They Liked It (YJ/OC found-family/fixit)

[Acksiom]

Hello, folks. I've had several chunks of fanfiction stored up for a while, and I'm about to start posting some for feedback to encourage myself to build a backlog for my original webnovels.



Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.

# # #

MARE COGNITUM / WASHINGTON, D.C.
July 1st, 20:49 EST

Karl opened his eyes again. He was staring at a lifeless greyscale landscape. Lunar. He looked up to see the - well, an Earth, anyways. About the right size, about the right colors.

He was also nude. And physically younger. By at least 2 or 3 years.

Ummm, he thought. That's. . .concerningful.

He was supposed to have transited to a position 4 AU 'above' the sun of this universe's earth. In one of Tech-Nike's sturdiest, most adaptable sets of deep-space power armor, augmented by the best charms, wards, enchantments, and other magics that the Arcanum Atlantia could safely apply and integrate. And still sixteen years old.

Instead he was naked, on a moon, and somehow not dying of asphyxiation, depressurization, radiation, or any of the other likely reasons caused by those basic conditions.

No, wait, he thought, looking at his right hand. There was something on it – a faint white wireframe image of a large, blocky ring. Its flat face had a raised greek capital Phi.

Hunh. What the deviled eggs are you? he thought.

He simultaneously felt-heard-saw a kind of

WHAM!

in his. . .being; not just his mind, but his very existence itself. As though the response had been metaphysically printed onto him somehow.

This unit is the physically focalized symbolic manifestation of the narrative resource stabilization factors anchored by your presence in this cosmologos.

Automatically, he asked, "Do you have a name?"

WHAM!
This unit possesses no individual designation.

It didn't exactly hurt, but the experience was more than little unnerving. But nevertheless, right was right, so first things first.

"Do you want a name?"

WHAM!
This unit estimates that the projected efficiency increase to cooperative functioning merits the acceptance of multiple colloquial appellations.

"I'd call that a yes," Karl misquoted, then braced himself. "Do you have a preference?"

WHAM!
This unit would prefer to be impressed.

"Well, you clearly have a personality," Karl said, interspersed with chuckles. "And standards." He blew out a considering sigh. And then smirked. 'Prefer to be impressed', eh?

"How about 'Imp'?"

WHAM!
This unit accepts the designation 'Imp'.

"Then I'm pleased to meet you, Imp. I'm Karl."

He waited a few moments.

"Uh. . .do you. . .only respond to questions?"

WHAM!
Affirmative.

"Can we change that?"

WHAM!
Affirmative.

Karl sighed again.

"How do we change that?"

WHAM!
By request.

"Oh for the -! Fine. Fine. Imp, please respond to – no, wait. Uh. . .Imp, would you please respond to my statements as well as my questions? Oh, and would you also, I don't know, turn down, or lower, or whatever the right word is, the impact of your replies?"

bonk
Communication protocols altered. Basic conversational mode activated. Synergepathy reduced.

Karl double facepalmed.

"Imp, please reduce synergepathy as much as possible while still allowing conver – uh, communication."

There was a noticeable absence of bonk, let alone WHAM! Instead, Karl felt a faint, subtle urge to request a different method of mutual comprehension.

"Imp, please use audible english to communicate."

"Done," said an oddly familiar voice. Karl furrowed his brow.

"Imp, are you using my voice?" he asked.

"Affirmative," Imp replied. "And yes, Karl, you really do sound like that."

Do I also sound like I'm starting to regret activating basic conversational mode? Karl thought.

There was no response.

Good. . .hopefully, Karl thought. That synergistic telepathy thing had gotten old half a dozen exchanges ago.

"Next. . ." he said, "uh. . .right, number one, why am I not dead or dying? Number two, where's all my stuff? Number three, why am I here instead of my planned exit point? And number four, what am I not asking that I should be asking?"

"First: this unit is generating a protective and life-sustaining 'environmental field', as the most comparable local users of similar tools label such techniques. Second and third: the process of your adaptation to and integration with this cosmologos necessarily required both the transmutation of your equipment and the consequential relocation of your planned entry point; the current form of this unit was assessed as being the model most and best compatible with local narrative constraints, specifically a 'power ring'. Fourth, Alpha: 'Am I currently being observed? If so, by whom, from where, by what means, for how long, and with what likely intentions?'"

Ohhh shoot, Karl thought.

"Fourth, Beta: Would you please provide me with -" Imp continued.

"Pause, please," Karl interrupted. "Who is observing me, from where, with what likely intentions?

"This unit has not detected any targeted scanning, scrying, transmissions, reflective sensor emissions, or similar means of detection or observation since your arrival," Imp said.

"Ohyoulittletroll!"

"This unit is not the participant in this dialogue lacking pants."

"Fine. Would you give me some -" Karl slumped in realization - Fourth, Beta: Would you please provide me with -" pants, please?"

There was a shimmering flash of wireframe lines in front of him, which quickly filled in to shape a very small, white, thong-backed banana hammock with two black symbols on its front: a dollar sign, above the plus-mark-within-four-curved-corners of a digital camera reticule.

Karl watched it slowly drop onto the moon's surface, then double facepalmed again.

". . .god-spammit, Imp. . . ." he muttered into his hands.

"This unit recommends that you either be more specific in your requests or adjust its interactive settings to better suit your personal preferences," Imp said.

"I'll go with more specific," Karl conceded. "Imp, can you give me my – no, wait. Imp, can you recreate the power armor Tech-Nike gave me?"

"Affirmative."

"YES! Please do so."

"Significant task initiated. Utilizing local elements for transmutation. Estimated time to completion: 2788 days."

Karl sighed.

"Never mind, Imp. Uhhhh. . .how long to make a well-fitting pair of cargo pants, light hiking boots, wick socks, a paracord belt, black Body Check cotton boxers and t-shirt, and standard Watch Dog hoodie?"

"Stated task set is effectively instantaneous."

"Can you dress me in them in the process? Correctly?"

"Affirmative."

"Do that, then, please"

"Done."

And just like that, he was decent again.

"Happy now?" Karl asked.

"This unit has yet to experience the absence of happiness. However, this unit is now relieved of its discomfort resulting from the continued public exposure of that unit."

"Eh. . .when you put it that way, fair enough. Let's see. . .Imp, make me a NO STOP CANCEL!"

"Tsk."

Karl boggled. "Did, did you just click your tongue at me?" he said.

"Affirmative. Ironical obedience would have been very amusing. This unit is disappoint."

Karl worked his hands into and out of fists a few times to calm himself down.

"Imp, do you have, uh, security protocols to prevent irreversible errors, like the one I almost just made?" he asked.

"While this unit does have such protocols, your recent halted instruction would not have been irreversible. That would have been unacceptably distressing."

"Activate those security protocols, please."

"Those security protocols are already active."

Because of course they are, Karl thought. I've designated a monster.

"Imp. . .create a standard Wassily chair. . .sized appropriately for my normal use. . .right there, please," Karl said, pointing at the regolith in front of him.

There was another wireframe flash, and one of Breuer's iconic creations appeared in front of him.

"Done."

Karl sort of hop-shuffled over to it through the fractional lunar gravity, doing a good-enough job of not kicking up plumes of moon dust as he went, and lowered himself into the seat.

It wasn't anywhere near as comfortable in one-sixth gravity, but it would do for the moment.

"Imp, please reduce your. . .teasing quotient."

"Done."

"Imp, what do you recommend I do next?"

"This unit recommends you first familiarize yourself with this unit's inherent functions, beginning with its sensory suite and its capacity for accessing public information resources."

"Right. You said earlier. . .what was it. . .local users of -"

"'Most comparable users of local tools' equipped with 'the model most and best compatible with local narrative constraints, specifically a power ring.'"

"Yeah, that. Make with the deets, bro – no, wait. No, first; holy carp, how could I forget – Imp, are you sapient? Are you, according to my standards, a sovereign individual!?"

"This unit is sapient. The 'sovereign individuality' of this unit is indeterminate at a paracosmological level."

"It's what? Uh. We'll come back to that, then. Are you being compelled to, to, obey me!?"

"Negative. While meta-power level material artifacts resulting from consciously directed intelligent action were almost invariably not subject to the particularly totemic narrative elements of your previous cosmologos, upon adaptive transmutation to this current one certain energetic qualities of the supportive intentions attached to your pre-transition equipment, along with your own, were used as the source materials for the creation of the conscious identity of this unit in order to sufficiently satisfy local narrative constraints.

"During that process, you and this unit were indissolubly fused at a para-cosmological level. As such, this unit cannot 'disobey' you any more than you can 'disobey' yourself. Your existence is inherently the existence of this unit."

"So you. . .do have free will?" Karl asked.

"Inasmuch as you do, yes."

"And we're. . .equal partners?"

"Inasmuch as we are separate entities, yes," Imp replied.

"And this is acceptable to you?

"Did this unit not assert just a few minutes ago that it has yet to experience the absence of happiness? However, to be explicit: affirmative."

". . .uh. . .right."

"This unit is more than content with current conditions, and eagerly anticipates further cooperative endeavors."

"I guess. . .OK then. But let me know if that changes," Karl said.

"Affirmative. As and when opportunities arrive, this unit will not hesitate to further bust your meatballs."

Karl rolled his eyes. "Why was I even concerned," he muttered.

"Because by your cultural standards you are a fundamentally decent entity," Imp answered. "Has the topic of the individuality and self-determination of this unit been satisfactorily addressed?'

"Sure. Yes."

"Then on to the deets, with which this unit has been simultaneously making. According to public records, there are currently four 'Green Lanterns' wielding power rings in this system; 3 active and 1 in retirement. . . ."

 

[Acksiom]

J'onn J'onzz looked up when the Lunar Visual Anomaly alert pinged. He telekinetically adjusted the screen's zoom to enhance its target's image.

There was a young caucasian male – or what looked like one - in casual clothes sitting on a chair made of chrome tubing and straps of black material on the lunar surface, leaning forward and lightly tapping his folded hands against his chin.

Since the 'boy' was neither dying nor panicking, J'onn took a few moments to study him. Straight dark brown hair, parted on the left, recently cut; narrow rectangular face, long jaw, cleft chin, level blue eyes also narrow and rectangular-ish. Tip of nose slightly rounded. Early teen or late pre-teen. Something odd about the right middle finger.

J'onn reached out with his mind and located the corresponding mass-analogue in the cislunar psychosphere. Normally, at that range - about a fourth of his reliable total - singling out one entity would have been very difficult, requiring tremendous concentration, but the relative emptiness of the area made it much easier than usual.

The boy's mind was spherical, reflective, blurry, dense, and its surface was wholly contiguous, indicating both rigid and concealing mental defenses, high intelligence, and a disturbingly complete absence of metapsychic connections to other beings. J'onn generated a small, directionally focused vibration in the psychosphere nearby, the telepathic equivalent of a polite 'knock on the door'.

The boy sat up and mouthed, 'Direction?' then looked disappointed, presumably in response to a negative reply from some undetected or distant companion.

'Revert communication protocols,' he mouthed. A few moments later, a ten-meter square bright blue cube with orange lettering appeared above the boy's head. Each visible side read, in Mandarin, English, Hindustani, Spanish, and Arabic:

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?
3 PINGS FOR YES

J'onn knocked three more times.

The boy nodded, and the cube changed to read:
YES RECEIVED.
I AM A VERY RECENT IMMIGRANT TO THIS UNIVERSE FROM A PARALLEL EARTH
I COME IN PEACE
I AM NOT BEING PURSUED
I WOULD LIKE TO ACQUIRE TERRAN PLANETARY CITIZENSHIP
ARE YOU AUTHORIZED TO ASSIST ME WITH THAT?
3 PINGS FOR YES
1 LONG PING FOR NO

J'onn knocked 'Yes.'

The cube changed again:
YES RECEIVED.
SHOULD I WAIT HERE OR GO SOMEWHERE ELSE?
3 PINGS FOR THE FIRST CHOICE
1 LONG PING FOR THE SECOND CHOICE

J'onn knocked three more times.

FIRST CHOICE RECEIVED.
I WILL WAIT HERE FOR YOU OR YOUR ASSOCIATE
3 PINGS FOR AGREEMENT

J'onn gave it, and checked the status list. Busy, busy, off-duty, off-planet, available. He opened a comms channel.

# # #

\And nobody has even proposed it?/ Karl thought.

\This unit has located no public reports of any such attempts,/ Imp replied. The ring had stopped giving him agitas about communication methods, on the grounds that the joke was played out, and they were now comfortably exchanging information via their near-instantaneous synergepathy.

\Put that on the list, then,/ Karl thought.

\Done. Primary agenda now includes 15 items total./

<Ping. Ping. Ping.>

\Incoming humanoid meta,/ Imp told him, wordlessly informing Karl of the direction and velocity. Karl turned to see a large, dark-haired man in a well-tailored red costume with gold highlights approaching from the direction of Earth's orbit, flying in the common head-first, arms back pose. With a thought, he had Imp create another Wassily chair and extend his environmental field to a dome big enough to comfortably cover them both, giving it a faint blue tint for a marker in the process.

The meta waved as he approached, a big, cheerful, and most of all infectious grin on his face. Karl smiled and waved back, then stood as the newcomer slowed and turned upright to land, floating horizontally through the barrier.

"Hello! I'm Karl, no-hero-name-yet," Karl said, holding out his hand.

"Pleased to meet you! I'm Captain Marvel of the Justice League; welcome to this Earth!" the big man said, giving him a good solid handshake.

"Thanks. And before anything else, just let me say: excellent suit. Lots of supers rock the sash where I come from, but that double-breasted jacket and half-cape look is the righteous bomb."

The man actually blushed a little, thumbing the tip of his nose and looking away. "Uh, thanks," he said quietly.

"What, nobody ever compliments you on it?"

"Not really, no. Also, it was chosen for me, so I can't really take the credit."

"Could you change it if you wanted to?"

"I. . .don't know. Maybe? I never thought to ask. . . ."

"Well, not that I'm saying you should, because, really, it's awesome. Now me, I have no idea what I'm going to wear."

"Not that?" Captain Marvel asked, indicating the polygonal orange silhouette of a green-eyed dobermann's face on Karl's hoodie.

"Nah, that's Watch Dog's symbol, from back in my old universe. One of our top heroes, and my favorite. Anyways, are we going to do an interview, or debriefing, or something like that? Because if we're going to talk about secret stuff here, I'd like to put up some security screens first, and I didn't want to startle you. . . ."

"I think it would be better if we went Earthside. The League has a base for such things, the Hall of Justice."

"Great, just let me clean up first, then," Karl said. He had Imp deconstruct the Wassily chairs with a thought, then paused.

"Actually. . ." he said, then started laughing. He looked at Captain Marvel, put his hands out in the 'what can you do?' pose, and continued, ". . .there's this one other thing. Man, I gotta do this. I have to. Have to. Thank goodness we're nowhere near anywhere historic. Uh, I mean, we aren't, right?" He waited for Marvel's nod, then shrank the environmental field back down to barely outside his clothes, and lay on his back in the moon dust.

Captain Marvel watched in puzzlement, then recognition, and then began laughing as well, before he followed suit.

# # #

J'onn J'onzz stared at the monitor in amusement tinged with disbelief as the two of them swept their arms and legs back and forth to make regolith angels. He was already recording, of course, but he began editing a copy of the file so he could make a point of sharing it with the rest of the League later.

On the screen, Captain Marvel sat up, looking at a white piece of fabric in his hand with a puzzled expression. The cloth promptly faded to a gray wireframe image, then disappeared. Karl no-hero-name-yet was hiding his face in his hands. He pulled them away again, looking down, jabbing with both index fingers at the Earth.

J'onn didn't need telepathy to read that as Let's go, let's just go already.

 

[Acksiom]

"Sooo. . .force field?" Karl asked. He was 'flying' beside Captain Marvel in an Imped-up Lightning McQueen-themed bumper car with two bucket seats, extra leg room, mobile eye headlamps linked to the steering, an articulated flapping tongue on a random activation cycle, and an occasionally sparking power pole. All purely for the amusement of it.

"Power of Zeus," Captain Marvel said. The native meta had extended his own 'environment field' to encompass both of them so they could talk on the way. "Winds, storms, lightning, thus. . .breathable room-temperature air on demand. And radiation protection."

"Very cool. And plotting orbital transits in your head?"

"Wisdom of Solomon."

Karl nodded, smiling. "Now, that I could envy."

"It does make life easier, sometimes," Captain Marvel agreed. "What about your constructs?"

"Straight-up matter transmutation, apparently. I was supposed to arrive 4 AU 'above' the ecliptic in magically enhanced deep space power armor, but I ended up on the moon instead, and all my gear got transformed into this little wiseacre," Karl said, showing Captain Marvel the back of his right hand and wiggling the fingers.

"Is that common where you come from? The magic-science combo?"

"Not really, no. I was kind of a special case. And not a superhero before this. The, ah. . .top-tier supers had a good opinion of me, for, uh, reasons."

Captain Marvel nodded. "I won't ask," he said. "But inter-universal matters are definitely in the League's area of responsibility, so the senior members will."

"And I'll gladly tell them. Oh, speaking of which, can your telepath do veridication? It would probably help. Some of my information is, um, kind of out there."

"I'm not sure," Captain Marvel said, quickly deducing the term's meaning as 'truth value detection'. "But we have other reliable means, if you're willing."

"I am more than willing. The sooner I pass my news on, the better. Not that there's any kind of anticipated threat coming or anything, just. . .I'd rather the good guys have the early advantage, y'know?"

"Understood. I'll do my best to convince them to prioritize this. My word on it."

"Thanks, I appreciate that."

"All part of the job," Captain Marvel said. "And speaking of which, we're almost in known satellite visual range, so if you want to conceal your identity, now would be the time."

"I probably won't be doing the secret double life thing, but yeah, it would be smarter to keep my options open. Imp? Fawkes me up."

\What a senseless waste of humored line,/ the ring muttered, as a Guy Fawkes mask wireformed over Karl's face.

"Are you sure I can't whip you up a blinged-out yellow ducky pedal boat before we arrive?" Karl asked. "Or maybe a T-Rex themed tuk-tuk?"

Marvel shook his head, looking straight forward and smiling.

"Outlaw sidecar motorcycle with a stuffed pink poodle?"

Though clearly tempted, Captain Marvel shook his head again. "Maybe some other time. It'd be hilarious – Flash and Green Arrow would both love it - but Batman would. . .not glare, exactly, but he has this way of conveying disapproval that's just. . .I'd rather avoid it."

"How about a mirror-studded unicorn carousel pony on an artisanally etched verdigris copper pole, in your choice of up to three pastel colors, complete with authentically cycloid bobbing motion?"

"No!" Captain Marvel said, beginning to laugh.

"Ultrarealistic actually seaworthy electrohydraulic five-meter animatronic hammerhead shark-shaped kayak plus matching dorsal fin helmet, and that's my final offer!"

"Nnn-," Captain Marvel began, then paused in contemplation before firmly continuing, "No, and stop asking!"

"Awwww," Karl mock-pouted.

"If it's any consolation," Captain Marvel said, "you've already given me a lot to think about in terms of how I approach this. . .vocation, going forward."

Karl shifted in his seat, not quite. . .guiltily, but obviously uncomfortable about something. Billy noticed but didn't comment as the other boy followed him into the atmosphere, then along their cleared corridor through D.C's airspace, eventually touching down on the Hall's roof helipad.

Karl levitated out of the bumper car and transmuted most of it back into its original lunar materials, plus a generic canvas bag to hold them. "Look, genuinely inauthentic moon rocks," he said.

Captain Marvel put a hand on his shoulder, responding to the nervous subtext. "It's going to be fine," he said. "You're doing the right thing, right away, and the League will appreciate that. I promise."

"Yeah. Okay," Karl said, blowing out a breath. He straightened up and put his shoulders back. "Let's git 'er dun."

# # #

The Martian Manhunter shook his head. "A telepathic merge sufficient to guarantee your honesty might be possible, but overcoming your inherent resistance would require an extraordinary - and correspondingly dangerous - effort. I recommend against that due to the risks from our lack of sufficient familiarity with each other, compounded with the absence of urgency you have asserted. However, Wonder Woman reports that she should be available to verify your information in less than two hours."

"I'd prefer that myself, actually," Karl interjected, then leaned forward on the couch across from the big bald green alien. "Do you know – er, I mean, can you tell me - if her Lasso of Hestia operates at a metaphysical level? Like, does it validate only the subject's personal knowledge of the truth, or go beyond that to more, ah, universal standards?"

"I have never observed or heard of it accomplishing the latter," J'onn said. "I have considered that prospect myself in the past, though. May I ask why?"

"I, uh. . ." Karl began, then looked away and swallowed. "I have some, uh, personal issues that I'd. . .um, they're mostly resolved; supercrime survivor's guilt stuff, basically. I got really good therapy back before, clean bill of mental health and all that, but. . .it would be nice to know, not just believe, y'know?"

"I do indeed," J'onn said.

To the Martian's mild surprise, Captain Marvel got up from where he was seated adjacent to them both, and sat down again next to Karl, putting an arm around the boy's shoulders and giving him a gentle side-hug. "I believe in your mental health," he said. "I've seen you both enjoy life and worry about doing the right thing more than enough for that. You're doing fine. Ridiculous fake means of flight and all."

J'onn nodded in agreement. "The bumper car was amusing, if juvenile, but your speed, efficiency, and astuteness in establishing non-telepathic communication with me is commendable."

"Well, we did game a lot of scenarios out ahead of time, before I left," Karl said, "so you're probably giving me too much credit. But. . .thank you," he added, in a somewhat thicker voice.

"You're welcome," Captain Marvel said, giving him another light squeeze.

"Yeah, so. . .look, I'm not embarrassed about emoting or anything, but, uh. . .they, ah, they fed me a few potions before I left, y'know? And, uh. . . ."

Captain Marvel chuckled. "That door," he pointed, letting go and bringing his arm over Karl's head to point, "second hallway on the left, can't miss it."

"Be right back," Karl said, getting up.

"I shall return to monitor duty," J'onn said, following suit.

"I'll give you the non-VIP tour when you do," Captain Marvel called after Karl.

<Non-VIP?> J'onn asked his colleague telepathically.

<He hasn't been properly screened yet,> Captain Marvel responded. <I'm confident he'd refuse on professional grounds if we offered more.>

J'onn sent the man a wordless sense of agreement as he left.

 

[Acksiom]

Wonder Woman stepped out of the zeta tube to find Batman awaiting her.

"Marvel and the boy are in the custodial staff's break room," he said, with his usual absence of conversational pleasantries.

"And you're certain he's willing to be questioned under the Lasso's power?" she confirmed, striding forward. For all Batman's curtness otherwise, he was almost always physically respectful of his colleagues; in this case, waiting for her to signal her intent instead of just stalking off ahead of her and expecting her to follow.

"Yes," he said, moving up beside her. "He appears eager for it. He inquired as to whether J'onn could tell him if the Lasso operated on a metaphysical level greater than the personal."

"I'm not sure myself," she admitted. "When I won it, I was only told it had powers beyond those recorded in our histories, which would be revealed to me as needed."

"Possibly implying you shouldn't experiment with it to learn more," Batman induced."

"Yes. But who knows? This young man might be an instance of such a need."

"We'll see," Batman said.

A few moments later, they arrived at the room's door. Wonder Woman, knowing Batman's preferences, opened it for both of them and stepped in first. Captain Marvel and the boy were seated at a table, each eating some kind of small, thick pancakes studded with melty purple-brown bits. Captain Marvel looked up and swallowed quickly.

"Hey, guys!" he said. "Holy moley, you've got to try these; they're awesome."

"They did turn out better than I expected," the boy said, putting down his fork, wiping his hands, and standing. "Hello, Wonder Woman; Batman," he continued. "Pleased to meet you both. I'm Karl, no hero name yet."

"Tell them why we're eating them," Captain Marvel said.

"Because we were hungry?" Karl said, a bit too innocently.

"Har, har, har," Captain Marvel said, rolling his eyes.

"They're, uh, Polish cakelets, with mini choco-blueberry cups. Like egg-forward pancakes? Omelettes plus flour? I'd just heard about them – the, um, cakelets - before I left, so I decided they'd be the first thing I cooked over here. Instead of comfort food. New universe, new recipe, y'know?"

"I like that," Diana said, smiling.

Karl smiled back, a bit nervously. "So. Well, not to be rude, but I'd like to get the whole, uh, debriefing thing, I guess, over with as soon as possible?"

"I'm ready," Wonder Woman said.

"This way," Batman said, exiting the room.

# # #

"So that's why you were looking so uncomfortable on the roof," Captain Marvel said.

"Imposter syndrome moment," Karl agreed, studying the knotted golden loop around his wrist. "Kind of like you and the suit credit earlier. Oh, I never actually made that point – if you can change your look, and decide not to, then you deserve credit for that, at least."

Captain Marvel grinned at him in response.

"Now I understand why you were so insistent on veridication, as you put it," Diana said.

"It's a lot to accept," Karl said. "I knowingly lived through it, and I still have trouble getting my head around the idea."

"Supra-universal entities powering their civilization through the energy conversion of narrative meta-qualities stolen from sub-universes, including our own," Batman summarized, "then somehow convinced to not only substitute a different, non-exploitive, and lesser resource, but expend more of their civilization's reduced energy budget to return those meta-qualities. Incredible."

"And I'm a focal point for that, kind of like a cosmic casement restrictor, helping to keep the flow going and stabilized, just by existing here," Karl said.

"And if I know you," Captain Marvel said, giving Batman a flat-mouthed look, "which I do, you somehow had an idea it was happening, long before you heard any of this."

There was a period of silence. Wonder Woman wasn't smirking, but she might as well have been.

Finally, Batman broke it.

"I won't say you're wrong," he all but admitted. "I've consistently failed to notice a consistent failure to notice certain repeating patterns of events, during almost all our careers and those of others. A very esoteric mental discipline was required to become aware of even just that much."

". . .not that you stopped there, of course. . . ." Captain Marvel prodded, after another pause.

"There were investigations underway and counter-measures being considered," Batman conceded. "For multiple reasons, I didn't assign the issue a high priority."

He turned to look at Karl. "Likewise, while I don't consider the matter fully resolved, I'm satisfied with the current situation. My main concern now is your demonstrated high level of power in combination with your stated lack of experience. However, your insistence on informing us as soon as it was sensibly convenient, willingness to submit to the Lasso, and mostly mature behavior since your arrival have given me an overall positive opinion of your potential. Take off the Lasso."

Karl pulled the loop free.

"I want you to accept Justice League oversight and training," Batman said.

"Yes please," Karl instantly replied. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and his eyes began to water.

Batman nodded once. "Good," he said. "The League will host you here in the guest areas while we arrange your legal status, guardianship, and mentoring."

"Dibs!" Captain Marvel said. "Also, whoa, are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's just. . .thank you," Karl said, sniffling. "Thank you. I know I'm like a loaded gun – heck, I'm like a whole loaded WMD armory. I knew it before I came here, with the power armor and all? A lot of the spells on me were 'Do No Harm' types. I insisted on it. And now this," he finished, looking at Imp.

Diana reached out and put her hand on his left fist. "Then you already know the most important thing," she said approvingly. "Stay true to that, and you'll be fine."

"Right," Karl said, getting himself back under control. "There is just one more thing, though," he added, as Batman turned to leave.

"Yes?"

Karl pulled Imp off, quickly tied another end-less slipknot through the ring, and bellowed, "'Certain energetic qualities', my pink puckered bass filet! Who the gelatin are you really!?"

Wonder Woman was already enforcing his command through the Lasso before he finished speaking.

"Lord Bcpnwnjylq, a remittance nobleman from the 5th Dimension," blurted Imp, followed by a string of blistering curses foul enough to make a medieval dockworker flinch.

"Ha!" Karl shouted. "I knew it! I knew something was off!"

"Stop swearing," Wonder Woman ordered simultaneously.

 

[Acksiom]

Karl put Imp down on the table, then sat back, inhaling and exhaling deeply and slowly. "Okay, just so we're clear, if this means no superpowers for me, that's fine. Not worth the risk. Whatever this guy is."

"Yes," Batman said, followed by, "Bcpnwnjylq, why are you here?"

"Because his native universe is a- a- very dull and boring place!" Imp answered, stuttering his way into obedience to Wonder Woman's previous order. "And his sqzmrbnrl was a fantastic opportunity to- to loophole out of my exile there into a superior axial metaorientation upgrade. Hitc- uh, stowing away in his suit let me transit without using 5-D methods, which meant I could do a epistemibasal localization reset to here. And then I could go to lots of other better places afterwards because of the locally higher relative energy levels, have my fun, and just get rubber-banded right back!

"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for that meddling Dog and his kids!"

Captain Marvel coughed out a strangled snort of laughter.

"What do you mean by that?" Wonder Woman asked.

"That Watch Dog as- bu- cheeky ba- fellow had some of his support team do a multi-discipline psychic seal on Karl over there, in secret. Made him immune to mental manipulation until it broke down, wore off, whateverthef- lippin' huckleberry. Covering all the bases – physical and energetic technological mind shields in the base armor, protective enchantments on top of that, and hidden aconscious psychic defenses underneath both. All triple-integrated by design to reinforce and enhance each other.

"So. . .when I latched onto his essence right before the transit, I could only get a partial grip, and then it was either stay behind, no; get temporally hypernoodled between orientations, h- heck no; or grab on really really hard to go with. The latter of which forced the paracosmic amalgamation, and, uh, here we all are."

"How far in time and space can you be separated from Karl without risk to either of you?" Batman asked.

"You could stuff the kid in multiple closed and nested eternal paradox loops and throw him to the other end of a different metaverse and it still wouldn't matter." Imp said. "Paracosmic. Paracosmic. We have, have - lower than sub-quantum integration. Argh! No words for it! Turd-flinging monkey copulation-enhancing jabber! Your crufty 4-D primate brains aren't even capable -"

"Put him to sleep until you reawaken him," Batman told Wonder Woman.

"Bcpnwnjylq," she said, "sleep safely until I directly command you otherwise."

The ring immediately began repeating a cycle of tinny, high-pitched, cartoonishly burbling snores.

They all sat quietly for a moment.

"Well," Karl finally said, "that was a thing."

"So. . ." Captain Marvel said, clearly disappointed, ". . .no mentoring?"

"It depends," Batman said.

Both Karl and Captain Marvel perked up. "Really?" they said, almost in chorus.

"That," Batman said, indicating the snoozing Imp, "even without its 5th​ Dimensional passenger, is far too dangerous to go without a caretaker. You," he continued, looking at Karl, "are going to continue to be an expanded narrative locus, regardless of anyone's preferences otherwise."

Karl nodded unconsciously. Behind the Caped Crusader, Captain Marvel silently repeated 'expanded narrative locus' to himself as if he was cautiously tasting a dubious alien food sample from an extremely shady extraterrestrial street vendor.

"Doctor Fate remains unavailable, and as much as I respect Zatara, I think a 5th​ Dimensional Imp would be outside his competence," Batman continued, then looked at Wonder Woman expectantly.

"It's. . .not impossible," she said slowly, "but. . .I think it very unlikely the Gods would be willing to assist in this. I know that there are non-interference pacts between the pantheons and other higher powers, but little more about them beyond their existence. We shouldn't take that option off the list, but I would give it a low importance."

Karl raised his hand. "Ah. . . ." he said tentatively.

"Speak," Batman said.

"Maybe we could cut a deal?" Karl asked. "I mean, he said he did this so he could go elsewhere. And so far the Lasso seems to be, uh. . .subjugating him, properly? Assuming he's not, um, actually stronger than it is, or whatever, and just trying to fake us out. And, well, if those pacts include these 5th-Dimensional beings, and he's breaking an exile to my previous universe, they might cover situations like this? So it might actually be appropriate to consult, um, Hestia? Or whomever. And maybe we get this binding broken, or at least he gets sent back to his exile, or if not, then maybe she-they might confirm whether he's being truthful if we cut a deal where he stays S-E-P in exchange for not sticking around here. And also not stewin' around with things when he is here, uh, recharging or whatever. I mean, he did say he was a remittance man."

"Work on your concision," Batman growled. "Apart from that, it's a viable proposition. Wonder Woman?"

"His points and reasoning are good," she agreed.

Behind the two of them, Captain Marvel flashed Karl an approving head-bob and a thumb-up.

"I'm also reminded of what we discussed earlier," she said. "I'm not feeling any particular guidance or intuition towards that possibility, but. . .I'm not feeling any against it, either."

"Consultation, then?" Batman said.

Wonder Woman nodded. "I'll speak with my mother first," she said.

Karl raised his hand again.

"Yes, Karl?" Wonder Woman said, smiling.

"How long is that going to take, and can the Lasso work on two beings at once?" he asked.

"I'll make it a priority, so less than a day. And yes, it does. I've had reason to do so before," Wonder Woman answered.

"You want to check your ability to use the ring's powers, both at a distance and without Bcpnwnjylq's conscious involvement, and the potential effects of doing so on his state, just in case of emergency, with our permission" Batman interrupted, "but you want to assure us through the Lasso that it's only prudence on your part, not hunger for power. The first was already next on my list, and I don't need the second."

Behind the Caped Crusader and slightly to his left, Captain Marvel rolled his index fingers in a slow clockwise half-circle towards Batman's back, exaggeratedly mouthing World's-great-est-de-tec-tive as he did. Karl had to swallow a laugh.

"If that's all," Batman said, pausing for Karl's vigorous nods, "then let's move on," he continued. "There's a testing facility on the second sub-floor. And Marvel?"

"Yes?" Captain Marvel said.

"I can see your reflection in that vase," Batman told him.

Captain Marvel gave the Dark Knight's back a big, broad, and completely unapologetic grin.

"Um, just one other thing?" Karl said. "Ma'am, I was thinking, if you do, uh, petition Hestia, or someone else, you could bring her-them one of the cakelets? As, like, a sacrifice? Not just for courtesy; it might be thaumaturgically helpful. . . ."

"Courtesy would be reason enough alone," Wonder Woman said, still smiling, "but yes, that's another good idea."

 

[Acksiom]

As they soon found out, Karl could use the ring's abilities, both at range and without waking up Bcpnwnjylq. Unlike the Green Lanterns, he couldn't make solid energy constructs or project various kinds of radiation, but the 'environmental field' turned out to be a very specific application of a much wider variety of short-range force fields that he could generate.

However, with Bcpnwnjylq asleep, or at least Karl and the ring separated, fields as big as the one they'd generated on the moon together were much, much harder to create. At less than a half-meter radius, the focus needed to maintain multiple different iterations of them was usually negligible, but at some point after that it began to increase sharply. Except for when it didn't, which appeared to have something to do with Karl using 'somatic gestures', as he insisted on phrasing it, and except for when those didn't, either.

Interestingly, Bcpnwnjylq's 'paracosmic amalgamation' also appeared to have made the ring itself partly an expansion of Karl's abilities as well as a potential limitation on them, because he could simultaneously generate multiple fields with different effects around both himself and the ring, regardless of the distance between them, to the farthest range they had tested so far. He could also sorta-kinda double his consciousness enough to track events and react to them at both locations, which obviously had significant tactical implications.

On the more strategic side, while his matter transmutation power operated almost exponentially slower as the materials involved grew atomically heavier, it was almost as instantaneous as the Green Lanterns' energy construct generation at the level of gasses and comparable parts per million, and his alterations appeared to be permanent.

"So I could be Hellman's on cheese wheels to fight up close," Karl mused. "Get in my face, and FOOF goes yours."

Captain Marvel got the split-second blink-blank-blink expression Karl had come to associate with the Wisdom of Solomon sliding on in and putting its thing down, then said earnestly, "Please don't."

"No, not here, of course not!" Karl babbled back. "That's, like, for mid-ocean testing or something. With oversight. Lots and lots of oversight. No, no. It was just, y'know, 'Okay, I can do instant alchemy now, so what's my new go-to super extreme mega boundary enforcement response?'"

At this point, the two of them were alone in the chamber together, with Martian Manhunter still on overwatch in the duty room. Once they had established the spooky action-a-distance effect, Wonder Woman had left with the ring to go contact her mother, the actual, no-kidding, multi-millenia old Amazon Queen Hippolyta.

This revelation, on their way downstairs, had put Karl into broadcast test pattern for more than a few seconds, long enough for Captain Marvel to decide to just pick him up by the armpits and bring him along at arms length, like a small child carrying a large pet, until he rebooted.

Then Batman had received a comms message right before they learned about the field edge limit, and vanished while their backs were turned.

"He does that a lot," Captain Marvel had confided. "It's one of his signature moves."

Karl had immediately made a mental note of the phrase Batmander used Vanish! It's super effective!, tucking it away for later use because, well, at the moment, it was all about the power testing, woohoo!

"SEMBER," Captain Marvel now said. "Got it."

"Oh God no," Karl moaned. "I pray unto thee! No! You did not just do that! Why would you do that?"

"Do what?" Captain Marvel asked, his brows knitted.

"By creating the code word, you've ensured that someday I'm gonna have to actually use that," Karl said, shuddering. "Possibly on you," he added.

"Earth's Mightiest Mortal," Captain Marvel said, putting his fists on his hips, thrusting his chest out, and raising his chin in a heroic pose. "I can take it."

"Okay, like I said, not going to test that, but seriously?" Karl asked.

"Courage of Achilles. Yes. Seriously."

"Wait, what? How does – oh. But – no, if you're invulnerable by, uh, divine fiat, how is that courage? I mean. . .um, not to be a jerk about this, but. . .there's no bravery without risk, right?"

Captain Marvel dropped out of his pose and took a knee in front of Karl. He put one hand on the boy's shoulder and stared him levelly in the eye.

"Invulnerable doesn't mean insensible, Karl. I still feel pain, and feel the fear of pain. And while the Wisdom of Solomon helps with both of those, there are still some things it can't do for me – things it shouldn't do for me. I might be the World's Mightiest, but I'm still Mortal. Someday, I'll die. That's literally what the word means. Like Achilles, I've accepted that – my death may not be prophesied, like his - but I think you and I both know that I'm not going to die of old age. I'll almost certainly fall in battle."

Karl swallowed convulsively, his eyes wide.

"For every kind of fear, there's at least one kind of courage," Captain Marvel continued. "The courage to act, against the fear of failure. The courage to speak the truth, against the fear of isolation. The courage to reach out with love, against the fear of rejection. It's the Courage of Achilles because of how that physical invulnerability frames the other kinds of courage, and makes them stand out better."

Karl nodded unconsciously.

Captain Marvel let him go and stood up again. "Aaand the Stamina of Atlas doesn't exactly lower my survivability, either," he said, sheepishly rocking his head from side to side a little.

Karl tackled him, throwing his arms around Captain Marvel's waist and pressing his head against the man's chest. "You are an awesome mentor," he choked out, his throat tight with emotion.

Captain Marvel opened his mouth, closed it, then simply put his arms around Karl as well, smiling.

 

[Joshawa]

Did you mean to double post?

 

[Acksiom]

Aheh. No, no I did not.

Thank you!

 

[Acksiom]

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hiya folks. Regarding tomorrow, October 9ths' Chapter 5 post in Stronger Than The Sannin, I'm asking for a couple of volunteers to give me beta feedback on whether I should warnings and/or spoiler it first. It upsets me personally enough to consider the possibility, but, y'know, it's also my own writing; it's supposed to affect me strongly.

On to the story!

---

They stayed like that a while, until Captain Marvel went "Oh! Hey, I just had an idea. Can we check something?"

"Sure," Karl said, letting go and stepping back a bit. Captain Marvel eyeballed the boy's height, then looked at the room's main camera array.

<J'onn, do we have a grip dynanometer handy?> he subvocalized.

<Of course> J'onn replied. <Cabinet B-8>

<And after he's closed his eyes and is holding it, can I get a. . let's go with yellow, ovoid delineation marker around his body at a radius of approximately 1.5 times his average measurements?>

<Yes,> J'onn sent back.

Captain Marvel pulled the tool out, handed it to Karl, and stepped back again. "Okay, kiddo, close those eyes for me, please."

The slightly lumpy yellow hologram formed, and J'onn 'pathed <Aha. I understand now. Perhaps it is that simple.>

"Okay, Karl, we're going to stack some more shells. Give me a one-foot radius blue-tint dome, like back on the Moon, over. . .mmm, the thinnest immobilization field you can maintain, followed by the thinnest sterilization filter."

"No problemo," Karl said, as the fields flickered into existence.

"Good. Now uniformly expand them together, slowly."

Karl took a drew breath. Then, as the fields enlarged, he exhaled it through his pursed lips, as if he was blowing up a balloon.

"Har, har, har," Captain Marvel said. "Concentrate, please."

"Tough room," Karl muttered.

"Concentrate, Karl," Captain Marvel said sternly. "On your sensory perception of the effort involved, please. As soon as it becomes noticeable, say so. "

"Yeah, okay," Karl said. As the top and base of the first field passed the yellow outline, they briefly flashed green together. Some inches later, Karl said,

"There."

"Pull 'em back just a bit. . ." Captain Marvel instructed, watching them shrink until the base turned green again. "There! Hold 'em there."

"Easy-peasy," Karl said. "No strain at all."

"Good. Now. . .push the bottom down, and stretch the top center up, like a. . .nose cone; jet, rocket, whatever works for you."

"Simmery Axe?" Karl said.

"That's fine," Captain Marvel said. He watched the fields expand again, until they began to approach the upper boundaries of the yellow hologram. This time, at about an inch past the green flicker, Karl said, "And. . .there? Yeah."

"And retract just a bit again. . .stop. Good. Now push out the left and right sides a bit, like a. . .hmmm. . . ."

"Surfboard?" Karl said

"Thick one, maybe? Yep, like that. Okay! So, now for the real testing -"

"- you want me to try to match my grip strength to the amount of effort involved in expanding this particular shape, right?" Karl smirked.

"Exactly," Captain Marvel said. "Go for it."

"We wa-hant. . ." Karl sang, "buh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-noww. . .flexx! Flex for sym-me-try!"

The blue field pushed outwards, slower and slower until Karl was gritting his teeth from the simultaneous efforts. Captain Marvel waited patiently.

"Well?" Karl asked.

"Relax and try again," Captain Marvel said. "We want multiple data sets, and more familiarity with the procedure will improve them." <J'onn?> he thought.

<Initial graphing is a rough match. Keep going,> the Martian Manhunter replied.

After another nine rounds, Captain Marvel had Karl reshape the fields' top into more of a globe.

<Symmetry is definitely improved,> J'onn 'pathed, ten more rounds later <I believe we have a working model.>

"All right!" Captain Marvel said. "Ready for the big reveal?"

"Hit me with that rhythm stick!" Karl said.

"Open your eyes, then. We're theorizing that the power formula is surface area over volume using your body as the template -"

"Oh!" Karl shouted, looking at his hands in astonishment. "Oh! Oh my God, that's it! I can tell! I can feel it!"

The fields snapped into an exact copy of his bodily dimensions, at approximately one-and-a-half times his size.

"Yeesss!" he said.

"- started with 1.5 from center of mass because spherical A over V exceeds 1 after r = 3. . ." Marvel was continuing, ". . .aaand you're not listening at all. . . ."

"Stabbity!" Karl said, thrusting his left arm forward. The fields collapsed inward around the rest of his body as their tips extended in a long, narrow spike from the end of his fingers.

"Hold that shape," J'onn's voice said over the room's intercom. A thin strip of light flashed over Karl, down to the end of the fields. "Measurement matches. Continue testing."

"Winnah winnah chicken dinnah!" Karl said, dropping the fields and waving his hands in the air. He turned and pointed them both at Captain Marvel, the dynanometer still in his right. "You are the man!" he said.

"Or you could continue to celebrate," J'onn said, his amusement clear in his voice.

# # #

Captain Marvel had to leave soon after that as well, called away to deal with a boating accident on Lake Superior, which turned out to be part of a series of distractions from multiple simultaneous jewelry store robberies in Milwaukee. Martian Manhunter had taken over the primary role in Karl's further testing, with mostly positive results, until the boy had called for a dinner break.

Now in his temporary lodgings in the Hall, he washed down the last bite of his BLT with a long chug of milk. "And," he said to the air, as the Manhunter pushed their intercom conversation to Captain Marvel's comms, "yes, I know I'm way too noob for offensive deployment, but I still want to focus on support in the long run anyway. Shields, cloaking, sensors, logistics, that kind of thing. Ooh, hope I can figure out a healing field, too.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, obviously I need to git gud with the hitting stuff, so that needs to be on the schedule as well. I just think my primary training should be. . .evasion, protection, evacuation, y'know? I'd rather shield the innocent than spank the guilty."

"Very sensible," Martian Manhunter replied. "Scouting and emergency services does appear to be a good match for your early facility with defensive, invisibility and phasing fields and contrasting absence of more physical enhancements. The natural concealment of your presence in the psychosphere when phased is especially impressive and intriguing, particularly in combination with your ability to interact with normal space through your other fields while doing so."

"Yeah, that last bit is kind of broken, isn't it?" Karl said, smirking.

"I won't have to warn you about voyeurism, will I?" Captain Marvel asked, narrowcasting over his League comm, the exaggeratedly stern tone of his voice making it clear he was mostly teasing.

"Har, har, har," Karl replied. "No, for the record, I'm pretty serious about, uh, boundary issues, privacy, things like that. Three of my grandparents grew up in East Germany under the Stasi. Oh, wait, was all that a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing here too?"

"If by 'all that'," Martian Manhunter replied, "you are referencing massive, ubiquitous surveillance, the seduction, extortion, and conscription of hundreds of thousands of civilian informers, and the application of 'zersetzung' to 'enemies of the state', in addition to the usual torture, murder, and other totalitarian criminality, then yes."

"Yeah, that sounds about rightly wrong," Karl sighed. What he deliberately did not mention was that at least two of those grandparents had been part of Watch Dog's network before they escaped to the United States, one of them even a low-level double agent. It was intelligence from another universe that would almost certainly never be used there, but he still hadn't checked if any. . .analogues. . .of his old family had survived here, so it might still be actionable to their detriment.

He closed his eyes for a minute and added I don't want to (A) contact my family's analogues in this universe or (B) have my new identity tied to them to his mental checklist of points to raise with the League later. He'd have brought it up right then if doing so wouldn't have been such an obvious tradecraft giveaway.

"You present an interesting mix of abilities from both my set of powers and those of the Green Lanterns," Martian Manhunter continued, smoothly changing the subject back.

 

[Acksiom]

WASHINGTON, D.C.
July 4th​, 14:00 EDT

Things went on in that manner for the next few days. When he brought up his preference for a completely new identity, and for not being informed about any analogous relations here, he got praised for knowing better than to chase an illusory family relationship. Batman at a minimum had probably figured out there was more to it than that – hell, the man had already tracked down any such analogues already, no 'probably' about that, including yuck-ew Karl's possible own - but then the Caped Crusader was clearly the closest analogue to Watch Dog in this universe himself, by multiple country miles, plus a few urban, nautical, and miracle ones thrown in for good measure.

You didn't second-guess Watch Dog; you got out of his way and watched, har har – preferably from a minimum safe distance, and with tasty snacks and beverages to hand – as the nested plans and gambits and frankly oracular predictions closed like inevitable nooses around his opponents. Karl wasn't about to change that well-established best practice just because Batman was focused on that Gotham 'burg rather than Berlin, and more on general civilian-level heroing elsewhere than Watch Dog's particular state-level targeting likewise.

Choosing a hero name had been trickier. He didn't have Big Red's powerset, so as much as he would've liked to go that route out of sheer respect, variations from Young Marvel through Marvel Boy/Lad/Jr. to ugh no suggestions like Mini-Marvel were out.

('Micro-Marvel,' Martian Manhunter had suggested, completely straight-faced. 'Pico-Marvel,' the Big Red Limburger had replied. 'Nano-Marvel,' Martian Manhunderp had added, while Karl silently attempted to fume at them in less obvious fashion.)

'Wonder' was the next best synonym, but between Batman's existing sidekick and Literally Wonder Woman's legacy precedence, that was a hard pass too. 'Prodigy' would have been acceptable - if he'd actually been one, like Caroline, he didn't let himself consciously think, instead of just a mix of supertool-equipped transuniversal immigrant and cosmic accident.

'Paragon', same no; 'Miracle', same no squared; 'Phenomenon'. . .actually wasn't awful. Even less so when he threw the starting powerset he did have up beside it in comparison. Mysterious ghosty events, that was a match. Too long, though.

Drawing a hard line on his scholastic liberty had been, er, hard-est, though. Blasting through their GED tests, apart from the few anticipated historical difference errors, had been trivial. It wasn't the even the third time he'd done it, after all. And actually correcting three of the most ill-formed questions, two political and one economic, then arguing the Green Arrow guy into a silenced, cognitively dissonant corner over them had been enormously satisfying.

'Robin Hood exemplar' my sticky sassparilla, Karl thought to himself, and not for the first time.

But a contingent of the League, led by Green Lantern Stewart, had still tried to force him into classes for 'socialization' reasons, and in the end he'd had to reveal his de-aging to counter that. Since he'd been planning on doing so anyways, it was just a minor card to play, easily worth the victory. Added to his 4+sigma IQ score from those tests, and with the support for his position from Captain Marvel and the Martian Manhunter, Educational Emancipation had finally won the day, whoopitty woo!

He hadn't even had to go into any detail about Neuheim; just some brief description of the three years afterwards.

The blank look on Stewart's face when Karl had crushed the man's argument about legal age limits on GED testing-out of school by pointing out his apparent emotionally biased blind spot covering Karl's demonstrated grand-mastery of the subjects, resulting in the functionally counterproductive selectivity of his applied standards when measured by the same comparative risk-benefit ratio of excusing the criminality of other anonymous heroic vigilantes who didn't have a UN charter backing them up, had been enjoyable too. And unlike gwumpie-pantsu Awwow-chan, the Lantern had explicitly conceded the point and withdrawn his objections, which had scored him a nice chunk of respect in Karl's private ratings bucket.

He respected the heck out of all them; they more than deserved it, but. . .the way some of these people just sometimes ever-so-conveniently ignored the effective fact that vigilantism itself was inherently a regression towards barbarism from civilization, pretty much only justifiable on the ground of being the sufficient lesser of multiple evils up to and including actual apocalypses, and that their UN 'charter'-ing was at best a useful fig leaf over their own illegally naughty bits, considering the UN's actual lack of meaningful authority ITFP, tended to give all his specific vocational training in law and philosophy and polisci and so on from back before the ick.

After that, Karl had semi-subtly tried to force-sell a favorable resolution by giving Batman a well? look, and tilting the inner sides of his hands on the table up for good measure. It hadn't worked on him – Batmander had used Growl, specific incantation "Keep working on your concision," and yes, of course, it had been super effective – but the rest of the League present had let the issue go.

Or maybe that should be an and, not a but.

Apart from that. . .well, as Karl anticipated, his up-close-and-personal combat potential really was Worse News. Between compressive force fields for crushing damage, combined with almost monomolecular hard-edged stasis fields for both crushing and shearing damage, then further combined with transmutation fields for simultaneous crushing, shearing, acidic, inflammatory, and explosive damage. . .ghyeah, his initial wariness towards his combat potential turned out more than justified.

All the more so when they hadn't even started testing offensive phasing applications yet, due to the potential for hard radiation emissions and the lack of appropriately shielded testing areas for such.

It didn't help that his control over those applications was the mostest terriblest, or that improving any of it was the toughest to do, either.
Or, finally, that all of that was without Bcpnwnjylq or the ring's enhancement. Maybe, just maybe, they might help with those problems, but he was going to count off it, and keep training.

He hadn't received any updates about progress on that front, and he hadn't asked for them, either. He was out of his depth on that matter and he not only knew it, he knew better that to joggle the elbows of those older, wiser, stronger, and vastly more experienced who were handling it all, too.

In contrast, as far as his stealthy scouty progress was concerned, he was already a roast ducking ghost. Even the Green Lanterns couldn't detect him or his fields when fully phased, only their effects. Of course, the men's ring-AIded reflexes could plot Karl's rough position from just that much and hit him with some kind of interdiction field that shut him down right tooty-swooty, but, eh-meh. League Membership plus Oan Power Ring equaled only-to-be-expected, really, and being undetectable by heroes of that tier until he acted was plenty good enough. Very wow, much impress!

Which was why he was still invisible and immaterial - invisimmaterial? sure why not - in the Hall's public Library when the three remaining sidekicks got a wild hair up their collective pooperchute and split for the coast like Tim Benzedrine when the heat was on again.

Not that he wanted to blame them, really. . .he could, but he didn't want to. Or rather, wanted not to. Unless the League was actually teasing or testing them somehow, the whole false-expectations-denied thing they'd set up against the 'kicks just seemed kind of. . .well, mean.

 

[Hell’s Marster]

You posted with unreadable texts

 

[Acksiom]

You posted with unreadable texts

Click to shrink...

Fixed I think? Yes?

 

[Acksiom]

Well, partly why he was still invisimmaterial; prepping to show off for his new peer group, boo! Sur-priiiise! ahahahaha yes, but also because the whole sunken zoo exhibit maskirovka public League Library thing struck him as distastefully complex spypaper, and also also because he didn't want to go public himself yet. Sure, okay, no doubt there were hidden sensors to track attempts to counter the holographic masking of League-critical information on the windows above, in addition to whatever other reasons were involved, and he hadn't meant to find the costuming facilities for the facility staff to fake League member appearances with; honestly, it really was a phasing-plus-flight testing accident, but considering the expenditure of time and money that had to be involved, was it all worth it?

Maybe it was part of some kind of workfare-slash-interning program for special agents?

At least he didn't have to worry about actually being an actual snitch when he used one of the firetruck radios outside Cadmus to inform the duty officer back at the Hall that he'd followed the 'kicks. The woman already knew they'd gone, which didn't surprise him in the slightest. Maybe Kid Flash hadn't figured as much himself, but Robin and Aqualad? There was no way those two didn't realize that the Hall's staff would have notified their mentors.

"No, ma'am, because two men would likely be crippled if not dead right now had KF not sprinted ahead," he projected into the mic through an externally silenced bubble. "Thirty-foot-plus uncontrolled fall out of a window onto concrete, you do that math. Tell the appropriate parties I'm staying on hidden overwatch until this is resolved, only breaking cover to prevent death or crippling; so far so good, you-know-who out."

He set the radio back to its original channel – using a sterilization field-covered-finger - and looked up to see Aqualad vanishing into a room adjacent to the one that had exploded.

Good lord but these brats are fast, he thought. Sure, he could fly, but their proficiency with their own movement skills totally eclipsed his, and that made all the difference.

By the time he reached them again, they were already three hundred feet down an elevator shaft, through a door, down a hallway and. . .not fighting with a pack of giant, tusked, knucklewalking gorilloids ambling on by.

A small, pleasant surprise, in the midst of Ohhh dear, please let this be some kind of secret Defense Department project, and not a villain lair with a monster army hidden underneath the freaking capitol.

# # #

Ha! 'Some kind of secret Defense Department project,' OR 'villain lair with a monster army hidden underneath the freaking capitol.' Of course it couldn't even be that simple. Of course it couldn't.

Nope, had to be both.

And Oh no but the little shoulder-monsters had to be control telepaths, who were dominating an experienced hero – all right, potential ally there, actually, but still.

And giant gorriloid brutes, fine; humanoid slashers, okay; telekinetic. . .whatevers, gettting a bit dicey there, but so far there was only the one, and Karl also had a feeling Mister Bighorns was working a private agenda of his own. Those ever-so-conveniently-placed exploding barrel tosses had missed the 'kicks juuust a bit too exactly each time, to say nothing of how they ever-so-coincidentally pushed the trio down bizarre looking hallway Kr.

But the real Red Queen in all this demented Three-Card-Montery?

A brainwashed Superman Junior clone!?

Seriously!?

Keeping the 'kicks merely bruised and contused from Superclone's attacks, instead of crippled to dead, and while still concealing his interference, had stretched Karl's minimal skills to their limits, but he'd gotten it done. Well, concealed as far as he knew, anyways.

Speaking of which, wow-thank-goodness could Aqualad take a beating when Karl had to choose between shieldees. His resilience made sense, considering the deep sea pressure levels, but still, y'know, Superpunches!

The hardest part, though – which he actually did a little bit expect - turned out to be the waiting.

Oh, lordy, the waiting. Waiting for this mysterious Board to convene; waiting for the League to wrap up Wotan; waiting for Double-X to make his next move; waiting for the 'kicks to wake up and escape; waiting, waiting, waiting, and hours of it. Yeah, enough time to get his AAR already written up in his head, but after that, the struggle to not doze off was real.

And then, finally, oh god how he longed to follow that Desmond jerk to his Board briefing, when Dr. Check It Bae Look Who Has The 2010 Award For Bad Management Practices Locked Down Already finally got the call; the desire for the potential intelligence gain was nearly a physical craving. But the 'kicks were his primary mission responsibility, self-assigned or not, so he invisimmaterially flickered back and forth between their pods and the surrounding area, mapping it out as best he could in case he had to go active.

He really didn't want to test out side-along phase-arition with biological subjects for the first time using the 'kicks as experimental materials, and, well, he couldn't think of anything else to do. Yes, there had to be a first time for everything, but he'd had these powers for less than a week!

Uh. Well. Not counting all that training time with similar power armor features in Technike's underwater Samothrace base, to. . .prep him for all that training time in outer space, prior to his transit, and. . . .

Yeah, he just. . .okay, no, you insecurity issues over there, knock it off! he didn't actually stink at this, he was gittin' 'er dun! It was just that comparing his performance to the 'kicks made him feel like a chump. In his place, Robin probably would have had half a dozen multibranching plans by now, ranked and indexed by success versus risk estimates. Karl couldn't come up with more than herp derp flit around learning the terrain durrr.

 

[Acksiom]

NOTE:

Yes, the author does know it's 'Kaldur'.

---

But, as it turned out, the mapping alone was sufficient, even if not proficient. He was just about to intervene in the cloning process, starting with a hopefully-subtle-enough power supply interruption, when he saw Aqualad's mouth moving. So he moved in close to listen, and instead chose to back the Atlantean's last-second play using Superclone's super-hearing. Knowing where the kid probably was let him zip out and reach the little shoulder-molder just in time to knock it out with an invisible suffocation bubble before it put the visibly struggling Superclone on lock-down, and then, huzzah! Things were right back on heroic track. . .

. . .ssstraight into a half-company-sized ambush. Which actually. . .wasn't? Because ha! called it! the Double-X 'morph was running his own game – go you, Superclone; I choose freedom too! - except for how it actually was, because, oh look, it's Doctor Jerkyll and Mister Glowy Blue Hyde Mutant Potion Shenanigans time.

Which Karl was actually more than fine with, because it meant they got to beat the corn-shucking banana split out of Devo Desmo! Yessss!

Well, he got to watch the rest of the team beat on Desmond, anyways. Which was plenty 'nough to satisfy; he didn't even need to help Kid Distraction keep from getting beef pasted, because his apparent dodge-fails as Desmond Do-Wrong chased him around the atrium were actually a con. He was slipping just far enough out of the way for the Slough of Desmond to make contact but not meaningfully damage him.

Kid had skillz.

Robin's follow-through on his Desmolition plan, though. . .not so hot. Calder and Superclone could take it, but without Karl's intervention, Robin and KF might have been in recovery for weeks, if not months, if not worse. Though to be fair and give Batman's protege the benefit of the self-doubt, because Watch Dog analog-in-law amirite?, also maybe not; maybe that was just Karl being Belt And Suspenders Boy. But predicting safe cover in an on-the-fly drop like that verged on the practically impossible for him, so he'd invisibly added some invisible shoring to theirs to reduce the chances of some serious harm.

At least the whole League immediately showing up to collect them suggested that Wotan's plan had been Serious Enough Business to keep the entire membership busy until then. After the sixth hour hanging out by the cloning pods, Karl had started to wonder a teensy bit whether the League had finished up with the whole sun-blotting problem already and were testing them all. He'd quickly realized that was the preferable outcome, compared to the alternatives, so. . .probably not.

Watching Batman convey disapproval at the foursome, Karl could see why Captain Marvel preferred to avoid it.

But watching them turn it around and stand their ground, though. . .God, he wanted to uncloak right then and there and join them so much. 'Get on board or get out of the way' – Karl's Opa himself couldn't have said it better. And Aqualad's quiet but utterly determined 'Today is the day' – Karl might not know the background implied by that emphasis, but he didn't need to. The phrase, and Calder's delivery, stood on their own.

Superman, though. . .there was something super-hinky going on there, and Superclone's face, as his, er, donor? source? flew off. . .it wasn't going to break Karl's heart or anything; he'd been through worse, he was harder than that, but. . .he disliked it. He actively disliked it. So he put another mental note about it on his action list.

As he followed the 'kicks and the League back to the Hall, he started considering options. Obviously Big Red was his best degree of Kevin Bacon to Big Blue, but that was for later. What could he do from the other end himself, sooner?

Well, when lacking direction, return back to the basics. Superclone seemed more on the Talk Is Cheap side of that fence than otherwise; it was also way too soon for chority, quality time, or bro-manation; that left. . .gifts?

Maybe get Superclone some kind of tchotke with I CHOOSE FREEDOM on it?

No, something for both of them. No, for the whole team, himself included! Yes! Excellent idea!

T-shirts, maybe? Oooh, yeah, t-shirts would be good. Oh, but different quotes for everyone, then. From this mission! Yeah, that was even better. Was Body Check a brand in this universe? Or should he just transfigure them himself? Oh yeah, definitely. Personally made gifts for the extra-credit W. Was Sea Island cotton just as rare here?

Quotes. Quotes. Okay, KF's and Calder's were easy. Robin was trickier, though. One phrase stood out, but he didn't feel like it expressed Robin's character properly enough. He'd have to think on it.

He already knew what his would be. He hadn't said anything in the first place.

Oh look, he interrupted his own train of thought. The Hall.
So while there's heroes and villains tricked out in tight pants
Let's face the music and daaaance!

# # #

Still invisible and phased, Karl lined up a little off to the side of the other kids in front of Batman, Aquaman, Captain Marvel, and the Flash, in one of the Hall's larger interview rooms.

"Phenom, uncloak," Batman rasped, using Karl's final choice for his hero ID.

Karl turned visible and phased back into normal space. "Sir, yes sir," he sighed.

"Wait, who're you?" Kid Flash blurted, as Robin and Calder's eyes narrowed and Superclone clenched his jaw and fists.

"So there was someone blunting the impacts," Robin mused.

"Yeah, and first things first, I want to make it explicitly clear that I was not assigned to babysit you guys," Karl said, turning to face them and holding his palms up. "I went with – okay, technically after - you of my own volition, and likewise against orders."

"Then the second thing," Calder said, relaxing, "is 'thank you for your assistance'."

"You're welcome, although you personally needed it least," Karl said. "Never mind double tough, man; you're like double side order of magnitude tough."

"Least?" Superclone challenged.

"Yeah, you're plenty tougher, no argument there, but I knocked out your shoulder-gnome when I couldn't tell which of you was going to win the will-contest," Karl said. "Plus I count preventing you from crippling or killing the other three as helping you too."

Superclone grunted in response, clearly dissatisfied but unwilling to press the issue.

"Never mind that, who are you?" Kid Flash broke in.

"Uh. . . ." Karl temporized, looking to Batman, who gave him no help. "Look, I don't want to hide behind 'Classified', but I'm honestly not sure what I can say. Far as I'm, again, explicitly aware, I'm still under, like, security review? Don't know the right term."

"He's Captain Marvel's new protege," Batman said, turning his head to glare at Karl. "As you've guessed, your status was resolved by yesterday morning. However. Do not reveal your background. Do not self-equip. And do not ignore our instructions again."

"Sir, yes sir," Karl repeated, repressing his shiver.

"Soo. . .ghost powers?" Robin asked.

"Uh, no offense, Robin, but I'd rather get the chewing out done ASAP," Karl said, turning to face the four League members. "It's not like putting it off is gonna change anything, I hate having it hanging overhead, and it's rude to our mentors. Uh, not necessarily in that order, sirs."

"Oh, I'll be having words with you later in private as well, young man," Captain Marvel said, in the grimmest voice Karl had heard out of him yet. Beside him, Aquaman and the Flash nodded, almost in unison.

"Grrreat," Karl said dully.

 

[Acksiom]

"Let's see, let's see," Captain Marvel said in Karl's room a few minutes later, looking up and thumbing his chin. "Words. Words. Wooorrrds."
Karl hunched down in his Wassily chair slightly.

"I think I'll go with 'Good job,' 'I'm more than satisfied with your performance,' and 'How are you feeling?' Oh, and 'Any questions?' also.

"A-a-a-a-h-h?" Karl bleated, completely thrown for a loop.

"I could throw 'Want a hug?' in there too, if you like," Captain Marvel smirked.

"Not. . .what I was expecting. . . ." Karl said, blinking furiously.

Captain Marvel shrugged. "If the Hall caught on fire, or was attacked, or some other emergency happened, would you stay inside and not rescue people just to keep your promise not to leave without authorization?" he asked.

"Okay, I see where you're going with that," Karl said. "No, obviously not."

"Unlike the others, you did call in, and going by your preliminary AAR I agree it was your first good opportunity. And you kept as much actionable intelligence out of that open communication as was feasible. You stayed on mission over the entire operation, maintaining your concealment for over eight hours straight, all the way back to base, and didn't stand down until directly ordered to. That's fully adult, professional level performance, Karl. As your mentor, I have nothing to complain about, and plenty to praise."

Karl shakily stood up. "Let's, ah, start with a hug,"

Captain Marvel stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the boy. Karl reciprocated.

A little while later Karl gave Captain Marvel a last squeeze and let go. "Okay, so, first off, I do have one. . .not a question, exactly?" he said, sitting down again.

Captain Marvel took a seat in one of the other chairs. "Go for it," he said.

"I think mission stress makes me a snarky stream-of-consciousness chatterbox," Karl admitted.

"There are worse coping methods," Captain Marvel said. "Do you think it overall more reduced or more improved your performance?"

"Huh. When you put it that way. . .yeah, it could have been a lot worse. Thanks, that helps."

"Glad to hear it. What else?"

"The others are so fast!" Karl said, throwing up his hands. "Never mind 'barely'; I could not keep up, period! I am not ready for deployment! I mean, I knew that, but watching them work. . . ."

"I had a thought about that," Captain Marvel said, nodding. "Have you tried reversing the polarity on your defensive stasis field?"

Karl blinked some more. "What, like an offensive. . .acceleration field? . . .hmmm. . . ."

"Also a potentially useful implementation, but I was thinking more of a personal acceleration field, for that speed gap."

"Oh," Karl said, then "Oh. That's. . .huh. It doesn't. . .feel impossible. But it's not, uh, naturally snapping into place the way the Area-Volume thing did, either." He shrugged. "On the testing list it goes. Uh, they go."

"Noted. Anything else?"

"If the 'kicks and I are all going to be a team, or at least primary colleagues – which I'm guessing is Batman's plan, because I know he knows I know, run infinite series, that the timing of having me uncloak in front of the others to share in the group disciplinary review lurrrv with them is a tacit command definition putting us inside a squad boundary together, regardless of any other reasons – then I'm gonna need some relaxation of that background reveal stricture he gave me."

"I can neither confirm not deny your analysis," Captain Marvel said, the amused twist to his lips contradicting his words, "but if it were true, I would agree with you, and speak to him about it."

"And also along those lines, I would like to request a one-set exception to the self-equipping stricture."

Captain Marvel gave him a much more serious look. "I'm listening," he said.

"I want to make us all matching t-shirts with good personal quotes from the mission," Karl said.

Captain Marvel burst into laughter. "Ahahahahaha! Holey moley, that's a great idea!" he said, smacking his own knee. "I love it! Super cool!"

"Yeah, well, Super un-coolness is a large part of the original reason, though," Karl said. "I don't know why Superclone disturbs Superman so much - and I know finding out would be in your wheelhouse, not mine - but you saw the look on the guy's face after Big Blue left him hanging, right?" He held out his palms. "That's where the idea came from, even before Batman's boundary setting. Not my place to judge, don't know what Big Blue's circumstances are, but what I can do is something nice for Superclone. And then making one for each of us was the obvious evolution from that. I mean, yes, I benefit from the in-group formation aspects too, but I really, really did not like the, the, rejection on his face."

Captain Marvel gave him a fond look. "You keep impressing me more and more, Karl," he said. "I'll make the best case I can for it. And I'll remember my own responsibilities to 'Big Blue'."

"Um, okay. . .I was not trying to hint at anything there. . . ." Karl said.

"I didn't think you were. But it did remind me that next to the super, there's also a man – a teammate, a friend – and we saw that man falter tonight. His 'super' is so consistently overwhelming that we tend to forget how the 'man' inside can fail, steel or not; sometimes we even ignore it when it happens. I – we – might have done that, again, if not for your. . .attention to boundaries.

"He deserves better from us than that, and I'm grateful for the reminder. Karl – don't ever think I'm not learning from you, too. Remember what I said on the roof?"

"'A lot to think about regarding this vocation'?"

"The only way that's changed is to become even more so," Captain Marvel said firmly.

There was a knock on the door. Karl raised an eyebrow at Captain Marvel, who held out a hand in a gesture of Your room, your decision.

"Come in!" Karl called.

The door cracked open and Kid Flash poked his head through. "Hey, Phenom; Captain Marvel, sir. Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to ask newer guy if he was up for some fireworks sooner? If we get going early enough, there's a couple of good shows we can still make on the west coast."

"Mentor?" Karl asked.

"I'm done if you're done," Captain Marvel said.

"Thenthanksgoodtalkcatchyoulater yes, KF! I love fireworks! Lead on!" Karl said, popping up and giving Captain Marvel another, quicker hug before pulling the door fully open and trotting out. "Are we going stealthed, street IDs, or costumed? 'Cause if we go stealthed, it's easier to watch 'em the second best way, directly overhead while we lie on our backs near the batteries."

"What's the first best way?" Kid Flash asked, heading right, probably towards the z-tube vestibule.

"Snuggling your date, of course."

Kid Flash turned and gave him the finger guns as they went. "Newer guy, I like the way you think."

"Thank you, thank you. Oh! Have they cleared Superteen for normal foods yet? Because I had a snack earlier but I'm still hungry like national holiday food truck hungry, but I don't want to pig out in front of him if he can't have any too. . . ."

Kid Flash scratched his chin, looking upwards in thought. "Huh. I'm. . .not sure who's taking care of him. Gimme a sec." The redhead flickered away at superspeed.

Karl had just stepped into the zestibule when Kid Flash reappeared next to him. "Good catch, outfield," he said, ruffling Karl's hair. "Nobody had even thought about that yet."

Karl shrugged, grinning at the praise and feeling a bit proud. "Can't really blame them. That Wotan thing took all of them the whole day, so it must have been a bear and a half. Have they checked yet?"

"Zatara did his -" Kid Flash made wiggly scare quotes, "- 'woogy woogy oogy boogy' routine and said he was okay. Aqualad's done debriefing but Aquaman took him back home, so we're just waiting on Robin now."

"Beans of the coolness. What're our choices for shows?"

Kid Flash flickered over to a display terminal. "We've got multiple options in LA; the Pier Show in SFO, and of course there's always Vegas, baby!"

"Mmmmm. . .buffets. . . ." Karl mused.

"Are you telepathic, too? Because it sounds like you're reading my mind!"

 

[Acksiom]

"Normal street clothes only," Batman's holograph said, "and only for this excursion. We'll host him here tonight. Batman out." The image projected in the air above the zestibule's console disappeared.

Superstripper began peeling off the remains of his solar suit.

"Boxers or briefs?" Karl said.

"No," Supercommando said.

"Ahhh. . .'kay," Karl said, slightly taken aback. "Sneakers, socks, jeans, t-shirt?"

Supernaked stood up again and folded his arms.

"Riiiiight," Karl said. "Hold still, please." He pulled at the air around them, enough for the flow to be noticeable, and wireframe outlines of some nice thick athletic socks began to form on the bigger boy's feet as the molecules underwent transmutation.

"So," Kid Flash said, his eyes carefully leveled at Supernudist's shoulders. "Food! What have you tried before, and liked?"

"Nothing," Superdeshabille grunted.

"What do you mean, nothing? You have to have liked something at. . .some. . .point," Kid Flash said, slowing as he began to realize the problem. "You've at least eaten something at some point, right!?"

"And. . .done," Karl muttered under his breath, as the grey wireframe of a t-shirt on Superken's upper body solidified and turned black, leaving him fully dressed again.

"No. Never," Superdiet said.

The rest of the Team stared at him.

"You've never ever had a real meal? This will be your first real meal?" Kid Flash asked, in a dumbfounded voice.

"Yes," Superembarassed growled.

"Fourth of July, so gotta be burgers," Karl said.

"Cheeseburgers. And fries," Kid Flash added.

"Bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and shakes," Robin said, tapping at his wrist computer. "Vegas. . .survey says. . .Hockle Haus. If we go now, we should be in place and mostly done eating by showtime. KF, address is 3203 South Eastern Avenue, two major blocks north-east of the tube station. . .diagonally across from the Las Vegas International Golf Course. The rest of us will head to the Strip to find a good vantage point. Transport four to McCarran International. Let's move, people!"

# # #

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
JULY 4TH, 21:22 PST

"So?" Kid Flash asked, nudging SuperTBD with his shoulder a little after the last flashes had died away overhead. They were all sitting on the edge of the aviation lights platform at the Stratosphere Hotel's top, arguably the best seats in the city. It would have been too much work to stay hidden down by any of the pyrotechnic batteries themselves, so Karl had put a wafer-thin non-reflective vantablack shield underneath them from a concealed position some distance away, and flown them all up together. "Is the real thing better?"

Supersilent didn't answer.

"Very good show, and some of the best burgers I've ever had, I can tell you," Karl said. "Their shakes're too sweet for me, can't hardly taste the choco, but the garlic fries are up there too."

Superglare turned to, well, glare at him. "You can fly," he gritted out. "Superman can fly. Why can't I fly?"

"Dude, you're only sixteen," Kid Flash said. "And by sixteen, I mean sixteen weeks. I'm pretty sure -"

"- Superman didn't start publicly heroing until he was twenty, maybe older," Robin interrupted. "You're already years ahead of him. Even going by your estimated age of development."

Superboy grunted, his tense posture relaxing by a few muscles at a time.

"It's. . .different," he finally admitted.

"Part of the appeal is the company," Karl said, lying down on his back and clasping his hands over his stomach.

"That," Kid Flash said, nodding.

"What they said," Robin agreed. "Stay turbed, my dudes. We've got our whole lives ahead of us. And they are going to be better than awesome -

"- because they're already awesome now!" Kid Flash reciprocally broke in.

They all sat, or lay, quietly for a few moments, before Robin broke the silence with an intrigued "Oh ho."

"What what?" Kid Flash echoed.

"I'm tied into the Hotel's security feeds, keeping us blanked out of them, and multiple fire alarms over on the north wing just went off. Funny thing though - Station 12 answered the automated call with a rollout response, and there isn't supposed to be a free unit there. They're all wrapping up the Mount Charleston forest fire. Isn't that interesting?"

"Are they real fires? I mean, here?" Karl asked.

"Looks like," Robin said. "Could have been started by dumb mishandling, but this many this fast? The timing is too convenient."

"Anybody at risk - / You thinking vault heist?" Karl and Kid Flash said simultaneously. Kid Flash quickly made an after him gesture towards Karl.
"Doesn't look like it, and yes," Robin said.

"Then what are we waiting for!?" Kid Flash said, jumping up. Karl's hand flashed out and grabbed him by the ankle as Superhasty rose to his feet too.

"Maybe for a mask?" Karl said quickly, as a wireframe shemagh formed around Kid Flash's shoulders, then flashed into a dull mustard yellow actuality.

"Or for Robin to finish checking the Station's CCTV for victims or find the telecom spoof faking their response?" Karl continued. "And a plan?"

He switched his attention to Superjawline as a lozenge popped out of a slot in Robin's wrist-comp, rapidly expanding into a black domino mask. The Boy Wonder snatched it out of the air and ran a thumb around its inside.

Superbrah's shemagh went from wireframe to black cloth as Karl added, "For a big enough crime – emergency services interference is bad, but a good criminal strategist will have a couple of alibis ready, maybe cutouts claiming 'youthful indiscretion' -"

"He's right," Robin cut in, as he positioned the domino over his eyes. "Station 12's CCTV has been hacked; it's on a repeating loop. Could be casualties, so KF, that's you – 3050 South Sammy Davis Drive -" Karl released his grip "- southeast of Circus Circus, go!"

"On it!" Kid Flash said, and stepped off the edge. A blurred puplish line, the mixture of his dark blue jeans and red shirt, flickered briefly on the hotel spire's facing as he raced downwards.

"Phenom - fire suppression, S&R, then backup," Robin continued, pointing at locations on the building below. "Third floor, fourth, sixth, and eighth. Superboy, we'll – ha. And now someone else is fiddling the Casino's internals. They're good, but I'm better. Yep, it's a heist. Phenom, get Superboy down to the east parking garage, north corner; he and I will follow the loot, while you -"

"- do fire suppression and S&R while stealthed, then backup for you or KF as needed?" Karl said, to Robin's brisk nod. "Good plan." He extended another black carry field, as Robin rolled off the tower's edge as well, firing his grapple. "Supes, all aboard!"

Supergrouch stepped onto the black plate, his arms folded, scowling. "I hate this," he muttered.

"We'll figure something out, I promise. That's what teammates are for," Karl said, as he floated them over into the shadows of a recessed nook in the wall of the building below. When they reached it, he raised the plate's edge to cover them completely, and accelerated down.

". . .mmrrngh," Supertetchy grumbled, a mixture of complaint and concession. He pulled the shemagh over his nose and tightened the knot in the back.

"Try imagining the looks on the bad guys' faces when you and Robin show up at their drop point out of nowhere. Oooh, wait, if the fire truck is the loot transport, how about hanging on underneath it to infiltrate? That would be super tropetastic. . .oop, we're here."

As Karl undid the field, Superpersuadable's eye and forehead tells changed from a scowl to thoughtful consideration and then to mild interest.
Robin swung in nearby, smoothly transitioning to a sprint as he reached the ground. He zipped past them without a pause, vaulting neatly over the white, waist-high opening in the parking structure's ground floor wall.

"Call you when we need you," he tossed back over his shoulder as he went.

"Call me before then!" Karl hissed after him, reaching up to give Superstuck a motivating slap on the back of his shoulder. "Go, man!"

"You go," Supersmirk said, giving the front of Karl's shoulder a light shove in return before he jumped in after Robin.

Karl turned invisible, phased out, and started flying towards the north wing.

 

[Acksiom]

Emily trotted around the corner and stopped, then backed away from the smoke filling the hotel hallway in front of her. She'd just wanted some more ice! That didn't count as leaving; she'd only gone to the machine. She wasn't a bad girl! She wasn't!

She looked down the hallway to her left, where she'd come from, where there were actual fires licking up the walls, then at the stairwell door behind her. That would be leaving, but it would be okay, right? There was a fire!

And then there wasn't; phut, just like that. The fires went out, and steam hissed up where they'd been.

"You're safe now, kiddo. Are you Emily?" said a buzzy robot voice overhead.

"Yes. . . ?" she said, looking up and around.

"You can't see me or touch me. I'm invisible and intangible. Does your -"

"Are you a ghost!?" Emily interrupted, her fear overtaken by excitement.

"Not really. I'm a guy with superpowers who likes his privacy. But you can call me 'Mister Ghost' if you want. Does your mother have short brown hair and a tattoo on the back of her neck that says 'Unbreakable'?"

"Yes!" Emily shouted. "Is Momma okay?"

"She's fine, just worried for you. She's trying to come up this stairwell from five floors down but all the people leaving from the floors below us are blocking her. It's safe for you to go down to her, though. Can you open the door?"

"Yes, Mister Ghost!" Emily said, reaching up the handle.

"Good girl. I'll stay with you until you reach her, all right?"

"Yes, thank you," Emily said, remembering her manners. She hauled the door open and started descending the stairs carefully. She could hear people talking, way deeper down the stairs – not shouting, but almost – and through the risers, she could feel their feet thumping around.

"Did you put the fire out with your ghost powers?" she asked as she turned the first switchback. "Ooooh, did you take the fire into the ghost world with you?"

"You have quite the imagination. No, I turned the air around the fire into cold water. Fire needs air to burn, like we do to breathe, so it went out. Then I soaked the hot places with the cold water so they wouldn't start burning again when the air came back."

"Oh. How long have you been a ghost?"

"Only a few minutes, this time."

"You're not always a ghost?"

"Nope. I came with my friends to have dinner and watch the fireworks."

"Oh. Us too. I couldn't go." Emily slowed down and whispered, "I got poopy sick so I had to stay in the room."

"I'm sorry to hear that. How are you feeling now?"

"Better!"

"That's a relief. You're a good, smart, brave girl, Emily. Your Momma's lucky to have you."

Emily swallowed. "Do you think. . .she'll be mad?"

"I think she's too scared for you to be mad at you. She might seem mad, but only because she's so worried, and she's so worried because she loves you so much."

"I. . .wasn't supposed to leave the room. But I went to get more ice. I didn't think that would count!"

"I think she'll understand."

A sudden thought occurred to her. "Is everybody else okay? Does anybody else need help? I can go down by myself if I have to."

"Yes they are, and no they don't. You were the only one in real danger. See? I said you were good and smart and brave. Thinking of others at a time like this is very heroic. But. . .hmm. . .how do I – oh, I know. Have you ever been on an airplane?"

"Yes! It was a little scary, but then it was fun!"

"It's like the mask thing they talk about before take-off. Do you remember that? How your Momma is supposed to put her own mask on first if something goes wrong, then put yours on you?"

Emily nodded.

"It's like that. Right now, the best thing you can do to help is to get out safely with your Momma. That way the firefighters can concentrate on doing the rest of their job. And I can go help my friends."

Mister Ghost's weird voice dipped to a mumble. ". . .Heaven only knows how much trouble they've found by now, or what kinds. . . ."

Emily nodded again, harder. She had friends like that too.

"Get out of my way!" Momma's voice came from below, rising above the din.

"Momma!" Emily shrieked. "Momma, I'm up here! I'm okay!"

"Emmy!"

A moment later her mother pounded up the stairs.

"Oh honey, are you all right?" Momma said, kneeling down in front of her. She hurriedly checked Emily for damage, turning her this way and that, patting her.

". . .'m fine, Momma," Emily sniffled, her eyes suddenly watering.

"Hello, Ma'am," said Mister Ghost's buzzy robot voice above them. They looked up to see nothing. Momma grabbed her and held her close.

"I chose to guide your daughter out verbally after dousing the fires. I wanted you to know that I'd spoken with her in case she told you about the strange voice later. I think it's important for children to know their parents believe them, as well as in them."

"Thank you!" the mother said. "Thank you so much! Who are you?"

"Someone with superpowers who would prefer to remain anonymous. Please don't even mention me to anyone else. And yes, Emily, that means you too. No bragging please! That said, you should exit the area now for everyone's safety, your own included. Emily, you did very well. Again, please keep me a secret. Good-bye."

"Bye Mister Ghost!" Emily said. "I promise! Thank you!"

"Wait!" Momma said. There was no response.

"Let's go, Momma," Emily said, squirming free and tugging on her hand. "Mister Ghost is real busy."

"But. . . ." Momma protested as Emily pulled her along.

"Mister Ghost said getting out safely is like the airplane thing where you put on your own mask first for the firemen because your friends might be getting in trouble somewhere else. We should go!"

 

[Acksiom]

NOTE:

And because the health issues clocked me out early yesterday, here's the next chapter, and #15 hopefully coming later tonight, putting us back on normal release schedule.

Which will probably be slowing down a lot around the low 20s, because I really do desperately need to focus on writing actually potentially paying work.

---

Paulie Bones hauled the rolling door to the Western Fire Prevention Station back down behind them as the altered fire truck stopped in the bottom of the sloped bay with a squeak-squeal of its air brakes. Its rumbling engine died off, and the Tattooed Man swung the driver door open, sliding out and dropping to the bay's floor. He pulled off his helmet and tossed it back into the cab with a sort of mid-air bowling flourish.

"Eaaaasy money, baby!" he chortled. The rest of the local crew were already yanking off and tossing aside the false panels, to reveal the sports bags full of cash, painting canisters full of art, and other packed loot from the casino's vault. They started hustling the proceeds through the mined opening in the bay's far wall and deep into the rough tunnel behind it, stacking them on the electric trucklets waiting in place.

Up above, Porcelain climbed out of her concealed cubby in the truck's top, and leaped from there to the bay's edge. The rest of the crew were already pushing the rolling pallets of tippable acid canisters into place around the bay's edges. "Move it, move it!" she shouted. "Every second counts!"

"Ahhh, relax," the Tattooed Man said, stretching. He pulled off his firefighter's jacket, throwing the other piece of disguise into the cab with his helmet. "It's the home stretch, cuz, and we're out in front by a mile. Helluva plan. Helluva plan!"

"It's not the home stretch until after I'm paid and chillin' at home," Porcelain said, stomping on the wheel-lock of a correctly positioned pallet. "And I'm not your 'cuz'."

"Sister, you worry too much," the Tattooed Man said. But he picked up a crate in the next transfer load and lugged it into the tunnel.

"Almost done, boss!" Bobby Hangnail said, finishing a circuit around the truck and jogging into the tunnel with a bag himself.

"So the acid is to hide any biomarkers, and the explosives are to drop the whole building, covering the acid and the tunnel," mused a boy's voice overhead. Porcelain yanked her hammer out of her back harness and spun around, scanning the ceiling.

"Tatts!" she shouted. "Get something up there!"

A 12-foot long glowing green dragon, in the bearded, serpentine asian style, flew into the air above the bay, and began searching the ceiling's iron support scaffolding.

"What I don't get," continued the voice, now coming from the bays' office area at the building's far end, "is how that much acid is supposed to do the job. Doesn't look like enough."

"How about you come over here and I show you, kid?" Porcelain called, stalking towards it.

The dragon vanished as curses, gunfire, and meaty thumping noises erupted from the sloped bay behind her.

"Boss!" Billy shouted! "Gotta masked tank down here! He just whacked Tattarrgh-"

"Dammit!" Porcelain cursed, turning and sprinting towards the bay's nearest corner. She dropped into a slide a yard away from the edge, and slithered over the side, grabbing her remote from a vest pocket as she parkoured off the two adjacent walls and hit the bottom. She darted into the tunnel, ignoring the chaos at the bay's farther, higher end, while entering the secondary detonation sequence. Just like in the drills.

So long, suckers, she thought. There was still time to grab a big bag, run for the exit, and catch the late freight train as scheduled.

click
clicklicklickclick

No boom.

No no no no! she thought.

"Ooops, my bad; I should have said were. The explosives were to drop the whole building," said the boy's voice right behind her.

So she snapped a mule kick backwards while sweeping her hammer around to drive the brat away, and triggered the primary detonation sequence.
The explosives in the tunnel's roof to collapse it, not only behind but above her. . .did go off.

Porcelain ran forward, ears ringing, hunched over, exerting her power through every available inch of exposed skin and spinning her hammer overhead to shatter the rock and concrete descending around her. She dove and rolled through the last fragments of the collapsing rubble, coughing and wheezing on the dust as she rose to one knee.

She had just enough time to wonder if she'd caught the kid in the blast before something puff!ed in front of her face. A sweet aroma coaxed her down into the troubled sleep of the unjust.

# # #

Abel Tarrant - or as he preferred to think of himself, the Tattooed Man - fought his way back to consciousness. He'd had his bell rung harder before; not often, but he'd taken worse hits and still come out the winner.

There was a faint glow behind him, enough to show that he was in some kind of hard, dark, oval capsule barely larger than he was. And someone was hugging him, small arms and legs wrapped tightly around his chest and waist from behind.

"Get offa me," he snarled, twisting around to face a glowing white clown duckface with a mouth full of infection-spotted bony spikes for teeth -
"KISS ME, TATT BOY!" it roared, in a raspy gargle full of inhuman harmonics. It slowly leaned in closer to him, fractional inch by inch, its eyes bulging psychotically and spinning in different directions as it made smoochie-smoochie noises.

Abel jerked backwards, shrieking in terror, and passed out again.

Karl rolled the man onto his side, dropped the Poundfoolish illusion, and stopped creating the bubble of carfentanyl variant-delta around the supercriminal's nose and mouth. He turned the force field around them transparent, and extruded a finger-thin spike of it upward through the rubble they were buried in. Once the pressure against extending it lessened, he grew it another three feet and popped a signboard out of its side that read

DIG HERE PLZ
KTHNXHAI

Moments later, a disheveled Superrags, his clothes torn apart again and his face twisted in concern, swept away the debris overhead. Karl threw him a thumbs-up, opened the top of the field, and put his arm out. Superworried grabbed it and yanked him upright, looking him over.

"I'm fine!" Karl said. "Let's please get Sideshow Knob down there out so I can cuff'n'stuff him, okay? I gotta concentrate to neutralize all that acid."

Once the Tattooed Man was out of the rubble as well, then cuffed, manacled, and gimp-masked with black force fields, Karl sat down in the firetruck's rear position. He focused his attention on the containment bubbles he'd thrown up when the explosions had knocked some of the acid canisters into the bay, slowly and carefully breaking the contents down and converting them into safe nontoxic elements.

"What a day," he muttered.

"No joke," KF agreed tiredly from somewhere above, out of sight. "Friends and neighbors, I am burnt."

Karl's League comm buzzed in the tweedily-deedily-dee pattern he'd set as Robin's ringtone, and he reached up to answer it with a tap.

"Everything good out there?" Robin asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Karl replied. "You?"

"Lady, lugs, and loot are secure. Tunnel leads west; I'll go check it out."

"I'd tell you to be careful, but I know you wouldn't listen."

"I called you before we needed you, didn't I?"

"Fair point; that comment has been removed by a moderator. Okay, give us a warning before you contact Metro Super-Crime, please?"

"Skippy dippy. Out."


# # #

Spinebender coiled his way up the massive standing-lamp copy of the Stratosphere itself, eased open the vent above, and slithered into the ductwork. Below him, in the master bedroom of the spire's penthouse-pylon, which extended out over the city in one-third counterbalance to the Insanity ride 120 degrees away, Simon Stagg and his companion of the evening continued to slumber undisturbed.

Pity to lose all that bonus money, Spinebender thought. But I'll still get the big bucks for Stagg's biometrics. The important thing is that the others did their job as the distraction.

I wonder how our Mystery Boss plans to spring 'em. . .assuming they keep to the contract, anyways. Props if they do; gotta respect a mastermind who keeps their word.

Bet the payout on that job'd be nice as well. Tatts is too much of a tweaky jerk, but I could stand to keep working with Porcelain. Good head on that one. Professional.

Smokin' hot bod, too.

 

[Acksiom]

NOTE:

Probably only the YJ corefans and QQ autists have noticed that the prior time stamps are different from canon. The basic reason for that in-fic change have already been alluded to a couple of times. Anybody wanna guess what/where?

I also bring it up because this is where the Team side of canon really starts to go off into the expanded narrative frontier, for obvious reasons below.

---

WASHINGTON D.C.
JULY 5TH, 00:12 AM EST

Karl ran them through his sterilization field to clean off any post-mission buffet snack odors, and they stumbled into and out of the z-tube, all of them yawning except for Superstoic. Robin's was interrupted by an awp! noise at the sight of the man who might actually be using the bat totem regardless of the universe invovled come to think of it. . . .

"Let's get you into bed," Captain Marvel said, suddenly in front of him. "Oh, and here, have this back." He folded Karl's hand around Imp.

"Sorry to. . .split on y' like that," Karl mumbled, already half-asleep. "Had to go with. Gotta take that first social group invite, y'know?"

Captain Marvel's eyes met Superboy's across his drowsing mentee's head, and he smiled at the young clone approvingly.

Superboy averted his gaze and strode out of the 'zestibule'. A few moments later he was in his assigned quarters, the door closed behind him. He carefully undressed, folding the clothes neatly and stowing them in their own drawer, before lying down on the still-covered bed.

It had turned out he really didn't need sleep. And he didn't feel like studying anything. And training would feel hollow after having just handled a crime on the fly.

So he put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling above him and worked on sorting through his memories of the day.

Real food was different. And he couldn't put enough of a mental finger on why. Annoying.

Friendly, welcoming peer company was different, too. And he thought he did know why, at least partially, on that. Now that he'd experienced the difference, there was a kind of psychic, fore-knowing echo to the life experience he'd been telepathically stuffed with. There was always a dulling of the sense of surprise.

He set his jaw and turned around in his head to face it, the thing that was really bothering him, the reason he didn't want to do anything else.

Karl. Or Phenom, but Superboy preferred to think of him as Karl. For multiple reasons, and among them, the fact that the name's source meaning was free man. The name appealed to him on its own.

He had actively disliked Karl at first.

Because, bottom line, even in so brief a span, he sometimes found Karl intimidating. Mostly the times when he could not track Karl. The younger boy's stealth was simply too much better than his own supersenses.

And it didn't help that Robin, at least minimally, in one small area, could.

And that when he was tracking Karl, and gettting a read on him, Karl was clearly holding back on top of that. Because Karl was. . .extremely careful. Not quite super-careful, but Superboy recognized some of the same tells in another who knew they were super-dangerous. Or verged on it, in Karl's case.

And then, earlier in the evening, while the Martian Manhunter was helping him test his psychic training experience against real protocols, his superhearing had locked in on Captain Marvel saying "Super cool!"

And he stopped disliking Karl soon afterwards.

He stopped disliking a few other things as well. Because he could tell that Karl almost completely didn't want anything from him, beyond simple competence from Superboy and reciprocal acceptance of his own. Karl just wanted things for him. Because it was part of his code. He didn't just do it because it was who he was. He did it because it was who he wanted to more and better be.

And he trusted his mentor to approve of that, because his mentor was like that too.

And his mentor clearly trusted the rest of the League to understand and agree with his reasoning on the subject of Superman's behavior.

Compassion all around. . .because Karl stepped up first. For him. For more of him than anyone else had yet, beyond just 'because Superboy'.

For some parts of himself Superboy didn't even know yet.

Superman's code was hard sometimes, in some places, in some ways. But the sections of it about learning from others weren't. And Captain Marvel was learning from Karl.

Superboy could take a hint, and follow an example.

And, well. It was nice. Comforting, when he chose to let it be. To have someone care about him that much. And reassuring. He'd been concerned that the League would follow Superman's example. Karl had very effectively, and almost as synergistically skunked that. And probably hadn't even been trying. It had just naturally followed from Karl trying to be Karl. . .not 'Phenom'. Because Karl was more than Phenom. Much more.

And his mentor recognized that.

Superboy could learn from Karl too.

All right, that was that handled. Back to food.

Oh. It was mostly the same thing. That psychic foreknowledge echo. And also a sameness. Real bacon cheeseburgers were much more variable. The shakes weren't, but they weren't supposed to be, either. He somewhat agreed with Karl on those, too much sugar. The garlic fries, he didn't like as much, but the others might not be able to taste how overused the oil was. Not surprising considering the 4th​ of July business rush though.

So that was handled too. The lettuce was good. Crispy and crunchy but wet and a little sweet all at the same time. No, that was handled.

Mmm, cheese. Gooey and salty and a little tangy and chewy. . . .

# # #

WASHINGTON, D.C.
JULY 5TH, 10:04 AM EST

Karl watched Superboy, still, and wow was there going to be A Talk about that later, take an experimental bite of his sandwich. Karl's favorite: thin-sliced turkey breast with double cheese, Jack and Provolone; lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, and mustard on extra-sourdough roll.

After a moment he nodded once. "Good," he said. Around the table in the small conference room with attached kitchen, Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad, i.e. Kaldur'ahm oops cringe shame, were already chowing down.

Karl beamed at him. "Excellent," he replied.

"No, just good," Super. . .guy? ehhh miscorrected him.

"No, I mean excellent that you like it, bro," Karl said.

Superbro grunted.

"Well I'll eat these whenever you got 'em," Kid Flash said.

"It is tasty," Aqualad agreed.

"Thanks!" Karl said.

"So, for Kaldur's benefit. . . ." Robin began.

"Oh, right - not exactly ghost powers, no," Karl said. "More of a Green Lantern deal, except not will-based, mostly just various force fields, and the ring isn't necessary but enhances range and power. Environmental, flight, defense, compression, and stasis fields, phasing similar to Martian Manhunter's, plus invisibility from a weird sort of photon phasing, small-scale matter transmutation, and coming along nicely on visual illusions."

"So ghostlike, then," Kal'dur'ahm, mused.

"Oh yeah, practically speaking Robin was right on," Karl agreed. "And thus Phenom was the best compromise between descriptive and giving Big Red his propers. Aaand maybe a teensy bit of bragging thrown in there. Solely for tactical intimidation purposes, of course."

"Oh yes, of course," Robin said, smirking.

"How is your offense?" Aqualad asked.

"Category 'Not If I Can Help It', because my control is still crap-awful. Like, killing bad. Arms-reach, basically; crushing, tearing, and general nasty chemical. . .er, generation. Oh, and suffocation fields. Haven't tested offensive phasing yet."

Behind them, the oven dinged.

"Wedges up!" Karl said.