Everyone has a Day Job
The morning sun seemed to glare down on the desert, and if you watched long enough, you'd see the air shimmering from the heat. What was there to be said, it was hot. Deserts were hot.
It didn't help the train car as it was pulled along in rail-based caravan of wheeled containers. The train itself chugged along, keeping at a steady pace and blaring its whistle whenever it came across crossings and towns, and whatever else the conductors were required to honk at. The more blaring there was, that meant a town. Trains had to honk until they left.
So that gave the passenger who was hiding in the car the kind of warning he needed if he wanted to remain on this ride. Now, he wasn't an expert on trains or anything, but if you paid attention enough, you might learn a thing or two.
He was young, his back pressed up against the metal interior of the container he was hitching a ride in. His legs were splayed out, covered with jeans with a ratty pair of sneakers on his feet. A hoodie covered his upper body, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Beside him was a backpack that was stuffed to the brim with a zipper that looked like it would unzip itself at any moment.
His name was Miguel Barragan, and he was a man on a mission. Well, okay, he was underaged, a teenager still, but a man on a mission nonetheless. As that kind of man, he liked to keep himself presentable, but travel tended to turn that upside down, and so normally styled black hair was a bit more disarrayed. Some strands were starting to get into his eyes and had to be swiped away.
It wasn't that he prided himself on his handsome good looks…okay, he did, if only for himself, but what was the point in living if you let yourself go? There was too much going on and letting other people just see how well you cleaned up was the least you could do. Sometimes that felt like, well, let's back up a bit.
Let's get this one fact out of the way: Miguel was Mexican. Born and bred, a native of a nice little village, good ol' El Chilar. Nice place, lots of friendly people, though not a lot of visitors. It was just a place that was out of the way, no dark or evil reason or anything like that. Not that they didn't welcome visitors, they did. And they tolerated the ones who were obnoxious, waiting until they left to talk crap behind their backs like normal people did.
This is where the story really gets started. It starts with some unwelcome visitors. Why were they unwelcomed? Well, maybe that had to do with the fact that they came in very heavy handed, both in their actions and their behavior. They made demands. When no one was quick to fulfill them, they got violent. People were hurt.
What they wanted, like hell he knew. They made for ol' Abejas' place, and anyone who happened to be in their way didn't have a good time. Unfortunately, his, ahem, friend Gabe, short for Gabriel, happened to be in their way.
Well, as an upstanding villager, Miguel hadn't let that go. He got a punch to the face for his trouble. So, he grabbed these unwelcome visitors with a not so iron fist. The damage was done though, and after chasing the bastardos away, he found a little something left behind.
That little something was currently being held in his hand. He had no real idea what it was, but it was something, and his only clue about who these people were. It was tech, no doubt. Not the kind of thing you would find in El Chilar or the surrounding area. Hell, it didn't even look like anything the cartels would have.
That could mean only one thing. It had to be American. That, or Japanese.
Hold on, what was that? Sounded like a screech. It was far away too…oh, he knew now what that was. With the train conductor blaring the horn, the train was slowing down. They were coming to a stop, but that was going to be a couple of kilometers first. Trains took a while to slow down, you know, but that meant they were reaching the train's destination.
If his travel plans were right, the train was going to be arriving at a border crossing. It was going to be searched through and checked for its cargo. Everything on the manifest was going to have to be there, and unwanted passengers, like him, were not on the manifest. So he needed to get ready.
Pushing himself up, he pulled one of the backpack's straps over a shoulder and made his way over to the container's sliding door. It wasn't easy since there was a lot of crates in the way, but he had a trick or two to make it a little easier, and then he was sliding the door open. Okay, that was a bright, bright light, and the rocky desert was not helping.
Still, the breeze slipping in felt a little nice, and he peeked out as much as he could. The landscape moved around him and slowly, but surely, in the distance he could see it. There was the border crossing and on either side of it was the Wall. You know the one. To be honest, it looked more like a glorified fence, but people north of it wanted to call it a wall.
Wall, fence, call it what you wanted, all Miguel could call it was "cute."
Whoever thought this thing up hadn't considered superpowers in its design.
Pushing the car door open wider, the Mexican teen gave a wave of his hand, adding a bit of a flourish to it, and brought into the world a brick. This was no ordinary brick, as it was colored a pinkish purple and transparent so you could see through it. Also, it was hovering in the air, keeping up with the train car easily. It was a bit lonely by itself, and with the slightest effort of will, a second brick formed, latching onto the first. Then a third brick appeared, followed by a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and so on and so forth.
Soon enough, there was a pink-purple construct of psionic bricks keeping pace with the train. With a jump, Miguel landed onto the floating platform, and with the smallest of thoughts formed new bricks. These ones appeared directly in front of him, connecting with his platform and then more began to form in front of those.
It seemed like a complex maneuver, but he had practiced enough that it was second nature. Plus, it allowed him to show off a bit. In this case, the bricks he stood on began to propel him forward, disintegrating into nothingness once they were far enough behind him. Forward and up he went, angling himself above the train and rising higher so as to not tip off anyone on the ground.
Once high enough, it was full speed ahead as he drew closer and closer to the crossing, passing over the depot that the train was approaching then everything, including the wall, was behind him.
So this was America? Huh, didn't look much different from the other side of the border. Well, if the maps he had looked up via Google were right, he should be in Southern California now. Glancing down at his hand, he studied the little clue that had been left behind in his hometown, the one thing that might lead him to answers.
It was shaped like a hexagon, yellow and black in color, and displayed a prominent H on its front. It was thin, like you could slip it into your pocket like a phone kind of thin. He had absolutely no idea what this thing was, but it had to lead him to whoever either owned or made it.
Those guys, whoever they were, had picked a fight with the wrong hombre, and far be it from Miguel to show them the error of their ways.
Normally Immortus would have had to arrive at one of the many training rooms, but not today. This day it was to the laboratories. Yellow was toned down in this area, allowing for more sterile blues to dominate. In this place, this was where research and development took place, and this research took many forms.
There would always be weapons research; he had seen to that himself. However, H.I.V.E. needed more than weapons for its goals. That meant other sciences had their place here. Eugenics, kinesiology, biology, medicine, and agronomy were just a select few.
In the medical wing of the labs was where his destination lied. While other high-ranking members were content to either attend their duties, or watch the proceedings digitally, the general wanted to be there in person to watch with his own eyes. To create the minimal amount of disruption, he chose to enter from a door that was out of the way.
This room was filled with lab technicians. Unlike the soldiers who wore yellow and black, these individuals were clad in purple and black, the overall design the same as the soldier uniforms, but with one singular color replaced. The headgear was a stark difference, covering the heads of each person with a dark opaque faceguard obstructing the face. They were see through, but only one way.
Quite a few were gathered around a bed, one that was inclined and allowing the test subject to sit up somewhat. This was the star attraction in this room, the man that Immortus would watch and held high expectations for.
This man did stand out amongst everyone here. For one, he wore no head gear, revealing the head of a young man just entering adulthood. Brown shellacked hair gave the impression that at one time, he had been wearing a helmet. White skin contrasted sharply, somewhat pale but free of any blemish.
His uniform, however, was one of a kind. It was form-fitting, exposing a fit body but one that lacked some much needed muscle to it. Black and silver were the primary colors, halving his torso with silver dominating the shoulders. Red stood out around the feet as boots and at the waist, hugging the thigh and groin regions.
One single arm was exposed, the cloth pulled up past the elbow. The arm laid there limply, a tourniquet lightly tied around the bicep to help coax the veins below it into rising to the surface. It seemed that the general had arrived in time.
There was one technician who had her opaque face guard open, perched over her head. A pretty little thing she was, but far from the beauty that was held in Immortus' eye. She was speaking to the costume man, offering platitudes and soothing words to keep him relaxed.
"Don't worry. We've been through so much together, over a year! We're going to see you through this," she spoke, raising a hand up to push around some brown locks of hair.
Another nearby technician chuckled. "Man, you're going to have some serious abs after this. Buns of steel too!" He held up a syringe, one with a light green fluid contained within.
A third technician approached, clearing away anything that might obstruct his arm, including pushing the sleeve higher up so that he could rub an alcohol-soaked cotton ball into the young man's inner elbow.
The young man watched the rubbing, then looked up to the rest of the technicians. "Are you sure this is what the masters want?" There was uncertainty in his voice, hesitation. From what Immortus had learned, this was a question that had been asked many a time by this man. To think that he had been born from…
No. He was far too old to continue putting stock into that kind of belief. Antiquated and soon to no longer have any justification. H.I.V.E. would see to that.
The second technician moved into position, the needle of the syringe hovering as a vein was sought out. Once one was identified, Immortus watched as the needle was stabbed into the vein, the contents slowly injected in with the plunger. To the young man's credit, he didn't wince, though his jaw visibly lightened. Perhaps not a lost cause after all.
"There, all done," the female technician said. "We'll need to monitor you for a while, make sure everything is working as it's suppose to. But I think we don't need to worry."
"There are other matters to worry about," Immortus cut in, drawing all attention to himself. Every technician stood up straighter and gave a salute, all good humor suppressed. The only one who hadn't was the young man himself, an expression of surprise on his face.
With a long stride, the general approached until he was looming over the young man. Looking him over, from head to foot and back, Immortus declared, "We will need to test you out before we can get to assigning you your true mission." Without looking away from the young man, he demanded more than asked, "How long until we can begin expecting results?"
The female technician stood up straighter. "Several hours, sir. His body will need time to assimilate the serum. Regular exercise should—"
"Four hours," Immortus allowed, interrupting. "We will see your capabilities in four hours. Be completely suited up by then."
The young man stared up at him, eyes the color of the sky peering back. A visible spasm in the throat gave away that the man swallowed. "I—I mean, yes sir."
Without giving acknowledgement, Immortus turned on his heel, marching away. There were still other duties to attend to if the operation was to be a success. Wasting time with platitudes of his own would be just that, wasting time. This wasn't a place for weaklings.
Before he was able to fully leave, though, one of the technicians leaned close to the young man and said in a tone of voice that was meant to be quiet, but the general heard all the same, "Don't worry about him, Grant. He's hard on everyone. You're going to be just fine."
While not the shrill ringing that you hear in movies, school still used a bell of sorts to tell everyone when a period was over. It was like a dull blaring, to be honest. It went on for like three seconds, and people were always quick to get up or pack up. Leaving the classroom was a different matter though.
For some reason, once walking, everyone was slow. Not quite shuffling, but you couldn't confuse them with power walking either. This was frustrating when you had a class at one end of the school and the next one was on the either side, but your locker was definitely not a midpoint, and having to carrying all the books and crap for both classes made your backpack way too heavy to carry so you were screwed in so many ways and everybody walking slow was not helping.
It was a good thing Cassie's schedule was nothing like that right now.
Technically, passing periods were about seven minutes long. Oh sure, they say it's five minutes, but then they don't mention the warning bell which gave you two more minutes to get to class, with the warning bell right before the final bell. It was stupid, because if you couldn't get into your seat before the first bell, then you needed to walk faster.
Right now, that seven minutes would play in her favor. With everyone walking around, more absorbed with their own drama or shit or both, no one would really listen in on the kind of conversation she was about to have. And since her last class was geometry—hey, what was with that look, hmm?—then her quarry would be coming out the 200 hall. So…and there he was.
Red—ahem, Tim—was minding his own business, and by that she meant he was giving some throw away comment to…a guy. Forgive her for not memorizing everybody's name here. This wasn't some small school out in the 'burbs, and Jump wasn't Reno. There were a lot of people and those people had a lot of kids, so the school had a lot of kids in it. Whoever it was Tim was being a bro with, it was definitely someone out of her usual cliques.
Great, that made her sound lame. Anyway, so there was Tim and he had no idea she was closing in on him. No wait, Tim was pulling away and he was heading towards her—he spotted her, hadn't he? And here she thought she was going to have to pull him aside or something.
It was smooth as he came up alongside her, practically bumping shoulders with her, and then Cassie was turning with him until they were both strolling side by side in the same direction.
"Something on your mind?" Tim prompted.
"Not much," the blonde quipped. "But I bet you do. Last night was a bit too easy, wasn't it?"
The nightly patrols felt so same-y lately, but according to Tim here, that was to be expected. You didn't have violent crime all the time, nor could you be everywhere to catch every violent act. The thing was, that sweet computer at the Tower that normally hid out under the floor in their rec room was connected to that of the cop's database. At least, that's what Tim here told her.
There was a decrease with all the fun stuff over the last few days. The boredom some of the others complained about was more proof to that.
"You'd be surprised how often there's an 'easy' night," Tim said.
Cassie raised an eyebrow. "Personal experience."
"It rarely happened in Gotham, but it did happen and always after something major went down," he explained. "Jump isn't Gotham, and it works by its own rules. I have noticed that when it's calm, it stays that way for a while. But if everyone is wanting action, don't worry. It's coming. It always does. The bad guys just have to grow a pair again. They've just been reminded that yes, there are bigger and badder guys out there, guys that make the rest of them small fries. But the small fries also have egos, so they're going to go back to business as usual."
The blonde teenager listened to all this and found herself nodding her head. Sometimes, she forgot that Tim had been at this longer than the rest of them. He had more experience, and whenever one of these long-winded explanations came out, that would be when she was reminded that damn, he's really been doing this for a while. Maybe too long.
Then again, she herself had gone from being an adrenaline junkie who tended to break and enter into other people's homes and steal, doing it for the thrill and because she felt like it. How far she had gone from those days to spending it patrolling the streets of Jump and protecting it from all sorts of crazy shit. Sure, a lot was mundane, but there were always the weird ones.
Naturally, she could trace it all back to Tim here. Well, not everything. Just everything with having to fight off weird, out of this world threats.
"You know, everyone else doesn't have the kind of experience you have. They're not going to understand this crimefighting stuff like you do," she pointed out. Everyone had their role on this team of theirs, and she figured that hers was keeping everyone down to earth. That included fly boy here, especially fly boy.
"They need time and a lot more experience," Tim sighed. "The kind of experience that only comes from the boring stuff. The big stuff is more exciting, but it's also way more dangerous."
"We're teens. We live for danger," Cassie drawled, looking ahead and to the rest of the school. Milling about, going to and from class, was an ocean's worth of hormone driven teens, and like it or not they too were counted among their numbers. The loud noise level was almost like a din, background noise to expect.
If you paid attention, you'd hear the conversations. A lot of them was about normal stuff. What someone did over the weekend. The upcoming game. Shopping trips. Bitching and moaning. Let's not forget the fans, the ones who obsessed over the daily actions of the Teen Titans. Phones were out, chatting was done, and pictures were found all on that digital landscape to be posted somewhere else, and probably redundantly.
It was a little wonder how no one so far had managed to pin her as Wonder Girl. Then again, perhaps she shouldn't look too far for the reason why. A blue eye slid back over to the guy next to her, and she wondered if this was something he had Victor working on or if he was doing it himself. While Victor had the access and the ability to monitor the net for any images of her and to delete them, Tim here had been picking up extra lessons on everything cyber at the Tower. Secret identities had always been his thing, after all.
"There's stupid and reckless, then there's dangerous." Tim's words pulled her out of her thoughts and now she was fully facing him. Tim was still looking straight ahead. "They're not mutually inclusive, but if you're not careful, the first can become the second." He turned his head just enough that he could look at her from the corner of his eye. "Just because superpowers are in the mix, it's less dangerous. If anything, it makes it more. It's not just us at risk, but the people we take down, and not all of them are trained assassins or highly skilled thieves.
"Right now, the biggest obstacles are keeping everyone motivated and then using their powers so that it doesn't cause lasting harm. What this Initiative is is something bigger than all of us involved. We might be teens, but we are going to be getting more and more responsibility as we get older. It's like we're paving a road for other teens who have no idea what's going on with them or have no direction other than to use their powers for themselves."
"And we can't let it get to our heads. Remember, we're still teens," Cassie said, looking away. "What's the point if we can't live a little either?"
If you believed everything you read on the internet, you'd think that life in Titans Tower was all glitz and glamor, a wonderland of a teenage paradise, parties all the time, no accountability, and no adult supervision. It sounded like a great time for all involved didn't it?
Well, what all the kids in Jump didn't know was that the Justice League could be the biggest buzzkill ever.
It wasn't all fighting crime, saving the day, and staying up past midnight on a monster movie binge. Oh no. No, there were classes.
The Justice League billed this place as a place for superpowered teens to prepare themselves for a life of saving the world. That meant training, which wasn't too bad until you learned that Kori could be quite the taskmaster…taskmistress…whatever. She knew how to kick butt without her Starbolts.
But it wasn't all training the body. There was training the mind as well, and that meant sitting in front of a computer terminal and cramming all the little facts the monitor showed into your brain. For Victor, this wasn't such a big deal. He had a computer attached to him all the time, and it was a simple matter to do a download.
Everyone else wasn't as lucky.
Gar had his head propped up on an arm, and his eyelids looked suspiciously closed. Oh sure, they would blink open, but if you continued to watch, you'd see them start drooping slowly. Someone was having a hard time staying up, wonder why. With access to the mainframe and all, the cybernetic teen could keep an eye on all grades and well, Gar had a lot of subjects he was passing. Mostly Cs, some Bs, but weirdly, science was his only A. Not A+, but still, unusually high.
Sitting at the monitor behind him was Terra. Terra didn't look half as tired, but you could tell she was having trouble with the work too. No schooling in her life as far as any of them could tell, so she had remedial, and a lot of it. There was a lot of catch up for her if she wanted to be on the same level as everyone else her age, and to her credit, she looked like she was doing her best. At first, she was just slamming her way through, but the expected slowdown came around the sixth grade. Still a long way to go, though.
Other side of the room, Bart sat with some of the worst posture you had ever seen, practically laying in front of his terminal, his head also propped up on an arm. A single finger was rapidly tapping on a button, the same button it looked like. His eyes were half-lidded, but unlike Green Bean, the speedster just looked plain bored. The only part of him that was slow was the eye blinks, which was really unusual from the teen who was always on the go go go.
Raven was the last, the only one with good posture, and her eyes were sharp as always, moving from left to right as she read what was on her monitor. You didn't need to be a genius to know that out of everyone here, she was the smartest one. All A's right there, truly the valedictorian of this class, not that she had any real competition. Not that he was bragging or anything. She was always reading, so doing all the simple assignments were a breeze for her. She tended to be a bit more intellectual than the rest, especially if Kori's vocabulary had anything to say about that.
That left him, the residential cyborg at the front of the room, not quite bored out of his mind because apps were a thing. Unlike the rest here, for the most part confirmed to be underaged, he himself had a birthday a few months ago. He was officially legal, ahem, eighteen, so it was all about graduation or college level stuff, but again, computer connected to his brain. He knew all he needed to know and what he didn't, well, that could be changed.
So this meant that he had to be, ugh, responsible here. Just keep an eye out, make sure none of these guys caused too much trouble, and make the League happy with whatever it is they wanted to cram into some headstrong adolescent heads.
Now, if you did your math correctly, you knew that someone was missing here. Well, since Kori was officially listed as an instructor here, she was exempt from classwork. She had her hands full with being a single, female extraterrestrial without a planet to call home anymore. She had had a lot of tough breaks recently. Too many. So the cover story offered by the League gave her some breathing room and space to figure out what she was going to do with her life.
It brought back the age old question of how old the Tamaranean was. So far it had gone unanswered, but perhaps one day…
"Done," Bart drolled out, no more tapping coming from his terminal.
Putting the exposition to a side, Victor favored the speedster with a skeptical look. "Done?" he repeated.
"Yeah," the brown-haired teen shrugged as he leaned back in his seat, stretching his arms over his head. "Can you do what you gotta do with that stuff already? It's so boring."
Boring, huh? Hold on one second, let's check the time. Hmmph, someone had finished early. Way too early in his opinion. "You sure?" he asked. "Think you might want to go back over everything? Make sure you didn't make any mistakes?"
By now, the two of them were drawing attention from the other side of the room. Terra was obviously distracted by the chatter, and BB looked like he was desperate for anything distracting. Raven made an effort to not show she was paying attention at all.
Heedless, Bart stretched his back until you could hear a few pop. "Nah, they're all right. Just do the thing already."
Well, since he insisted. He ran the turned-in assignments through the grading program. Something like this didn't take long, only a few seconds, really. Results came in and—hold up, wait a minute.
Frowning, "You got them all right."
Gar nearly slipped out of his seat. "He what?" he squeaked out.
Even Raven couldn't ignore this, though the only way to tell was that her eyes weren't looking at her monitor anymore.
Bart didn't seem impressed or proud. "So, is that it? Am I free to go now?"
While he understood the sentiment here, there was still the sense of responsibility he had. He was wondering why Bart of all people was A, done first, and B, has every single answer right. Sure, he had superspeed and all, but he would have been slowed down by the modern day computer and its processing power. Sure, compared to what you had in the home nowadays, these computers were in a word better, but he had to take into account Bart's willingness to use his powers whenever he could.
So he did a double check, just to be sure. Not that he wasn't trusting what was there, or that he was trying to put Bart in some kind of box or anything, but still…and yep, all correct. No miscalculating on…wait a second.
"You're taking college prep classes?" he exclaimed rather loudly. While Green Bean and Terra were watching him with wide eyes already, Raven finally looked up from her monitor and while she hid her emotions much better than others, the swiftness of her head rising indicated surprise on her part.
Scratching the side of his head, Bart said, "That's college prep? Um, yeah, not really sure what that means but is that important?"
Victor felt his jaw hanging open for several seconds before he was able to get a hold of himself. "Since when are you doing the college track? This is the kind of stuff people my age start working on when they want to get a head start going to college!"
Bart looked away distractedly. "What's college again?"
Now Victor was getting frustrated. "That's higher education, where people go after high school which is the stuff everyone here is working on." Oh, forgot about Terra but she didn't seem offended yet.
"What's the big deal then? I had to learn this stuff growing up in the future anyway." Bart capped that statement off with a big yawn, a hand hovering in front of the orifice. "I mean, that's like…what, elementary level? You're telling me that's all adult stuff? Wow, you guys are kinda behind aren't you?"
Lack of tact aside…the cyborg did get the argument. This was a case of outdated information being taught, but to an extreme. Who knows what education looks like in the future, but apparently they were teaching college level physics at a grade school level in that time. This was like Bart was repeating a grade level and not actually learning anything new.
Which begged the question why he gave off the impression of being an idiot, according to Raven. It could be a possibility that the speedster simply didn't care, which was in character for him. Regardless, it made this little tidbit come out of left field and bitch slap him for underestimating the guy.
Now, when he was presented with enough evidence, he could change his mind. He wasn't one of those type to hold on even when he was dead wrong. At worst, it was begrudging, but he could be talked around. This time wasn't going to be different.
"You can take off."
"Sweet!" Bart cheered, and before the end of that syllable was finished, the teen from the future was gone, the doorway open and revealing the hallway outside. The classroom was quiet then, and had there been an analog clock, you would have heard the ticking.
"Man, why does he get to leave early?" Gar complained, pouting as he crossed his arms.
There was no real good answer to give, yet Victor tried valiantly. "Done with his work. Maybe you should do the same."
"But this is boring," the green shapeshifter grumbled, glaring at his monitor. "When are we going to use any of this?"
Beats the hell out of him, but who knows? The same crap was crammed into his head, and they say misery loves company. Oh yeah, and this was a requirement if they wanted to live here. League rules.
"If you like living here, you'll keep doing it. The League thinks you need it, so do it to keep them happy. 'Kay?" It was his attempt to placate and even he didn't need a highly advanced program to tell him it was weak.
"No one follows a bum on their social media," Raven remarked, eyes back down and expressing nothing from that poker face of hers. The comment had the shapeshifter twisting in his seat to glare at her, but like with a lot of things, she was unresponsive.
Grumbling, Gar turned back around, and that might have been a couple swear words in there. Better hope Raven's hearing wasn't that good or somebody would be taking a swim out in the bay. Again. For like, the twentieth time.
For his part, Victor took one more look at Bart's results, then at the subject, and shook his head before sending the results onward. That would hopefully be the last time he underestimated the speedster.
"There's nothing to dooooo," Bart whined from his seat—since when the hell did he get back here so quickly…right.
Maybe want to put an addendum to that internal vow.
