A/N: Hi guys, sorry it took so long to get this chapter out, but the day I started working on it I was moving. Since then there has been Internet problems, room fights, unpacking, shopping, adjusting, and lots of headaches. I totally lost all will to write for a few weeks, and I had a lot of stuff to do, so I just got around to finishing this chapter that I started weeks ago. I hope you can all forgive any mistakes, as I didn't want to wait to go through my normal editing, and have no Beta, so as always, the many mistakes are all mine. I've actually been thinking of getting a Beta, someone to look over my work, help me get better, point out my mistakes, and hopefully keep me from just abandoning this story as I've done before. I don't mean to... It just seems to always happen. But, my faithful readers, this time, I swear that I will finish this story, however long it takes me! Now, as I'm sure you've all been wanting... On with the show!
Wait, not quite. Almost forgot.
Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice, the Justice League, any characters other than my own, or even really the basic storyline, which while something I came up with myself, is something I'm sure many people have thought of, and just been to lazy to get to writing. Right. Now on with the show!
Supergirl stood in front of her pod, staring at the green tinted glass as it slowly opened, ready to put her back in, willingly or not. She had gotten rather claustrophobic after waking up in the middle of the night, with no one there, all the lights turned off, trapped in a green glass box with no way out. She hadn't liked going back in even before that, but that made it all the worse, forcing herself not to flinch, or show weakness. the G-gnome still sat on her shoulder, but as it wasn't told to do anything, it was inactive for now, until it got new orders to control her.
She had heard rumors that Superboy was fighting now, foiling Cadmus and The Light's plans, and for a moment she let herself feel a twinge of pride in her twin. She knew once she completed the Last Test, she would be ordered to go out there and kill/capture the Justice League, and anyone worth while who got in her way, including their pathetic sidekicks. One of them, she knew, was Superboy. She had seen what he was doing sometimes, flashes in her sleep of how he was, his missions, and those friends of his. Supergirl had pushed this to the back of her mind, to think over when the G-gnomes couldn't see it.
But it was getting harder, as her final goal approached. She was getting more and more worried, and had fallen back on thinking of her brother and the new life he had when things became to hard. She would try as hard as she could out in the real world to get free, to avoid hitting the heroes who she would be forced to fight with all her power, but she couldn't make it too obvious. Cadmus was always watching. She had tried getting warnings out any way she could, trying to press certain thoughts into Superboy's head, but it didn't work as far as she could tell.
Finally, the glass had raised, and she half stumbled into her pod, turning to face the G-gnomes who were locking her back away until the next day when her harsh training and fear inducing sessions would resume. Supergirl did her best to remain calm as the green material closed over her, taking slow, deep breaths and closing her eyes, telling herself that she was in a big, open space, that the walls surrounding her-suffocating her-didn't exist. But it hardly worked, because she knew that they did exist. And she could just imagine them closing in on her, cutting off her air supply, leaving her in darkness, feeling the cold glass press against her, crushing her, killing her.
No! she snapped her eyes open, forcing air into her lungs which had restricted themselves as she imagined her fear becoming reality. It wasn't her greatest fear, but it was definitely up there on the list. Supergirl breathed in deep through her nose, letting it out through her mouth. In, out, in, out, in out, she counted in her mind until she was calm. She pressed a small button on the inside of the reinforced glass and a needle came out of the floor on a mechanical arm, injecting her with a sedative.
Her last thought before she drifted off to sleep is if she would wake up in the morning, and get her chance to leave. To set foot, for the first time, outside these dismal, metal floors, the pristine, hospital white walls, the experiments and the needles and the pain. To see the sun, the sky, breath fresh air for once in her short life.
She wondered if she would see a superhero. But no, she knew she would see them. After all, she would be attacking them. She wished just once that she had a choice. That she could say no, that she could stop and do what she wanted, instead of what they wanted. But she doubted, somehow, that that would ever happen. I am a weapon after all. Even if I escaped the Justice League would destroy me, like Cadmus would if they found on of the Justice League's weapons they couldn't risk falling back into enemy hands. Right? Righ...ZzzzZzzzzZzzzzzZzzZzzz. The sedative kicked in at last and Supergirl, Project Superclone, knew no more.
R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R * R *
The next morning, Supergirl woke up, knowing that today would be the day. She would get one shot at the Final Test. If she beat it, she would go on to destroy the Justice League and any other heroes who got in her way, or she would be terminated. She wouldn't get a second chance at this, she knew. So she would have to do the best she could and better.
She stood outside huge, double doors made out of metal, freshly showered and dressed in an exact replica of the white costume she wore before, that looked the same as the one Superboy was in while in his pod. Her long, thick black hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and the front locks, her bangs, hung down around her shoulders like the rest of her hair, only differing in that they were hiding her left eye from sight as she studied herself in the distorted image the steel doors gave her. Supergirl tilted her head to the side, leaning in close to look at her prominent cheek bones, her rosy cheeks, her long dark eye lashes and her full mouth.
And then she saw her imperfections. The small scar cutting into her arching right eyebrow, half hidden by her hair, which she got by a Kryptonite tipped knife as Cadmus experimented with making her resistant, and they got to her limit of what her skin could and couldn't withstand.
She saw the absence of freckles, or a tan, because she had never stepped foot in the sun. She saw how small she was, how her ribs were so easy to see in her skin tight uniform. She saw how her face was free of wrinkles, no laugh lines, no signs of smiles, because she had never smiled or laughed in her six months or so of existence. She saw her unnaturally pale skin, and how she never was allowed to show emotion, so she looked like an ice queen with her pale blue/white eyes and her creamy skin-tone. She saw how her pale, almost blue tinged lips were chapped, how her long black hair was dull and faded, how her eyes were empty, lifeless, dead in all senses of the word.
She looked emotionless, cold, aloof. As if she felt nothing at all, as if she was the perfect little weapon Cadmus wanted. And she felt like she was wearing a mask, but not. Because how could it be a mask when it was all she was, all she knew? How could she know who she was when all she knew about herself related somehow to her powers, her training or Cadmus?
She didn't have a favorite color, or food. She didn't have a friend or a family member, unless you counted Superman, who was technically her father, Superboy, who was her twin brother though they had been grown in test tubes, and the blond Supergirl, who was technically her cousin something something, and who she had been partially modeled after, and was meant to replace.
She was leaning slightly to the side, arms crossed, foot tapping, face emotionless as she faced her final challenge. The Last Test.
A sharp whistle broke into her thoughts, telling her it was time to go in, and the thick steel doors slid soundlessly open. She walked in, gaping at what she saw. The room was a huge metal ball, white with glowing blue lines so it looked like a chess board, but with none of the squares filled in. She was standing on a plain metal walkway, the same as the room, but there was no rails and if she looked down to either side all she saw was the curving metal of the walls. In the exact middle of the room was a platform, with no visible supports, and she was currently standing on the only way on or off.
At first she thought nothing about the fact that the room was lit, but then she saw that the white metal glowed and reflected a strange white light that seemed to come from nowhere, keeping the room in full radiance. In the middle of the platform was two pedestal-like things coming up from the metal. There were holes in them the exact shape and size of her arms and hands, and she knew what they wanted her to do. Behind Supergirl, the cold doors closed, sealing her into this horrible white ball.
She took a deep breath, and walked forward till she was right in front of the arm/hand pedestal/hole things. Inhaling sharply through her nose, and exhaling heavily through her mouth, she jammed her hands in, and they sunk up to her elbows, the gooey, organic-like metal forming closer around her arms and trapping her inside the machine.
They glowed, and then the room began to spin, up, down, side-to-side, diagonally, until she lost sight of what was up and what was down, which way was north and which was south, something she had been trained to always know, along with an internal clock, but she couldn't make sense of time either. It was as if suddenly she had lost all direction, everything she had been taught to help her always know when and where she was. But now... Nothing.
Then she noticed the room had turned into a carbon copy of Metropolis, complete with people, cars, dogs, buildings, streetlamps, along with city noises, smells and sights. At least, they matched all the sounds, smells and sights the G-gnomes had put into her mind of such things. But how? The Test, she thought. They plan to make me fight fake Justice Leaguers on carbon copies of their own cities, their own battlefields, where they held all the advantage. Shit. I'm screwed. I'm so totally screwed.
Cadmus didn't teach her to curse, it was something she had learned on her own. When they had nothing for her to do, she had taken to watching the security feeds in the monitor room, and with all the bad words every single person in Cadmus used when things went wrong, which was often, she could curse like a drunken sailor, something she had carefully kept hidden, making sure she never spoke it out loud, so as not to be caught on tape, even if she was alone.
She looked up through the buildings, using her X-ray vision to search both the skies and the ground for any heroes. There, she thought, a flash of red cape. He could be trying to sneak up on me. Of course, I could be supposed to use a surprise attack, and he won't know who I am or why I'm here yet, but that was too much to hope for, she decided. With my luck, he'll probably be on the lookout for me, with backup hidden somewhere. It's always safest to assume the enemy knows who you are, where you are, and how you fight, along with them having a few tricks up their sleeves.
She remembers the G-gnomes called those kinds of thoughts pessimistic. But in her opinion, she was either constantly proven right or pleasantly surprised. Let's just say that pleasantly surprised didn't happen often, especially since she lived in Cadmus.
She caught the flash of red again, this time from a different direction, and turned her head slightly to keep it in sight this time. She followed it around until she saw it go behind a building, and not come out the other side like before. Her eyes widened for a second, shifting to have a red tint, as she used the X-ray vision she had been designed to have.
Her eyes widened again, in shock this time. Because behind that building, and in every direction she looked with her X-ray vision she could see members of the Justice League, hidden on rooftops, behind buildings, costumes covered by civilian clothes, but she could see them. And then the one she knew was made to imitate Superman looked her right in the eyes and she knew he could sense her staring at him. All around her shop windows blew up with a Bang! And then the fight began.