Fire and Lightning (Book One) [Young Justice fanfic]

Chapter Thirty-Eight- Happy New Year!

December 31, 2010. 07:16

Mount Justice

~~Willow~~

I dashed up and down the hall between my teammates much like an impatient Wally.

"So the Injustice League was a distraction, right?" I asked, too excited to keep still. We'd beaten the grown-ups to the punch again, and I couldn't wait to tell Canary how I'd disarmed Cheshire with that move she'd taught me.

"Yes, but Luthor and Queen Bee are not alone in their plotting." 

"And somehow they're still getting intel on us," Robin put in.

Wally trapped me under his arm as he walked next to Artemis. "Yeah, maybe, but at least we know none of us are the mole." He smiled at Artemis, and from the look on her face, Emma noticed it too.

"That is correct." Batman said, having heard our conversation as we entered the room. My teammates and I went quiet, waiting to hear what the almighty Batman would say next.

"The mole was Red Arrow."

"What?" Wally asked, recovering before the rest of us.

"You're joking!" Emma and her twin insisted.

"Batman, that cannot be true! We have all known Roy for years!" Kaldur added.

"He tried to find out who the mole was!" I reminded him. "He...he looked out for me, he trusted me when he had no reason to!"

"Perhaps, but it appears that the Red Arrow we know was abducted and cloned several years ago, before he met any of you."

My breathing grew heavy as Batman explained. Roy was a clone. Roy was a science experiment. Roy had a drive to join the Leauge. Roy struck out on his own to prove himself to the League. Roy had no idea he was a clone. Roy wasn't real. Roy turned suspicion on Artemis, Superboy, and Miss Martian to maintain his cover. 

Roy was the mole.

"We have to face the possibility that the real Roy Harper is dead."

"The Clone Roy," Aqualad's voice shook as Emma struggled to hide tears behind shaking fists, "The team will find him.

"Red Arrow is a member of the Justice League. You will leave him to us." Batman instructed strcitly. "I'm needed on the Watchtower. Red Tornado, stay with the kids," Batman instructed, emotionless as always.

Aqualad turned to face us, his stoic face betraying his barely-controlled rage. "Clone or not, Red Arrow was one of us, we will-" 

He was cut off by a whirring noise as Red Tornado shut down behind him.

"Red Tornado!"

"What happened?"

"He's completely shut down! All systems offline," Robin told us. I knocked on his head, just in case, but only got a hollow echoing in reply.

"Guys, I'm sensing a low-level mystic force at play," Zatanna said, "I don't know if it caused his shutdown or- now that I think about it, I was getting the same buzz off of Batman!"

"Batman," Dragonfire mused, "He called us kids. He never does that!"

I looked Red Tornado up and down, and noticed something in the fist he had extened towards Aqualad right before his shutdown. "What's this?" I asked, taking what looked like some sort of computer chip from Tornado's lifeless hand.

"Looks like one of those chips we confiscated off of Cheshire." Wally said. 

I turned to Emma, still holding the strange chip. "Do you still have those notes I took?"