" . . . Burnie."

"Yeah?"

"You ever wonder why we're here?"

"You know, Mike, I used to not care. I just went along with orders and hoped that everything would work out for me. But after all that's happened, you know what I've learned? It's not about hating the guy on the other side because someone told you to. I mean, you should hate someone because they're an asshole, or a pervert, or snob, or they're lazy, or arrogant or an idiot or a know-it-all. Those are reasons you dislike somebody. You don't hate a person because someone told you to. You have to learn to despise people on a personal level. Not because they're Justice League, or because they're Secret Society, but because ya know them, and you see them every single day. And you can't stand them because they're a complete and total fucking douchebag."

" . . . "

" . . . "

"I meant why are we down here in the only Cadmus bunker Langley didn't scrap, watching over the 'Vegetable Patch's' only patient when we could be doing literally anything else?"

"Because I made a crack about Waller and her big fucking melonhead, and you let Eiling go all 'Captain Nazi' and level half of Metropolis."

"Hey, that's a low fucking blow and you know it."

"Whatever. At least we're still getting paid by the hour."

"Time and a half over forty, time and a half and a half after sixty."

"Yeah, that's about the only upside to this shit jo-"

"Something wrong?"

"Get Waller on the line..."

"Why?"

"Because Sleeping Beauty's waking up, that's why."

*JLUxTT*

Some saw Metro Tower as the government capitulating to "the meta-human menace"; the first step towards the eventual downfall of "good, normal people". Others saw it as the symbol of a new golden age for law enforcement; the cornerstone of a safer world that didn't have to fear some fresh flavor of Armageddon every few years.

For one Amanda Waller, it was just another resource. Not one she could control with the iron fist she once wielded, but a resource nonetheless. Though she was now retired from "the game", as the US' liaison to the Justice League, at the very least she didn't have to try and host another fucking tea party for her and all the other old retired broads in DC.

While people still listened when she talked, due to the complicated history between her and the League, she chose to go in through the back, instead of the public entrance all the tour groups and other government officials used.

As she passed by Leaguers and support staff, she noticed a few of them shooting her sour looks, the tension around her palpable.

Understandable, given she had tried to "sanitize" the Watchtower and everyone in it after being suckered by Luthor. She'd known the man was a snake, but she'd let him bite her anyway.

Not one of her greatest moments, she admitted…

She'd wanted the Justice League to be in the wrong so-much, she'd almost let the man win, if it weren't for Batman driving home the last nail in the coffin. Compared to Darkseid's second dedicated invasion, the rise of "Lexiac" was a close second in how-close the entire world came to being rechristened "Vacant Lot".

Sure, no-one outside DC could actually see what had happened that day, but the ramifications of Luthor going on the mad scavenger hunt that followed, chasing the voices in his head, had led to the second coming of Darkseid.

Idly, a part of her wondered whether she'd live long enough to see the end of the world, or if she'd be lucky-enough to kick the bucket so she wouldn't have to see it happen in-person.

"Just another day at the office."

*JLUxTT*

"Mr. Terrific."

"Amanda Waller. To what do I owe the pleasure," the man returned dryly as she got into the main Ops Center with her Liaison Pass.

"There's a problem on my end."

"Which is…?"

"Galatea is showing signs of waking up," the woman replied, causing Mr. Terrific's eyes to go wide.

"Didn't Supergirl fry her with runoff from the Watchtower's fusion reactor?"

"She did, but if Superman's any sort of object lesson, Kryptonians are damn hard to put down; even the clones."

"Actually, Supergirl was Argoan, not Kryptonian."

"Tomato, potato," Waller huffed, waving it off as an unimportant detail since they both had the same powers under Earth's yellow sun. "Reason I'm coming out like this is, we're not sure what to do with her if she really does wake up. The League and the UN confiscated most of our Kryptonite stores, and our red sunlight generators, so we're hoping you could send someone down in case she's… upset with how things turned out. Her level of consciousness is debatable, so even if we told her about our 'truce' and she was able to hear it, she might not really care. It didn't take a room full of geniuses and psychiatric profilers to figure out she went off the reservation right at the end."

"Well, you get what you pay for. Or don't pay for, as it were."

"So I'm reminded," Waller huffed.

As soon as people found out the Ultimen had all been cloned, and that countless batches more had been turned into mindless meat-puppets to throw at the League, there'd been no end to the Human Rights Activists and governmental oversight committees on her ass. Didn't help when Superman spoke up on the issue, admitting that Krypton had literally had a "Clone War", years before he was born, because the cloned labor caste had outright rebelled against their masters. And it wasn't just Krypton that frowned on clone labor, at least according to the Green Lanterns that could be reached for comment.

Since then, any human, meta-human, alien, or even animal cloning was heavily scrutinized, if not borderline illegal. As was the better part of Cadmus' proprietary medical nanotech.

"I can put out an APB, but all of our heavy-hitters are off world."

"All of them?"

"Almost all, but I wouldn't want to send anyone against your bootleg Argoan all alone."

"So then we just wait and see if this time bomb blows up in our faces or not?"

"Maybe not. All of the big guns in the League are off-world, but there might be someone in the Reserve League we can call on," Mr. Terrific said pulling up a file on his computer.

"Uuugh, why'd it have to be him?" Waller groaned as the Reserve Leaguer and founding member of the Teen Titans, Ventus (known to her by the alliterative name of Vincent Valentine) appeared on the screen.

"Is there going to be a problem?" Mr. Terrific asked as his finger hovered over the Call button.

"He and Cadmus don't exactly have a… cordial relationship."

"What did you do this time?" he asked without missing a beat.

It was a cheap shot, but not wholly inaccurate...

"Wind Dragon's meta-gene had to come from somewhere…"

"Should I leave you out of the briefing?"

" . . . No. The moment he hears 'Cadmus', if he finds out I hid away from this, he might step back and let it blow up in my face on sheer principle alone. Best I go to see him in person, bend the knee and ask for his help the old-fashioned way."

"Like when your agents jumped him and dragged him into the back of their windowless van?" Mr. Terrific quipped sarcastically.

"Sure, anything can look bad if you put enough of a spin on it…" Waller groaned, deeply dreading the confrontation to come.

*JLUxTT*

AN:
A lot of my new and long-time readers have been wanting more of a Justice League crossover, some shipping for more Pairings (which I always find flattering since my OC is involved) so when the JL episodes became available on Netflix and I re-watched the "Cadmus Arc", I got to thinking about Galatea, and how she might react to Supergirl not being there anymore after that whole thing with the Legion of Superheroes.

Unlike my Teen Titans story where there was a Canon I "wanted to change" at the start, starting out in this one, there's a "story I want to tell" because this version of Galatea/"Power Girl" always seemed interesting. Especially with how-deeply I peer into Lore.

As a bit of a heads-up, to address a small Continuity Error someone pointed out to me, the events of Justice League Unlimited: "Far from Home" still happen in this version of Earth-12; they just happened after the events of "Back in Black" in my second Teen Titans work (since that's the last appearance Supergirl makes in "Teen Titans: Elements"). At the time I was writing "Tournament of Heroines", I'd forgotten about that whole thing with the Legion of Superheroes, but there's no reason I can't re-fit what happened into the timeline. While it did come up in-episode that Supergirl changed her outfit to look more like Superman's, there's nothing saying how-long or how-short that change had been in effect.

It's also a chance to branch out from "Teen Titans: Elements" itself, and show that Ventus can step into the bigger leagues away from Jump City. Where/when this fits into my Teen Titans timeline can be nebulous, since the Earth-12 iteration wasn't big on Timestamps like its Earth-16 counterpart, but it's somewhere after the point that he mastered his Indigo Ring, but before Trigon makes his big comeback. And also within/after the timeframe for the events of my AO3 off-shot story, Ride the Wind.

Reason I'm making this a Justice League crossover instead of just adding it into my pre-existing work, is to spread my name out a little bit more; that and because I hope it can also work as a standalone piece. Already, my Young Justice story is quite massive, with numerous crossovers making the world a massive-multi, so its possible in the future I'll make the more focused arcs their own separate works assuming they focus on a specific IP within the "Earth-16H Universe" I've created. But I digress.

Anywho, tell me what you think if you're an old or a new reader. A small part of me hopes that "Ventus"/Vincent Valentine is compelling-enough of a character, that new readers might check out my older works if they stumbled upon this first. I'm always really flattered when someone tells me they've binged my work, which in of itself is no small feat since I'm a sucker for long-form storytelling.

Anywho, this story won't be a part of my main "Rotation", so updates will come as I hit inspiration, and I hope to see you all next time.