infodumping backstory. But never fear, the infodump will return next chapter!

Speaking of Chapter 5, no prizes for guessing who it's about. I realised the other day that I don't actually know what Starfire's backstory is - the others were all planned out years ago, but I kept skipping passed her. I'm still not entirely sure it's going to go, but I guess I'll find out when I write it. A tentative next week estimate for time of arrival.

Also, thanks to these people for lending me their characters, as without them I'd have had even greater pains generating all nineteen inmates:

Jedi-And, who Legend and Mr Scruff belong to.

Prisionero, who is the creator of Metatron.

Chaltab, for his character Phaeism.

ShiningAsta, to whom both Leo Knight and his not-yet introduced sister Karen belong.

And Mightierdandasword, who loaned his character Slyde.