Young Justice: Recruit
Chapter 1: Indoctrination
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters involved except for Li Owens
New York City, August 2017, 21:30 EST
Superboy and Tigress moved through the complex quickly and quietly. Their intel reported that the building was being used as a warehouse where illegal experiments to identify and create meta-humans were being conducted. Superboy moved up behind a support pillar and looked over as Tigress moved to another pillar nearby.
She looked up and saw him looking her way and nodded her head in the direction they were headed. Superboy nodded and closed his eyes to focus his hearing.
He could hear voices echoing slightly to them from down a set of stairs at the far end of the complex. Based on the vibrations of their voices off the walls he was able to determine there was an underground level to the complex with a multitude of off-shoot hallways.
"We're clear up here," he told Tigress.
"Good, then let's get down there."
The two took off, rushing around the pillars and moving towards the staircase. The door was unlocked and the two quietly made their way down the stairs before arriving in a long hallway with branching off-shoots.
"No! No! Stop! Please!" A voice echoed to them from down the hall.
The two rushed down one of the side hallways and heard screaming, doubling their pace they arrived in a large room where a young man was strapped to an upright table and was covered in sensory nodes, electricity was visibly arcing through his body and he was convulsing in pain.
"That's enough!" Tigress shouted as she drew his bow off her back and it folded out. She deftly laid an arrow on the string and released, it flew into the console where the scientist conducting the experiment was thrown back as it exploded.
Superboy meanwhile rushed forward, leaping onto the machine. He grabbed one of the pylons that were conducting the electricity, and while he was getting shocked he was able to wrench it free and shut off the power. As the circuit was broken the electricity stopped and the boy slumped against his restraints.
"Is he ok?" Tigress asked as she ran up to Superboy as he leapt off the machine.
"Yeah, I can still hear his heartbeat, but it's faint."
"Should we call the League?"
"No, I think we're ok here. Keep an eye on him. This looks like a smaller facility. I'll search through the rest and see if I can find anything."
"Ok, be careful."
Superboy nodded before turning and rushing out of the room and into another hallway. Tigress sighed as she collapsed her bow and replaced it on her back. She then set to work unstrapping the young man from the table and laying him on the ground. His breathing was deep and even, and he seemed to be recovering.
"Well well, look what we have here," A voice echoed from the far side of the room.
Tigress immediately leapt to her feet and readied her bow again, an arrow on the string as she spun around to face the newcomer. A large figure, seemingly made entirely of rock, was stomping towards her.
"Seems we have an intruder," it said, its voice deep and gravelly.
"It's over, we're here to break up this operation," Tigress told him.
"Is that so? My boss won't be too happy to hear that… maybe I should make it so he never does…"
The rock-man rushed Tigress, she easily leapt away to avoid the charge and fired an arrow at him. It exploded on contact which made him grunt as he absorbed the blow. His body began to glow red, albeit very faintly.
Tigress readied another arrow as the Rock-Man rushed her again. She skipped back and fired a series of three arrows that detonated on him once more. The red glow inside his body grew brighter and Tigress took notice of it.
"I take it your ability isn't just being made of rocks huh?" She asked.
"No, but what's the fun in telling you what I can do? Why don't I just show you!?" He shouted as he ran towards her again, but rather than a headlong rush, this time he was holding his arms out ready to grab her.
She managed to dodge his attempts, but he was backing her into a wall and she needed to find a way out before he grabbed her. Too late she saw an opening as his large fist locked around her arm.
"Gotcha!" He shouted gleefully.
He pulled her close and she began to feel an intense heat coming off his body as the glowing intensified. She began to sweat from the ambient heat coming off him, and it was starting to become too much when he stopped as another voice called out to them.
"Let her go!"
The two looked to see Superman floating high in the air in the middle of the room.
"Superman?! What's he doing here!?" Both asked at the same time.
"You got a lot of nerve bustin' in here Superman!" The Rockman called to him.
"And you have a lot of nerve talking back to me like that," Superman replied.
Tigress noted this, that wasn't how Superman usually spoke to people.
The Rockman seemed to forget about her for the moment as he tossed her aside and began to move towards Superman who floated down to ground level, his arms crossed over his chest.
"So, you wanna go a few round then Mr. Bigshot?" The Rockman challenged.
"Let's see if you can last one round first Avalanche," Superman replied.
This seemed to catch the Rockman, Avalanche, off guard as he took a step back in surprise.
"How do you know my name?"
Superman gave him a smirk before he uncrossed his arms and threw a punch at Avalanche. He took it on the chin and was sent sailing backwards, crashing to the floor and sending up a small cloud of dust and smoke.
Tigress took the opportunity to get away and make her way back to the kid who was being tested. As she got close she saw him standing, focusing intently on Superman.
"Hey kid! Are you ok?" She asked as she rushed up to him.
"Don't, distract me," The kid said as Superman clutched at his head and began to stagger around, as if he were being struck.
Avalanche looked up and saw Superman being seemingly assaulted by nothing and grinned as he charged into Superman. Picking him up he slammed him through a wall and the Kid let out a yell of pain and dropped to a knee.
"What's going on?" Tigress asked as she knelt down beside him and put a hand on his back.
"Stop, talking to me. I need to focus! Or else…" He didn't finish as Avalanche came back into the room.
"Nice trick kid, but making a fake Superman who can't take a real hit won't get you very far," He said as he slowly approached the pair.
"Then what about a real Superboy who can give a real hit?" Superboy shouted as he rushed up to Avalanche from behind.
He turned just in time to take a punch on the jaw from Superboy which sent him flying and crashing into the floor again.
"You get the Kid out of here, I'll hold him off."
Tigress nodded as she looped one of the Kid's arms over her shoulder and began to lead him out. The sounds of Avalanche and Superboy's battle echoing to them and signs of the struggle were evident whenever one of them landed a serious blow as the whole complex shoot, rattling dust and small stones from the ceiling.
"We should get out of her quickly, before they bring this whole place down on our heads. Hold on Kid," Tigress said as she re-adjusted her grip on the Kid and lifted him up on her back and rushing out of the complex.
She took the stairs two or three at a time before she rounded the corner and was in the warehouse on the surface again. As she started to make her way towards the large bay doors that she and Superboy had used to enter Superboy and Avalanche came crashing through the floor, Superboy seemed to have a death grip on Avalanche who was trying to break it by repeatedly punching Superboy in the face.
"Superboy!" Tigress shouted as she saw him.
He looked over to see her standing there with the Kid before turning back to Avalanche and crashing him into the wall of the warehouse. The sounds of metal snapping and pipes falling echoed to Tigress from further down the walkways of materials stored in the building. She saw parts of the ceiling were beginning to rain down on them and she rushed towards the exit.
"Come on, come on, come on," She was saying to herself as she ran. The exit was rapidly getting closer, but so were the pieces of debris falling near her.
At one point she heard a loud cracking sound right above her head and looked up just in time to see a piece of the ceiling give way and start to fall directly on top of her. She tried to double her pace to make it past, but based on how big its shadow was becoming she knew she wouldn't make it. She went to slide to a stop to drop the Kid and grab her bow when the chunk of ceiling shattered into thousands of smaller pieces. She covered her face with her arm and after the dust settled looked up to see Superman floating there.
"You again?" She asked.
Superman went to say something, but his body turned into a golden light before disintegrating into similarly-colored particles. Tigress felt an arm slump over her shoulder and looked over it to see the Kid passing out again.
"You are one crazy kid, you know that?" She asked as she made her way out of the warehouse and onto the safety of the boardwalk outside.
As she made her way to the boat she and Superboy had used to approach the warehouse she heard a crashing sound and looked up onto the shore to see the structure collapsing. As the dust drifted in the air she saw a figure approaching her. A silhouette inside the dust cloud, she drew her bow and readied an arrow only to see it was Superboy, his shirt ripped and his body cut and bruised in places from his fight with Avalanche.
"Looks like he gave you a hard time," she said as she lowered the bow.
He shook his head. "You would not believe what he was keeping in reserve. The dude turned himself into a bomb to try and take me down with him!" Superboy shouted in exasperation as she collapsed into one of the seats on the boat.
"Sounds like fun," Tigress replied sarcastically as she turned the key and sped the boat away.
"Loads… so what about this Kid?" Superboy asked, looking over to the Kid who was strapped into a seat.
"I'm not sure. Before you showed up, right after Avalanche there caught us at first, Superman showed up for a few minutes and fought with him."
"But that's not possible. Superman is in space,"
"I know. Which is why I knew something was up. It was confirmed when I found this Kid focusing on him and told me to leave him alone when I tried to talk to him. Eventually Avalanche took his Fake Superman through a wall and the Kid passed out. He summoned him again as we were fleeing the warehouse to shatter a piece of debris that would've fallen on us."
"So they activated his meta-gene," Superboy said as he turned from Tigress back to the Kid.
"Looks like it, and as far as I can tell his ability is to create fakes of other people."
"But it sounds like its based on his concentration, and if his fakes take any damage he takes it too, at least to some extent." Superboy said as he leaned forward and put his arms on his knees.
"We'll need to get him to the League. They'll know what to do with him."
"Do we know his name at least?" Superboy asked.
"Li Owens," The Kid said softly.
The two turned to look at him in shock as he stirred and shifted his position. He sat up straight in the seat and groaned as his vision swam and his head pounded.
"How do you go through walls like that? It's a killer headache," Li told Superboy.
"Takes a lot of practice, are you ok?" Superboy asked him.
"Once my head stops feeling like it's being used as the main drum in a marching band maybe," Li replied as he gripped his head with his hand.
"We'll get you to a doctor and they'll be able to help you," Tigress told him.
Li nodded and leaned back in his seat.
"Li… about what happened back there," Superboy began after a few minutes of silence.
"I… is it about Superman?" He asked.
Superboy nodded "How did he get there?"
"I summoned him… I think,"
"Summoned him? What do you mean?"
"When I saw Avalanche had gotten ahold of her," Li stopped to point a finger at Tigress, "I wished someone, anyone, could show up to stop him. My first thoughts turned to Superman. I'd read all about him and I knew if anyone could stop Avalanche it was him. The next thing I knew, he was there, floating in front of me. He acted just like I imagined he would, being all cool and witty."
"That explains a lot," Tigress chimed in as she listened to the conversation.
"What do you mean?"
"The Superman he summoned was acting really weird compared to how he normally does. I thought something might've been off. It was based on Li's perception of Superman."
"Is he normally not like that?" Li asked, "Wait, you've met Superman!?"
Both of them nodded "Met him, worked with him a few times even," Superboy answered.
Li's jaw dropped as he looked from Superboy to Tigress and back again. "That's awesome! Can I meet him?"
The two looked at each other and Superboy gave a small smile before turning back to Li.
"I think we could arrange that."