Young Justice: Everymen

Knocked Down

Disclaimer: Young Justice belongs to Greg Weisman, Brandon Vietti, Cartoon Network, and DC Comics.

Plenty can happen in six weeks.

It was only a week into the program at the Everyman Institute when Tim decided he needed a break from the other metas and just needed wander through the institute himself.

"Left, right, parry! That's it. Left, right, parry!"

Black Canary's voice boomed over the pairs of metas as she instructed them on basic bow staff stances. They were in one of the gyms, with plastic mats lining the floor and walls. It was underground and a bright, artificial, February sunlight came streaming into the windows of the lower level room. The metas were off in their training pairs, under the direction of Dinah Queen.

Tim wasn't surprised to see Black Canary working at the Everyman Institute. Oliver Queen had vocally supported it in its formative years, proclaiming it a god-send for the underdog. And, of course, if Green Arrow supported it...

"Left, right, parry."

Tim was mildly comforted by the well-practiced movements of his bow staff. He hadn't fought with it in what seemed like ages (though it wasn't). And he wasn't going to use it for another long time after. He had already decided to use two night sticks he channeled his electricity into instead.

He didn't want to be found out and especially not because of his iconic fighting style. The chances were slim, but still.

This was how every morning had progressed since Tim had arrived at the Everyman Institute a week ago: an hour of warm ups and basic strength and flexibility exercises followed with an hour of unarmed combat followed by an hour basic weapons instruction. While many of the metas did need the strength training and martial arts skills, not many of them used the weapon skills and frankly, most of them didn't need the training. Then was an hour of mobility and more conditioning before lunch. The afternoons were dedicated to team building, some sparring, and basic tactics. Tim had been partnered up with Collateral Damage Girl, of all people, which made him wonder what they based their decision on.

"Okay, now right, left, parry. Let's go, right..."

Cassie blocked Alvin's swing and countered with one of her own, taking a second to correct her footing before returning a blow.

She sighed at the monotony. She had come here to learn how to use her abilities, not to play with sticks.

"You know," Cassie said, talking to Draper, "I thought we'd be doing more stuff to do with our powers."

Alvin grunted.

"I just thought that with all this hype we'd be doing more than just working out and learning how to use weapons we'll never use." She side-stepped a swipe from Alvin and took a small hop backwards. Alvin twirled his staff and came her at the otherwise.

"I'd just like to call them out, you know," she said, barely blocking a blow. "Give them a piece of my mind."

He just shrugged and glanced over at where Black Canary was correcting a pair of psychics, his mind clearly not on the topic at hand. Cassie followed his gaze.

"Alright!" said Black Canary, looking up at the progressing students, "Time for a little free sparring."

Cassie swore she saw a small smile flicker over Draper's face before he fiercely swung one end of his bow staff down on where Cassie had been.

Cassie, surprised by Alvin's sudden attack had only milliseconds to get out of the way, did a forward handspring over his to his back, managing to clip his arm with her staff as he whipped around to face her. He raised an eyebrow.

Cassie smirked and shrugged. After seeing Draper's use of acrobatics, she decided to use her super-strength to her advantage and try to copy some of his moves. Abilities weren't allowed in direct combat during weapon spars but were totally fair game for moving around.

He advanced again, whirling his staff in front of him, blocking her swings at him and forcing Cassie into a defensive position. Almost as fast as Cassie could comprehend, Alvin pulled off one of his rubber gloves with his teeth and dropped it to the ground.

Then she heard a crackle in the air and Draper's hair started to stand on end. Blue sparks jumped from the ends of the metal staff. Cassie swung her weapon at Alvin, trying to keep his electric staff the hell away from her.

He blocked her swing from her metal staff with his own metal weapon. Cassie winced at the shock, tasting metal and trying to resist the charge but she felt her knees crumpling.

Alvin walked in closer pressing the staff closer towards her and forcing her to her knees. Cassie swore he looked into her eyes pointedly for a second, his eyes wandering to the door in apparent distraction.

He stopped channeling electricity and Cassie took her chance, giving him a clout to his chest and sending him backwards, landing with his back on the mat.

Did he just take pity on her?

Cassie pulled herself up to her feet, looking at her partner, waiting for him to get up. When he didn't, she walked over to where he lay and prodded him with her foot. She hoped he wasn't dead. His resigned silence had a certain charm to it.

"You okay?"

He groaned and propped himself up on his elbows, putting his hand to his head.

"Where am I?" He asked, rubbing the back of his head.

Crap. Cassie called over Black Canary and quickly explained the situation. A crowd of metas promptly gathered around the scene.

"Sounds like a potential concussion," Black Canary said, shining a pen light into Draper's eyes. "You didn't hit him at full power, right?" she asked, looking up at Cassie.

Cassie shook her head, frantically. "No."

"Okay. What's your name?" Canary asked, turning to her patient.

"...Alvin," came the reply.

"Well, he doesn't seem to have a concussion," Canary said, pocketing the pen light. "You should still go to the medical bay, though. Cassie? Can you take him?"

Alvin's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before quickly replying: "I don't think that will be necessary." He stood up, stumbled a little and then started making his way towards the door.

"Don't be ridiculous," came a voice from the crowd. Len Snart walked forward. "I'll take him, toots," the older man said, walking over the teenager.

Black Canary sent him a sour look at adress to her, but allowed the older meta to grab the younger's arm.

"I don't think that will be-" Alvin started.

"Nonsense," Snart said, clapping him on the back and steering him to the door. "People with head injuries shouldn't be left alone. You don't feel sleepy, do you?

"No..."

"That's good... I think."

Len Snart called an elevator and waited with the young meta, keeping one squinted, cold eye on him.

Tim cursed. He had wanted to leave alone. It wasn't his fault that his heat exhaustion bit looked so much like his concussion act. Maybe if they had gotten their diagnosis right...he sighed. At least he had lost most of the people. Besides Len Snart, anyway. He'd be gone soon, Tim hoped. Otherwise he'd have to lose him too.

And so, now he was standing in an elevator with Captain Cold himself.

"Are you sure you know what floor the medical bay is?" Tim asked, as he watched the man press a button.

"Pretty sure," was the reply. Tim watched as the man pulled a pack of cigarettes out and put one in his mouth. Cold raised his eyebrows before tipping the package towards Tim. "Smoke?"

"I don't, thanks."

"Smart kid." He didn't light up but instead just let the cancer-stick dangle from his mouth.

They rode in silence until the bell rang and the doors opened to one of the lowest levels.

It was a small, concrete room, with a wall of television monitors to their backs and three glass walls looking out onto a lower level.

"I don't think this is the medical bay," Tim said, walking up to the windows.

"I'm old, I'm forgetful," Cold replied, shrugging and following Tim into the room.

Tim looked out the window and had to keep his jaw from dropping to the floor.

The room the small observation deck (for that's what it was) was looking out onto this massive, deep, concrete maze that seemed to stretch for miles underneath the Institute. It was so deep and wide that Tim could barely see the walls or the floor in the giant room and most of the walls were shrouded. But still, Tim swore he could see things moving down there, like sentries. He shuddered and looked away. And then he shook himself. He was Robin. He shouldn't be afraid of the dark.

"The Labyrinth," Snart croaked.

Tim nodded.

There was a silence between the two men.

"Wonder what would happen if someone broke all three glass walls. Would the room fall?"

"People would fall," Tim answered absent-mindedly, pressing his face against the glass and staring down into the abyss.

They had been told about the Labyrinth in their orientation. It was a training area used for final groups examinations and for individuals metas that thought that they were prepared to leave the Institute early. They had to solve the maze and fight their ways through obstacles to the exit. It was supposed to be hard, they said. Tim wasn't so sure but it definitely was bigger than Tim had imagined.

Snart, who was also looking down, gave a low whistle. "You gotta have a lot to prove if you go in there alone."

Tim nodded, forgetting that he was trying to sneak off to investigate alone.

It took Cassie two weeks to realize that she needed some rest from the program and started sleeping in.

Beep beep. Beep beep.

The alarm clock squaked as Cassie groaned and took refuge under her covers. It hurt to move.

"Jus' a few more minutes..."

The two weeks she had spent at the Everyman institute had been brutal and Cassie was now feeling the effects. As she turned on to her stomach under her pillow, she felt the bruises that had amounted over her stay. There was one on her ribs where Alvin had gotten past her defense and round house kicked her into the wall. There were several on her arms from where she had blocked the night sticks her partner was so fond of. She deserved an extra few minutes...slipping one hand out of her blankets, she lightly tapped (she didn't want to have to buy yet another alarm clock) the snooze button.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," came a voice from the other side of the dorm room.

Poking her head out and blinking at the sudden light in the room, she gave her roommate a confused looked. "What?"

Karen ("call me Bumblebee") looked up from her issue of Scientific American and carefully put it down on her desk. She picked up her handbag and started to rifle through and continued: "That'll be the fourth time you hit snooze." She nodded at the digital display. "And we're all supposed to be meeting up in the training rooms in three minutes."

"What?!"

Cassie shot out of bed and started scrambling for some clean clothes (she really needed to do laundry). She hopped into a pair of pants and pulled them up with one hand and she ran a comb through her hair with the other, scooping it into a haphazard ponytail. She nearly lost the head hole when pulling on her shirt and she tripped over her shoe laces on the way on. She shook her bangs out of her eyes and gave herself a smile in the mirror before turning back to Karen.

"You ready?"

Pulling a granola bar and a stick of gum out of her bag and chucking them across the room to Cassie, Karen smiled, "Remember to brush your teeth when we get back."

Walking out of their tiny room, into the hall, and past a service closet, they reached the industrial elevator and pressed the button and waited.

There was a clatter of running foot steps as someone later than they were made an appearance. Alvin stopped in front of the elevator doors, panting.

"Good morning, partner," Cassie said. "Where's the fire?"

"Wherever you were last," he said and then let out a big yawn and promptly dropped the gloves he was holding on the floor. Fumbling, he picked them up and put them on.

Cassie saw a spark and heard a crackle and Draper winced as he pulled them on. Her partner hadn't made much headway in the past month. Not that he had needed it. She watched as he yawned again and rubbed at his puffy, sleep deprived eyes and zipped up his wrinkled hoodie over a faded shirt.

"Blüdhaven University? I've got some friends in the molecular physics department there." Bumblebee said, nodding towards his t-shirt. And then cocked her head to one side. "I thought you were in high school."

"Yeah, well," he shrugged, "only good thing about Blüdhaven. I graduated a semester early and I'm planning on going there, but hey," he stuffed his hands into his pockets, "things change. I'm taking a gap year of sorts."

Bumblebee nodded. "I just got my Master's. This," she said, waving her hands around the room, " is something I owe to a friend."

"Friend?" Cassie asked, intrigued.

"Uh yeah. She was killed some years back."

Cassie and Draper gave each other a look, realized they were agreeing and then promptly looked away. Bumblebee saw their faces and smirked a little.

The elevator doors dinged and slid open and Bumblebee looked at the pair. Pushing the younger metas towards the doors, she waved. "Looks like there's no room; I'll catch the next lift."

They stumbled in to the empty elevator. The doors closed in on them.

They stood in silence for a moment.

Cassie looked around the mostly empty elevator and let out a sigh. She looked around clicked her tongue. And sighed again.

Alvin had pulled out his cell phone again and was vigorously typing on it.

"Who you texting?" Cassie leaned towards him to get a peek at the screen. "Your girlfriend?"

Draper shuffled away, angling the screen away from her prying eyes.

Cassie held back a huge grin at his reaction.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, trying to sound honest.

He continued typing. Cassie smirked.

"Is it your boyfriend, then?"

With that comment, Draper stiffened, snapped his phone shut, and stuffed it in his pocket.

Cassie beamed as they rode the rest of the way down in silence and made their way to the first training session of the day, a little more energized than she was when she woke up this morning.

It did take three weeks, however, until Tim was actually sleep deprived.

Nothing good happens after two in the morning. That's the Earth saying right?

Tim stifled a yawn, cracked his fingers and continued typing. It was four forty-five in the morning now and Tim was damn sure that whoever had made that saying had never had to hack into a computer that was not strictly his. It had been about three weeks since he had arrived at the Institute, but sometimes he swore it felt like he had been there waiting for six months.

Disabling the security cameras had been the easy part; he had been able to access them and build up enough fake footage in about a week to keep his nocturnal activities officially nonexistent.

No, the security cameras hadn't been the hard thing, it had been finding and accessing a computer that had anything important on it had been the trouble; all the staff kept their computers on them or under watch. But finally, Tim had found the computer in the lobby of the Institute that was connected to the system. It had taken a week in the dead hours of the night for Tim to sneak around firewalls, remain invisible to the security and erase his minuscule progress on the system before his escapades would be noticed by the staff in the morning. But finally, finally, he was just about in.

Tim's watch-computer glowed, pale and eerie and, the only light in the lobby as he punched away at the keys. The security was strong -all of the automatic programming in his wrist-computer had not been stong enough- so he had to go in manually, staring at his tiny screen as he typed in character after character. The eye-strain probably wasn't doing him any good. The old-fashioned way took forever. He covered his mouth with yet another yawn and hitched up his rubber gloves. He didn't want to ruin all of his hard work with a crispy-fried computer.

And then he stopped. And stared. And suppressed an urge to cheer.

He was in.

With this system accessed, he could easily get at the institute's secret files and take a peek at their secrets. Hell, he could get at Luthor's personal computer if he had enough time...

Eagerly clicking at one of the folders, he decided he might as well read up. But there was nothing in the folder. Frowning, he clicked on another, just for it to turn up empty. He tried again. And again.

He ran his gloved fingers through his hair and stifled a groan. There was nothing there. There was no detailed information on the staff, no building plans, not even a meeting schedule or a record of sick days.

Frantically, Tim started typing, looking for a hole, or anything. Nothing was here. Nothing was here.

Tim wanted to scream. Three weeks. Three weeks he had spent on this lead. It felt like it had been six months of waiting...

Unplugging his wrist computer from the hard drive, he slipped back to his room where he then enabled the security cameras.

He needed a lead. A good solid lead. Wasting almost an entire month on what turned put to be a dead-end was not the way to go about things. He needed to talk to Dick or Barbara or Alfred or...

Tim fell asleep on his bed, exhausted. He had been wrong; he was definitely staying up later than the Bat.

There was never much downtime at the institute and about four weeks in, Cassie cherished every minute of it.

Instead of heading to the mess hall in hopes of some extra food, like the Challenger or Hotshot, or hiding in her room, like Draper, or sneaking off to smoke, like Len, or even trying to fit in more training, like Bumblebee, Cassie went to a room filled with footage.

It was a small room, with an old computer filled with film footage of the Justice League before the incident in Washington D.C. all those years ago.

She'd stay in there until curfew, just watching clips of their fights. She watched the Flash and Green Lantern fight Gorilla Grodd before the Flash had disappeared and the Green Lantern was called out to a small corner of the galaxy. She watched Black Canary and Green Arrow fighting like the team they were even today. She watched so many clips of Superman, surprised to see him so responsive to disasters. It was rare to see him nowadays.

She even watched footage of the sidekicks, shocked at how young they were and how much more they had gone through than her. She wondered where they were now.

But the clips she cherished the most were the ones on Wonder Woman. Cassie watched the Amazon warrior defeat foes fifty times her size and Cassie hoped that one day she would be as good as her.

And so, she spent all her nights watching the footage, not realizing the opportunity to become like Wonder Woman was right in front of her, if she would just leave the film room and join Bumblebee in extra training.

Five weeks passed since the beginning with no relent as Cassie started crash.

When Cassie was little, she played freeze tag with her friends. And if being frozen didn't suck then, it totally sucked now.

"Collateral Damage Girl to Draper. Do you copy?" Cassie said into her communicator. She was flying through the vines and undergrowth of the jungle.

"Loud and clear, Sandsmark. Again," Draper added under his breath. Cassie swore she could hear his eyes roll. "Be quiet okay? Don't lose the position."

"Copy," Cassie said under her breath. "So, you think Len will come after me, right?"

"You're the 'big guns' as it were. Don't worry about it. Just fly him up high by his ankles and he'll-" Draper turned silent. "Gotta go, trouble on my end." His line faded out into static and Cassie heard the start of a scuffle.

Cassie blew a stray strand of hair out of her face and sighed. She wished he was more chatty when he wasn't bossing her around. She shook herself and told herself to focus at the matter at hand.

A small flash of light glinted out of the corner of her eye. Reflection. Cautiously, she slowed down and glanced at the source. It was a shiny patch of ice. In the middle of the jungle. How subtle.

On foot, she crept towards it, keeping her ears out for any disturbances. The patch of ice led to a clearing in the jungle floor.

Peeking in (but not going in, she wasn't that stupid), she saw a body laying in the middle of the clearing. It wasn't hard to identify: with the wife-beater, the stubble, and the too-good-for-you sunglasses, it was almost clearly Snart. She waited for the body to move and start to pick itself up but it did not move. It looked like ice-man was out cold (heh) and that the surrounding area was clear.

Water dripped onto her head and she looked up to where an icicle was melting over her head. There were other trees that were either frozen or blackened and charred from where Alvin had clearly touched them. She could still smell the burning bark and taste the metallic bite of an off-set electric charge.

Holding her hand up to her earpiece, she started to talk. "Hey, Draper, come in. I found your little battle zone with The Ice-man. Thanks for taking my target."

She walked closer to the body, her feet scuffing the ground around her as more icicles dripped around her, rhythmically sliding down the trees and hitting the ground. "So when you find Bumblebee, she is all mine-"

Cassie's legs buckled as an unseen force kicked the back of her knees. Speak of the devil... Cassie smiled. Snart was down and it was her against Bumblebee? It was a late Christmas present!

Tumbling forward as she fell, she looked around for the shrinking, flying meta. She saw a small blur of yellow and grinned. Bee really needed to stop wearing such bright colors.

Like a giant compared to Jack, Cassie swatted her hand forward at her target. It seemed like an eternity in that one stroke. And in that eternity, Cassie knew that there was something wrong.

Her ears pricked up and she noticed the absence of the sound of the dripping icicles and the tiny flashes they made as they fell. She saw her breath start to cloud up and stream out of her mouth. It must have gotten cold but Cassie hadn't been able to feel subtleties like that since she had gotten her abilities.

In that second, Cassie knew that she was in trouble and she turned around to see Cold's hand grasping at her ankle and a thick layer of ice quickly spreading up her leg, her waist, her shoulders-

Cassie blinked and opened her eyes. She was sopping wet. The jungle was gone and was replaced with the real inside of the virtual room where all the mock battles were staged. Draper sat on the floor next to her, subdued, soggy, and silent.

"Not again." She ran her fingers through her ponytail and bangs, trying to dry them.

It was the fifth week at the Everyman Institute and the second time Draper and she had sparred with Bumblebee and Snart.

She had hoped that they would have gotten better by the second time around.

Finally, after six weeks, Tim allowed himself to be knocked unconscious by his partner in order to sneak away from the group. Cassie, on the same hand was exhausted.

Cassie was turning red even as she watched Draper walking towards the elevators. He could have blocked that hit. She knew he could have but instead it sent him flying. She had seen hesitate and look straight at the strike as if he was looking into a crystal ball, knowing what was going to happen even before it did.

This was the second time this had happened, the first time had been about a week into the program. Draper had pretended to have been concussed and was accompanied to the medical bay with Len Snart. This time, he had excused himself to the medical bay to make sure his nose wasn't broken where Cassie had punched him.

He threw the spar and she knew it. And what was with that? Little Small Fry did not need the pity vote.

She clicked her tongue.

She knew she didn't like losing but getting the pity vote wouldn't help either. What was he playing at, anyway? It made her want to scream. She wasn't that weak, for crying out loud!

"Hey," came Bumblebee's voice."You might want to flatten your hair. You look like the bride of Frankenstein."

Cassie bit her lip and ran her fingers through her hair, turning red. It must have been the shock from her skin to skin contact with Draper's face.

"I knew that," she replied after her hair was flat.

"Sure you did," Karen said, smiling. "Do you want to pick up sparring with me? Len and I can trade off being partners with you until Alvin returns."

Cassie looked at her friend and then down at her shoes, not really paying attention to what Karen was saying. Her gears were turning. She wasn't stupid...

Surely it wasn't that much of a reckless decision. She had been at the institute for six whole weeks and had been freelancing for a year before that...

It wasn't like it was a snap decision. She was experienced, more experienced than most of the people people. And unlike most of the people here, she had something to prove. How hard could a little maze be?

She hoped those weren't her famous last words.

"Black Canary?" Cassie yelled to where her teacher was listening and laughing to an animated Challenger. The older woman turned and looked at the meta.

"I'd like to have a go at the Labyrinth."

Next on Everymen: Cassie faces the Labyrinth as Tim wonders what could be so important about a closet.

AN: Sorry about the long break. This school year has been crazy but now that I'm on summer break I have time to write and plan, though my updates won't be a fast nor as consistent as they were previously. I just had this chapter and decided I should probably update after six months of nothing. This chapter's pretty long and most chapters that I will write won't be this long but after coming off hiatus, I figure you guys deserve it.

I know this chapter is choppy but I wanted to show you guys why Cassie finally decided to do what she did. She came to the Everyman Institute to better herself and she is mad because that hasn't really been happening.

Thanks for all the returning readers for reading and welcome to all new readers!