"So, uh… this doesn't look very suspicious to me."

"Which is exactly what they want you to think."

The young heroic duo were stood outside a barren street in the not-so-nice parts of Metropolis, taking in how neglected it looked. Shabby, run down house after run down house, Jon couldn't believe that this was really part of the city that he grew up in. Garbage laid on the sidewalk, discarded lazily along with just a few lurking eyes. Jon was certain that he had caught a stare from either a pale cat or a man who was a prolific smoker.

Robin had his arm raised with his finger pointing from house to house, muttering their numbers until he told Jon to stop at thirty-five. "This is the one. Follow me." He casually strolled to the front door and knocked. Jon was completely baffled. As expected, nobody answered when looking at the time. "Man, I was really hoping somebody could open. Oh well, hard way it is. Care to do the honours?"

"You want me to knock as well?"

"Yeah, but more like knock it down."

"But…" Jon looked across the street nervously, "people live around here. It looks from the outside that — well, we're pretty much breaking and entering, no? Can't you just pick the lock?"

…

"Fine, okay, I'll do it. Geez…" Jon walked up to the door and opened his palm up to strike the door. No, that would be too noisy. Instead, he gripped the door knob and yanked at it, ripping the lock mechanism along with a bit of door right off with minimal effort. "See, less is more. You're telling me you don't have a lock-picker in that belt of yours?"

Robin shrugged and pushed through the loose door as Jon followed suit, chucking away the broken door piece. Wow. Horrid wasn't even the word to describe how truly disgusting the house's interior was. Colonies of mold could be found at every corner and the carpets were crusty and ripped up. The stench of rotting food was too noticeable to ignore to Jon but Robin didn't look bothered at all. Weird guy if he ever smelt worse.

"This place reeks. What are we looking for anyway?"

"Any possible passageway, a secret room — anything. Those pictures that I showed were outside this house. What I'm guessing is that either they store their stolen goods here until they ship it somewhere else or this place has an underground network leading somewhere else."

Jon walked into the living room, scrunching his nose as the smell seemed to originate from there. "You think? Okay, uh… let me see if I can hurry things up," he said before straining his eyes. Everything in sight began to fade a little as layers of each object sort of people off, just barely hanging between invisible and transparent. X-Ray vision was an odd power which either worked perfectly or went out of whack but lately he's been improving his control.

He turned around in the room slowly, ignoring Robin's skeleton standing crossed arm and fixated his concentration just behind him. "There!" he pointed to the ragged carpet just outside the living room door (oddly, it looked a lot more cleaner than any other part of the carpet). "I saw a basement but we gotta take a closer look. I don't think there's any of that stolen tech from Cadmus that you talked about though."

"It's a start," Robin acknowledged and brought out a red Batarang (Jon called them Wingdings, much to Robin's dismay) and sliced through the carpet easily and pulling it away. Although faint and filthy, the outline in the floorboard was clear enough that there was something underneath. Robin jammed his Wingding into the crevice and prised it like a crowbar, popping open a trapdoor of some sorts. "Nice work, Superboy. Now let's see what's down here."

Superboy? He didn't even think about giving himself a superhero alias — and didn't that name belong to his dad's supposed clone? Jon ignored it and followed Robin down the barely visible flight of steps that led into darkness. A flashlight procured from Robin provided the only light source for the duo — Jon was making sure that he wouldn't trip but squirmed when felt something brush against his face, like a spider looming above him. But it felt too thick to be just a spider.

Gripping it and realising what it was, Jon pulled what was a switch, filling the room with a flickering yellow light which Jon could only imagine was a 'villain's planning room'. A sticky board with complex draw ups, a large inactive computer, several cartons of… takeaway? Now this seemed less of a planning room and more of Riddler's possible home for the past year. Certainly not a place to store dangerous technology. No wonder why this place was filthy.

As Robin inspected the sticky board, Jon took to the desk of the computer and shuffled some of the stained notes aside to see several question marks etched into the desk. This guy really stuck to his gimmick huh? Robin did say that he was dangerous though, even more when he was in the shadows for all these years. All these notes were just riddles upon riddles, nothing even the slightest bit suspicious. Nothing suggested that Riddler was here for a while so why were they here now?

"What are you looking at?" Jon asked Robin, who was still in deep thought until Jon snapped him out of it. "I think Riddler's gone crazy — crazier — and that computer isn't working. Well, the monitor isn't."

Robin perked up and rushed to the computer, connecting his glove to the computer and flicking his fingers across the holographic keyboard. Somebody was having fun — on the other hand, this was a little slow for Jon. Hopefully something interesting would come out of it. Jon sighed, partially hoping that Robin could see that it was getting boring and because he decided that he should interest himself in reading the sticky board.

Hmm. This was… interesting, he thought to himself. This looked like the makings of a massive equation but to Jon it looked like it was just a fancy, almost cocky way of making a map out of numbers. It wasn't his favourite subject but Jon was pretty good at math and this was… well, almost like a disguised riddle. Ohhh, now he got it.

Behind Jon's shoulder did he hear Robin watching some sort of recording with a spectacled ginger man sporting a devious smile babble about some nonsense until it cut off. Robin looked especially annoyed and attempted to retry the video until it became apparent that it was useless.

"Hey, Robin? I think I know what this thing is. It's like coordinates, only I think it's…" Jon brushed his hair away from his eyes and took a look at the sticky board full of lines and numbers. "Subway stations? Huh…? Why would Riddler want to attack subway stations?"

"Because he's not going to attack… he's gonna come out from it! Jon, you genius!" Robin grabbed Jon by his shoulders and opened his eyes so wide, Jon thought his mask would pop off. "I didn't even see it until you said this! Think about it — Riddler wants to make clones of himself but he can't just mass produce them in one place unless he had a site like Cadmus."

"So he's making clones at different areas from the subways so that they could swarm from underneath!" Jon exclaimed. A look of pride from Robin told him everything he needed to know that he caught on, however his happiness at the revelation was snatched away quickly. "Uh, how are we gonna stop them if they're all gonna be at different places? He could have thousands of clones at one station — we should call for backup!"

"No, we're not calling for backup! We've gotta act now and stop them. Now these stations all gotta be connected — where do they all crossover? Maybe that's the hotspot where Riddler is now?"

"Uhh… it should be near Stagg Warehouse near Centennial Park… wait, that leads almost right into the city!" Jon gasped. Robin quickly told him to follow which Jon did — until he heard something from above. Two men clearly speaking as they must've pushed through the broken door. Jon grabbed Robin by the leg and pulled him back, covering his mouth while frantically looking for a place to hide. Even though Jon was clearly stronger, Robin wasn't taking being restrained pretty well. Arms and legs flailing everywhere, Jon told him to shut up because somebody was here.

"Would you stop being a baby?!" he hissed. "They're gonna hear us down—"

"Hey," one of the voices grunted. "Check this. Somebody's been here — knew it from when they tripped the sensors in the door frames. You know what the boss said if his hideout was ever compromised."

"We're really gonna blow up this place?" the other voice said back, almost in a similar tone and manner. "Ain't this the bosses childhood home before he moved to Gotham? You'd think he'd be a bit sentimental."

"Shut up and get to work. These bombs aren't gonna place themselves. We've already got this whole street bought out so nobody's gonna get hurt —" the voice giggled, "except for whoever's still here. My sensors told me they went in but they never came out. Ain't that right?!"

Robin stopped squirming and stared at Jon wide-eyed and vice-versa. Getting blown up wasn't exactly ideal for how Jon thought this day was going to go. Robin finally latched a willing Jon's hand off his mouth and whispered, "Take one on and stop him planting any bombs, while I'll take care of the other one! Ready?"

"No, I'm not—!"

"Break!"

Robin burst through the trapdoor and pounced on the closest enemy who was dressed up exactly like the image Robin showed to Jon on top of the Planet. Scrambling up to see Robin weave through punches and floor him with a sweeping leg, Jon turned around and faced his own opponent. Although faded, Jon could see a question mark stitch onto his mask — had to be one of Riddler's goons.

"You lost, little boy?" said the goon menacingly. "I'm sure your mommy wouldn't want you out late at this — wait, is that Robin?!" He instantly reached for his thigh and brought out a gun from seemingly nowhere, aiming it towards Robin from behind but Jon had reacted too quickly. Jon closed the gap between them before the henchman could even blink and slapped the gun away from his hand along with a snapping sound. And the scream of a full grown man.

"Argh, you broke my fricking hand!!" he wailed, clutching his clearly broken hand while it was quite obvious that he was crying.

"Oh no, I'm sorry! I-I didn't mean to hit you that hard, I — whoa!" Jon dodged the gunshot that came from the goon's good hand, and then dodged again when pulled the trigger once more. He flicked his head back, feeling it whistle right past his nose before he stumbled onto the floor. Today was not the day to find out if he was bulletproof just yet but what choice did he have?

The other goon flew over his head, presumably by Robin, and crashed into the wall out cold. "Superboy, move out the way!!" Robin screamed as the gun was drawn again — Jon could hear the rustle of Robin's belt as he must've been reaching for a Wingding. Bang! Jon's head was knocked back and it felt like his skull was housing a bell that was struck with the hardest bit of force. It stung for sure but… is this what it felt like to be shot? Hell, most people weren't lucky to ask this question to themselves right after.

What felt like dizziness being slowly drained from his head did Jon get back up, rubbing his forehead from where he was shot. Opening one eye, he saw the goon whose hand he broke knocked out with Robin checking him over. Regaining his focus, Jon walked over to him and scoffed, "Yep, I'm fine. Just got shot in my head, no biggie, I can take it."

"Mm hmm…" Jon just rolled his eyes. "Looks like these guys got trackers on them. No doubt were they spotters just in case anyone decided to snoop and boy did we snoop. Alright, let's head to Centennial Park before it's too late — hey, would you stop grabbing me up?!"

Jon hauling Robin over his shoulder replied, "If we're gonna get there fast then you need to tag along. Just get on my back; the quicker we get there, the less awkward this feels."

Soon enough was Jon leaping in the air from building to building with Robin clutching for dear life on his back, darting as fast as he could to the park. As Jon raced past the clock tower, he could see that the two had been out for nearly five hours already — how did the time go by so quickly? Jumping over tall buildings in a single bound was taken like a fish to water with Jon as it barely took him six minutes to get from the surprising slums of Metropolis to the centre of the city.

He landed right on top of a warehouse that was neglected which sat right near the subway train lines that led into a dark tunnel. No doubt that this was the place. Robin, surprise surprise, took the constant up and down motion well, not even swaying on the spot.

"Hey, Robin, over here!" Robin followed Jon's call to a window pane on the roof which showed the inside of the main warehouse. Bright enough that they could make out several moving figures dragging crates all over the place. But still, it wasn't easy to get the whole picture. "So they hijacked this place to make their clones and nobody noticed? Was this always gonna be this easy?"

"It's not over yet but I can't help feeling this way too. Come on." Robin shifted the window pane just far enough to fit the both of them and hung in first, landing on the closest platform with elegance — Jon not so much. Luckily, the large clang didn't bring them any attention as they shimmied along the platform to get a closer look. Nothing was out of the ordinary except for the giant hole that was in the centre of the building with several ropes attached to the walls leading into the abyss. No sign of Riddler though. But there were definitely masked men that suited up the same as the ones back in Riddler's hideout.

Suddenly the large doors swung open from the entrance as a box truck in reverse entered. Everybody stopped what they were doing as they paid their attention to the truck as did Jon and Robin. Focusing his vision to zoom in, he caught a closer look at the truck which had its back opened up — what looked so peculiar was that it looked like to Jon a capsule of some sorts which contained something inside it. A person who was clad in a green suit, a lime fedora and green-tinted glasses. To be more specific it was —

"Riddler," Jon whispered under his breath. "Is that the cloning device, Rob— Robin?!" He was talking to himself, no, to thin air as Robin was nowhere to be seen. "Dammit…!"