Post by Brandon on Jan 8, 2014 17:38:53 GMT -5
EARTH-TWO: The classic DC heroes faced challenge after challenge in their early years, only to eventually come to face their greatest threat, a Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Multiverse was saved, but this Earth survived intact and the classic heroes persevered on. In time, the heroes moved on and as the children of the metahuman era came of age, a new generation of heroes stood ready to take up the charge....
The Meta Teens #1
Criminology 101
Story by Scott Cook
Concept and Cover by Brandon Herren
*Tap tap tap*
That sound…what is that? She wondered this as she slept comfortably in her bed. Maybe it’s just part of a dream, she thought, or would have thought, had she been awake enough to think in complete sentences. But then she heard it again, louder this time. Is that…? she didn’t complete the thought, as she was interrupted by a loud whisper of the name “Lisa!”
She was awake now – bitterly awake. She wanted to ignore the tapping and the whispering and just go back to sleep, but they refused to quit, and had indeed joined forces in order to keep her awake, it seemed.
“Lisa! You there?”
Having had enough, Lisa Pierce got out of bed, walked to the window of her dorm room, pulled open the blinds, and saw a sixteen-year-old boy, dressed in a blue costume and mask, hanging outside her open window. She glanced at the clock next to her bed and saw the numbers 2:19 AM staring back at her.
“What do you want, Ren?” she said.
Renegade was a classmate of hers at the Justice Academy for Metahuman Youth. The two had had homeroom together since freshman year, and were friends since then, and Lisa still didn’t know what his real name was or what he looked like without his mask on. Lately, Ren had been antsy to get out of the Academy, to actually be the superhero they had all trained to be. Lisa didn’t quite have his impatience.
“Night mission,” he said. “Me and the others are going to infiltrate the Institute, see what exactly our distinguished competition is up to. You in?”
“Which others?” Lisa raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, y’know, the usual suspects,” Ren shrugged. “E-Girl, Morpho, Zoo Boy, and Etrigana. C’mon, come with us, you’ll get to use your codename…Livewire.”
He tried to make the last word sound seductive, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Lisa had to laugh at his attempt though, despite herself. Ren didn’t mind the embarrassment; he was just happy he could make the girl he liked smile.
“It’ll be cool, we’ll get to do real superhero stuff!” he said, reaching out a hand. “What do you say?”
“No thanks, boy wonder,” Lisa answered. “Unlike you, I actually want to graduate from this place.”
Ren snorted. “Newsflash, Livewire: you don’t need a degree to be a superhero!”
“Well, maybe I want one,” she said. “Look, I’m going back to bed. You and your teen titans better get out of here before the hall monitors find you – or worse, Eden.”
And with that, she closed her window, shut the blinds, and went back to bed.
Renegade was disappointed, but nonetheless flipped backwards from his perch on the roof and landed nimbly on the grass of the courtyard, where his companions were waiting for him.
“What’d she say?” asked Cliff Baker, alias Zoo Boy. Cliff was the youngest of the group, as well as the shortest, but he was the most eager to prove himself to the older kids. He nearly died of excitement when Renegade had invited him to go out with them.
“She’s out,” Ren answered, trying to hide his disappointment. “C’mon, we should head out.”
“What about the others?” asked RJ Mason, alias Morpho. RJ was the biggest among them, and every exposed limb he had was a different color, and presumably, made of a different element. He was far from the smartest person in the group – he didn’t yet know enough about his own powers to change his own chemistry, but he could still change his shape, and he was still one of the most loyal friends any of them had.
“Eden would just turn us in, Philip probably would too, Riley’s out of town, and Leo…is Leo,” Ren said, with resignation. “Now c’mon, let’s go!”
With that, they took off through the courtyard, away from the Fox building, past the administration halls and classrooms of the Academy, until they could see the west exit, leading out into the city of Happy Harbor, Rhode Island. They were very nearly home free when…
“Ahem,” came the fake cough they had all come to associate with stern lecturing and condescension. The stopped, turned around, and saw Eden Danvers, alias Earth Angel, still looking beautiful even in her pajamas and hovering above the ground with her majestic feathered wings. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Oh we were just gonna go have an orgy, worship Satan, maybe sacrifice a virgin,” Emily Bones said with a smirk. “Y’know, the usual.”
Emily was something of a newcomer to the school. Unlike the others who had been born with their powers or had grown up around superheroes, Emily had fallen into the life on her sixteenth birthday. She never revealed to the rest of them exactly how she had gotten cursed to share her form with a demon, but by all accounts, she seemed perfectly fine with it, and was even looking forward to immortality. She was not, however, one to enjoy the Academy, or some of her classmates.
Eden glowered at Emily. “All of you should get back to your rooms immediately, or I’m going to tell Professor Palmer.”
Eden Danvers was, by all accounts, perfect: a model Academy student, acing all of her classes (except combat training – she couldn’t quite get the hang of her flaming sword), going out for various clubs, never ever breaking the rules, and doing her best to ensure her classmates did the same. However, to her classmates, this perfection came across as a holier-than-thou attitude that got under everyone’s skin, but none moreso than Emily, who grinned wickedly as she intoned, “Now before your very eyes-”
“Oh no,” Eden said. “Don’t you dare-”
“-the girl be gone, and Etrigana rise!”
A burst of flame surrounded her, and when it disappeared, Emily was gone, and in her place was a yellow-skinned demon dressed in scorched rags, with horns, pointed ears, and grim red eyes.
“Stand down, right now!” Eden said.
“Get thee hence, my brothers in arms,” Etrigana said to the group. “Before the cherub raises the alarms!”
And with that, Etrigana leapt into the air and grabbed Eden, sending the angel and the demon tumbling to the ground, grappling with each other. Renegade took the opportunity to say, “Let’s get gone, people!”
And with that, the remaining group of Renegade, Morpho, Zoo Boy, and E-Girl bolted out the door, leaving the pair to fight each other.
* * * * * *
The Luthor Institute for the Gifted was, as it seemed, just a tower in downtown Happy Harbor, surrounded by a barbed-wire cement wall with a steel gate in front. But the Justice League knew better than that. They had done several thorough investigations of the building, its holdings, its records, its staff, its students; everything that could be investigated, and came up with nothing. As far as they could tell, the Institute was everything it presented itself to be. However, the students didn’t have quite the same faith in the rival institution, and so it came to pass that the four students perched themselves on a building opposite the front gate, staring down at it.
“What are you reading, E-Girl?” Renegade asked.
Jennie Olsen, alias E-Girl, looked over the information that was being fed into her goggles. “Let’s see…there’s security cameras that I can put on a feedback loop from out here. The front door requires a card key to be scanned, I can probably fake our way past it-”
“This is the real deal here, Olsen,” Renegade said. “We don’t have room for ‘probably’.”
“Right, right,” she said. “I can definitely fake our way past that, plus all the other spots that need a key. There are some security drones roaming the perimeter, but if I map out their schedule right, we can make it to the elevator before any of them spot us.”
“And how long before you do all of that?” Ren asked.
E-Girl raised her goggles and smirked. “About two seconds ago.”
Ren smiled at her. “Jennie, you are a wonder.” She tried to hide her excitement over the complement as best she could.
“Now then, if we’re all set, let’s investigate.”
They all cleared the fence fairly easily – Renegade leapt it with his acrobatics, E-Girl flew over using her jet pack (stylized to look like a turtle shell), Morpho turned his lower half into a spring and bounded over, and Zoo Boy flew over by mimicking the flight of a pigeon. They stopped once they reached the front door and saw the plastic pad where a key card was required. E-Girl removed the plate and inspected it.
“Whoa,” she marveled at the maze of wires embedded in the wall. “This is way more advanced than I thought. Why don’t we have security like this at the Academy?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Renegade said. “Can you hack it?”
“I can try…” she trailed off, pulling a pair of tools out of her shell pack and poking and prodding at the wires. “Did…did that do it?”
They all turned and saw the front doors open. “Nice work, E-Girl,” Ren said as they all rushed inside. While the doors were closing behind them, the group came to a common room, where they saw two small circular drones, hovering through the hall. The four stopped and hid behind anything they could find, waiting for the drones to pass through.
Then one of them paused, and their breaths stopped in their lungs. They were absolutely silent, absolutely still, as the drone rotated, the blue light atop it acting as an eye to find the intruders hiding behind couches, chairs, and support beams. Then, as quickly as it stopped, the drone returned its eye forward and turned the corner to follow its mate.
Once they were out of sight, and five seconds after, the four rushed silently from their spots and stopped just in front of the elevators, where there was another plastic pad that was expecting a key card. On cue, E-Girl took off the plate and drew her tools. This time, she had the door open in seconds, and chuckled quietly as she did.
Then the four heard what sounded like a toilet flushing. Then they heard a door open. Then they saw a handsome-looking boy of seventeen, seven feet tall and built for power. He stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw them, and raised an eyebrow.
“Do you guys go here?” he asked.
“PANTHER CLAW!”
Before any of them could do anything, Zoo Boy charged forward, tackling the tall boy but not budging him in the slightest. The tall boy grabbed him by the collar of his coat and lifted him up. “I recognize you! You’re from the loser academy by the bay!”
He threw Zoo Boy away; Cliff smacked into one of the beams and landed roughly on the floor.
“Well sit pretty, children,” he grinned as he cracked his knuckles. “Cause Kid Hollywood’s gonna learn you a thing or two about trespassing!”
He rushed the remaining three, but Morpho leapt forward and intersected him. They grappled with each other, matching the other’s strength. Morpho grunted, “Go! I’ll hold him off!”
Without needing a second warning, Renegade and E-Girl leapt into the open elevator. Jennie smacked the wall of buttons, hoping to hit something that would create an escape. Miraculously, the doors shut and the elevator began to plummet downwards.
“Nice move, Jen,” Renegade said.
“I keep telling you: superhuman luck,” she said.
As the elevator continued to plummet, Ren asked, “We’ve been going down a while. What button did you press?”
E-Girl glanced up at the wall. “B10.”
“So why does a school have ten basement levels?” he said.
At that moment, the elevator came to a sudden halt. The two heard a ding and when the door opened, they saw a soulless steel hallway that lit up as they exited the elevator.
“We should go,” Jennie said. “We shouldn’t be here. This was a bad idea. We’re going to get in so much trouble! We’re gonna get expelled! My parents’ll kill me!”
“Calm down,” Ren said. “We’ll be fine. Morpho can handle whatever they throw at him, he’ll keep ZB safe. After we find what we’re looking for, we can get gone.”
“Okay…what are we looking for?” she asked.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Renegade answered. “Although…do you think the League knows about this? Secret subbasement? Cause this seems like supervillain-type stuff here.”
“Could be…maybe? I don’t know. Please, Ren, can we just leave?” Jennie was babbling now, but Renegade remained the picture of serenity.
“Check this out!” he said, ignoring her pleas. The two were by a window, looking down on what looked like a gymnasium. Inside it, on top of a mat, were two people; the first was an older man, somewhere in his sixties, with pure white hair and a pair of sunglasses. The other was a girl of eighteen, with unusual pale white skin and green hair. The two appeared to be sparring with one another.
“I don’t believe it,” Ren said. “That’s the Duela Dent! That’s the Joker’s Daughter! She’s supposed to be in Arkham, what’s she doing…and is that Slade Wilson?”
Then, the sparring partners stopped, and the old man looked up and directly at where Renegade and E-Girl where. They immediately ducked down and out of sight of the window. “D-Did he see us?” Jennie asked.
“Not likely. He’s supposed to be blind,” Ren answered.
“Yeah, but he’s got ears like a bat.”
Duela Dent was now standing next to them. “So, do you two have hall passes or should I call headmistress?” She paused, then asked, “What’s with the outfits?”
Neither of them answered, but Renegade’s hand slowly drifted towards the extendable staff he kept at his side.
“You kids don’t go here, do ya?” Duela said. And with that, Renegade leapt to his feet, drew his staff, and stood ready to defend himself.
“Get out of here, E,” he said. “I’ll hold her off.”
E-Girl instead drew her stun pistol from its holster and aimed it at Duela. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Actually, I think both of you would do well to stand down.”
Standing next to them was a stern-looking young woman with red hair, tied back in a ponytail. Her face was expressionless, but she seemed to be on the verge of glowering at them. They all recognized her immediately: Leticia Luthor, headmistress of the Institute that bared her and her father’s name.
“I can only assume you two are the reason one of my students is currently in a fistfight with an elemental and a child?” she asked.
“Oooooh! You kids are in trouble!” Duela taunted them, which was bad enough, but what was worse was that Ren and Jennie knew, deep down, that she was right.
* * * * * *
As Ren and Jennie were escorted out of the Institute by menacing sentry drones and Leticia Luthor herself (who had taken the time to change into a more professional attire), they were met up by an exhausted-looking RJ and worse for the wear Cliff, who insisted that their fight with Kid Hollywood had ended in a draw. Ren chuckled at that, but Jennie was too terrified by their situation to laugh.
With that, the four invading students, Headmistress Luthor, and a cadre of sentries returned to the Academy, only to find someone awake and waiting for them: Professor J.H. Irons, who was relieved to them back.
“Thank god you’re alright,” he said. Then he noticed who they all were with, and his relief turned to worry. “Kids, please tell me you didn’t-”
“Professor Irons,” Luthor cut him off. “If you could go get Headmaster Palmer; I’d like to have a word with him.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Of course, Headmistress. I’ll go get him.”
An hour later, the four were sitting outside of Professor Palmer’s office, alongside a bitter and cut up Eden Danvers and a nonchalantly sleeping Emily Bones. They had been waiting for Luthor to finish with the headmaster, but by the sounds coming through the door, she had a lot to be angry about. Key phrases that stuck out included “trespassing”, “assaulting my students”, and “pressing charges”. But finally, the end came, and Luthor walked out of Professor Palmer’s office, shot a bitter look at Ren, and strode sternly away.
“Renegade,” the headmaster said. “Could you please come in and close the door behind you.”
Ren did, and sat down in a chair across the desk of Professor Ray Palmer, formerly the Justice Leaguer known as the Atom. The two of them had something of a history; this was not Ren’s first time in his office.
“Professor, if I could just-” he began.
“We’re alone here, Chris,” the headmaster said. “Take off the mask, please.”
He sighed, reached up, and peeled the mask off of himself, revealing the face of Christopher Drake. “Professor, if I could just explain what happened-”
“You didn’t trust the Justice League’s multiple inspections of the Luthor Institute were up to snuff, so you figured you and your friends could dig up something that the world’s greatest heroes couldn’t,” Professor Palmer said. “Is that the long and short of it or is there more to this escapade?”
He didn’t answer.
“Chris, we’ve been through this already way too many times,” the headmaster said, exasperated. “Sneaking off campus, disturbing the peace, getting your classmates hurt; why do you keep doing this?”
“I’m trying to be a hero,” he answered. “Isn’t that what this school is supposed to be prepping me for?”
“Yes, preparing you!” Professor Palmer said. “Preparing you through study, through knowledge, through practice, through learning how to not get yourself killed or bring a lawsuit down our heads! Do you know how lucky we are that Luthor isn’t pressing charges?!”
He let out a sigh and rubbed is tired, tired eyes. “Chris, I just don’t know what to do with you. Your teachers tell me you slack off in class and then you rope your friends into going off like this-”
“They didn’t do anything,” Chris interrupted him. It wasn’t the wisest move to interrupt a teacher, but he felt he had to. “It was all me, it was my idea, I should be the only one who gets punished.”
The headmaster considered this. “That’s very noble of you, Chris, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of you broke curfew, left campus, and had to be escorted back by the Luthor Institute’s security drones. All of you will be grounded and in detention for the next two weeks and I’ll be calling all of your parents about this. You can go back to your room now.”
“But Professor Palmer-” he tried to protest.
“You can go back to your room now, Chris,” Professor Palmer said. “Don’t forget your mask.”
Angrily, Renegade put the mask back over his face, got up, and left the headmaster’s office.
* * * * * *
It was a good thing Leticia Luthor’s car was waiting outside if the Academy, because if it wasn’t, she might’ve just blown the damn building up out of spite. The Justice League had inspected the Institute so much that they had seen classes more than some of the students, and now they send their teenage groupies to try and dig up dirt? Then again, maybe Palmer was right: maybe this was the impulsive act of thoughtless children. She’d have to investigate. Whatever the reason, one thing was clear: Leticia was tired, and angry, and someone was going to go down for this.
As she climbed into the car and closed the door behind her and her driver Ernest pulled away from the Academy, she pulled out her phone and spoke into it, “Conference call: Wilson and Morrow.”
There were a few rings on the other ends before two voices answered: those of head trainer Slade Wilson and security chief Thomas Oscar Morrow.
“Wilson here.”
“Hello, headmistress.”
“Gentlemen,” she said. “Care to explain to me how four teenagers broke into my purportedly impregnable school?”
“One of them, the Olsen girl,” Morrow answered. “She dropped a handful of viruses into the software; she hit just the right security nodes to get past the firewalls and screw with the system.”
“They screwed with your system,” Luthor corrected him. “You designed it, you ensured me it was airtight, and you were wrong. You’re fired, Morrow.”
“Fired?” he shouted. “Are you high?! I am the foremost machine expert in the world!”
“You were the foremost machine expert in the world,” she said. “And even that’s debatable. You’re outdated, Morrow. Pack up your things and get off my campus by tomorrow night.”
She hung before hearing his indignant reply. She didn’t have time for crap like that. “And as for you, Wilson: what exactly were those children doing at the Institute?”
“I couldn’t exactly tell, as you can imagine,” Wilson said. “But it sounded like they were just trying to find something that obviously wasn’t there.”
“They were found disturbingly close to the cell,” Luthor said. “Is there any chance they may have seen it?”
“If the League couldn’t find it, what chance do you think these kids have?” he answered.
This answer wasn’t as reassuring as Leticia had hoped it would be, but for now, it was enough. “Fine. Thank you, Slade. Good night.” And with that, she hung up the phone and waited for Ernest to take her back to the Institute.
The Meta Teens #1
Criminology 101
Story by Scott Cook
Concept and Cover by Brandon Herren
*Tap tap tap*
That sound…what is that? She wondered this as she slept comfortably in her bed. Maybe it’s just part of a dream, she thought, or would have thought, had she been awake enough to think in complete sentences. But then she heard it again, louder this time. Is that…? she didn’t complete the thought, as she was interrupted by a loud whisper of the name “Lisa!”
She was awake now – bitterly awake. She wanted to ignore the tapping and the whispering and just go back to sleep, but they refused to quit, and had indeed joined forces in order to keep her awake, it seemed.
“Lisa! You there?”
Having had enough, Lisa Pierce got out of bed, walked to the window of her dorm room, pulled open the blinds, and saw a sixteen-year-old boy, dressed in a blue costume and mask, hanging outside her open window. She glanced at the clock next to her bed and saw the numbers 2:19 AM staring back at her.
“What do you want, Ren?” she said.
Renegade was a classmate of hers at the Justice Academy for Metahuman Youth. The two had had homeroom together since freshman year, and were friends since then, and Lisa still didn’t know what his real name was or what he looked like without his mask on. Lately, Ren had been antsy to get out of the Academy, to actually be the superhero they had all trained to be. Lisa didn’t quite have his impatience.
“Night mission,” he said. “Me and the others are going to infiltrate the Institute, see what exactly our distinguished competition is up to. You in?”
“Which others?” Lisa raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, y’know, the usual suspects,” Ren shrugged. “E-Girl, Morpho, Zoo Boy, and Etrigana. C’mon, come with us, you’ll get to use your codename…Livewire.”
He tried to make the last word sound seductive, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Lisa had to laugh at his attempt though, despite herself. Ren didn’t mind the embarrassment; he was just happy he could make the girl he liked smile.
“It’ll be cool, we’ll get to do real superhero stuff!” he said, reaching out a hand. “What do you say?”
“No thanks, boy wonder,” Lisa answered. “Unlike you, I actually want to graduate from this place.”
Ren snorted. “Newsflash, Livewire: you don’t need a degree to be a superhero!”
“Well, maybe I want one,” she said. “Look, I’m going back to bed. You and your teen titans better get out of here before the hall monitors find you – or worse, Eden.”
And with that, she closed her window, shut the blinds, and went back to bed.
Renegade was disappointed, but nonetheless flipped backwards from his perch on the roof and landed nimbly on the grass of the courtyard, where his companions were waiting for him.
“What’d she say?” asked Cliff Baker, alias Zoo Boy. Cliff was the youngest of the group, as well as the shortest, but he was the most eager to prove himself to the older kids. He nearly died of excitement when Renegade had invited him to go out with them.
“She’s out,” Ren answered, trying to hide his disappointment. “C’mon, we should head out.”
“What about the others?” asked RJ Mason, alias Morpho. RJ was the biggest among them, and every exposed limb he had was a different color, and presumably, made of a different element. He was far from the smartest person in the group – he didn’t yet know enough about his own powers to change his own chemistry, but he could still change his shape, and he was still one of the most loyal friends any of them had.
“Eden would just turn us in, Philip probably would too, Riley’s out of town, and Leo…is Leo,” Ren said, with resignation. “Now c’mon, let’s go!”
With that, they took off through the courtyard, away from the Fox building, past the administration halls and classrooms of the Academy, until they could see the west exit, leading out into the city of Happy Harbor, Rhode Island. They were very nearly home free when…
“Ahem,” came the fake cough they had all come to associate with stern lecturing and condescension. The stopped, turned around, and saw Eden Danvers, alias Earth Angel, still looking beautiful even in her pajamas and hovering above the ground with her majestic feathered wings. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Oh we were just gonna go have an orgy, worship Satan, maybe sacrifice a virgin,” Emily Bones said with a smirk. “Y’know, the usual.”
Emily was something of a newcomer to the school. Unlike the others who had been born with their powers or had grown up around superheroes, Emily had fallen into the life on her sixteenth birthday. She never revealed to the rest of them exactly how she had gotten cursed to share her form with a demon, but by all accounts, she seemed perfectly fine with it, and was even looking forward to immortality. She was not, however, one to enjoy the Academy, or some of her classmates.
Eden glowered at Emily. “All of you should get back to your rooms immediately, or I’m going to tell Professor Palmer.”
Eden Danvers was, by all accounts, perfect: a model Academy student, acing all of her classes (except combat training – she couldn’t quite get the hang of her flaming sword), going out for various clubs, never ever breaking the rules, and doing her best to ensure her classmates did the same. However, to her classmates, this perfection came across as a holier-than-thou attitude that got under everyone’s skin, but none moreso than Emily, who grinned wickedly as she intoned, “Now before your very eyes-”
“Oh no,” Eden said. “Don’t you dare-”
“-the girl be gone, and Etrigana rise!”
A burst of flame surrounded her, and when it disappeared, Emily was gone, and in her place was a yellow-skinned demon dressed in scorched rags, with horns, pointed ears, and grim red eyes.
“Stand down, right now!” Eden said.
“Get thee hence, my brothers in arms,” Etrigana said to the group. “Before the cherub raises the alarms!”
And with that, Etrigana leapt into the air and grabbed Eden, sending the angel and the demon tumbling to the ground, grappling with each other. Renegade took the opportunity to say, “Let’s get gone, people!”
And with that, the remaining group of Renegade, Morpho, Zoo Boy, and E-Girl bolted out the door, leaving the pair to fight each other.
* * * * * *
The Luthor Institute for the Gifted was, as it seemed, just a tower in downtown Happy Harbor, surrounded by a barbed-wire cement wall with a steel gate in front. But the Justice League knew better than that. They had done several thorough investigations of the building, its holdings, its records, its staff, its students; everything that could be investigated, and came up with nothing. As far as they could tell, the Institute was everything it presented itself to be. However, the students didn’t have quite the same faith in the rival institution, and so it came to pass that the four students perched themselves on a building opposite the front gate, staring down at it.
“What are you reading, E-Girl?” Renegade asked.
Jennie Olsen, alias E-Girl, looked over the information that was being fed into her goggles. “Let’s see…there’s security cameras that I can put on a feedback loop from out here. The front door requires a card key to be scanned, I can probably fake our way past it-”
“This is the real deal here, Olsen,” Renegade said. “We don’t have room for ‘probably’.”
“Right, right,” she said. “I can definitely fake our way past that, plus all the other spots that need a key. There are some security drones roaming the perimeter, but if I map out their schedule right, we can make it to the elevator before any of them spot us.”
“And how long before you do all of that?” Ren asked.
E-Girl raised her goggles and smirked. “About two seconds ago.”
Ren smiled at her. “Jennie, you are a wonder.” She tried to hide her excitement over the complement as best she could.
“Now then, if we’re all set, let’s investigate.”
They all cleared the fence fairly easily – Renegade leapt it with his acrobatics, E-Girl flew over using her jet pack (stylized to look like a turtle shell), Morpho turned his lower half into a spring and bounded over, and Zoo Boy flew over by mimicking the flight of a pigeon. They stopped once they reached the front door and saw the plastic pad where a key card was required. E-Girl removed the plate and inspected it.
“Whoa,” she marveled at the maze of wires embedded in the wall. “This is way more advanced than I thought. Why don’t we have security like this at the Academy?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Renegade said. “Can you hack it?”
“I can try…” she trailed off, pulling a pair of tools out of her shell pack and poking and prodding at the wires. “Did…did that do it?”
They all turned and saw the front doors open. “Nice work, E-Girl,” Ren said as they all rushed inside. While the doors were closing behind them, the group came to a common room, where they saw two small circular drones, hovering through the hall. The four stopped and hid behind anything they could find, waiting for the drones to pass through.
Then one of them paused, and their breaths stopped in their lungs. They were absolutely silent, absolutely still, as the drone rotated, the blue light atop it acting as an eye to find the intruders hiding behind couches, chairs, and support beams. Then, as quickly as it stopped, the drone returned its eye forward and turned the corner to follow its mate.
Once they were out of sight, and five seconds after, the four rushed silently from their spots and stopped just in front of the elevators, where there was another plastic pad that was expecting a key card. On cue, E-Girl took off the plate and drew her tools. This time, she had the door open in seconds, and chuckled quietly as she did.
Then the four heard what sounded like a toilet flushing. Then they heard a door open. Then they saw a handsome-looking boy of seventeen, seven feet tall and built for power. He stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw them, and raised an eyebrow.
“Do you guys go here?” he asked.
“PANTHER CLAW!”
Before any of them could do anything, Zoo Boy charged forward, tackling the tall boy but not budging him in the slightest. The tall boy grabbed him by the collar of his coat and lifted him up. “I recognize you! You’re from the loser academy by the bay!”
He threw Zoo Boy away; Cliff smacked into one of the beams and landed roughly on the floor.
“Well sit pretty, children,” he grinned as he cracked his knuckles. “Cause Kid Hollywood’s gonna learn you a thing or two about trespassing!”
He rushed the remaining three, but Morpho leapt forward and intersected him. They grappled with each other, matching the other’s strength. Morpho grunted, “Go! I’ll hold him off!”
Without needing a second warning, Renegade and E-Girl leapt into the open elevator. Jennie smacked the wall of buttons, hoping to hit something that would create an escape. Miraculously, the doors shut and the elevator began to plummet downwards.
“Nice move, Jen,” Renegade said.
“I keep telling you: superhuman luck,” she said.
As the elevator continued to plummet, Ren asked, “We’ve been going down a while. What button did you press?”
E-Girl glanced up at the wall. “B10.”
“So why does a school have ten basement levels?” he said.
At that moment, the elevator came to a sudden halt. The two heard a ding and when the door opened, they saw a soulless steel hallway that lit up as they exited the elevator.
“We should go,” Jennie said. “We shouldn’t be here. This was a bad idea. We’re going to get in so much trouble! We’re gonna get expelled! My parents’ll kill me!”
“Calm down,” Ren said. “We’ll be fine. Morpho can handle whatever they throw at him, he’ll keep ZB safe. After we find what we’re looking for, we can get gone.”
“Okay…what are we looking for?” she asked.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Renegade answered. “Although…do you think the League knows about this? Secret subbasement? Cause this seems like supervillain-type stuff here.”
“Could be…maybe? I don’t know. Please, Ren, can we just leave?” Jennie was babbling now, but Renegade remained the picture of serenity.
“Check this out!” he said, ignoring her pleas. The two were by a window, looking down on what looked like a gymnasium. Inside it, on top of a mat, were two people; the first was an older man, somewhere in his sixties, with pure white hair and a pair of sunglasses. The other was a girl of eighteen, with unusual pale white skin and green hair. The two appeared to be sparring with one another.
“I don’t believe it,” Ren said. “That’s the Duela Dent! That’s the Joker’s Daughter! She’s supposed to be in Arkham, what’s she doing…and is that Slade Wilson?”
Then, the sparring partners stopped, and the old man looked up and directly at where Renegade and E-Girl where. They immediately ducked down and out of sight of the window. “D-Did he see us?” Jennie asked.
“Not likely. He’s supposed to be blind,” Ren answered.
“Yeah, but he’s got ears like a bat.”
Duela Dent was now standing next to them. “So, do you two have hall passes or should I call headmistress?” She paused, then asked, “What’s with the outfits?”
Neither of them answered, but Renegade’s hand slowly drifted towards the extendable staff he kept at his side.
“You kids don’t go here, do ya?” Duela said. And with that, Renegade leapt to his feet, drew his staff, and stood ready to defend himself.
“Get out of here, E,” he said. “I’ll hold her off.”
E-Girl instead drew her stun pistol from its holster and aimed it at Duela. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Actually, I think both of you would do well to stand down.”
Standing next to them was a stern-looking young woman with red hair, tied back in a ponytail. Her face was expressionless, but she seemed to be on the verge of glowering at them. They all recognized her immediately: Leticia Luthor, headmistress of the Institute that bared her and her father’s name.
“I can only assume you two are the reason one of my students is currently in a fistfight with an elemental and a child?” she asked.
“Oooooh! You kids are in trouble!” Duela taunted them, which was bad enough, but what was worse was that Ren and Jennie knew, deep down, that she was right.
* * * * * *
As Ren and Jennie were escorted out of the Institute by menacing sentry drones and Leticia Luthor herself (who had taken the time to change into a more professional attire), they were met up by an exhausted-looking RJ and worse for the wear Cliff, who insisted that their fight with Kid Hollywood had ended in a draw. Ren chuckled at that, but Jennie was too terrified by their situation to laugh.
With that, the four invading students, Headmistress Luthor, and a cadre of sentries returned to the Academy, only to find someone awake and waiting for them: Professor J.H. Irons, who was relieved to them back.
“Thank god you’re alright,” he said. Then he noticed who they all were with, and his relief turned to worry. “Kids, please tell me you didn’t-”
“Professor Irons,” Luthor cut him off. “If you could go get Headmaster Palmer; I’d like to have a word with him.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Of course, Headmistress. I’ll go get him.”
An hour later, the four were sitting outside of Professor Palmer’s office, alongside a bitter and cut up Eden Danvers and a nonchalantly sleeping Emily Bones. They had been waiting for Luthor to finish with the headmaster, but by the sounds coming through the door, she had a lot to be angry about. Key phrases that stuck out included “trespassing”, “assaulting my students”, and “pressing charges”. But finally, the end came, and Luthor walked out of Professor Palmer’s office, shot a bitter look at Ren, and strode sternly away.
“Renegade,” the headmaster said. “Could you please come in and close the door behind you.”
Ren did, and sat down in a chair across the desk of Professor Ray Palmer, formerly the Justice Leaguer known as the Atom. The two of them had something of a history; this was not Ren’s first time in his office.
“Professor, if I could just-” he began.
“We’re alone here, Chris,” the headmaster said. “Take off the mask, please.”
He sighed, reached up, and peeled the mask off of himself, revealing the face of Christopher Drake. “Professor, if I could just explain what happened-”
“You didn’t trust the Justice League’s multiple inspections of the Luthor Institute were up to snuff, so you figured you and your friends could dig up something that the world’s greatest heroes couldn’t,” Professor Palmer said. “Is that the long and short of it or is there more to this escapade?”
He didn’t answer.
“Chris, we’ve been through this already way too many times,” the headmaster said, exasperated. “Sneaking off campus, disturbing the peace, getting your classmates hurt; why do you keep doing this?”
“I’m trying to be a hero,” he answered. “Isn’t that what this school is supposed to be prepping me for?”
“Yes, preparing you!” Professor Palmer said. “Preparing you through study, through knowledge, through practice, through learning how to not get yourself killed or bring a lawsuit down our heads! Do you know how lucky we are that Luthor isn’t pressing charges?!”
He let out a sigh and rubbed is tired, tired eyes. “Chris, I just don’t know what to do with you. Your teachers tell me you slack off in class and then you rope your friends into going off like this-”
“They didn’t do anything,” Chris interrupted him. It wasn’t the wisest move to interrupt a teacher, but he felt he had to. “It was all me, it was my idea, I should be the only one who gets punished.”
The headmaster considered this. “That’s very noble of you, Chris, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of you broke curfew, left campus, and had to be escorted back by the Luthor Institute’s security drones. All of you will be grounded and in detention for the next two weeks and I’ll be calling all of your parents about this. You can go back to your room now.”
“But Professor Palmer-” he tried to protest.
“You can go back to your room now, Chris,” Professor Palmer said. “Don’t forget your mask.”
Angrily, Renegade put the mask back over his face, got up, and left the headmaster’s office.
* * * * * *
It was a good thing Leticia Luthor’s car was waiting outside if the Academy, because if it wasn’t, she might’ve just blown the damn building up out of spite. The Justice League had inspected the Institute so much that they had seen classes more than some of the students, and now they send their teenage groupies to try and dig up dirt? Then again, maybe Palmer was right: maybe this was the impulsive act of thoughtless children. She’d have to investigate. Whatever the reason, one thing was clear: Leticia was tired, and angry, and someone was going to go down for this.
As she climbed into the car and closed the door behind her and her driver Ernest pulled away from the Academy, she pulled out her phone and spoke into it, “Conference call: Wilson and Morrow.”
There were a few rings on the other ends before two voices answered: those of head trainer Slade Wilson and security chief Thomas Oscar Morrow.
“Wilson here.”
“Hello, headmistress.”
“Gentlemen,” she said. “Care to explain to me how four teenagers broke into my purportedly impregnable school?”
“One of them, the Olsen girl,” Morrow answered. “She dropped a handful of viruses into the software; she hit just the right security nodes to get past the firewalls and screw with the system.”
“They screwed with your system,” Luthor corrected him. “You designed it, you ensured me it was airtight, and you were wrong. You’re fired, Morrow.”
“Fired?” he shouted. “Are you high?! I am the foremost machine expert in the world!”
“You were the foremost machine expert in the world,” she said. “And even that’s debatable. You’re outdated, Morrow. Pack up your things and get off my campus by tomorrow night.”
She hung before hearing his indignant reply. She didn’t have time for crap like that. “And as for you, Wilson: what exactly were those children doing at the Institute?”
“I couldn’t exactly tell, as you can imagine,” Wilson said. “But it sounded like they were just trying to find something that obviously wasn’t there.”
“They were found disturbingly close to the cell,” Luthor said. “Is there any chance they may have seen it?”
“If the League couldn’t find it, what chance do you think these kids have?” he answered.
This answer wasn’t as reassuring as Leticia had hoped it would be, but for now, it was enough. “Fine. Thank you, Slade. Good night.” And with that, she hung up the phone and waited for Ernest to take her back to the Institute.
To Be Continued...