"Don't be startled."
A thin horizon of neon purple light spread across his vision, the darkness behind his eyes parted and split that horizon into incomprehensible light. Robin opened his eyes and slowly, blearily, saw the figure knelt over him.
"Don't let my appearance bother you."
It was one of those times where some one tells you to do one thing, but your gut instinct is to do the exact opposite. Like if a police officer tells you not to panic, your first reaction is to panic immediately.
The person looming over him in the purple darkness was missing one whole arm. Not in the fashion of an amputee, more in the style of someone who had experienced the intimate and frighteningly recent embrace of a wood chipper. His face bore three vicious claw marks as well, leaving bloody trails down his head. Tatters of a dark hood and cowl barely obscured his blonde hair, but to be honest the lacerations were doing most of the heavy lifting in hiding this person's identity. Not that Robin could remember knowing someone with such a bargain bin approach to superhero costumery. The only clear identifiers were a green question mark splattered with blood and emblazoned on his grey shirt, and a dark blue cloak hanging down to his side.
"You're gonna have amnesia."
'No kidding.' Was Robin's first thought, as he took in the surroundings which acted as the backdrop to this odd awakening. A stone room, far larger than at first appeared, with spiral like engravings on the walls and large burrow-like tunnels spaced at odd intervals. The floor was covered in small scratch marks, and all about them was an ambient sound of buzzing. All this taken into account, Robin was sure he'd remember this place and this person regardless of how bad a knock to the head he'd taken. Amnesia made sense, since the last thing he remembered was getting ready for the first day of the new school year.
"You don't know where you are, who I am, or how you got here."
Sitting up slowly, Robin cast his perception over his own body. He felt rough, like he'd gone two dozen rounds in a tumble drier before bungee jumping on a full stomach. Still, this wasn't an unmanageable event, Batman must've experienced situations like this before. Unknown location, uncertain allies, it was practically a staple of heroics. Dropped in at the deep end he was confident he could drag himself and anyone else out, or call Bruce if things got real bad.
Just as the Boy Wonder thought he was getting a grasp on the situation, a series of words left the strangers mouth that instantly froze him solid.
"Long story short, we're in an extra-dimensional Peruvian temple suspended over a void of infinite light being chased by giant guinea pigs."
"… That's… a new one." Dick Greyson, who had backflipped over speeding sports cars and round-house kicked his way out of a crowd of gangsters, felt immediately lost and confused.
"Your friends are here, but they've been put under the same amnesia effect as you, none of them remember the last couple of months, give or take." The person, whose name Robin couldn't even guess yet, had a voice that was oddly calm for someone who had recently lost a limb.
So many things were out of place right now that all Robin could do was work through them one by one, he started by asking Captain Question. "What friends?"
"Kid Flash, Miss Martian, Artemis, Aqualad, Raven, and me."
Some of those names rang a bell, but not on a personal level. All The Questionator had done was leave him with more questions.
"What do you mean by… giant guinea pigs?" The words felt stupid even as Robin said them, but given that his new pal was not in any condition to be making jokes, what with the bloody mess and all, Robin tried to push away any sense of idiocy.
"I mean giant guinea pigs. Guinea weasels too, chipmunks, gerbils, and even a koala. Giant versions of the cutest creatures on planet Earth, all massive, all bloodthirsty, all under the control of powerful villains." The gravelly voice of The Human Question reminded Robin somewhat of his mentor, though that sense of stoicism and seriousness was layered over with a general bluntness. Overall he gave off the impression of someone who had gone beyond caring if you listened to him or not, where Batman commanded attention like a schoolmaster, this Mr. Q almost evaded it, his voice leaving only questions in its wake.
With a crease of his brow, Robin asked. "Should I be worried that you're acting so casual about this."
"I've lived this shit for years, don't worry about me." Resolutely Robin came to the conclusion that he had found the impossible, he had found someone more inscrutable than Batman. "Can you stand up?"
With a groan Robin rose to his feet, wobbling only slightly before testing his arms and legs to sense for any broken bones or injuries. Satisfied than any injuries he had sustained were minor or superficial, the boy wonder stated. "Alright Questionaire, we should try and establish a connection to the justice league."
The mysterious vigilante shook his head, his bloody, wounded head. Blood was slowly oozing out of the stump where his arm should have connected to the shoulder. The casual tone in which he then spoke made Robin wince. "Not even you could get signal in a different dimension, kid."
The familiarity irked Robin somewhat, prompting him to respond. "Do I know you?"
"I'm your babysitter." The cocky smirk that accompanied that statement finally set Robin over the edge.
"Babysitter?" From one solemn word, Robin flew off the handle, throwing his hands in the air in desperation and confusion. "Babysitter!? You've got one arm missing, your face is all messed up, Jesus Christ who are you!? Giant guinea pigs, Peruvian temple, what is this, this, this… this shit!?"
A brief moment of silence fell, wherein Robin, shocked at his own outburst could only hear the harsh sounds of his own breathing. Thank God Batman hadn't been around to hear him swearing like that, or worse, losing his cool.
A grumbling chuckle was all it took to break that silence, as the figure started to speak, a small smile on his face. "The Bat sent you and a number of other teenage sidekicks on a mission to escort a young girl to a monastery, I was sent along to act as backup for magical bullshit."
Rolling his eyes, Robin took issue with that measly explanation. "Firstly, hate to have to correct you, but, I'm not a sidekick. Secondly, that doesn't answer why you've only got one arm!? Do you know you're missing a limb?"
"Sure. Either way, said magical bull has shitted itself all over your psyche, so cool your jets and follow me."
Robin planted the palms of his hands into his eyes and massaged them, hoping to scrub away this infuriatingly mysterious anomaly. "Holy shit… your arm!?"
"It's fine." The mysterious answer did not do much to alleviate Robin's mood.
"Thats really all I'm getting, huh?"
The vigilante shrugged, a motion that did unspeakable things to his visible bones. "It won't be a problem."
The one-armed bandit turned and headed deeper into the stone temple. Resigned to his fate, Robin followed along behind, asking belatedly. "… Who are you then. I can't just keep thinking of you as The Quizzer, or whatever."
"I am Mysterion."
"Well that makes a hell of a lot of sense…" There was no response except for Mysterion crouching down by a corner to check around it before proceeding into another empty chamber. "I've never heard of you." Robin continued, trying to make conversation purely for the hope that some more concrete information would come forth. Like, what had happened to those other young heroes, why this girl they were supposedly escorting was so important, and what giant guinea pigs were doing in an extra-dimensional Peruvian temple. There were a lot more questions, but for the life of him Robin couldn't be bothered to interrogate the brick wall that was Mysterion again.
"That wass intentional until very recently." Mysterion moved over to a broken pile of debris that stood in one corner of the room, splintered wood arranged haphazardly, as if someone had just swept it into the corner with a giant broom.
Lost for what they were even doing, Robin threw out another verbal barb. "You know question marks are the Riddler's thing?"
"You've asked me this before you know."
With a sigh, Robin brought up his wrist mounted holo-screen, examining it for the multitude of sensor readouts it could give him. "What is it we're doing then. Whats the situation. If we were here with our friends then where are they, how did I lose my memories?"
"That's a good question." Mysterion answered. "Soon as we arrived here you were all hit with a psychic wave, we hit the ground in some kind of courtyard. You were all unconscious, but someone was coming soI hid out of sight."
"How come you weren't affected by that psychic wave then?" Another note of annoyed suspicion wormed its way into Robin's voice at that revelation. All the inconsistencies and down right oddities surrounding this Mysterion character were beginning to make him paranoid.
"Remember I mentioned magical bullshit? Yeah, that. Anyway the people who showed up were some ninja-looking mother-fuckers with sowrds, and a hooded albino guy with his brain exposed or something. He seemed to be in charge." Mysterion's tone wasn't ignorant per se, but it was the voice of someone who was concerned with bigger things.
"Psi-mon." Robin answered, the description bringing up memories of the villains he had studied in his own time. Even if he and Batman hadn't directly tangled with a villain, Robin took care to make sure he was familiar with as many of them as he could manage, his feverish interest in criminology driving him to gain more and more data on each one.
With an eyebrow raised, Mysterion asked. "His name really Simon?"
"Yeah, it's…" Robin could see where the question marked teen was coming from. It wasn't exactly the most threatening name. "He's no joke." Robin added as an addendum, for despite Psi-mon's ineffectual name, the villain's psychic powers were apparently dangerous enough to send Superman for a whirl.
"Could've fooled me…" Mysterion continued in his blunt uncaring manner. "They start talking about taking them to The Professor, when shit hit the fan."
Robin couldn't help but notice the frown that spread over mysterion's face. "What happened?"
"Superboy woke up."
"Oh yeah, you mentioned." Scratching his chin in thought, Robin walked alongside Mysterion as they continued to make their way through the temple halls, each one as ruined and empty as the last. "Didn't know there was a Superboy."
"Well there is…" Mysterion stopped for a moment in the middle of a crossroads of hallways, cocking his head to the side and appearing to listen for something. "And I don't think he likes getting his brain fucked with. He went ape-shit immediately, started smashing the ground, punching people. That woke some of the others up and… well, it didn't go much better. Kid Flash picked up Artemis and sprinted out of there. M'gann phased into nothing and fucked off as well. Then Kaldur tried to pick up Raven…" At that Mysterion heaved a forlorn sigh, a sound both aggravated and melancholy.
"And…?"
"It didn't go well…" It became clear to Robin then why Mysterion had been so stand-offish, so belligerently obscuring. Perhaps part of it was his nature, but the nervous movements, the constant investigation of their surroundings, everything made it very clear that Mysterion was worried. Not just solely fixated on one situation, but a myriad of things that combined to make this excursion incredibly anxiety inducing.
Rocking back on his heels, Robin cautiously asked. "Who is this Raven?"
"She's the one we're escorting here." Mysterion walked on, his tattered half-cloak flapping at his bloody side. Not a hint of reaction to the physical pain he may or may not be enduring, but a nervous twitch in the eyes that showed his emotional imbalance, the knifes edge of worry on which he teetered.
"Why here?"
"This place was a renowned monastery, place where a bunch of monks used to sit and hum all day, finding the true path to enlightenment or whatever. Idea was for Raven to learn how to control her powers." As they walked on Robin began to notice that the ambient light that revealed this place, seemed to have grown stronger. A more present luminous violet set the walls into ominous relief, the engravings and religious markings casting deeper shadows as they emerged from the darkness.
Curiously, cautiously, Robin asked. "What are her powers?"
"Well… from what I saw in the courtyard, her powers involve wrecking everybody's shit. I ran in and got you out of the line of fire before things got really bad, but now we're all split up in an unfamiliar place, and Psi-mon seems to have erased everyone's memories of the last few months."
"How can you tell?"
"In the chaos it was pretty clear no one knew who anyone else was. That and Psi-mon kept shouting something about 'forgetting'." With a rolling of eyes, Mysterion wiggled his fingers mockingly, his dislike for Psi-mon showcasing itself in his thickly layered sarcasm.
"Wait… so where do the giant guinea pigs come into this?"
As an answer Mysterion pointed to his bloody stump, then with a blunt matter-of-factness pointed into the next chamber. Inside which lay curled up one, giant, guinea pig.
With a hushed tone Mysterion answered. "Fuck if I know. But they've been here long enough to seriously mess this place up. I don't know why Psi-mon is here, but he's not alone, and I don't think he's here for us either."
"Wait, what are you doing!? Shouldn't we just go around it?"
"Nah, this big little guy is gonna help us out."
"How so?"
"He's going to take us to his leader."
—?M?—?M?—?M?—
Hunkered down in a strange temple with a cute, and likely deadly, girl, was not exactly where Wally West had planned to be that day. But hiding from ninjas in a strange location was better than being stabbed by ninjas in a strange location, so he supposed he could count his lucky stars. They numbered one, but still, luck was luck. And hey, cute girl. Lucky star number two.
"Why'd you save me back there?" Her voice was like a dozen different weapons all aimed at him, blunt, sharp, dangerous. Yet she held it back from him, showing her anger at the situation, but also gratefulness for his pulling her out of the fire.
Wally shrugged. "I'm a hero, it's what I do."
"Ugh, he probably wants me to kill you." Her flippant tone sent Wally's expression spiralling into worry and confusion, his freckled face peeling back into surprise behind his mask.
"Maybe you can hold off the killing for now? Neither of us know exactly where we are right now." Her reaction to his suggestion wasn't ideal, but she didn't seem ready to kill him at any rate. He continued. "Look, it's a bad situation we've fond ourselves in, but we can get out of this, together." He held out his hand as a peace offering. "So… friends?"
An expression flickered behind her eyes and she looked away, but Wally in all his fathomless intellect, couldn't begin to understand what it showed. "At least until we figure out what's going on." She said, her tone accepting and resolved.
"Right, time to figure out where we are." Wally stated, smiling broadly at the girl to settle her nerves. He slowly rose to his feet and peered out around the corner they had hidden behind.
When he withdrew back into the safety of their hiding place, his expression was almost clinically blank.
"What is it?" The archer girl asked, her words sounding ancxious as she saw the Speedster's odd expression.
Wally peeked out from their hiding spot one more time, just to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.
"What is it?" The girl repeated, growing ever more afraid.
"You ever…" He stalled, his mind spinning its wheels in the mud of the insanity he'd just witnessed. "What's your name?"
"Artemis."
Wally nodded, mulling over how he would break the news to her. "Artemis, you have any pets?"
"No."
"No…?" His voice trailed off, before in a pitch higher than was normal he asked. "No guinea pigs, or…?" Again, his mind came up with nothing clever to say, for once, Wally West found himself speechless. After a long few seconds of silence he bluntly asked. "No guinea pigs?"
Clearly reconsidering having placed any confidence in this stranger, Artemis responded. "No, why?"
Taking a deep breath, with a tone of finality Wally said.. "You're gonna have to see this to believe it."
—?M?—
Being princess carried down a stone hallway at speeds rivalling a dirt bike, Artemis belatedly recognised that this most certainly wasn't some twisted training exercise her dad had arranged. Her blonde ponytail whipped behind her as she kept a keen eye on their pursuer.
Her and the Speedster who'd saved her, twice now she counted, were careening away from a giant guinea pig. Maybe the size of a jeep and with all the speed of one too. It's eyes were red and glowing, its teeth were sharp and deadly, and it was so… so, god damn cute it hurt.
As she grimaced in regret, Artemis fired off an explosive arrow behind her at the creature. Ons second thoughts maybe this was arranged by her dad, it'd be just like him to make her kill both a cute boy and a cute guinea pig. Blah blah crushing the weakness of childhood out of you blah blah. His script was so old by this point it was practically a museum piece.
To her surprise the arrow she fired did not explode into brutal shrapnel fragments, instead blossoming into a quickly solidified lump of foam gel. In confusion she stared at her own arrows, then at her costume in growing realisation. "What the hell is going on!?"
"You said it!" Wally replied, puffing and panting as they sped away from the arrested giant pet.
—?M?—
M'gann M'orrz paused above it all. She had floated up into the unnatural sky to get a better idea of where she was. There she had found no answers, only more questions.
She was not on Mars anymore.
A void of swelling purple covered the whole sky, with spots of radiant light shining like diamonds within it. Two moons shone down like lazy eyes taking in all of this world's glory. Though the world itself was nothing more than a huge island complex, buildings and gardens arrayed in a bizarre pattern, spires and towers rose up, and dark red slate tiles coated every rooftop.
Closing her eyes she sank back into her mind, trying to remember what had happened to lead her to this place.
A thundering roar splintered her concentration and with a gasp her eyes snapped open and she looked in the direction of the noise. Down below her she could see black and red light exploding from one of the many courtyards of this place. Even without listening for it she could hear a voice crying out in telepathic space, calling for help. It was in a language she did not know, but nor did she need to know it, to hear the cry so clearly.
Descending at a rapid rate she flew to the site of the danger without thinking. Therein she found a number of humans, not martians, surrounding and yet cowering away from a central creature she had no frame of reference for.
In the middle stood a diminutive figure, no bigger than her in her current humanoid form. Like her it was clad in a purple cloak, but unlike her something dark gathered around it. From beneath the swoop of the hood where only shadows dwelt, three red eyes pierced out. Rising up around the figure, snaking out from beneath the hem of the cloak were tendrils and limbs of liquid shadow. Shot through with red light, these tar coloured tentacles lashed out at the people who surrounded it.
The majority of these were dressed wholly in black, carrying short swords in their hands, though standing warily and backing away from the monster in the centre. But it was the one who did not fit their description that she fixated upon, and as she saw him, her memories snapped back into place, like the final piece of a puzzle slotting together. She saw the whole picture, then saw the dark tendril lashing out for him and she cried. "Kaldur look out!"
—?M?—
It was now Artemis who carried Wally, supporting the almost exhausted hero by the shoulder and gently setting him down against a pile of rubble.
"Thanks." He offered gingerly, as he sat back and proceeded to open a hidden compartment in his glove. From there he took out an energy bar and scarfed it down.
Noticing her watching, Wally grinned oafishly. "Sorry." He mumbled through a mouthful of food. "I'm a bit of a pig when I'm hungry. Gotta keep those energy levels up!"
Despite herself Artemis laughed, the nervous energy that had been building up in her letting itself out at one stupid joke. "Alright then, Pig Flash, what do we do now?"
Wally smiled at her friendly insult, and this time finished eating before he answered. "Well, we gotta figure out where we are."
Their planning was suddenly interrupted by an interjecting voice, whispering from over the rise of their rubble barrier, it said. "KF, that you?"
Appearing in almost the blink of an eye, flipping over the rubble, was none other than Robin, the Boy Wonder, the most famous sidekick who ever lived.
Reacting like he was seeing an old friend, which Artemis supposed made sense, given that they were both sidekicks to two of the most famous heroes in the world, Kid Flash lit up with relief. "Robin! Boy am I glad to see you, what the heck is going on?"
"You said it, buddy." Artemis self-consciously took a half step back, her hand itching for her bow. Seeing the two heroes made her question even more why she was here. It didn't make sense for her to be with these two, she must be here for something else. Yet Wally had saved her, been nothing but goofy and funny and reassuring and…
"You're Artemis, right?" Robin's question froze her solid.
Luckily, she was saved from answering or reacting suddenly, by Wally's interjection. "Yeah, she's cool. How do you know her?"
"Geez, how do I start. So… neither of you remember how you got here, right?" Not waiting for any substantial reply, Robin continued. "The last handful of months of our memories have been erased. I'll fill you in on the way, but right now we gotta move, Mysterion is setting up an ambush and we've gotta get in position if we're going to save Superboy!"
In a moment of complete unison, Artemis and Wally both said.
"What?"
-?M?—
Crouching in wait, Artemis looked out over the area Robin had brought them to. It was a large antechamber of some kind, open to the sky, with a balcony running around a second level and stone pillars supporting it. One huge set of stone doors stood in an imposing doorway to one end, and in the centre rested a stone dais.
Standing guard in this area were a number of what Wally had simply, but accurately described as spooky ninjas. While she ran through several organisations in her head which they could be part of, something couldn't help her from thinking of them as just that, spooky ninjas.
Something was happening behind the stone doors, for in a brief moment when one of the spooky ninjas had entered into the room beyond, she had heard sounds. Crackling of lightning, feral screaming, and a maniacal laughter the likes of which only a truly deranged villain could conjure.
Robin had positioned them here on either side of a doorway into this courtyard, while the boy wonder had disappeared with a spine chilling giggle. They were to wait for the signal, and apparently they would know it when it happened.
'Why am I even here.' Her thoughts betrayed her, was she running on autopilot, was she really so lost as to just follow the orders of whoever happened by. Robin's story was so unbelievable She couldn't, dared not, imagine herself as a hero, on a team of heroes. That wasn't her lot in life, that wasn't her role, she wasn't a part of that world. She could never be.
"Hey." A voice whispered from across the way. "You're going to be ok." Kid Flash looked at her with a kind smile.
That was really all it took.
She smiled back, ignoring the voice of her father which echoed in her head. Words he spoke after every training exercise, after every one of her failures.
Too easy.'
In spite of him, she smiled.
Then a giant guinea pig smashed into the antechamber, with a bloody one-armed blonde boy riding on it's back and screaming a high half-cracked laugh.
Her self-doubts were swept away by one question.
"Who the fuck is that?"
-?M?-?M?-?M?
A/N: Happy new year? Been a while. Been a BIG while. But I'm still here, still doing my thing. Still happy that people are finding and enjoying this story, still happy to provide more of it when I can. I had fun switching perspectives a lot more here, maybe that's part of what got me through the block that stalled me for so long on this story. Also starting to throw more of that South Park mayhem into the mix too. Honestly a lot of why I buckled down and finished this chapter was because the South Park Post-Covid specials were just so freaking good! A big part of me wanted to screw it and just do a massive time skip so I could include some of the stuff we see in those specials. Professor McKormick, Vic Chaos, the Foundation Against Time-travel. All ripe for superhero crossover fan-fiction fun! Didn't quite have the same reaction when I watched Young Justice Outsiders, I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite inspire me to write as much as South Park Post-Covid did. Well, that's enough rambling from me, see you next time! Thanks for reading - Faff