Worst Case Scenario

Chapter 48: Undermined

Robin dashed to the left, a laser blast singing his cape. Weaving back and forth, he evaded several more shots before reaching Black Manta. His kick deflected off the mercenary's armor. Robin tried to use his momentum to flip over Manta, but the man caught his ankle and tossed him into Rocket, knocking them both to the ground.

"Rather confident, aren't you, child?" Manta asked.

Robin kicked off the ground with his feet, flipping over into a one-hand handstand and cartwheeling away. Manta fired another laser blast, which missed. Rocket suppressed a squeak as the blast struck the ground near her feet.

Get it together Raquel! she thought as Robin kicked off a wall and somersaulted over Manta, only to be batted aside by the man's powered armor. You've faced down worse guys then this. And so what if you had a piece of alien technology helping you out? It's not the belt that made you a hero. It's what you did with it.

Black Manta slammed Robin into the wall and raised his left fist, which crackled with electricity from a wrist-mounted taser.

All you've got to do is give it your all and don't hold back.

With this enlightening epiphany, Rocket examined the situation, thought for a moment, and threw her shoe at Manta's head.

"Hey! Ugly!"

The sneaker bounced off without visible effect, but Manta did turn his head briefly, allowing Robin to slam both his feet into Manta's 'eyes'. His head snapped back and he lost his grip on Robin's collar. Somehow, the Boy Wonder still had the energy to do another leap, spinning over Manta's head and snapping an inhibitor collar on his neck.

Manta had barely been able to turn around to face Robin and Rocket when Robin pushed the button in his hand, sending electricity pouring out of the collar and into the mercenary.

"I got that from a friend of yours" said Robin. "How's it feel?"

Black Manta stood up straight and ripped the collar off with one hand. It continued to spark in his gauntlet.

"Just fine" said the mercenary. "The suit's Faraday shielded. This won't hurt me a bit."

A wide variety of profanities raced through Rocket's mind, but Robin didn't seemed phased. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"You may be shock-proof" he said, giving one of his kinda-creepy child-like chuckles. "But are you Aqualad-proof?"

Black Manta had a pretty quick mind. Like many supervillains who tangled with super-powered heroes on a regular basis, he had to use his brain to make up for their brawn. But even with his sharp intellect, it still took him half a second to realize the meaning of this sentence and to start to turn around.

And by then it was much, much too late to stop the fist of one Kaldur'ahm fist from slamming into his face.

Red Arrow peeked around another corner before signaling that it was clear with a hand signal.

"Are you going to do that every time we turn a corner?" Artemis asked.

"Well, we could always try dying" the elder archer replied with venom in his voice. "I much prefer this, though, don't you?"

Wally had forgotten exactly how bitter Roy could get when he was frustrated and bowless.

"Come on, guys" the speedster said, stepping into the empty hall. "Surely we're almost..."

A wave of nausea struck him, then disappeared as quickly as it came. Wally put his hand on the wall to steady himself.

"Hey, did you guys feel...?"