(Robin POV)
"So this is the place?" However, before I can even answer, Wally just proceeds to run into the building.
Aqualad just sighs. "The woman we are looking for, Selena Gonzalez… you sure she's still here?"
Pulling out my gauntlet, I project a visual of her still in her office. However, she's frantically packing up.
"She's still there, but she's gonna be running soon enough. Wally, I need you to scope out all the exits. See if anyone's sneaking around."
"Already on it. You guys secure Gonzalez." Nodding toward Aqualad, I fire my line directly into the window of her office. As the line catches on the edges of the window, I jump off the roof that we're standing on and begin to climb.
Aqualad, also gripping onto my line, does the same. However, he does it faster, which makes me slightly jealous of his Atlantean physiology. As I grip onto the window, he pulls me up, and after checking to see if it's still locked, we look into the room to see the woman deleting files off of her computer.
"Robin… I checked out all the exits. I didn't see anybody. I think we're in the clear. You guys find Gonzalez?"
"Already on it. Kid, meet us on the fifth floor." The line then goes dead.
Seeing that the window was locked, I looked at Aqualad, and after motioning toward the lock, he reaches down toward the mechanism and grips it before breaking it like a piece of paper.
As we slide the window open, we both enter and then find the woman holding a gun at our faces. However, as she sees our faces and costumes, she lowers the gun and takes a deep breath.
"Why are you here?… No… if you're here, then they must already know… I gotta get out of here…." The woman begins to hyperventilate, and as we slowly stand up, Aqualad walks his way over toward her.
"We understand your confusion. However, we are here to escort you to safety… we know the Shadows are after you." After saying the word "Shadows," however, the woman simply sits down on her office chair and looks downward.
"I'm going to die…" Soon enough, however, we hear a knock at the door, and as I open the line to Kid Flash, I feel a small foreboding feeling.
"Kid, is that you at the door?" All I get is static.
Looking toward Aqualad, he slowly takes out his water blades while I prepare a few surprises for whoever's behind that door.
Walking slowly toward it, I look into the peephole and find a pizza box.
"Giorno delivery… for a Selena Gonzalez? The address you gave us was for this building…" I look toward the woman, and she simply shakes her head.
However, as I go to open the door, it's kicked in, causing me to jump backward, with Aqualad rushing toward the open doorway. However, as soon as he does so, he's covered in what looks to be red webbing.
"Black Spider…" The spider wannabe then leaps into the room and onto the ceiling while laughing the entire way.
"I totally had you guys fooled… truly, the pizza guy disguise always works. Now… Mrs. Gonzalez, I believe we haven't been acquainted. But as you know, parting is such sweet sorrow." He then tries to throw a kunai toward the woman, to which I then throw my own, which then hits each other and lands on the opposite side of the room.
Black Spider then looks directly at me and groans in annoyance. "Truly, you hero types are so boring. Looks like I'm gonna have to deal with you and yesterday's dinner before having an intimate moment with Mrs. Gonzalez." He then tries to wrap me up in that same webbing, to which I simply dodge to the left before throwing explosive pellets, which cause him to leap off of the ceiling and onto the ground.
Aqualad then tries to hit him with his water hammers, but the man dodges as if bending down to do a limbo game before tripping Aqualad up.
However, while doing so, Aqualad manages to grab the man by the foot and slams him into the nearby wall, causing it to collapse.
As we both rush into the room where he landed, a fist hits my face, causing me to hit the opposite wall.
Shaking my head due to the disorientation, I look upwards and see Hook along with Black Spider.
Black Spider just giggles before wrapping Aqualad up in his webbing again and tossing him into another nearby office.
"Well, you know what they say—if you're fighting fairly, then you're losing… Hook, cut off one of his arms for me." The man next to him just grumbles in annoyance while I attempt to dodge as he swings his hook in a downward motion, and as I dodge left, he feints a kick toward me before grabbing me by the arm and slamming me onto a meeting table.
Laying down, the man attempts to jump onto the table and slam the hook directly into my gut, to which I extend my staff directly into his chest, causing the man to stagger backward, clutching his chest while trying to regain his breath.
"Annoying little bird…" This guy doesn't seem to have a very articulate vocabulary. As I toss down a smoke pellet, I slam my staff into his leg, causing him to fall over. But I then catch a stray punch directly into my stomach. Thankfully, I hadn't eaten anything for a couple of hours.
Looking behind me, I see Aqualad, who had escaped the webbing again, grabbing onto the Black Spider and repeatedly slamming him into nearby walls. However, after doing so three times, the Black Spider stabs Aqualad with what looks to be a poisoned knife, causing him to let go. And as he falls to the ground, I look behind me and see Hook winding up a punch—and everything goes dark.
I am never going to hear the end of this.
(Third Person POV)
"You're done playing hooky with the little Robin? It's time to take care of the contract." Hook just simply tries to slash at Black Spider, but he just jumps away while grabbing Aqualad and Robin.
"I'm definitely getting a selfie of this… Hook, help me string up the three sidekicks." While the man's demeanor didn't change, there was a slight smirk at the thought of embarrassing the sidekicks.
Black Spider then deploys more of his webbing, and after attaching the end of it to the ceiling, the two men then wrap Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Robin in multiple layers.
As they finish, both of their heads turn toward Selena's office, and as they walk toward it, they find it empty.
Black Spider just sighs. "Why do they always run away? I really thought we were about to form a very deep connection."
The two then head downstairs toward the lobby, as the other assassins had reported that she was still in the building.
As the two take the elevator, they reach the lobby with Selena exiting the nearby elevator at the same time.
The woman, upon seeing them and not the sidekicks, tries to make a break for it, but Black Spider catches the woman by her foot using his webs.
"Selena, why did you run away so quickly? We were about to have a very stimulating conversation on how Hook can go multiple weeks without saying two more words…" Black Spider then again dodges Hook attempting to punch him in the face.
"Love you too, buddy…" Again, the man with the hook for the hand just walks toward the woman, and as she goes to scream, she finds her mouth webbed up. Tears begin to form in her eyes as her life flashes before her eyes. She didn't even know she was working for a company connected to Cadmus—she just helped design the building… Everyone else was already dead or missing. All she could think, as the hook reached toward her neck, was that she never got to spend that paycheck.
However, as she goes to do so, all three begin to hear a whistling tone… The entire lobby goes dead as all nearby sound disappears. A chilling whistle continues. And as Selena tries to find the source, she can't, as it seems to be coming from all directions.
Black Spider and Hook immediately stand back to back, trying to find whoever's making that noise. However, their surroundings then begin to fill with a mist, and while it was nighttime, all of the lights in the building go out.
"Show yourself!" Hook says while attempting to swing his arm to keep the mist away from them.
However, the whistling doesn't end, and as Hook throws a flashbang from his belt, the mist disperses due to the force of the flashbang going off. And while all the lights were out, the two men look upwards and see red eyes staring at them as the man stood on the ceiling upside down…
Black Spider immediately flies into action, attempting to web up the man, who then seemingly turns himself into mist before appearing right behind Hook. The man, sensing the unknown person's presence, immediately slashes backward, yet his hook stops a couple inches away from the interloper's eye.
The man tries to push his hook toward the challenger's face, however, finds that he can't. Instead, the man just raises his hand and reaches toward Hook's face before stopping a couple inches away, and before Hook can say anything, he is launched into the wall.
Before Hook could even get himself back together after that, he finds the man again staring at him dead in the face, red eyes coming from behind an empty mask. No words were said as Hook then began to scream out in agony as he felt his insides turn to liquid fire.
Black Spider immediately tries to save Hook, but as he shoots out his webbing to catch the kid by surprise, the kid grabs the webbing while still looking Hook directly in the eyes.
However, as the man catches the webbing, he somehow turns his head 180° and looks directly at Black Spider.
Before Black Spider can say anything, lightning arcs across the floor in the form of two wolves and bites the man in the legs.
"AHHHHHH! You fucking bastard! Who even are you?" The man in the mask simply says nothing. Black Spider begins to comb through his memory, trying to recall any data they had on this guy, but he comes up blank—not because he couldn't remember, it was because he knew he could, but as he tried to do so, the memories just disappeared.
The wolves then disappear, but not before exploding next to him, causing bolts of electricity to fry the bleeding man.
Trying again to web himself onto a nearby wall, he finds that he can't control his arm due to the electricity still affecting his nervous system, and as Hook continues to scream in pain, Black Spider begins to breathe heavily, his heart racing, and his mind trying to think of a plan.
He then looks toward Selena, who hadn't even moved. No, her eyes were glazed over as if she wasn't seeing any of this…
And as Black Spider attempts to web up the woman to use as a hostage, the woman just disappears, and in her place, the man with the red eyes stood and pulled him toward him. And as he held him by his shoulders, Black Spider stared into his red, dead eyes, and from the man behind the mask came no sound—no presence. It's as if the man didn't exist…
And soon enough, similar to Hook, Black Spider then began to scream as electricity filled his system. And after what felt like hours of screaming and begging for it to end, he found himself standing back to back with Hook as if nothing had ever happened.
"What… what was… how?" All he saw was the man with the red eyes looking him dead in the eyes, and soon enough, the pain began again and again and again, before again he found himself standing back to back with Hook.
The brute himself then fell to the ground, quivering as his body attempted to cope with all of the pain… and as the man in the mask walked toward Selena, his voice echoed throughout the empty lobby.
"Selena Gonzalez, come with me if you want to live." The man behind the mask then reached his hand towards the woman and picked her up slowly and carefully. The woman herself just seemed genuinely surprised—for a second she was about to die, but then the two men just seized up and stood back to back before they started screaming.
However, before she could think of anything smarter to say, she pointed directly at them and shouted, "Shouldn't you be, I don't know, knocking them out or something?" And while Black Spider wanted to scream and kill this woman just for getting that guy's attention towards them again, he then felt immense pain in his legs, and as he looked downwards, both his left and right legs twisted and contorted. As he fell down, screaming in agony, he found Hook doing the exact same thing. However, instead of his legs, he found that the man's hook had been ripped out of his arm socket.
And again they found themselves in the same place—back to back—with the woman simply staring confusedly at them before both their minds had had enough, and they both passed out.
As Selena looked towards the masked man, she wanted to shout, to scream in anger about how late he was. However, all she could do was simply fall into the man's arms… she cried uglier than she could ever do so… she felt so scared ever… the man then reached his arms around and held her close, saying nothing but saying everything at the same time.
For a few minutes, they just stood there, and as Selena kept herself together, the man just stared behind her towards the two League of Shadows assassins. And as he saw them, his eyes flashed red, and as the assassins screamed out in pain, they found that their legs and arms had been broken entirely, each of them contorted at all angles.
But somehow, the woman didn't hear them, and after a few more minutes, the woman was able to gather herself enough to speak once more.
"Thanks… I don't know who you even are… do you have a name, or do I keep having to call you V for Vendetta in my head?" Expecting some kind of annoyed response, the man holding her just chuckled as if amused by the nickname.
"I am Solomon, a relatively new player to this game… now I believe three others came here trying to help. Do you know where they are?"
"Yes, they should still be on the upper floors. Those two just strung them up so that they couldn't get in their way… How did you do that, by the way? One second they were about to kill me and the next they were just screaming." For a few seconds, the woman was left in silence, and after a few more, she just thought that he wasn't going to tell her since it might be some top-secret thing, but instead…
"I dealt with them like how I deal with all of the other small fries. I let them destroy themselves… such is the wonder of my abilities. Now before I take you to safety like a classical hero should, I'm going to need to retrieve my colleagues… wanna take some pictures?" The woman, who was just about to die a few minutes ago, then began to laugh. And as the two went back up the elevator, she wondered for a moment what was going to be done with the two assassins—Hook and that Spider guy. But then the more cynical part of her mind just thought that they would be out of jail within the day.
However, before they headed towards the elevator, Solomon just placed his hand on the back of the two men and muttered something that she couldn't understand. And while she was curious to ask what he was doing, the man simply gave her an amused look, even though he was in a mask, and somehow his eyes seemed to twinkle. And she noticed that they weren't that same red color as they were before.
No, instead they were a light blue, which then sometimes shifted to an emerald green. She wondered if it was some kind of advanced tech, yet she didn't really want to question it—and it may have helped that keeping him close made her feel better.
As they made their way to the elevator, they found that the electricity had been cut. So before she could say anything, she was taken into the man's arms and carried like a princess. And as the man ran up the walls, she couldn't help but feel her heart beginning to race in excitement. Everything he did seemingly went against the very laws of physics, yet it was all so very exciting.
As they made their way to the top floors, Solomon just looked at the three sidekicks strung up in webs, and as the woman took a couple of pictures, Solomon walked over to the three and proceeded to summon water from nowhere and splashed it in their faces.
"AHHH! WHO? What?! Where?!… Is that you, Solomon? No wait—why are you even here?" Solomon just shook his head in slight disappointment.
"Apparently, I'm here to help you rescue your VIP here. I hope you understand that this woman was merely seconds away from death… this isn't a game, and I know all three of you understand that. But going in without any reconnaissance, without any data on who you're fighting—you're just begging to die…" The slight scolding had an effect on the three as they looked down in shame.
Solomon then simply lifted up a finger toward the webs and fired off a small bolt of electricity, which then spread to the webbing and disintegrated it.
As the three dropped to the floor, with Aqualad and Robin landing on their feet, Kid Flash hits the ground on his back.
"OW! I could've used some magical assistance, Solomon." The man in the mask just ignored him as she was again taken into the man's arms and taken back downstairs.
All of them enter the lobby, the three of them all see Hook and Black Spider on the ground. However, they were shaking and sweating as if having a nightmare.
"What did you do to them?" Kid asks as he walks over toward them.
For a few moments, there was silence before Solomon just says, "A small punishment befitting the crime. They will wake up soon, do not worry—but they know. I will let them know that if they step out of line again, there will be more permanent consequences." With that ominous warning, all three of them just followed Solomon out of the building. As they did so, they found the other two assassins outside, which surprised the three, as they only expected Hook and Black Spider.
Selena just took a deep breath in relief. However, rampant thoughts entered her mind, thinking on what she was going to do now.
"Your future is rather simple. Your life is now over—at least this one. Thankfully, the Justice League will be able to provide you with a new identity, a new name, a new face. And I do genuinely apologize, as while I can save your physical life, your identity—Selena Gonzalez—dies tonight." As the man then reaches towards the assassins' heads, small yellow smoke then emits and enters the heads of the four men.
And as Solomon gently places a hand on the woman's face, yellow and gold lines begin to develop over her. And while she felt a slight fear, she looked into the man's warm blue eyes and found serenity.
As he walked away, the woman felt almost obligated to reach out towards him again, longing for his touch. However, as the man places his hand on the ground, the very atomic structure of the floor changes, and an identical copy of Selena Gonzalez's body appears. And as Solomon takes Hook's… well, hook, and stabs it deeply into the false body's heart, she looked away in disgust.
"The League of Shadows have succeeded in their mission. The cameras had been out for hours now, so there is no digital data. And if you don't mind, I am going to be teleporting all of us to the Hall of Justice. To the League, they completed the mission. To us, this is our victory." The words were left in the air as heavy as stone, but none could fault the logic.
A portal then opens up, and as the five step through, Selena doesn't even look at the fake body…
(Gale POV)
I didn't know what to feel at this moment… Looking towards Selena, I find her talking with Batman and my father as they discuss her new identity. Thankfully, cosmetic surgery is rather easy to do when you have literal magic and super science on your side.
While she would lose her name and face, everything she could be in the future is now up to her.
Projecting a mirror in front of me, I hold it up to my face and look into my new eyes.
Tsukhime / Mystic Eyes of Distortion: (-400 CP):
The telekinetic eyes of the Asakami clan. Together, they exert great force on the world in their sights through the vector of spirals of force. The left eye forces rotation to the left, while the right eye does the same to the right. Any location that can be seen can be forcefully twisted in this way, immense force being emitted that's enough to tear a person in half or crumple up a car. Your eyes are stronger than most, equal to Asagami Fujino, and could potentially warp and distort an entire suspension bridge in a single use, though it may prove tiring to start out trying that. And unlike most users of Mystic Eyes, you can turn yours on and off at will.
[200 CP Remaining]
I could see the endless red and green patterns like a kaleidoscope of colors. I could feel the power they held the second I got them before heading out on this mission.
To be honest, when I used them to destroy the legs of those assassins, I wasn't expecting the pain to be so large. It felt as if I had socked myself in my own eyes. However, it seems like the more I use them, the less painful they become to use.
Another amazing addition to the arsenal, as well as another point of study. These eyes were different from the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, as while those eyes existed using the fundamental concept of death in all things, these ones were more simple. It was a form of telekinetic force created through vectors—specifically, the left eye causes distortion in a left direction, and the right eye distortion on the right.
Using them in tandem causes an innate warping effect of matter. If I wanted to, I could look at a building and cause it to collapse in on itself. I would assume anyone that isn't a decently durable metahuman would be turned into a blood mist if I actually used them at their full power.
I was tempted, to say the least… but I needed them alive for now. Let them escape—they will remember what happened here today.
Batman looks over towards me as Selena tells her side of the story, and while he walks over to Robin to assumably get a report from him, my father looks at me and nods with pride.
"It seems that you cannot help but get yourself involved in interesting business, Solomon." I slightly tense up as Wonder Woman, who was here giving a report to Martian Manhunter, looks at me. And as I stand up to talk to her, I find Wonder Woman gazing towards Selena.
"You did a good thing here today, Solomon. Do not worry, she will be safe." Without control for a moment, I slightly chuckle at that notion.
Her gaze then returns to me, slightly frowning. "Do you disagree, Solomon?"
For a moment, I ponder my answer… "While I respect your optimism, Wonder Woman, her life is over. She will have to move somewhere entirely new, get a new job, get new friends. While we did win, it did come at a cost to her. And the Shadows are competent. They may simply find her again, and we may not be there to save her a second time."
Instead of shouting or saying something in contrast, Wonder Woman's look becomes more empathetic. "If we fear that 'what if,' Solomon, then we never move forward. I can think of 10 different times the same situation occurred, and while I do feel saddened over the loss that those people have, it cannot stop us from continuing what we do. To stop and allow others to suffer the same fate is to spit upon their sacrifice."
Ultimately, I disagree given the nature of this multiverse, but I would rather not get into this here. "Agree to disagree. Although, admittedly, I am happy that she's still alive. Thank you for your words of encouragement, Wonder Woman."
She then smiles at me before patting me on the back. "In time, you will surely become worthy of sitting at the table with us… and Solomon, you may call me Diana." She then walks away while I just wonder what my next move should be.
However, before I can even think of that, Batman walks over to me, his stride ever so forceful, as if his body is a spring ready to pounce at anything that moves. I would say he was like a cat, but given his relationship to Catwoman, it would be a bit odd.
The man then simply stands in front of me, and for a few moments, we just stand staring at each other in silence… this was not going to be a fun conversation.
(Well boys and girls another chapter for y'all I was trying to go for a bit of a fear factor in this one kind of inspired by Naruto illusions and all that… essentially if any of you guys are confused, he's literally using hypnotism as well as various other mind manipulation spells to make them suffer pain in different ways, at least until the end where he just caused them to overload their brains and knock themselves out.)
(And in terms of the Mystic, eyes of distortion, he can use them on normal humans easily enough, but if someone were to have say aqua lad's durability, it would cause severe damage, but it won't be irreversible. If he tries to hit Superman with them it will hurt, but it won't take him out of the fight. But as you saw for normal humans, he could basically turn them into a fine red mist if he wanted to.