Worst Case Scenario

Chapter 47: United

A Coruña, Spain

December 28, 16:07 CET

Superman hurtled through the air, just under the speed of sound. It wouldn't do to set off a sonic boom across half of Spain. Certainly not if the League wanted their team back intact.

Behind him, Green Lantern John Stewart had a fist pointed at the ground, his ring scanning the ground miles below.

Batman had contacted them as soon as he'd worked out his theory. The rest of the League was currently assembling at the zeta tube in Madrid and would move out in less than an hour. However, since Superman and Stewart were already there, they were ordered to recon the location from high altitude.

Superman reached the upwards part of his trajectory and flattened out, Lantern doing the same.

"Is this it?" said Superman. Though they were only a few feet apart, the high winds and thin air would have made it impossible to hear each other if not for the radio earpieces they both wore.

"Yeah" said Lantern."My ring says the base is about three miles... that way." He pointed straight down.

Superman nodded and began to stare intently at the location, activating his x-ray vision. It penetrated the cloud cover with ease, revealing a series of concrete buildings next to an old airstrip. No planes were visible, but he could see fresh tire tracks in the grass surrounding it. A few tarps covered various objects.

"Uh-oh" said Lantern, looking at a holographic display coming from his hand. "We just got pinged."

"By what?" Superman asked. There was no way human radar had picked up something as small as they were, not at this altitude.

"I don't know. My ring think's it's alien, but doesn't know the tech."

"Batman, this is Superman" said the Man of Steel into his radio. "They may know we're here. How far out are you?"

Seventy miles away, Batman consulted a holographic map, ignoring the greenish surroundings of the energy bubble that he, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Superboy and a fully green (but still weakened) Miss Martian were standing in, courtesy of Green Lantern Hal Jordan. Outside the bubble, the rest of the League was flying in a rough formation, trying to create a radar signature similar to a flock of birds. Not that that would fool anyone when they were flying at over two hundred miles an hour. They'd brought out the entire League, save the Flash, who was still at Belle Reve. Batman had ordered him to stay put. Catching Strange was just as important as recovering the Team.

"It'll take us at least fifteen more minutes to get there" said Batman. "Can you wait that long?"

Superman's super-hearing and Stewart's ring both detected a disturbance at the same time. The two heroes instinctively looked down, just in time to see a bunch of surface-to-air missiles racing up towards them.

"Nope."

Rocket lashed out for another kick, striking Goon #1 in the stomach, letting out much of her frustration of the past day or so. Aggressive violence was surprisingly therapeutic, she'd discovered. And it was good that she was getting it all out of her system, since she probably wasn't going to live through the next thirty seconds.

She could see it all as if it was in slow motion. Goon #1 was down, but his partner was going to be a problem. Aqualad was charging the man, but there was no way he was going to make it before Goon #2 shot him. And while regular Aqualad might be able to take a chest full of birdshot (Rocket would admit she wasn't exactly sure how hard his abs were) beat-up and inhibitor-collared Kaldur probably couldn't.