Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews!
-RV
They're on the Helicarrier, and it's bigger than Conner imagined. The place is huge, a flying aircraft carrier, and it's going somewhere but Conner doesn't know where. There's lots of people on this ship and Conner can hear every last one of them, their voices and footsteps echoing off the steel walls of the ship. It would be harder to tune out, but Conner's had years of practice with this kind of thing, and turns down the volume in his head without a second thought.
The very moment they board off the helicopter, everyone splits up, heading in different directions. Artemis and Dick are the only ones who really seem like they know where they're going while the others just seem to wander. Conner doesn't know about anyone else, but he just wants to get away. Away from Klarion, away from Artemis, and away from everyone else, too. He doesn't want to be reminded that he almost killed Artemis, who already had bruising on her neck from god knows where before he got at her. She was also the one who was responsible for him coming, which doesn't help; it would be easier to say that she deserves it but that's a shit excuse and no one deserves that. He almost killed the others too, ripped them to shreds with his bare hands. Conner doesn't forget how easy it would be. He doesn't want to remember that he's supposed to work with these people despite all that.
Don't they know that he's a monster? He shouldn't be working with them. One or more of them is going to die, and it will be at his hands. And he hates knowing it.
Conner finds standing alone himself on the flight deck, which is full on people working on high tech computers. Director Prince stands on a kind of stage in the middle of it all, typing on a series of computers that surround her in a semicircle. The entire front wall is made of glass panes, curved in a hemisphere around the flight deck.
"I'm sorry," a soft, genuine voice says behind Conner, and he turns around to see who it is. The Martian stands behind him, long red hair tied up in a ponytail. She is wearing a black spandex full body suit with a large red 'x' across the front, blue cape hanging behind her. Her green hands are twisting in front of her and she has pinned both her lips between her teeth. She won't meet his eye, just like she hadn't the whole ride back. She'd flown outside for a time, then taken over the controls for a while up front. Her ship had followed behind them the whole way and she had occasionally ventured back to it. She hadn't looked at him the whole time. Conner had thought she was scared of him, and she should be, but why would she be apologizing for fear? It's justified; he's a monster.
"I shouldn't have just barged into your mind like that," she continues and Conner's eyebrows meet in the middle. Why is she apologizing for knocking out the beast inside him? "It wasn't right of me," she says.
Randomly, Conner remembers that she's the first Martian he's ever met. She's prettier than he expected. Kinder too, despite the ferocity they both showed back in the forest. It's a strange combination but Conner thinks it's kind of beautiful, like sunshine. Bright and lovely but with a potential to be deadly. Conner doesn't have much beauty like that in his life, deeper than the appearance of the body she's in.
"I – I mean I didn't see anything or hear anything I shouldn't have. I just – I went in there without permission and that was wrong. And I'm sorry." The Martian finishes awkwardly and a little rushed. Her words are jammed near the ending, but they're said with sincerity.
Conner still doesn't know why she's apologizing. He doesn't get it. He doesn't know how to reply either, so he shrugs. "Whatever."
Finally, she looks at him, eyebrows raised in surprise. "Pardon?"
Conner shrugs again, "I don't have any secrets. My life is a billboard, especially around here."
"Oh," she says softly. There's a pause before she says, "Well, it is very nice to meet you, Conner."
Conner looks over at her, a little surprised. She's watching out the front window, at the sunset that bathes the entire flight deck in an array of pinks, oranges, and yellow.
No one's ever said that to him before.
"It's nice to meet you too, Miss Martian," Conner says respectively, unsure how else to respond.
Miss Martian looks over at him. "M'gann," she corrects with a smile. Despite himself, Conner finds himself smiling back.
"There he is," M'gann says, smile dropping as she redirects her eyes to look over his shoulder. Conner follows her gaze and sees ten armed guards escorting Klarion down the hall. He must feel their gazes because he slowly turns his head to look at them through the window. M'gann's posture becomes straighter and her fists clench. But Klarion's not looking at her. He's looking at Conner, directly at him with a gaze so piercing that Conner doesn't feel invincible anymore. Klarion smiles at him under they turn down the hall. Conner suddenly has a worse feeling about all this.
"M'gann," he says and she looks over at him. "If I... lose it again, pull me back. Go in my brain and knock me out or whatever you did. If it'll stop me from hurting anyone, then go in my mind all you want."
M'gann gives him a small, encouraging smile, "Okay." Conner looks back out to the window and can see that there's a few clouds in the Helicarrier's path.
"Earth sunsets are very beautiful," M'gann says. Conner doesn't look at her straight out, but he does look at her out of the corner of his eye. She's really very beautiful.
Conner never got lessons in social skills. He didn't even know how to talk properly when he first escaped, everything he knows now learned from books. The only words Cadmus intended for him to ever know were 'yes' and 'sir'. Conner taught himself 'no'. He finds it hard to carry on a conversation, to not become short with people. Somehow, M'gann makes it easy. Conner doesn't know what that means.
"Does Mars have sunsets?" He asks. M'gann nods.
"They're breathtaking," she says.
"Will you...will you tell me about them?" Conner asks. M'gann beams at the question and starts to tell him about red sand and suns that burn the horizon.
...
"Is there any booze in here?" Zatanna looks up and smiles when she sees Raquel in the doorway of the empty kitchen, arms crossed. Zatanna takes some comfort in that she's not the only one looking for a drink, and nods easily.
"Don't tell Prince," she says as she fills a second shot glass with the rum she's found, hidden away in a locked cabinet in the back of the kitchen. Raquel picks up the shot.
"Please. I just helped a Martian track down a god-knows-what halfway across the country only to have to deal with a very angry science experiment gone wrong. And, I saw a cat talk today. I earned this," she downs the glass and sets it on the counter when she's done.
"Amen," Zatanna says and tips her glass up in a cheers before swallows the spiced rum. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and leans on her elbows on the island where she's sitting.
Both girls look up and see two guards pass by through the window, which is strange since those same guards just passed a minute ago. And the minute before that too.
"They followed me all the way here," Zatanna says quietly, turning her head casually away from the window and towards Raquel.
"I've had the same two on my back since we stepped on this thing," Raquel responds, expression so unreadable that she could be talking about anything from the weather to taking a nuke to the states.
Zatanna pours both of them another drink. She lifts the cup to her lips and uses it to block them from the camera that is undoubtedly there, "You feel like we're being watched too?"
Raquel lifts her glass too. "Oh, yeah," she says before knocking it back.
...
Director Prince watches her guards put Klarion in his cell with steely blue eyes, powerful and unyielding. Once her prisoner is inside, she unclasps her hands from behind her back to flick the switch on the control board. The door to her cage slides closed. She waves her hand to dismiss her guards, then approaches the cage with her hands clasped behind her back once again.
"You know, Director, that eye patch is very stylish, but I think I'd prefer to see the scar. How did you get it?" Klarion says, sitting and crossing his legs like a child settling in for story time. Prince just smiles.
"Work accident," she says. "Don't worry. The woman who did this is going to rot away in a nice, cold cell, just like you."
Klarion smiles, "But this nice, cold cell wasn't built for me, was it?" Prince shakes her head.
"It was built for something much stronger than you."
Klarion rolls his eyes spectacularly, "Well I've already guessed that." He sounds like a child when he says it, over dramatic and impatient.
Prince turns from where she'd walked towards him and goes back to the controls, "Klarion, do you know how this works?" Klarion doesn't respond, so she continues. "That glass was developed especially for S.H.I.E.L.D. If you so much as breath on it the wrong way, it will trigger the computer to open the hatch."
"Hatch?" Klarion asks with interest. Prince presses a button and a large hatch opens belong them, letting in winds so strong that the cell shakes and Klarion topples over. Prince, who had known what was coming, is still standing tall. Not a hair lifts out of place from her tight military issue bun.
"You trigger the hatch to open, and the cage drops, straight to the ground. With you inside," she has to shout over the wind as it screams, scraping its teeth on the inside of the ship and clawing its nails on the steel. Prince presses the button again and the hatch closes, cutting off the wails of the wind. Klarion rubs his head, which he hit on the floor when he fell, and glares up at her. His chest is rising and lowering with conscious control, his teeth clenched together in fury.
"How desperate are you?" Klarion says except now, his voice is much louder. Prince doesn't know how he has done it but it sounds like it's coming from the intercoms, letting the entire ship hear their conversation. The Director won't let it phase her, and she remains calm. "You call on such lost and broken creatures to protect you," the Lord of Chaos says.
"An archer whose hands are dripping with blood and shoulders are covered in demons," he continues through the intercom. Across the ship in the surveillance room, Artemis refuses to look at anything except the frame of the computer before her. Her teeth are clenched tightly.
Klarion continues, "An acrobat who should've fallen with his family, and now tries to recreate it with every height he sees." Dick's fingers pause over the lab's keyboard. They twitch.
"A champion whose planet can't stand the sight of her." M'gann looks away from the reflective glass before her, too ashamed to look at the false image she made for herself.
"A king who has no royal blood in his veins, but plenty on his hands," Kaldur tries not to let himself think of his predecessors, who fell in a war started by his own father, or the image a girl with hair like precious coral and a smile that could light even the deepest of oceans.
"A magician who killed her own father so she could live." Zatanna feels the weight of her father's sacrifice in the wedding band around her neck, stolen off the cold finger of a corpse on the worst day of her life.
"A girl who would be nothing without a belt." Raquel's fingers lift from her pockets, brushing against her only source of power. They burn with the contact.
"A speedster who will never be good enough." Somewhere, the fastest man alive pauses, hearing the words echo in his head. For a split second, his eyes flash green.
"And finally, a man who is more beast than human." The steel table Conner is holding bends to his will, taking the shape of his grasp.
"How desperate are you?" Klarion finishes with a smile.
Prince considers him for a moment before she speaks. "You killed four hundred people on Earth, and nearly three times that on Mars," Prince says. She is unsurprised how her voice is also magnified. "You have made me very desperate."
For the fractured pack of vigilantes on the ship, the world seems heavier somehow.
...
Artemis finds Dick in a room above the flight deck, one they use for science experiments and occasionally weapon development. It has some kind of long mouthful of a name that no one but Prince and a few higher up execs bother to remember, named after some long dead agents that leave different, longer lasting legacies than this. Everyone just refers to it as the lab instead. It's the place Artemis always checks first when she's looking for Dick or Wally; she's sure it's their favourite place on the Helicarrier.
Sure enough, Dick is inside, and Kaldur is with him. Dick is typing into the computer and Kaldur is studying the staff, bent over the table it is on with his hands clasped behind his back. Both are still in uniform, like her, but they have taken off bits of it: Kaldur has lost the armour and Dick his mask and gloves. Artemis' own mask is in her pocket, her wrist guards in her hand.
Klarion's words still echo in her head, and she knows that's their point: to wear them down from the inside. She doesn't want them to, doesn't want to let him win, but it's hard not to let your past destroy you from the inside. Especially with one as red as hers.
"Anything?" Artemis asks from the doorway, standing in the threshold. Dick looks up at her from the computer and Kaldur straightens, hands behind his back.
"I've got nothing," Dick admits, "Alien tech is more Wally's area of expertise." Artemis nods once. Wally has degrees in both Physics and Biochemistry, plus he studied alien technology over the past year. He'd be able to identify what the staff is and where it's from in a second.
Not for the first time, Artemis wishes that she'd have been taken instead. If only she'd have finished her mission early, they wouldn't have had to contract in Dick or Wally. She would've been the one that got taken. Artemis hates that is wasn't her.
"What about you, Kaldur?" Artemis asks. The Atlantean king shakes his head.
"It is beyond anything we have in Atlantis. I have never seen anything like it, I am afraid. Perhaps you might take a look?" It is Artemis' turn to shake her head.
"Can't," she says. "I've got something to do right now. I'll come back later." Kaldur nods, going back to studying the staff, but Dick looks up at her with a question on his teeth.
Artemis leaves before he can ask it and presses her mask back on her face. She tugs on her wrist guards as she walks down the halls, passing the door to the hold. She's decided to enter through something more creative than a door. Artemis pulls open the vent cover and slips inside, sliding through with ease. She drops silently down on the opposite side of the circular glass cage that holds Klarion.
Artemis remembers seeing the plans for this cage at Dick's apartment once. She knows the glass is two feet thick and laced with a special compound that Wally designed. If it's so much as scratched on the inside, a chemical reaction occurs and alerts the computer, which opens the hatch below and drops it all fifty thousand feet to the ground. No one would be able to survive a fall to the Earth like that. Unless you were say, indestructible.
Klarion is pacing back and forth like a wild animal inside, and continually glances at the door opposite of Artemis. He's waiting for something, or maybe someone. Artemis watches him pace and glance thrice more before he finally pauses.
"Well done, Agent Crock. Not many people can sneak up on me." He turns and looks at her, smiling.
Artemis crosses her arms, keeping her face impassive. "What have you done with Kid Flash?" She keeps her tone even, strong as she cuts straight to the point. Artemis finds her patience has been lacking these past few days.
"Ah, yes. I expected you to come here, you know." Klarion says his words with relish and his anticipation shines through. "Baby Flash told me all about you, blondie. It was Artemis this and Artemis that. You should've heard his thoughts before I stole them." He's so excited to rip Artemis apart, and she can equally tell and not care.
"So is that what you did? Stole his thoughts? Or his whole mind?"
Klarion giggles. The sound is akin to a sharp rock being dragged across glass, scratching and screeching the whole way. It makes Artemis want to flinch away, but she doesn't. "Why take a piece when I can have the whole?" Klarion says and Artemis' stomach goes cold.
Her expression remains indifferent. She takes a step towards him across the metal grate below her feet. "And what happened to his thoughts?"
Klarion giggles with glee, "Is this love I sense, Miss Crock?"
Artemis smiles at him but it's bitter and sharp, one that one might reserve for when patience is lost over trying to explain something incredibly simple to someone that's stupidly naive. Her short laugh is cold. "There's no such thing as love." It's a lie she used to repeat to herself over and over, back when she was an assassin in training; it's how she explained the trials her own father put her through.
"I think Wally would beg to differ." Klarion says and Artemis braces herself, "You know, he remembers the strangest things about you. 'Artemis likes the rain but loves the sun.'" Her smile falters slightly. Klarion continues in his deeper falsetto, something that doesn't anywhere near Wally's tone but it doesn't much matter since what he's saying is verbatim of Wally's thoughts, "'Artemis loves campfires but hates the woods. Artemis loves to have her shoulders and hands rubbed after missions. Artemis tells people that I'm the one who brought the dog home, but she's the one who really did it. Artemis loves Gotham but she loves living in Keystone more.' Blah, blah, blah." By the time he finishes his taunt, Artemis' teeth are clenched together, any evidence of a smile, no matter how harsh, is gone.
"But he doesn't just remember the good things. No, he knows your fears too, which you whispered to him in the dead of night. I saw those too. Not only that, but you told him all those things you've done. Artemis Lian Crock, you've done some pretty terrible things."
Artemis's eyes widen slightly. "I-I'm making up for it," the words come out quickly, too quickly and twice as weakly. Like she's trying to reassure herself. "I'm better n-"
"Are you? I don't think you can make up for crimes like that," Klarion interrupts, "I mean, what about that homeless man? Killed because he looked at your father in the wrong way? The Sebastian's? You didn't kill them all, but you gave them a one way ticket to the loony bin after they say what you did to their father. Or Mr. Callahan? Miss Trent? How about what happened in Moscow? Saudi Arabia? Or that plane crash over Iran?" Artemis knuckles are white, her nails in her palm. Her eyes are tinted red. "They're just few of many examples. But your father didn't need to make you do those things, did he? You always loved doing those things, didn't you? Don't you?" Artemis swallows thickly and blinks twice in rapid succession. Klarion continues, that sick little smile on his face. He takes a step forward and Artemis stumbles back one. "Can you feel the blood that drips from your quiver, Miss Crock?" She stares at him with rabbit's eyes.
Klarion continues, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do with Kid Flash. When I break out of here, I'll send him after you. When he catches you, he will kill you in all the ways you fear. He'll kill you slowly and painfully then he'll wake up just in time to see what he has done. He'll hold you and watch the light leave your eyes. Then, I'll kill him too. And it'll be all. Your. Fault."
Artemis whips around so her back it to him. Her shoulders quiver and her chest shakes up and down unevenly, "You're a monster." Her voice trembles, coming out in a breathy whisper.
"Monster?" Klarion cackles, "I'm not the only monster on board, girlie. The other one should be locked up in here with me, especially when setting him off is so easy-"
Artemis straightens. She turns, eyes dry, "So that's your plan? Superboy?" Klarion's eyes widen and Artemis smiles slightly, but it's not the sweet kind, it's the kind that very clearly reads screw you. She marches past Klarion, around the cage. As she goes, she presses the bud in her ear.
"This is Agent Artemis, designation B07. Klarion's target is Superboy, repeat the target is Superboy. I'm on my way now." Before Artemis leaves out the door, she turns back to her prisoner. Her smile remains, but it's scarier now; it's that of a tigress once she's caught her prey.
"Thank you for your cooperation."
The sound of his furious yell and his fist hitting the glass almost makes up for the way she suddenly feels she can't breathe.
...
Moments after Artemis breezes out of the lab and towards her interrogation, Zatanna and Raquel wander in. Raquel waits for the door behind her to close before she says, "Any of you guys noticed that they're watching us?"
Kaldur's agreeing voice is kept low, "Honestly, I am beginning to feel as if I am a prisoner myself."
Dick looks at them over his shoulder from where he stands at his computer. "Not only that," he says, "But they're keeping secrets from us. There's a hidden drive on here, heavily encrypted." Dick picks up a tablet and walks over to them, typing with one hand. "They tried to make it invisible but I found it anyways."
"Can you get in it?" Zatanna asks. Dick looks at her.
"Can I?" He grins, "I was the one who designed the encryption. I'm decrypting it now, but it could take a while. All I got right now is it's called Phase Two." M'gann and Conner wander in then, catching the last of the explanation.
"I bet I could beat your fancy computer," Zatanna says.
Dick looks at hit, still grinning, "Yeah? Alright." He takes out his wallet. "I've got a hundred," he says after glancing into it. Zatanna grins and holds out her hands for him to shake, which he does.
"Deal," she turns to the room. "Anyone want to join me?" M'gann steps forward.
"I'll come. I would like to know why they are following us. This could give us an answer," she says with a warm smile. When no one else volunteers, they set off.
It's not hard to ditch the guards who follow them. Just a muttered "edih em" from Zatanna and camo mode from M'gann gets them confused after the first turn and makes all four guards double back. The two women head to the rear starboard, which is where M'gann's telepathy tells her the security is ten times tighter than the rest of the ship.
They get to a large steel door that makes a big deal of itself with fat bolts on the frame and an eye scanner and keypad beside it. The girls have to pause at the corner before it because of the two guards standing watch.
Zatanna holds out her hand, "Ekoms dna srorrim... Etaerc na noinsulli fo em." A copy of Zatanna materializes before them and winks before she turns and goes down to talk to the guards. All it takes is a few smiled words, a giggle, and a toss of the copy's hair for both guards to march away on the copy's arms, down the opposite end of the hallway.
"Men," Zatanna says under her breath.
The two women hurry down the hall, pausing at the door. There's a fat screen on the door that was blocked before by a guard, the keypad next to it. M'gann stares at it for a moment before Zatanna breezes past her.
"I've got this," she whispers, "I have my dad's old code." She types in the five digit number but the screen flashes red a moment after, her access denied. "That's weird."
M'gann has to look over her shoulder at her, having been standing watch. "What?"
"My dad's code doesn't work. He was level six clearance, which is the highest an agent can get. He should have access everywhere." Zatanna bites her lip, "It doesn't make sense."
They hear footsteps behind them and M'gann steps back against the wall, pulling up her hood and camouflaging herself. Zatanna uses the wall for leverage and pulls herself up to the roof of the hall, bracing her arms straight against one end and her legs on the other. And she does all of this in heels.
A scientist that resembles a pencil in some ways, with a large, pointy head that has a bit of black hair on top and a short, round bottom held in red pants approaches the door. He types in a number neither M'gann nor Zatanna can see, then scans this eye and continues into the hall. Zatanna drops down silently while M'gann sheds her camouflage.
"You see the code?" Zatanna asks. M'gann shakes her head.
"I didn't need to. I saw the locks," she says. M'gann holds out her hand and her eyes go green as she pictures the locks sliding out of the door and the door sliding open in her mind. The locks obey her command and the door opens, just like that. Both women check the hallway is clear before continuing into it. It's dark and cooler in this end, a light breeze brushing their hair carefully. The floors are made of steel grate and the walls are lined with more sliding doors, these ones without a keypad or knob or anything.
M'gann steps forward and braces her hands on a door at random, using her strength to open it. The door bends under her will and swings open, admitting both women.
This room is even darker than the last, and massive. It's not wide, but it's deep, going beyond the light's reach. It's tall too and must be the entire height of the ship because when the women look up, they can't see the roof. The dark has claimed that too. The entire place is just walkway after walkway, with about three feet of room between adjacent walkways.
Without hesitation, Zatanna leaps up and grabs the safety pole that wraps around a walkway above them. She flips over it and lands silently on her feet before she runs her fingers along the lid of a container there. She braces her hands on the lip and pulls with all her might. When it won't budge under her weight, she steps back and holds out a palm.
"Nepo!" The crate lid flies off , up and behind Zatanna where it crashes to the floor on the ground level. M'gann's on the ground level does the same, courtesy of her telepathy. Zatanna steps forward and pushes aside the straw inside. Her eyes widen at what she sees.
"Zatanna, what do you have?" M'gann asks tentatively.
"I've got weapons," Zatanna says. "Big weapons." She turns around to find M'gann floating behind her, holding a gun almost larger than her, similar to the one Zatanna has just found.
"Me too," she says.
Zatanna places a hand on her hip, "What do you say? Wanna go figure out what the hell is going on here?" M'gann nods.
...
"So that's his plan? Me?" Conner says, furious. His fist hits the table. Artemis has just returned from her interrogation and she's shared Klarion's plan with all the occupants of the room. Kaldur doesn't think it's going very well.
Conner suddenly turns on both Dick and Artemis, "I told you this was a bad idea."
Kaldur's never witnessed Artemis in any of her infamous interrogations, but he's certainly heard of them. She has never failed, not once. It makes Kaldur wonder what kind of information she's extracted from him without his knowledge. He trusts Artemis and he loves her like a sister, but she is the most glacé person he knows, smoothed, hardened, and chilled from years of training.
"Playing the blame game, huh?" Everyone looks to Zatanna, who's standing in the doorway. Her arms are crossed and she's standing next to M'gann, who is holding an intricate gun. "Because we've got a few questions ourselves." Director Prince walks in just as M'gann drops the weapon on the table dramatically and crosses her arms.
"I see you've discovered Phase Two," Prince says calmly. Dick pulls out his wallet and hands Zatanna the hundred dollar bill, who tucks it in her pocket.
"You had us followed so we wouldn't find these, didn't you?" M'gann says. Prince inclines her head. The computer beeps and everyone looks over to the screen, which Dick is turning towards them.
"My decryption is done," he says and skims the lines on the screen. "You need the tesseract to power these weapons, according to your files. That's why you're after it."
"This is your plan for the tesseract?" Kaldur says, crossing his arms, "You want it so you can produce weapons?"
Prince answers, "Yes."
"I thought the Avengers were for peace. Not weapon making," M'gann says, fiery hair flying around her as she whips to look at Prince.
"The goal of the Avengers Initiative is to defend Earth. Not let other aliens walk all over it and destroy the human race," Artemis says.
"You knew about this, didn't you?" Conner accuses. Artemis doesn't deny it.
"I am the only official S.H.I.E.L.D agent here," she bites back. "I'm the only one with the security clearance."
"Conner, I think it might be best if you remove yourself from this environment," Kaldur says and Conner whirls on him, pointing an accusatory finger at Artemis.
"I was safe. Completely alone. I was all the way across the world, before she dragged me back here."
"Klarion is manipulating you," Artemis warns. "And you're falling for it."
"Just like you did to get me here," Conner snarls.
"You didn't come here because I batted my eyelashes," Artemis says defensively, "You saved those kids in that hospital fire last year. You saved an entire rainforest's population from mind control collars. You wanted to come, Conner. So stop pretending you're not a good person and start looking at yourself instead of blaming me."
"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," Conner says. He points to Dick, "You helped too. You're just as much to blame."
"Under my orders," Prince said suddenly, not willing to let her agents, official or not, take the fall for her commands.
"Then explain why you even have Phase Two in the first place!" Zatanna snaps.
"Because of her," Prince says, pointing at M'gann, who drops her crossed arms in surprise.
"Me?"
"Yes, you," Prince says, crossing her arms. "Last year, you came to Earth. In doing so, you levelled a small town. By accident, I know, but if you alone can level a town by accident, imagine what an army of Martians could do on purpose. After you landed here, we realized we were fabulously outnumbered and superlatively outgunned."
M'gann shakes her head, "Martians are a peaceful people. We have no quarrel with humans."
Prince nods, "And we know that. But what if another species comes along, one not so nice? S.H.I.E.L.D is tasked with protecting earth and its people. How will we do that if we can't even match the enemy?"
"What enemy does earth have?" Dick says, "No one except for Klarion has tried to attack."
"And you brought him here by experimenting with the tesseract," Zatanna adds.
"You're sending a message to the universe that Earth wants war," M'gann says.
"So if Klarion came here and we didn't have the tesseract, he'd be dancing through a field of daisies?" Artemis says, "If he came here on his own, I highly doubt a self proclaimed Lord of Chaos would be after peace. He killed hundreds of people in less than a week and that was just him. What if there's a whole race of him? What if they all want the human race extinct?"
"But Klarion was not unprovoked. He came for the tesseract. If you didn't have it, then he would've never came at all," Raquel says.
"I don't think you can talk," Dick says.
"Oh yeah?" Raquel places her hands on her hips.
"You do walk around with alien matter in your belt," Zatanna says.
"Since when did this become about me, Houdini?" Raquel snaps and Zatanna crosses her arms.
"You should not fight fire with fire," Kaldur says. "Guns are not the answer to everything. It seems that you humans are firm believers in that."
"Phase Two is called Phase Two for a reason," Director Prince says. "S.H.I.E.L.D will always attempt to organize peace first, like I tried to do when Klarion first landed. He repaid me by kidnapping Kid Flash and Dr. Adam Strange, both of whom we don't even know are still breathing." Artemis flinches, though no one notices. "If we cannot negotiate peace, then we will have to resort to fighting for our lives."
"I'd thought humans were more evolved than this," Kaldur sighs.
"I thought so too. It looks like we were both wrong," M'gann says.
"No one went to Mars and started destroying towns," Zatanna responds.
"That's because humans don't have the technology," Raquel's tone is somewhat mocking.
"Some of us do," Zatanna says offhandedly, "And I'm pretty sure that just subjects those who have advanced tech to unlawful surveillance."
"Don't be so ignorant. S.H.I.E.L.D monitors all potential threats," Artemis crosses her arms.
"Mars is not a potential threat!" M'gann insists.
"Threat or not, we're all monitored," Artemis is blunt, "Even I'm monitored and I've worked for S.H.I.E.L.D since I was a teenager."
"Really?" Dick says, "You're on that list? I don't think I believe that, Artemis. Especially since you seem to be trained to fight all of us."
"A necessary precaution," Artemis says. "If one of you goes rogue, then S.H.I.E.L.D will be able to level the threat."
"You?" Dick says. "Don't you mean us?"
"Yeah, actually. I do."
"What are we going to do with Klarion?" Conner demands. The arguing stops at his booming voice and all turn to him. "Because I think he doesn't deserve to live."
"No," M'gann says, "He must answer for his crimes on Mars."
"What about his crimes on Earth?" Dick says.
"Maybe his answer for his crimes should be his death," Raquel says.
"We cannot answer violence with violence. He should go to be tried for his crimes on Mars," Kaldur says.
"But he should be tried for his crimes on Earth first," Artemis insists.
"So he can just escape again? Kill more people?" Zatanna says. "Maybe we should think about the many over the few."
"We cannot justify murder by murder. We must rise above it. Klarion needs to face justice," Kaldur insists again but no one seems to want to listen, especially when they all stop arguing again.
"Conner," Artemis says suddenly, the tone of her voice making everyone stop. "Put down the staff." Somewhere in the midst of the argument, Conner picked it up. The glowing end is brighter than Kaldur has ever seen it. Conner quickly puts it back on the table, his expression something akin to horror. The room is silent as everyone stares at the staff.
Suddenly, the Helicarrier jolts, knocking all of the occupants of the room off their feet. Red lights begin to flash and an alarm sounds.
Across the ship, Klarion smiles at the oncoming anarchy. "Here, kitty kitty," he sings.