-None of you are prepared for what is going to happen in this story-

Across news channels, the same story was running. It was the biggest news in months.

"Lex Luthor, one of the world's leading business owners, made a shocking statement towards the end of his press conference yesterday..."

M'gann leaned against her boyfriend's arm, eye's glued to the tiny, vintage, tv their socials teacher had wheeled into the classroom. "Luthor?"
Conner stiffened. Gritting his teeth, he stared into screen.

"An accusation that may change the way we view the earth's strongest heroes forever." The screen showed Luthor, who appeared to already be halfway through his statement.
He stood behind a podium, flashes from offscreen cameras reflecting off of the backdrop.
"I believe that the (so called) Justice League of America, should held responsible for what is obviously child endangerment, neglect, or possible kidnapping..."

It cut back to the newscaster. "Luthor provided this photo for evidence"

Conner and M'gann instinctively sunk deeper in their seats, they had no clue how their classmates and teacher didn't recognize them.
It was the photo from two nights ago, and it really worked against them: Six teens being forcefully restrained, bloodied and beat on on a dirty concreate floor. It wasn't a good look.

"Still," The newscaster continued, "We do not know much about this, so called, 'Junior Justice league' beyond a few recognizable members. and although there is no definitive proof of child neglect abuse, the accusations are there, and Luthor is threatening further legal investigation..."

The two non-human teens glanced at each other.
"What?" M'gann croaked, without meaning to. There was a slight chuckle around them, the way classes react when someone spontaneously breaks the silence.

"Well," The teacher flipped the lights on and began wheeling the TV to the side. "That will be our current events topic for the day. Does anyone have any thoughts they'd like to share? This 'junior justice league' is only about your age."

"WE-" Conner kicked his chair back violently, standing up. He was getting really sick of hearing 'Junior Justice League'.

"Yes?"

"We-- We're not-- Never mind!" He sat down again, scowling at his feet.

"Well then. If Mr. Kent has nothing to say..." Mr. Lao sighed. "Anyone else?"

A couple hands shot up, than a couple more raised lazily. Mr. Lao picked one of the more eager ones. "I don't really think that it's... good? Like, you have to be eighteen to join the army, but they're supposedly going on advanced tactical missions at age fourteen!"

"None of U-- them are fourteen!" Conner snapped.

"Thank you for that insight, Conner." Mr. Lao picked on someone else.

"I agree with Mal, but I also think that, like, most teens aren't even trusted with driving a car, and they're trusted with saving the world?"

"I don't trust the League." The next student exclaimed, once called on. "Even if the JJL could fight crime well (which I doubt because of the photo), this is literally child exploitation."

Conner dented the metal table leg slightly from how hard he was squeezing it. M'gann glanced over and locked eyes. They needed to talk to the team.

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"What do we do know?" Flash asked the room at large. "After that smear campaign, it's clear the team can't even be seen in public."

"And if there's anything we know about the team it's that something like that will inspire them to solve this problem on their own." Aquaman replied.

"They'll try to." Batman told them. "This isn't their battle to fight."

"How?" The speedster asked. "This seems like a pretty cut-and-dry attack at them."

"It's an attack on the League."

Black Canary nodded. "I agree with Batman. Luthor is using the kids as a prop against the league."

"Against the League's image at least."

"So what do we tell the kids?" GA asked. "What do we do?"

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"The league will handle everything. We've already told you that the team can't get involved." Batman was telling them. "we think it would be better if the team didn't go out together." J'onn brought up hesitantly, knowing that they wouldn't like it, but it had to be said.

"What? First we're benched for 'recovery time' now nothing at all?!" Dick scowled, struggling to shout out the fire in his ribcage without toppling his crutches.

"We think it would be best if the team didn't go out. Obviously there are exceptions; you can go to school..." Diana started.

"So basically, we're under house arrest." Wally replied bitterly.

"Are we allowed to meet in the mountain?" Kaldur asked. "We can maintain training?"

"We think it might be better if the team stayed here only for after school training."

Artemis frowned. "So you're going to babysit us at the mountain from after school until our parents are home from work and can watch us there."

"Would you rather the team be isolated until this is over?"

"No..." The blonde grumbled. "I just don't get why you need to monitor us!"

Her mentor seemed unimpressed. "Well we know you like to bend the rules when you're left unsupervised."

"We don't bend the rules! We just run into problems and need to find solutions." Dick tried, defensively, to reason with them. "We don't break rules that often, we just find loopholes!"

"What about the CADMUS incident?"

"First, that was a loophole. Second, that was FOREVER ago! Even if we did break the rules, it created the team, exposed CADMUS, discovered the Blockbuster formula and freed Superboy, isn't that worth it?" Wally exclaimed.

No one on the League replied.

"You shouldn't have gone anyways. It was a loophole, but we know you aren't stupid enough to make that mistake." Batman said.

"But if we didn't, CADMUS would have used Superboy to take you down by now." Dick said, jerking an accusatory finger at Superman and almost toppling himself onto the cold linolium.

"Yeah, sounds like busting that place wasn't hot on the league's to-do list." Artemis steadied her friend immediately. "And if you did get along to stopping CADMUS in time, what would you do with Superboy? There wouldn't have been a team or living space for him."

Conner shifted, his organs feeling hot and itchy, and his face even hotter and itchier.

"Maybe there are alternatives you can't think because the team freed Superboy."

"I HAVE A NAME!" Conner shouted, surprising himself with how loud it came out. "I HAVE A REAL NAME!"

The clone broke away bitterly, storming from the room, his lungs heaving so hard he was dizzy. The others watched him go. M'gann and Kaldur pulled away from their teammates' grip to chase after him.

"Stay, we still need to talk." Batman ordered.
Reluctantly they did, but all five were furious with their mentors. How could they let Clark do that? They stared down the league, too done to try and make this work.
"Footage of the team this afternoon is already circling. You will stay here for all the time between 3:30pm and 6:00 pm eastern standard time. If you manage to leave, your league supervisor will notify us."

"YAY, house arrest." Dick growled.

Kaldur stepped in. "Is this effective immediately? Because it's already past the declared curfew." He wasn't mocking anyone on the league, he was too polite for that, but he was making his displeasure known.

"You can have another hour if you want to debrief from our meeting, but you must leave once your mentors call you back." Bats said. "Red Tornado will also be here."

"Swell." Dick said icily. "If you're done with us. Bye."

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Dick, who was resting his leg on M'gann's bed, spoke up for the first time in twenty minutes. "It's like the more experienced the team gets, the more they want to keep us in control!"

"I know! Now they're giving us hours when we have to be here, hours when we have to be home... It's a team base, not a holding cell or off-timestable course!"

"Yeah! We're supposed to come here whenever! Why are they micromanaging EVERYTING WE DO?" Wally ordered. "We could to the after-school meetings anyways, but they have to order us, and watch us, and know everything we do!"

"I know the league isn't giving us the autonomy they promised, but-" Kaldur couldn't think of anything to defend them. "They think they're helping us."

"Yeah, helping us by letting Superman make Conner feel like shit?"

Conner got loose and punched another wall, almost bursting through from M'gann's room to the storage room next door.

"Why've we let them do this?" Dick asked. "We didn't nip this behavior in the bud and now they're acting crazy. We have to deal with Luthor and make them back off."

"How?" M'gann asked, pulling Superboy back from trying to collapse her walls.

"Easy, we just prove Luthor wrong before the league does." The robin said.

Wally stopped making his arm bleed. "What if people find out that he coordinated that first photo he used as evidence? His whole side will crumble!"

Dick looked around at his friends, seriously. "M'gann, how quickly can you prepare the Bioship?"

"Do you have a plan of action, Robin?"

"I have a rough idea." The kid replied, resting his hurt leg on the stool the ship had shifted for him.

"Can you share so we can develop it?" Kaldur asked, starting to realize that this was a bad idea because they had not thought it through before breaking the rules and leaving.

"Well, if Luthor's whole case is based off of the photo he set up of us, so if we can get definitive proof that he attacked us himself and set up the photo..."

"And how do we do that?"

"Well if the facility has CCTV, we just need to find the archives room, spend an hour or two finding the footage from our mission night..."

"Leak that to the press, it's not like we don't know any reprters, and we're set!" Wally finished. "Luthor will start trying to PR team his way out of this, so he'll drop off the map for a couple months..."

"Exactly! Luthor is leading this whole anti-Justice League crusade, with him down, the skeptisicm will die down for a bit."

"So how do we do this?"

"Well drop down- not in the same place as last time, and spread out. Well each take a wing, and see who finds the cctv room first."

"Robin..." Kaldur started earnestly. "I'm not sure you should go, you are still injured."

"Ill be FINE! You think Batman didn't teach me how to fight on crutches?" He asked.the others just stared at him. "Fine, I'll go with KF, if we run into trouble, he can go all blue hedgehog on 'em."

This settled Kaldur a bit. "Where should we land?" Asked M'gann, trying to keep the ship from wavering mid air."

"On the roof" Dick said. "That usually works."

"Okay." She focused on landing in silence. "There! Stealth suits?"

"Obviously." Dick replied. "c'mon, lets go!"

"Won't your crutch make a lot of noise?" Artemis asked.

"I put one of those furniture pad thingies under it. It's pretty quiet." The over-eager bird explained. "Come on, Let's split!"

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Kaldur felt it first while creeping down the West wing; a tickle; an itchy, rattling feeling in his lungs. Like when he'd been out of water too long. Bit he was down at the peer all morning while everyone was at school.

This also felt a bit like when someone neat him wore perfume, which irritated his lungs terribly, but it didn't really smell like perfume...

He tried to ignore the feeling.

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Conner noticed it next, his extra strong Kryptonian senses picked up on something in the air. It didn't bother him, so he kept at his work. He felt fine until a strange heart-burning sensation overtook him. That was something he was too familiar with.

He backed away, usually that helped, but it was like the throbbing ache of pain was inside him. Surrounding him. Everywhere!

He shouldn't be here.

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M'gann noticed the smell quickly, but didnt mind it much. She didn't recognize, or enjoy the scent, but being so new to earth and oxygen, and air-bourn things, she assumed it was an acquired taste.

She ignored it for as long as the could, and just stuck it out, but that didn't last long at all.

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Artemis was not the first to notice the growing scent in the air around her, but she was the first to recognize it.

It was actually kind of nostalgic. Her dad used to come home smelling of that all the time. When she was really little, her mom came home smelling of that too, and she'd run to her and bury her face in her mother's costume until she was light headed.

The last time she smelt it this strongly was probably when when was about ten, Jade was pouring it into an ornate perfume bottle before going to meet her high school ex.

The ex they found half-dead in the gym the next morning.

Artemis, now quite dizzy, felt her rose coloured glasses shatter as she realized what was going on.

She had to warn the others....

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Dick limped after Wally, down the north-B wing, checking doors as they passed. It really seemed like Luthor used the facility once, and abandoned it. All the lights were out, they couldn't see any guards, and it was only about eight-forty.

"You told the to let us know if they found the room, right?"

"Duh! I'm not stupid!"

"Well sorry, Crutchie? Get back to your production of newsies!"

"Sorry." Dick said, after a minute or so of silent searching. "I didn't mean to snap..."

"I'm Sorry too."

The continued on for five minutes or so in an awkward silence, tensions stoll kind of shakey. Dick was the one who broke the silence. "Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?" Dick gestured, and Wally sniffed the air around them. "Oh, yeah, I just tuned that out by now."

"How long have you been smelling it?"

"About fiver-" Wally's voice swerved a little. "Oh shit."

Dick raised his fingers to his comm, but they never made it.

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Robin's eyes lulled open and immediately he realized there was a thick black line blocking half his view. His body was swore, and he could tell he was lying on his stomach, with his limbs strung up behind him.

It took about a minute for his brain to wake up enough to realize that the line blocking his vision was the edge of his mask, which had been half torn-off. He rolled his face onto the ground, trying to stick is back to his skin, but the adhesive was mostly worn off.

"Rob?" There was a croak. He turned his head to try and see through his loose mask.

"Wal?"

He grunted to confirm.

"Who's up?" M'gann whimpered, yawning.

"Me."

"What?"

"Robin."

"Me too. uh, KF."

The martian confirmed that she, too, was awake.

"Kal-qualad?" Dick asked. "Art? c-uhh-Con-uh-Supes?"

"Here." Artemis murmured, still mostly asleep. "Guys... I know..."

"AL?" Wally kicked around, bleary eyed, until his foot connected with someone. "Con?"

"Hm? I am here." Kaldur confirmed groggily, having received Wally's heel to the ribs.

"Guys. The air." Artemis continued lamenting to herself, barely awake. "Chloro, takes like five minutes at high consinta-uh... of ten if you displace it in air i think but it's chloroform. I know. In recognize it." She rambled.

"Where we are at?" Kid asked. "The fuck?" He blinked very hard.

"A room." Dick answered.

"Well duh!"

"Is Aqualad and Superboy here?" M'gann asked, slurring a little.

"AL is here." Wally reiterated, confused and sleepy and sore. His eyes were just glazing over, drawing him back with the temptation of just a little more sleep, where there was a sound down nearby.

"Do you hear that?" M'gann asked.

"Shh." Dick replied sharply.

Heads still resting on the nice cool ground, they listened to the drone of speech, and gradually nearing footsteps.

There was a grinding sound as the doorknob in the corner of Dick's peripheral turned, and a door he hadn't noticed pushed open. He saw several sets of legs in the doorway. Dick cranked his neck to see the rest of them. Leading the group was exactly who he'd prayed it wouldn't be: Lex Luthor