AN: So, I've got ideas for this and I know what directions I want to take it, but I'm still bouncing back and forth on whether or not to even write it in the first place. Let me know what you guys think. If you like it, I'll keep it up. If not, well, I'll delete this from FF and you won't have to worry about it. Like I said, I've got ideas, I just don't know if this is really any good. So, to that end, your input would be greatly appreciated

Disclaimer: As always, I don't own Young Justice or anything affiliated with it.

They had first met in second grade and had been inseparable ever since. It had been at recess the first day of second grade and Artemis had dashed right to the sandbox, staking a claim immediately. Growing up in the slums of Gotham left little play equipment, usually none whatsoever, and she didn't want to be stuck standing around with nothing to do for a whole thirty minutes. She had been there for maybe ten minutes when three fifth grade boys came up to her and demanded that she leave. She stood up to face them, knowing full well none of the teachers would come help her, not at all ready to back down; her father had practically drilled it into her that she was not to back down, ever. So, despite the fact that the three boys were much larger than her, she held her ground and glared them down as she flat out refused to move. As was true of most everyone growing up in their part of the city, violence was generally the way to achieve what you wanted and the three boys had no qualms against using their fists to make her move if she wouldn't do so on her own. Artemis dropped into a ready stance, as her father had taught her, and prepared for a fight she knew she probably wouldn't win, but she wasn't going down without a fight. Before the first punch could even be thrown, a redheaded boy about her age walked up to the four of them and stood next to her.

"This doesn't seem very fair," he said.

"Buzz off!" the ringleader of the fifth graders replied. "Our fight is with her."

The redhead shrugged. "Then I'm joining this fight," he said simply.

Artemis glared at the boy. She could fight her own fights, thank you very much, and she did not want or need anyone to come protect her. The boy had turned to her then, a grin on his face.

"Do you mind if I help?" he asked. "You look like you know what you're doing in a fight, but I thought it wasn't very fair of three fifth graders to pick on a second grader."

Artemis just stared at him for a moment, confused. Se he wasn't trying to protect her, he just wanted to help her fight. He wasn't expecting her to go hide somewhere while he took on the other three boys. She just nodded mutely and watched as his grin turned somewhat feral as he dropped low and turned back to the fifth graders. She felt a matching grin spread across her own lips as she prepared herself once more for the fight.

They hadn't won the fight of course; neither of them had really been expecting to, it was really more or less the principle of the thing anyway. They sat side-by-side outside the nurse's office, waiting their turn to be treated. The boy had a split lip that was bleeding fairly badly and a dark bruise was already forming on his cheek. Artemis was no better off. She could still taste blood in her mouth from her cut cheek and she felt sure she had a bruise spreading along her ribs.

"My name's Wally," the boy said suddenly. "Wally West. We're in the same class. Wanna be friends?" He was grinning at her again.

"Artemis," she replied, a grin on her own face. "Artemis Crock. Sure, let's be friends."

Since that day the two of them hardly ever spent a moment without the other, quickly becoming the best of friends. They had found out early on (within a day or two of meeting) that they lived in the same apartment complex, just in different buildings, and decided to spend all their available free time together. As they got older they learned that, though they were both quite intelligent in multiple subjects, Wally was the science genius and there was absolutely nothing technological in nature that Artemis couldn't figure out.

As the years wore on, the closer they became. By the time they were thirteen, absolutely no secrets existed between them and they had become almost dependent on the other person as a lifeline in the messed up, dark world they lived in. They kept each other out of (and occasionally safe from) the many gangs that littered the slums around them and they always, always had each other's backs.

By the time they had turned eleven, Artemis had finally told Wally that her father beat her mother and herself. Being the type of person he was, he was ready to go after her father, consequences be damned. Artemis had managed to talk him out of it and the two of them had worked out a way to communicate with each other when Artemis' father had actually come back home from wherever he disappeared to most of the time and beat her. On those nights, Wally would crawl through her bedroom window and help patch her up and hold her close while she cried; he was the only person ever allowed to see her cry.

Artemis learned that Wally's mother had been disowned from her family when she had decided to marry his father; though his father had left when he was six and never came back. He claimed, on numerous occasions in front of peers, that he didn't care, but Artemis knew the truth. He had broken down one day and told her that he hated his father for leaving. She had sat quietly while he ranted and raved that day and, when he was done screaming at the world; she had wrapped him in a tight hug and promised that she would always be by his side. He didn't say anything back, though his arms had tightened around her.

When they turned twelve, Artemis had finally told Wally why her father had beaten her. Apparently, he had always wanted a son and he was more than pissed he got Artemis instead. Regardless, he trained her to be a fighting machine, the "perfect assassin", though for what Artemis didn't know. She had only told him after he had caught her going through her forms and asked her how she knew such complicated martial arts. She had told him that she didn't want to do it, any of it, but her father threatened to hurt her mother every time she refused. Wally had thrown a dark and almost murderous look back at the apartment complex, but surprised her by asking her to teach him what she knew.

"It'll seem less like training if you're learning it all to teach me later, right?" he had asked. It was simple, twelve year old logic, but Artemis had agreed and quickly found out that it worked. She still hated when her father came home and dragged her out for training, but thinking about teaching it all to Wally later made it seem a bit more bearable. She had learned very quickly that Wally was a very fast learner, as he became almost more than a match for her in martial arts; her skills with the bow were always better though.

A year later, Artemis' mother finally left her father, after he had broken both her legs and permanently put her in a wheelchair. Not knowing where else to go, Artemis and her mother had moved in with Wally and his mother. It wasn't meant to be a permanent solution, but as money got tight with both families, they discovered that sharing the two bedroom apartment and splitting the rent was easier. Wally and Artemis had been delegated to sleeping on the two sofas in the living room, but neither of them really cared.

By the time they were sixteen, they had become so in-tune with each other that some people often speculated if one or both of them had telepathic powers. Of course, neither of them had any superhuman abilities; they just knew each other so well inside and out that all it took was a single look for them to communicate with each other. It had also become more than obvious that where one of them went, the other always followed. It was a running joke with their peers that if you ever wanted to find Wally, all you had to do was look for Artemis and vice versa. Even their mothers often said that the two of them had attached themselves at the hip in second grade and had spent years cultivating that bond to the point that absolutely nothing could break it. It was this bond with each other that had caused Artemis to be there the day of Wally's accident and to subsequently be the only person to know of the consequences of his little science experiment.

"You're a total dork, you know that, right?" Artemis asked Wally, though her tone was light and teasing. "You get fifty buck for your birthday and what do you do with it? You use it to bribe off the guard at Gotham Chemical Laboratories so you can sneak in and go 'shopping'."

Wally looked back at her, a grin on his face. The same grin, incidentally, that made many of the girls in their school claim that he was "hot", though he never really paid much attention to them. "And how is that any different than how you spent your money for your birthday two months ago, you nerd?" he replied just as teasingly. "I seem to remember you blowing it all on getting into the Gotham Technological Institute. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure you forced me along so I could help you carry stuff out."

Artemis just rolled her eyes good naturedly before she picked up the paper sitting on the ground next to her. "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Wally's sixteenth birthday had been two days before and he had taken all of his birthday money (plus more that he had been saving) and dragged Artemis to Gotham Chemical Laboratories to get all the chemicals he claimed he needed for his latest experiment. After "buying" everything he needed, he had promptly set up shop in their secret "hideout". When they had been fourteen they had discovered an abandoned and closed off subway substation and had put it to "good use". Artemis used it as a place to fiddle around with new ideas she had for different pieces of technology and Wally used it as a place to store, hide, and mess with various chemicals and experiments he may or may not have deemed as entirely legal. Over the past couple years, this place had served them both well, and Artemis had been able to cobble together an electronic identification system with some spare parts that she had installed at the door so no one but themselves could get in. "So what are you experimenting with now?" she asked half distractedly as she flipped through the paper.

Wally shrugged. "Not really sure what it'll do, actually," he replied just as distracted. "I just got the idea to mix some of this stuff together and see what happens. If I'm right, it should temporarily heighten the senses of whoever takes it."

Artemis hummed in response as she found an article that caught her attention. Before too long, she threw the entire paper down in disgust and scoffed. "News media is just getting worse and worse," she sneered.

Wally stopped what he was doing and turned to look at her. "What are they saying now?" he asked.

"The usual, really," she replied. "The same old local crap on Batman and his little sidekick Robin, then "world" pieces on Superman, the Flash, and all of them. What really pissed me off," she started as she threw a glare at the discarded paper for good measure. "Is the fact the UN is giving the entire Justice League yet another medal for keeping the world peace. I mean, I get that they've got to save the world, fine, but what are they actually doing in their home territories?"

Wally scoffed and glared at the paper as well. "Damn near nothing," he replied. "The Bats and Robin get all the "big" guys, sure, but in the meantime petty crime is going up all over Gotham cause they're not doing anything about the local street gangs."

"Exactly!" Artemis cried, exasperated. "Why the public at large fawns over these guys, I'll never know."

Wally nodded his head in agreement as he turned back to his experiment. It was a long running agreement between them that the superheroes were, for the large part, pretty much useless when you got right down to it. Sure, they took care of the big stuff, but who was out there stopping the gangs from going out and doing what they liked? Who was there for that poor kid from their grade last Thursday that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and got shot in the head? The heroes of the Justice League were really figureheads at best and neither one of them could figure out why they deserved so much praise and attention simply because they were a little bit different. They had both long since decided to leave the hero worship to the masses and they'd focus on keeping themselves alive, thank you very much. Neither of them were useless and both of them were pretty handy in a fight so why should they wait around and expect someone else to save them when they were perfectly capable of doing so themselves. (1)

A particularly loud boom of thunder sounded through the substation and shook the tables slightly, but he paid no attention. They had long grown used to the ways thunderstorms would affect this place and hardly noticed anymore.

Artemis fell silent for a moment and just watched Wally as he worked. She shivered slightly once when a cold draft blew through the substation and pulled her jacket closer around her. It was their winter break of their sophomore year of high school and though the winters in Gotham rarely ever got cold enough for snow to fall, the near constant rain and persistent chill in the air was more than enough for the large city's inhabitants. Suddenly the lights went out just as a particularly loud boom of thunder shook the air around them.

"Aw man!" Wally cried. "I can't see what I'm doing!"

Artemis sighed, though a fond smile tugged at her lips. "I got it," she said as she stood and made her way over to the fuse box. "Remind me to get on upgrading these fuses at some point," she added.

Wally laughed somewhere in the dark. "You've been saying that for months. I don't think either of us really remember until something like this happens."

"And then there was light," Artemis said as she flipped the right switches and brought the lights back on. A few sparking and popping noises could be heard and both she and Wally looked up to see a few frayed and sparking electrical wires. "I'm going to have to replace those one of these days too," she commented. "Though it would require shutting down the entire system."

Artemis had managed to build an entire electrical system within the substation that powered the lights as well as the bank of computers she had built from scratch. In the two years since they had found this place, both of them had made it their own. Wally had tables full of equipment, chemicals, analyzing machines, anything and practically everything science related he could get his hands on. Artemis herself had tables full of scraps, wires, and half-finished projects.

Wally watched the sparking lights a moment longer. "I'll hurry up with this then," he said. "I'm not really sure what would happen if a stray spark hit this stuff and I'd rather not find out without the right protective equipment."

Artemis nodded and walked up to stand next to him. In a clear glass jar was a clear liquid substance that, when she leaned a bit closer, she found smelled worse than year old gym socks. "Yuck!" she cried. "It smells awful."

Wally laughed again. "That's why you don't go around sniffing at strange jars of chemicals," he chided, a teasing grin on her face.

"You could have warned me, you know," Artemis grumbled.

Wally just laughed again and picked up a beaker filled with a light blue paste-like substance. "I promise to give you a heads up next time," he said as he carefully poured the blue mixture into the jar with the clear liquid.

No sooner had he added the substance there was a loud popping noise. Both of them looked up in time to see an exposed wire hanging overhead let loose a volley of sparks, most of them headed right for the mixture Wally had just finished. Wally reacted first and grabbed Artemis to him, shielding her from the explosion of glass and chemicals as the sparks fell into the jar.

For a few minutes, all Artemis could hear was a ringing in her ears and she felt a little dazed. "Artemis?" she finally heard. "Artemis, can you hear me? Come on, Arty, answer me!"

She opened her eyes and looked directly into the worried green eyes of her best friend. "I thought I told you not to call me Arty," she groused.

Wally laughed while she took note of her bearings and she immediately realized that he was covered in a strange, pale blue goo. "Wally!" she exclaimed. "Are you all right? You're covered in this stuff." She reached out to touch it, but Wally backed away quickly.

"Don't," he said. "I don't know what that explosion did to the chemicals and the bonds they had formed. It's better if only one of us is infected."

"Wally," Artemis sighed. "What am I going to do with you?" she asked as she looked to the ceiling, just in time for a large dose of the goop to drop right into her open eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut reflexively, but it was too late; much of the goop had hit her directly in the eyes.

"Artemis!" Wally cried as he rushed forward. "Oh man, are you all right? Does it burn at all? Come on, we've got to wash it all out quick."

"Wally, I'm fine," she tried to reassure the boy. Was it just her, or did he seem to be speaking even faster than he usually did. "Honestly, Wally, I'm okay. It doesn't burn or anything."

"We should still get it all washed out," he said as he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the small bathroom. "Just because it isn't burning doesn't mean it isn't dangerous."

Artemis just sighed and let herself be dragged along. There really was no stopping him anyway; once he had something set in his mind it was as good as done. She waited patiently while he gently ran a wet clothe over her face before he instructed her to go stand under the showerhead they had put in for just such emergencies as these. She did as she was told and a few minutes later she opened her now clear eyes and gave Wally a smile. "There, see? I'm just fine."

Wally looked at her skeptically for a moment. "Are you sure? No bad side effects? Can you see alright?"

Artemis rolled her eyes and grabbed Wally's wrist, about the only part of him that wasn't covered in goop. "Yes, I'm sure. No, there are no bad side effects. And yes, I can see just fine." Better than fine, actually, she thought to herself. Everything seems to be in much clearer focus. "Now you need to get that stuff off you too," she told him as she shoved him under the running water.

A couple minutes later they were walking back up the steps leading out of the substation and to their bikes. They had found a couple of junked motorcycles the year before and had taken it upon themselves to fix them up. Wally had found a way to get them to run on a cheap and easy to make chemical synthetic as opposed to gas and Artemis had managed to deck them out electronically. She had replaced the usual key ignition system with a fingerprint and code based ignition system. A panel near the front of the bike would slide open after reading the fingerprint and matching it to preset individuals and would then prompt that person for a four digit code. After imputing the code, the bike started right up. It had taken them a couple months to get everything figured out, but the end results were worth it. Artemis' bike was a sleek, dark hunter green and Wally's bike faded from a darker gray to black. Both of them took great care of their bikes, even if it was still technically illegal for them to be driving them quite yet.

"Let's get home," Wally said as he started up his bike and pulled on his helmet. Artemis simply nodded in response and followed suit. At least our moms won't ask why we're all wet, she thought. Not with the rain coming down like this anyway.

"So, you sure you're okay?" Wally asked through the closed channel comm-links Artemis had built into their helmets so they could still talk to each other while they drove.

"I'm fine, Wally!" she insisted. "Besides, what about you? You were covered in that stuff for a while."

Wally shrugged. "I'm fine," he replied. "Nothing seems to be wrong." Well, besides the fact that my thought processes are speeding up, he thought. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The two of them made it back to the apartment just fine, making sure to stash their bikes where their mothers wouldn't find them, quickly changed out of their wet clothes, and promptly crashed on the couches.

Wally was the first one to wake up in the morning, only to find that both of their mothers had already left for work. A couple of quickly written notes were lying on the coffee table instructing both he and Artemis to get their chores done before their mothers got home. He took a quick glance over at the couch Artemis slept on and decided to let her sleep a while longer. His stomach growled loudly at him and he decided it was time to get breakfast, especially when a quick glance at the microwave clock told him it was almost eleven in the morning. He got up from his place on the couch and started to make his way over to the small kitchen, only to feel a rush of air go by his head and suddenly find himself skidding to a stop before he ran into the refrigerator. "What the?" he wondered out loud. He glanced back to the living room, turned around, and as he took a step, he felt air rush by again and the world around him blurred a bit. He tried to stop himself once more, but ended tumbling onto the sofa he had previously vacated. "What the hell is going on?" he yelled as he righted himself.

"Wally?" Artemis asked groggily as she opened her eyes. "What's going on?" She sat up to find the boy sprawled almost uncomfortably on the couch.

"Artemis," Wally said as he glanced at her. "Sorry, didn't mean to wake you. Check this out." He stood once again and blurred back and forth between the kitchen and living room once more, only this time with a bit more control. "I think it's a side effect of those chemicals," he said as he sat on the couch. "I need to get back there and run some tests."

"So, what? You're like the Flash now?" Artemis asked as she narrowed her eyes at him, only to have them widen once again in shock as she let out a surprised yelp.

"Artemis?" Wally asked as he blurred to her side. "What's wrong?"

"I just…" she said, pointing vaguely to where he had just been. "I narrowed my eyes and suddenly I was zooming in on you," she managed after a moment. "Kind of like telescopic zoom on a camera or a sniper rifle." She looked up at her redheaded best friend. "Wally, what's going on?"

Wally regarded her for a moment before he snapped his fingers. "Some of the chemicals fell into your eyes!" he exclaimed. "I'll bet that's what caused all this." His eyes got a faraway look. "Interesting that it affected us differently though. We'll need to get back down there today so I can run some tests on both of us," he finished. "We need to know what exactly happened to us and if we should be worried."

AN 2: So, there's chapter one. Like I said, I'm still on the fence about whether or not to actually write this, so please let me know what you think. If you guys like it, I'll keep it up. As far as what I said about the superheroes/the Justice League, please do not flame me for that. That is not my personal opinion, just something I thought Wally and Artemis would believe after growing up in the slums of Gotham and watching some of the worst humanity had to offer them without anyone really trying to fix it. As always, reviews are welcomes so drop a line and let me know what you think