A/N: Every self respecting Young Justice fan has to have one of these: a rewrite/1st person POV of at least one of the episodes.
And if you're a comic/anime/scifi fan, you might have heard of StarFest, mostly for Star Trek and Star Wars, but often including Harry Potter, anime cosplayers, pirates (still don't understand that one), comic book cosplayers, and actors (Jonathan Frakes this year) from Star Trek. It takes place in Denver, Colorado at a Marriott generally. Try looking up some StarFest videos by byrini on youtube for a general idea of this, but it's definitely worth looking up. Comes again in April. Check out more here: starland .com /wp/starfest/ and starland .com /wp/starfest/guests/ (It's actually for 2012, not 2011)
Even Superboy's voice could be heard faintly from our distance as he yelled at the mothership as Dick climbed onto my back, "Alright you glorified trespassers, you wanna see how a real alien fights?" Already I was running at a slightly slower speed than I was used to until he gave us the signal, and as soon as he called in our minds Now or never, Rob tightened his hold on my neck and I kicked up the speed.
Hitting the ground, we tucked and rolled, then ran to a hole on our right as two of the aliens passed by. Robin looked out the side, and lead me yelling telepathically, Way's clear. Let's go! and we took off running towards the center of the ship. We took cover yet again as another alien passed and I pulled off my goggles, only to be surprised as M'gann took out another alien behind us. Together the four of us took off, only for M'gann to collapse along the way.
No. Her voice rang clearly in our heads mournfully. He's gone, and broke down crying, causing for us to rush back and return to her aid.
It's alright, I assured her. We'll find him with Artemis. I know it.
No, Martian Manhunter disagreed. My mind is clearer now. The disintegration beam is exactly that. There is no detention facility; no prisoners to rescue. Our mission holds no purpose. Anger boiled inside of me, absolutely sure he was wrong.
No, you're wrong, I say gripping the front of his cape. The Zeta radiation proves she's alive. She's-
Stop it, KF, Robin pulls me away and grips me by the front of my costume, much more forcefully and mature than I believed a thirteen year old could have. I've been scanning for League and Team signals since we got inside. His hold loosened on me. They're not here.
My anger dwindles to nothingness, and I feel something inside of me break. Artemis, dead? But, I would have- I should have… my Artemis had to be alive. But Robin's next words finally made me realize the truth.
Artemis is gone. But our mission still holds purpose, to destroy this mother ship.
M'gann stands again, wincing as she does so with the help of her uncle. As J'onn and Robin run off, she gives my shoulder one last comforting squeeze- which alone is its own silent conversation- before joining them, and with a growl of both frustration and anger, I follow, and use my speed to run on ahead as the Martians fly up above us.
We enter the center of the mother ship, a glowing yellow orb with surrounding black layers. Aliens fly around and to it, as Robin scans it on his minicomputer.
This is the power core. Blow this and the whole mother ship blows, and we all jump to action, Robin ahead of us all. He attempts to jump onto one of the platforms for a closer approach, but loses his balance from the change of gravitational force and falls to his knees and then his stomach before I run up to grab him, and we both get sucked in. Robin uses one of his grappling gun like gadgets and prevents us from falling to our death, and M'gann lowers us down slowly after she and Martian Manhunter take out another alien about to kill us.
When he lays out his explosives, I know. You knew, I accused. You knew from the beginning why we were really here.
He taps away on his computer and turns to me. Four minutes. Let's go. Then, the charges begin to blink.
Megan lifts us out of the core, and I run on ahead to the opening, which closes just as Robin and I get there. Perfect, and I turn to the sound of the alien robotic legs behind us. Robin and I dive to our right and the Martians dive to the left.
Sixteen seconds and counting. Manhunter, take Miss Martian and go. Robin demands in his authority voice.
No, we won't leave you.
That's an order. We'll follow as soon as we blow those doors. With that, they disappear into the floor below us and I glance at Robin. He sighs at me, and rubs his eyes.
"We're not blowing those doors." He tells me. I know in an instant he's speaking out loud to avoid Miss Martian knowing, but she'll found out in less than ten seconds anyways. I nod at him, and we agree. We'll go down fighting.
I close my eyes for half a second, imagining that Artemis was there to fight alongside us, and for an instant I believe that I can see a flash of blonde hair, but I know it's my vivid imagination.
"Artemis," I whisper under my breath, as we break out from our cover and charge the aliens and pull down my goggles. Beside me I hear the familiar sound of Robin pulling out some of his Batarangs, and we don't get far before Robin is beamed by a disintegration ray, and just seconds after, I'm blown by the detonation of Rob's explosives.
After that, darkness and silence surrounds me. I can't see anything, and I'm not completely sure that I'm there. All I can hear is my breathing, and all I can see is blackness. I don't feel anything, not peace or anger. Nothing. Occasional words dance across my mind. No, Robin, gone, price, Artemis.
Then the blackness is gone and replaced by a foreign shock. My eyes are open and I bolt up, only to find myself in the cave, and the others, besides a hovering (now lowering) Megan, pushing themselves up from the strange beds that we had been lying on. I stumble slightly, and Captain Marvel.
Megan gasps, and she lays still for a second before pushing herself up as well. I catch a glimpse of Artemis not far from me, beside Robin's bed. She's being assisted by Red Tornado. Aqualad groans to my right and Wolf sits his head on Superboy's lap.
"You're all alive!" Megan's voice calls. She's surprised, as am I.
"What happened in there?" Batman asks.
"The exercise, it all went wrong." Martian Manhunter explains, gripping his head.
"Exercise?" Robin voices my thoughts.
"Try to remember." demands Batman. "What you experienced was a training exercise. Manhunter psychically linked the six of you within an artificial reality. You all knew this going in. What you didn't know was that it was a train for failure exercise. No matter what the team accomplished, the scenario was designed to grow worse. Still, you all knew that none of it was real, even the deaths of the entire Justice League."
"That is why you hardly grieved, even when Wolf was disintegrated before your eyes. But all that changed when Artemis died." Immediately I feel my eyes be drawn to the blonde girl, who was bent over with her hands between her knees, staring at the ground. She seemed to not register what Batman was saying. In fact, I tuned him out right there until I heard Superboy yell.
"This isn't her fault. Why didn't you stop the exercise?" I chose to tune them out again as I looked back at the archer. I knew what exactly was going on in her head, that she was the one to blame, and that it was her fault. She'd beat herself up consciously but deny it out loud to anyone who asked. I looked away again to see Captain Marvel comforting Megan, who was streaming tears.
I knock three times on the open door to her room, which is a light green with dark green accents. "Artemis?" I whisper, calling out to the girl laying on the bed with her head in her arms.
"Go away Baywatch." She growls. Her blonde hair is out of its pony tail and her brown jacket lays on the floor.
"Your door was open, and I wanted to see if you were okay." I sit at the foot of her bed and I touch her shoulder, but she yanks away from my touch.
"I'm fine. Now go away."
"Can you say that to my face?" I challenge, and she sits up, brushing her hair back over her shoulder, away from her face.
"I'm fine." She says through gritted teeth, but where her mouth lies, her eyes tell the truth. The gaze is broken and sad, and the dark eyes mirror what mine looked like (or I guess looked like, I didn't have a mirror) at the end of the "training exercise," when Rob broke it to me that Artemis was gone.
"Artemis," I whisper again. I brush a stray lock back from her face, and I cup her face, just before leaning in to kiss her.
At the last second, I hesitate, but as I waiver, Artemis closes the gap between us and then I don't feel anything but Artemis, I can't think about anything but Artemis, until she pulls back. Her gray eyes meet mine, and I lean in completely this time. This time, Artemis doesn't pull back, but I do.
"What does this mean? You know, for us?"
"Us?" Artemis grins at me. "Personally, I wouldn't want to change a thing."
"Me neither," and I lean back down.
A/N: Sucky ending, but you know what? I got my point across.