I fell out of the zeta tube onto the cave floor.
"Kaldur.." I looked down at the floor.
Superboy helped me to my feet.
Robin stood beside KF as he looked at Superboy and Miss M. "Our mission is clear. If we believe the aliens have been teleporting victims-"
"We do." Wally said cutting him off.
"Then the only reasonable detention facility is here." he uses his holo computer to get the image up in the Mountain. "Their mothership. Atop what used to be Smallville." he turns to Manhunter. "Ring any bells?"
Manhunter stands and shakes his head. "No. I'm sorry." He said weakly.
"Superboy, you'll create a distraction." Robin says.
"No!" Miss Martian nearly screams then turns to Superboy. "He's offering you as a sacrifice. Aqualad would never do that."
"You're right." Robin says calmly. "Aqualad would sacrifice himself, a mistake that just cost us our leader. Superboy is the most likely to be perceived as a threat, motivating the aliens to deploy. But we also have Midnight. She's been able to do the most direct damage to the beams. She'll be out fire power." he says.
"Yea and Worst case, he's teleported inside, and we set him free along with Artemis. And, uh, Aqualad and everyone." Kid reassured her.
We decided it would be best to broadcast to the world that there are still heroes fighting for the earth.
"And though we know all seems lost..." Conner stands beside her. "the one thing the aliens cannot destroy is hope."
"Hope survives because the battle is not over. Not as long as even one of us is willing to fight."
Wally steps into frame. "It doesn't matter how many fall for new heroes will always rise to carry on bringing all their resources, their skills, their talents to bear, to defeat the enemy."
Robin steps up beside Kid as he starts talking. "The people of Earth will survive this. We will rebuild, and we will thrive. Never doubt and never forget. The Earth will never surrender."
~
After the broadcast we made our way to the mother ship to rescue everybody and stop this alien invasion once and for all.
Robin stands on a bare spot a fair bit from the mothership, looking through binoculars as Miss Martian approaches him. "Stay close to J'onn. He's still..." Robin said implying how disoriented he still is.
M'gann nods.
"First team, deploy." he commands, both M'gann and J'ohnn take off, she pulls up her hood and as she takes Manhunter's hand. The two camouflage as they approach the ship, then stop just shy of the hull, before J'ohnn passes through and pulls M'gann after him.
M'gann groans as she passes through the hull, but stands straight quickly. "Ready and in position." M'gann tells Robin. "Be careful, Conner. I love you."
Superboy gives a small smile before turning to Robin who gives a small nod. He jumps from their spot and lands on the ship, crashing into the walls. He goes for the first gun he can and yanks at it.
"Careful! Don't disconnect the power source." Robin reminds.
Conner sticks his hand in and finds the trigger. "All right, you glorified trespassers! You wanna see how a real alien fights!?" He yells out as he starts shooting at the ships defenses. The doors below him open and the ships start to fly out in droves.
"Now or never." he tells them. I made an energy construct for Robin and Kid flash to stand on as I fly them to the open door on the ship. I let them down as we ran to hide as two ships passed by. I felt to see if I could feel my parents or Artemis, or anyone else from the League.
"Way is clear. Go!" Robin commands as he pokes his head back out then he, Kid and I head towards a pillar in the middle of the hangar. We watched a patrol bot lazily go by when he heard another one drop to the ground behind us. We turned and saw the Martians behind us.
Robin gestured for them to follow and we all ran behind him.
M'gann de-camouflages as she loses her balance, with a groan she leans against her Uncle. "No. He's gone."
She falls to her knees, crying, and Wally and I approached her. I gave her a warm hug. "It's all right. We'll find him with Artemis and the league, I know it." He says to her.
"No." Manhunter interjects. "My mind is clearer now. The disintegration beam is exactly that. There is no detention facility, no prisoners to rescue. Our mission holds no purpose."
"No are you sure aren't remembering things wrong? They have to be okay." I asked him.
Wally grunted loudly grabbing Manhunter by the front of his cape. "No! You're wrong. The Zeta Radiation proves she's alive. She's-!"
Robin grabs him by the shoulder, turning Wally to face him, holding him still with his hands on both his shoulders. "Stop it, KF. I've been scanning for League and Team signals since we got inside. They're not here. Artemis is gone." I looked up at him with tears in my eyes. Wally opens his mouth to try and say something, but he grits his teeth and looks away. "But our mission still holds purpose. To destroy this mothership."
J'ohnn helps M'gann and I to our feet. Robin walks away with us following. M'gann places a hand on Wally's shoulder before following us too.
Wally groans a little before running behind us.
They open a door to a room stained with red light, the source a gigantic orange sphere, with a metallic partial shell around it. Two drones are on their side of the sphere.
Robin looks at his HoloGlove. "This is the power core. Blow this and the whole mothership blows."
We all take off to one of the platforms at the same time. Robin lands first and closest to the edge, his eyes go wide for a moment, feeling the change in gravity that tugs at his cape and his whole body towards the sphere. I flew after them grabbing Wally's hand and making a hand construct and grabbing onto the wall.
A drone approaches us, clicking.
M'gann hits it first, then her uncle knocks it completely away. The two of them landing on the surface, and gravity shifts again. I let go of the wall and let Wally and Robin down on the orange sphere.
When they land Robin starts taking off the extra straps on his chest.
"You knew." Wally realizes. "You knew from the beginning why we were really here."
Robin types away on his Holocomputer before looking down at the charges. "Four minutes. Let's go."
The hangar doors slide closed before Wally can even reach them.
"Perfect." he gripes, but hearing a clicking sound he turns around. "Huh?"
There are five or six drones approaching them, one fires a laser before the rest join in.
Miss M and Manhunter split up from Wally, Robin and I to avoid the disintegration beams.
"Sixteen seconds and counting. Manhunter, take Miss Martian and Midnight and go!" He said pushing me over to them.
"No. We won't leave you." I reached out towards them only for Manhunter to pull me back. He phase shifted through the wall pulling me through also. It gave me a chill down my spine.
Manhunter phased us through the earth and we came up from the ground far away from the mothership. I waited for Robin to make one of his great escapes. Or Wally to run out with a souvenir. When.. the ship blew to pieces.
I dropped to the ground with M'gann holding me.
"Don't... Don't tell me the mission was a success. The price was too high." She cries, then closes her eyes for a moment.
I looked up noticing a shadow cast above us.
M'gann stood up walking forward. "No, no, no. We have to get out of here now." She pulled me up.
I looked at the ship. "No. We have to end this now." I heard Manhunter say before everything went black.
Mount Justice; October 16th, 16:21 EDT
I opened my eyes to see my mom and dad standing over me. "Mom? Dad?" I said as I felt my body drop down.
"You're all alive!" M'gann realizes relieved.
Robin sweats as he pushes himself to sit up, looking around.
"What happened in there?" Batman asks Manhunter.
"The exercise, it all went wrong," Manhunter says.
"Exercise?" Robin's voice cracks as he heaves in his breaths.
"Try to remember." Batman insists.
"What you experienced was a training exercise." My dad said.
"Manhunter psychically linked the seven of you within an artificial reality." Batman told us. "You all knew this going in. What you didn't know was that it was a train-for-failure exercise."
I thought about what they were saying. I think.. I think that sounds right..
"No matter what the Team accomplished, the scenario was designed to grow worse. Still, you were aware nothing was real, including the deaths of the entire Justice League" Batman said making me look at my parents.
"That is why you hardly grieved." Manhunter picks up. "Even when Wolf was disintegrated before your eyes."
Conner continues scratching at one of Wolf's ears.
"But all that changed when Artemis died." Wally looks to the still silent Artemis as she looks at her hands in her lap.
"Though consciously Miss Martian knew it was not real, her subconscious mind could not make that distinction. She forgot it was only an exercise. And her subconscious took control, making all of you forget too."
"And in that Midnight subconsciously made all of your reality our reality." Batman said pulling up video footage of the alien ships attacking the world.
I did this? I made what I thought was my horrible reality, everyone's horrible reality.
"Uh, I'm... I'm so sorry." M'gann tried looking between both her teammates and her mentors.
"This isn't their faults! Why didn't you stop the exercise?" Conner asked angrily.
"We tried." Manhunter says strongly. "But M'gann had a death grip on the scenario."
"Even Artemis, who should have awakened upon her death was so convinced she had passed, she slipped into a coma."
"All the while in the real world everything Raegan thought and felt was actually happening, she made happen in the real world." Batman said. "The entire league was gone and half the world population. And it was only getting worse."
I looked down feeling absolutely terrible. I put the entire world through what we went through..
"I realized I would have to wrestle control from Miss Martian's subconscious from within. But upon entering the reality I was overwhelmed by your collective emotion. There was too much noise to think clearly to remember why I was there. The deaths of Aqualad and Superboy helped. But only when the mothership exploded, and Robin and Kid Flash were silenced did my mind clear enough to remember my true purpose. To shock M'gann out of the exercise before your comas became permanent. My apologies. I had no idea a training exercise could be so dangerous... so damaging." he says to the Batman.
Manhunter turns to leave and nearly collapses, leaving Tornado and the Bat to support him.
"As bad as all that?" Batman asks lowly.
"Perhaps worse." Manhunter admit.
Red Tornado makes an easy observation. "Yet this is not what troubles you."
Batman helps the Manhunter stand again. "Make no mistake. My niece is untrained and cannot be held responsible for this... for our debacle.
"No one blames her or Raegan." Batman states looking at my dad. "But clearly we underestimated both of their abilities."