Disclaimer: I do not own either Young Justice or its related characters. Such are the property of DC Comics, Warner Bros. Entertainment and Cartoon Network. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.

Signals

Chapter Fifteen: Escalation

Watchtower

April 2 - (irrelevant)

Granny Goodness watched as Superman ripped into the Doom Tanks, one after another. Bending gun-barrels, causing backfires and explosions, ripping off chunks and lobbing them at other tanks, causing yet more explosions and destruction.

The old woman heaved a sigh. Her little Weapon really should have killed him. What had ever possessed her into thinking it was a good idea to try and turn him to instead of just killing him on the spot when she realized the Weapon wouldn't? Scientific curiosity? To see what would happen when she tried to wash a mind that was fully formed and firm in who it was. Possibly. Pride? The show that she could and earn the awe and fear that would come from the achievement. Most definitely. If ever there was a single, unifying, character flaw among the people of Apokolips it was pride. Pride and greed.

Of course, now was not the time to reflect on that. She did have a battle to run.

"Lashina, dearest, would you take Gilotina and Speed Queen down there and do something about those meddlesome Leaguers." It sounded like a gentle request from the sweet old Granny, but all three knew a command when they heard one.

…

Potomac River, Virginia

April 2 – 1:15 pm

A second, smaller, Boom Tube rent the air over the Potomac River between Anacostia-Bolling and the Pentagon.

Clark paused in his artistic rearrangement of a hover-tank's anti-grav treads to pause and glare at the newest of arrivals. Bruce's Batwing continued to circle the aerial battle, if his attention had turned to the new tube, his flying did not reflect it. He appeared to remain focused.

Across the river, Diana also turned her head to assess the latest development in the battle. Though they were not near each other and weren't listening for, or could hear each other. But they spoke in unison all the same.

"Great. Now what?"

…

Watchtower

April 2 – (irrelevant)

Superboy-Dark had almost punched through the door. Just a little more… one more good solid blow and-

-THERE!

He now had a hole large enough to fit his hand through. Superboy-Dark slithered his arm through the hole up to his elbow and felt up the wall outside until he found the door release to the room. Let's see… He was in Kal's quarters, and the Superman's designation was zero-one. But the code keys were four digits, not two. He supposed he could go through evey possible four-digit combination but that might be a waste of time. Superboy-Dark tried to stream-line the process.

Feeling the pad and keys with the pads of his fingers to make sure he was pressing the right number before he actually pressed it, he typed in the year Kal had arrived on Earth –the same date he claimed as his 'birthday'.

Nothing happened.

Okay then… Next Superboy-Dark tried the year Superman first appeared in Metropolis.

Again, nothing.

He tried the year of the formation of the Justice League.

Still nothing.

Okay, maybe it wasn't a date. Maybe it was an alpha-numeric cipher.

Superboy-Dark started simple, he typed in K-A-L-L.

Yeah, he hadn't expected that one to work. Kal wasn't nearly vain enough to use his own name as his keycode. He ran through a number of four letter words in both English and Kryptonese –none opened his door for him.

Superboy-Dark was about to give up on this approach and just return to punching the door in the hopes of breaking the whole thing down. But that would take so long and by the time he finally got through he would be to tired to face Kal… or fight beside him. He still hadn't decided yet.

While he debated this with himself, Superboy-Dark continued to type four letter words into the keypad. Although, these words were by no means the types of four letter words one used in polite conversation. Then, after F-U-C-K had failed (as he knew it would) but before he typed C-U-N-T, just on a lark, purely for the hell of it…

He tried K-O-N-L.

The door release clicked and the panel slid aside. Or rather, as far aside as it could go after being warped by his fist being pummeled into it repeatedly.

Superboy-Dark blinked in wonderment at the now open door. Really? Kal's passcode was his name. That was… unexpected. But he didn't have the time to sit and reflect on its deeper implications right now. He had a battle to get to. Through, he still wasn't sure just which side he was on.

…

Potomac River, Virginia

April 2 – 1:26 pm

Three women floated through the Boom Tube, suspended by flat hovering disks. Great. Just great. As if swarming Parademons and flying tanks weren't enough, they had to send three rejects from a BDSM convention.

Clark groaned. If they were gonna send in actual field commanders, he would have preferred they send Kon. He thumbed the MP3 player Bruce had made for him. He had everything he needed to bring the boy back; he just needed find and get to the boy.

His comm crackled and then Bruce's voice in his ear said, "I recognize one of them as the one you and Flash fought in Central yesterday. She has super-speed, but didn't seem to display any other powers. I don't know about the other two."

"Which is the speedster?" Clark asked.

There was a sound that we are not going to call a growl of frustration, rather, let us call it the Batman's 'Clark why do you ask stupid questions with obvious answers' noise. "Which one do you think? The one with tank-treads on her feet!"

Clark looked back. Okay, so that one he had to keep off her feet as much as possible and hope she didn't know how to vibrate her molecules through or around things. (Also, it would be nice to go through at leas one fight with a speedster where someone did not make a bawdy joke about the word 'vibrate'.) He surveyed the other two.

"You better let me take the one with the rhythmic ribbon things, Bruce." He began in his 'serious' voice, but then transitioned into his light-hearted 'things aren't all that bad, chin up' voice when he continued. "If you go up against her, she might end-up as your next girlfriend."

Clark waited.

Apparently, the Batman was not even going to dignify that with a response.

That was fine. The comment had been made. First, Selina Kyle and then that brief bout of 'romantic interest' between him and Diana, everyone had just sort of decided that the Batman subscribed to a certain fetish that will not be elaborated on more than what has already been said. …Mostly, just because they were in the midst of a battle at present and hadn't the time for teasing.

The Batwing banked left, swung around and launched three nets. Not a one of them managed to catch its intended quarry. The trio scattered, each woman zooming away on her hover disk in a different direction.

The Speed Queen headed down, towards the ground where she could use her super-speed and didn't have to depend on her hover disk in combat. Lashina headed east across the Potomac towards Anacostia-Bolling. Superman followed her, as he'd said, he would take her. Gilotina flew up, into the path of the afternoon sun and Batman lost sight of her. Clever girl.

Bruce did not like lousing sight of his enemy. He felt the hairs stand up on the back on his neck and his grip tightened on the Batwing's controls. After a moment's visual scan of the horizon and skies, he decided that normal human eyes weren't going to cut it and he flipped a switch on a side panel. A small area of his cockpit's glass canopy was suddenly illuminated by a holographic display of the aerial battlefield in three dimensions with a wonderful three hundred and sixty-five degree view. He might not have Clark's super-senses, but with some imagination, ingenuity and money, he could make just as good.

On the readout, Clark was marked in blue, one fast-moving blue dot that zipped and flitted and zoomed around the battle –just generally being super (which, when the Batman said it, did not mean what you think it means). Across the river at the naval base was another blue dot of a different shade identified as Wonder Woman. Right, he'd forgotten that he'd given her this assignment because it was the base her more-than-a-friend but less-that-a-boyfriend was stationed. A green dot marked Artemis on the parade field, the young archer must have run out of arrows by now. What was she fighting with?

Small, bright yellow dots gathered in swarms, those marked the Parademons. The hover tanks were larger dots in orange. The three women, just newly arrived, they were red. One red dot was moving so fast it appeared as a line on his readout. Zooming and zipping around the Pentagon building, just generally making a nuisance of herself. Bruce wondered if she was trying to find a way into the war room below or if she was just trying to stir up a big noisy mess simply for shits and giggles. A second red dot was grappling with Clark –the one with the ribbon-like weapons. Bruce suppressed the urge to humph. He did not have a fetish for whip or rope wielding women. Two cases was not a pattern! The third red dot…

…The third red dot was on his flank, right in his blind spot!

It took the Dark Knight less than a moment to register all of this. However, it was still to late. With her bare hand –her bare blade-like hand- the young Apokoliptan woman sliced off one of the Batwing's wings. Cut it clean off. It fell one way. The Batwing started to fall the other.

…

Watchtower

April 2 – (irrelevant)

Superboy-Dark made sure the oxygen mask was secure over his nose and mouth before stepping into the air-lock. He took a deep breath to try and calm his nerves when the air-lock's inner door shut and locked behind him and the countdown to the outer door's release began. He might be almost as invulnerable as Superman. He might be perfectly fine surviving in freezing space so long as he had sufficient air supply. But that didn't mean he had to like space travel.

It had been a shock to him when Kal had dragged him out that first time. He was sure his body would depressurize and his blood would boil out of his ears. But it didn't. Neither had he frozen instantly. Neither had the utter lack of any sort of gravitational orientation given him vertigo or made him sick. He had been fine that first time, he would be fine now.

Looking back, it was stupid to have been frightened. Superman could survive in space and he was Superman's clone… or his son. So, it was safe to infer that he, too, could survive in space. He should have known that. Why hadn't he known that? Come to think of it, he also probably should have known that the Robin would carry a weapon that could be used against him, because it was a bit of a 'public secret' within the Justice League that Batman carried a weapon that could be used against Superman. What had it been called? It began with a K, he was pretty sure of that…

His train of though was rather quickly and suddenly derailed, however, when the outer door of the air-lock was released and the Superboy-Dark was sucked out into space.

Without a flight ability, there was no way of him maneuvering freely within the vacuum, but he had planned ahead. Before the force of the chamber's depressurization could pull him to far out and send him spinning off into the void forever, the Superboy-Dark snagged his hand on the open clasp –the door's locking mechanism. With a firm grip on a piece of the station, he pulled himself back to Watchtower and, making hand-holds for himself by digging his fingers into the outer paneling, crawled along the outer hull until he was on the Earth-facing side.

He would only get one shot at this, so Superboy-Dark paused to study his target critically. The northern hemisphere was facing him on a slight axis. The rough outline of North America was just visible to him under slight cloud cover. He did not have his father's (his genetic donor's?) telescopic vision, but his eyes were still very good and he squinted, sharpening his vision as best he could to get a clear view of the area below him.

Boom Tubes glowed well within the atmosphere. One in the panhandle of Florida, two in Virginia. While it was a little far from his sight, he knew there were others in California, and Hawaii. But Kal would be in Virginia. He had seen him on the battle-feeds he'd jacked into.

Superboy-Dark positioned himself so that he was aiming himself at the American north-east. Admittedly, it was a small target in a large area and he was trying to hit it from an almost unfathomable distance. But it was also his best method of getting back to Earth, back to where Kal was. He wanted to see Kal. He wanted to hug him… and he wanted to punch him in the throat.

He would only get one shot at this…

Superboy-Dark bent his knees. Focused his eyes on the Atlantic Corridor. Muttered a short prayer, not to Darksied or the Gods of Apokolips, but to the Sun God Rao…

…and jumped.

He sailed through the finite space that stretched between Earth and the Watchtower, his acceleration not changing from the moment he kicked off the station. Coasting in a single strait line through a vast chasm of emptiness. NASA said space travel was rather like swimming and they trained their astronauts and cosmonauts in gigantic swimming pools. But Superboy-Dark disagreed. It wasn't like swimming at all. In fact, there wasn't really any action on Earth that it could be compared to because it was not an action that was possible on Earth. One could not use similes to describe motion in a vacuum. Perhaps that had been what scared him the first time –he had never experienced anything like it before, it was knew and unknown.

Now it was exhilarating!

It was the ultimate freedom. He was weightless –utterly and completely. Everything was open and clear. There wasn't anything on Earth to compare it to except maybe flying. Not flying on an airplane or in Miss Martian's bio-ship, no. But flying like how Kal flies. Flying free and unburdened under your own power. Where the skies were clear and open and seemed to stretch on for miles until the brilliant blue faded and gave way to an infinite black. Superboy-Dark liked that mental image. There was something… stirring about it.

He experienced something similar to that mental picture only in reverse. Drawing closer to Earth, his acceleration increased, pulling him down faster and harder. His body plummeted through the layers of atmosphere, making him feel hot. His battle suit steamed at the joints and he became startlingly aware that he was sweating. The oxygen mask on his face began to melt, its streaming droplets burning up in the atmosphere until they were nothing more than mere gas molecules amid an entire sphere of such gases. It suddenly became hard to breath and the Superboy-Dark began to question the wisdom of this plan.

He felt no pain. He was hot and the heat was causing him to perspire, but he was otherwise unharmed by the entry. He held his breath. Once he cleared the outer atmosphere he'd be able to breath again. He squinted his eyes ahead of him at the landscape rushing up to meet him.

To far north!

His aim had been off after all. He had shot himself at the Atlantic Corridor of the American North east, but while the target had seemed small and easy to hit from space, it was in actuality a very large and expansive area once you got dirt-side. He was plummeting to the Corridor, as he'd planned, but not an area of the Corridor anywhere near Virginia, the Pentagon, or Kal. He suppressed the urge to swear as the coast of Delaware grew ever closer, rushing up to meet him with an eager embrace.

He landed in Hobs Bay, just off from Metropolis and sent a massive wave crashing through the Bay area and surrounding city blocks.

…

Potomac River, Virginia

April 2 – 1:45 pm

Batman ejected from his ruined and crashing Batwing without another moment's pause. He was not the type to become overly attached to equipment or vehicles. If he did give the destroyed plane a second thought it was only to wonder how he could slip the cost of constructing a new one into Wayne Corp.'s quarterly report without raising to many eyebrows.

The woman with the blade-like hands was one him nearly the moment he had cleared the plane, slashing her fingers through the fabric of his out-spread cape. –The Batman began to fall.

He remained calm. Plummeting from great heights was nothing new to him and he hadn't ever hit the ground yet. He was confident in his ability to stay alive (but not overly so).

Reaching into his belt, Bruce withdrew his grappling gun. This he fired past the woman on her hover disk and at a circling Parademon. The hook caught the creature in the jaw like a fish and it struggled to free itself from the hook and line. But for the moment it gave the Batman the life-line he needed to swing himself on top of the nearest hover tank. His boots gave him firm traction and it took the Dark Knight only a moment to find his balance. His feet on mostly solid ground now ('ground' being a relative term) he assessed his enemy.

Her power was blade-like hands. Okay, he could deal with that. Since she had to use one of those hover disks, it was safe to assume she couldn't fly either. Since she was coming back in for more close quarters combat, it was also safe to assume she had no projectile or long-range weapons or powers. The Batman did not smirk, but one corner of his mouth did turn upwards with confidence. He would have the upper hand in this fight. It wouldn't take long.

Superman, meanwhile, grappled with the Ribbon Warrior woman.

She was quick and agile, and she was much stronger than a normal human. Her whips stung something awful when they connected with the Man of Steel's skin. But she was not nearly as quick as he was. She was not nearly as strong. While her whips hurt, they didn't do much damage. But the biggest advantage Clark had over her was that he could fly and she could not.

He knocked her off her hover disk easily enough, but she responded quickly by wrapping one of her whips around his neck and swinging herself up onto his back. Straddling his ass, with one whip around his throat, and then quickly looping the other through his jaw, Lashina rode him rather like a horse.

Needless to say, Clark did not take kindly to this. He veered into a barrel role, spinning and quark screwing through the air in an effort to throw her off while his hands clawed at the thin ribbon-like bindings. The one in his mouth was the most bothersome and he bit down on it hard, hoping to snap the material with his teeth. But it proved just a bit to strong, so he pulled on one of the ends. Tugging it roughly and with his teeth still clamped down, the material was strained, began to tear, snapped.

The Ribbon Warrior was thrown off balance, suddenly finding that she had nothing to hold onto and she went flying off. To the accompaniment of the obligatory pun, "Get off my back!"

Clark caught her before she could fall very far, however. Holding her by the high collar of her uniform, they ascended up. She wasn't from Earth, so there was no reason to assume she would be affected by thinner air higher up, but it was worth a try. If she passed out, hurray! One less baddie to worry about today. If she didn't, well, there was always the old fashioned smack-down.

They climbed high above the battle. Finally, it became apparent that she wasn't going to louse consciousness any time soon. The woman looked at him in confusion.

He glared at her. "Where's Kon-El?"

Her confusion deepened, but she covered it quickly with a sneer of bravado. "Who?"

Clark found himself suppressing a snarl. "The Superboy clone." He growled, his face mere millimeters from hers, his crystal-blue eyes glaring daggers into her own dark eyes. "Why isn't he out here with the rest of you?"

Her sneer turned into a scathing smirk. "He was a naughty boy, so Granny sent him to his room."

Off in the distance there was a sonic boom, as of something entering Earth's lower atmosphere. Probably another enemy wave. Was there ever an end to all this? He returned his attention to the Ribbon Warrior. "What's that now?"

"Don't look at me." She shrugged in his grip. "That wasn't one of ours."

This time Clark did snarl. He thought momentarily about dropping the woman and just letting her plummet downward. The fall probably wouldn't kill her. Aliens had a propensity to not only survive but also casually brush off things that would turn normal humans into chili con carne.

Then his comm buzzed.

The woman took advantage of the momentary distraction to swing both her legs up, plant her feet squarely on his chest and kick away hard. Clark loosed his grip on her and she fell away earthward. He cursed in Kryptonese and dove after her. One hand went to answer his still buzzing comm as he went into a nosedive.

"This is Superman. I'm kinda busy."

"So am I." Bruce's voice growled over the channel. There was a pause filled with the huffing and grunting of hand-to-hand combat, the whistle of air as something was suddenly falling, the firing of a grappling hook and another grunt. Then Bruce was back. "I just thought you should know, Wayne Tech satellites tracked an object entering Earth's atmosphere a minuet ago."

Clark reached the falling Ribbon Warrior, grabbing her by the ankle. "I heard it. So?"

Bruce took his sweet time answering. Superman scanned the battle for a moment before finding the Batman hanging by a grappling line attacked to one of the hover tanks. The silver-haired woman circled him on her hover disk, her blade-like hands barred threateningly. Bruce looked calm, like he had everything under control. But why risk it? Still holding her by the ankle, Clark threw the Ribbon Warrior at the other woman. They both went tumbling off the blond's hover disk and to the ground.

"Not that I needed it, but thanks for the assist." Bruce said, and he could see the Dark Knight flash a quick thumbs-up before turning his hands to pulling his back up onto the hover tank. "The reason you might be interested in this object, is because Alfred says the satellite images looked almost human, and its trajectory could back backtracked to Watchtower's coordinates."

"You think it might be Kon!" Clark's hand closed around the MP3 player he still carried on his belt. "Where did he land?"

He could hear Bruce's smirk when the Caped Crusader answered, "You're gonna love this. He landed in Metropolis."

…