Gonna get the Disclaimer out of the way real quick here. "I do not own any IP displayed and used in this story." For those of you that are new, IP means Intellectual Property, which is defined as "the legally recognized exclusive rights to creations of the mind." If I flat-out SAID what I didn't own the IP of, that'd spoil things since this isn't a straight Young Justice/Crysis crossover, so there's your Disclaimer. All OCs not part of any IP are "owned" by me, I guess, but any prior-established IP I do not claim ownership of.

For those of you that read my previous work, Teen Titans: One of Four Elements, just letting you know this is the work that was self-advertised after the events of Aftershock, but is an entirely separate story. Not a sequel, not a spin-off, completely different. Anyway, on with the show.

Manhattan
June 18, 13:31 EST
2009

Cascades High School wasn't anything overly-impressive by New York standards, but to hundreds of Manhattan students, from eight-to-three it was home; whether they liked it or not. It was three stories in height with a predominate box-like shape colored gray and tan with red accents, and covered all the basic classes high school forced you to live through as well as some extracurriculars mixed in. School started just after labor day and seemed to drag on for seven hours, five days a week, but solace could be found in the fact that around the last week of June, school would end before a two-month break. Said break was the long-awaited Summer Vacation, which would dominate July and August, heralding in both a new year and several teen pregnancies the next semester.

Of course after what happened back in the summer of '09, people were more focused on regaining some sense of normalcy and rebuilding ruined lives, thus not giving a second thought to teen pregnancies because it was "perfectly natural". To clarify, last year at Penn Station on the Fourth of July, 3:47 pm local time, a man by the name of Alex Mercer purposefully released some kind of chemical bio-weapon before escaping FBI custody; or at least that's what the official story was, and only idiots take those at face value. The people in Penn Station that were around Mercer died within minutes of the ambulances arriving on-scene, and panic had already spread through Manhattan before the local law enforcement could respond accordingly. Like a wildfire, anarchy spread through the city, people scrambling to escape only for the bridges and subways to be blocked off, letting nothing through while those who tried ate lead. People scrambled to escape to the other islands by sea, but that too was a no-go because naval barricades formed and gunned down anyone that tried, giving them a watery grave in the Hudson.

And that wasn't even the scary part. The really scary stuff happened towards the end of the first week of what would later come to be known as the First Outbreak of New York Zero. The people that died of the "Mercer Virus" ended up coming back to life as hideous, repulsive, flesh-eating zombie freaks that took to the city en masse, eating parts of people and in turn turning them into flesh-eating zombies. You'd think this was just like something out of a horror movie, but this was far worse. The "Infected" as they came to be called, had developed semi-bulletproof skin, so shooting them once in the head wouldn't work. A day later this special ops squad in all black toting high-end military equipment showed up, mowing down the zombies by the dozen within minutes of making footfall. Everyone had thought they were saved, but just like the Nazi faction of old, soon this "Blackwatch" began turning their gun sights on civilians, in addition to those they were set to fight.

A lot of the details had been either lost or classified, but the widely-acknowledged sign of when the First Outbreak ended was when some kind of high-powered explosive, like a nuke, went off in the ocean a couple miles outside Manhattan's east shore. After that, the Infected began to dwindle in number until eventually, it was safe to walk the streets once again. Blackwatch pulled out as quickly as they had arrived, and when it was confirmed that the Mercer Virus was no longer an issue, the thoroughfares were unblocked, and those that survived could come and go from Manhattan Island as they pleased. Due to all that had happened, what with the flesh-eating zombies, flesh-eating gorilla-dog hybrids, and black-clad special ops troopers that had killed both Infected and civilian alike, the housing market suddenly became wide open, and the price of said housing had reached an all-time low in order to draw people back in and save the economy from a mini-depression.

However, I'm getting off-topic. It was currently the last period of the school day on Friday, which meant the weekend was right around the corner, and all that stood between Cascades High's student population and freedom from the establishment of education known as high school, was one last class. The class was filled with students from all walks of life, ethnicities, and genders, their attention solely focused on the Social Studies teacher that held dominion over this final hurdle.

"Settle down, students. Settle down," the man spoke over the animated chattering of teenagers eager to see the weekend. "I know that summer vacation is only a week away, but we still have a few more assignments to take care of before school lets out." At that, the class's student population groaned en masse, sans one in the back who waited patiently for school to be concluded, unlike his peers. "Yes, yes, I'm well aware you want to be out those doors to do... whatever it is young adults do with their time," the man said adjusting his glasses. "How about I give you a light homework assignment, and if you can get it on my desk before final bell rings, I'll consider cutting you loose from last period and send you home early starting next." With that announcement, the students cheered, the patient student in the back picking up similar cheers from the room behind him. Apparently more than one teacher was thinking on the same page, almost like it'd been choreographed just so the underpaid instructors could all get their students out of their hair all the faster. "I see everyone is in agreement, so here's what I want you to do," the teacher said as he wrote a single word on the blackboard behind him. AUTOBIOGRAPHY "Either write or type a synopsis of your life up to this point, more than six paragraphs in length, double-spaced with 12-point font in Times New Roman, and I won't accept illegible work. The library's computers aren't being used at the moment, so if you hurry, you'll be able to finish with time to spare," the man said checking his watch, the throng of students pouring out the side doors and into the hallway. Sans one. "Mister Valentine, I'm surprised you're still present. Planning on writing shorthand?"

"No. I'll just make use of the computers behind me," he said jabbing a thumb at the quartet of computer work stations behind him, completely overlooked by the rest of the students in their haste to get out of class early. They may've been older models, further back the line than the ones in the library, but they could still get the job done. Albeit a tad sluggishly.

"Sharp as ever I see. Very well then, proceed," the man said sitting at his desk and pulled out a paperback book, the room's remaining student getting up from his desk and booting up one of the computers. His attire bottom to top consisted of black red-accented running shoes, faded blue jeans, a white T-shirt with a red poke'ball symbol on the front, and over that a black tight-fitting hoodie with a skull decal on the left side, a snake coiling up the bottom and slithering out one of the eye sockets.

For a few moments the screen faded to black, revealing the student's features. He was around sixteen years old, face a tad short of being able to incite an all-girl smackdown, though he wasn't ugly either. His features consisted of lightly-tanned skin, shaggy dark-brown hair that stopped just above his shoulders, and teeth straight enough that he never needed braces, but not picture-perfect either. What distinguished him from his peers however were his crimson-colored eyes, almost like blood, and during freshman year people made cracks about him being a vampire until it became evident they couldn't get a rise out of him. The other distinguishing feature was the trio of medium-sized scars diagonally across his face beneath his left eye, comparable to those on the face of Toriko by the anime-obsessed otaku taking up a small portion of the school's population, only they didn't cut through his left ear and weren't as pronounced.

"Alright..." the student said tapping the unresponsive mouse on the mousepad a couple times until the cursor began to move. "Let's see what comes to mind," the brunette said thinking back as far as he could remember and working his way toward the present, his fingers making a myriad of *clickity-clack* as they tapped the keys in rapid succession. 'Glad I chose to take Typing seriously, instead of spending all my time on that Tony Hawk game,' he hummed to himself as he got to work.

Autobiography for Social Studies
by Virgil Valentine

Have you ever taken the time to just sit back and think about your life? Well I have, and mine kinda bites for a while. I mean sure, it's gotten better recently, but still... Most people in general will think their lives are bad, but that's only because they focus on what they don't have but want. Of course, I'm not that much different, but what I don't have is a little more lasting than the newest phone, or the latest game, or even the nicest car in the parking lot.

You look at me, and you'll see an average guy whose parents might have been Italian. The reason I say "might have", is because I haven't seen my parents in near a decade, and my memory of them is a bit fuzzy. They didn't abandon me or anything like that, or at least not of their own volition. I can't remember everything too clearly, but I remember being in a car with my parents, I think it was raining, and suddenly another car comes out of nowhere and runs us off the road. I'm pretty sure that's where I got the scars on my face from. The one beneath my eye is the most prominent, but I've got others on my scalp too. My parents told me about life and death from a young age, so when the police told me my mom and dad, Eleanor Lucrecia (nee Valen) and Vincent Evander Valentine, had "gone away for a while", I knew they were gone for good. To this day I still don't know who ran my parents off the road or even why, but despite all the time that's passed I still haven't made peace with that.

Back on topic, with my parents dead I was put into foster care. I got juggled from one family to the next to close to a decade. I got to meet a lot of interesting people, see some new places, and made a couple friends along the way, however I've lost contact with most of them throughout the years. That was probably for the best though, since none of the arrangements were ever permanent, with things derailing one way or another.

The first time things derailed for me was actually the very first time I was adopted; that time I was adopted by a South Korean couple by the name of Jai-Bong and Aei-Young Kim. They'd already had a daughter of their own, but because she had gone off to California to complete her education, they decided to adopt rather than have another baby. Their English wasn't the greatest, though neither was my Korean, but we managed to communicate after a while. Things were good for a while... but then it turned out my adoptive sister, Joyce Kim, was a North Korean spy who had attempted to seduce an experimental physicist at the California Institute of Technology for some kind of rocket fuel formula or something. By default... that also meant my adoptive parents were North Korean spies as well. Long story short, adopting me was part of their cover as a couple feigning Empty Nest Syndrome, and considering I was "extra baggage", they abandoned me when they decided to haul ass and get back to their communist homestead. Plus side: I was bilingual in both English and Korean. Not really sure if that's a good thing though.

Second time, I got adopted by a Swedish family with an alpaca ranch up near the Canadian border. Of course, after the last fiasco, foster care ran a more extensive background check before passing me onto them; pretty sure the FBI is still keeping tabs on me for the whole North Korean thing. The parents were named Aarto and Labolina Frisk, their twins named Hansel and Gretel: to be perfectly honest the latter two looked like Augustus Gloop out of Willy Wonka had performed mitosis and split into two halves of the opposite gender. Out of the three of us, I was in the best shape, thus I was able to help my foster father out on the ranch, while the two of them loafed about. However around my ninth birthday, cookies started going missing from the cookie jar, and almost immediately the fraternal twins pointed their sausage-shaped fingers at me. Even though I'd been helping on the farm, in Aarto and Labolina's eyes their children could do no wrong, while I was merely the adopted extra for free labor and a monthly stipend. Long story short I was quickly ostracized from most of the family as tensions rose, and first chance I had I got out of the Frisk house and back into the system. If there's any solace to be found in all this, it's that those two fat bastards probably have Type Two Diabetes and lost the use if not one but both legs. I know that's mean and all, but my parents didn't raise me long enough to teach me not to have a grudge.

With all that happened between the ages of six and nine, foster care decided to keep me off the market for a while and desensitize me to what happened at the hands of the Korean and Swedish families that had adopted me. On one of my handler's visits I tried asking that they not send me to anyone "too foreign", but that would constitute as "racial profiling", and officially they could not do so. Of course, I think they at least took it into consideration after the North Korean thing. Around the age of ten I was sent down south to Louisiana and adopted by a nice black family, and it actually was a nice family; no secret spy activities or spoiled-rotten children, just a nice black Christian family. The father had a clean record and a steady income, the mom was stay-at-home, a son who I saw as a brother, and a nice house with a backyard and a small amount of electronic stimulation to take the edge off a few brain cells. In the course of two birthdays, I managed to make some good friends along the way... only for things to turn south again after my twelfth birthday. Turns out that region of Louisiana was a powder keg for white supremacists that fancied themselves to dress like ghosts and carry torches, and while a black family adopting a white boy from foster care was like smoking around a powder keg, said black family attempting to formally adopt said white boy was the same as dropping a lit torch in there. Long story short, my adoptive family had to go into witness protection once the torch-wielding ghosts mobilized, and I was pulled back into foster care for my own safety. After what happened the prior two times, I shouldn't have been surprised.

After more than half a decade of one fiasco after another, you'd think foster care would just put me up in a regular adoption home until I was old enough to do things for myself, right? Wrong! At least that time when I got adopted, my foster parents were forthcoming with the fact that this arrangement would be more circumstantial than anything else. Down in Miami Beach, Florida, there was a lesbian couple by the names of Miranda and Ashley Jane who wanted to see what it'd be like raising a full-grown child before having one of their own; however they did that, because back then I had no idea how that kind of thing worked. To my surprise, things actually went really well, and by the time I was fourteen, my foster mothers had decided they were ready to raise a child on their own. At that juncture, while it would've been nice to have a permanent family, I'd rather leave the two of them to raise their lesbian love-child and go back into foster care than be shoved into the background. They said such a thing wasn't going to happen, but they wished me luck all the same when it was time to go.

So... while I hadn't been driven completely bat-shit crazy by all the weird stuff I'd been through, I was still used, and more importantly, damaged merchandise. Honestly it's a wonder my current family adopted me at all for the last two years without any signs of things derailing horrendously. Of course I should probably tell you a little about them so you actually know what I'm talking about. On-paper they appeared normal enough, but after all the past fiascos, I wasn't going to hold my breath for too long. Now however, this seems fully legit with no weirdness. Or at least no more than usual.

My foster father is named Eric State; tall man, blond hair, blue eyes, part of the MIPD/Manhattan Island Police Department. My foster mother is named Tina (nee Braxton); petite woman, brown hair, green eyes, stay-at-home mother who sells beauty products over the internet and sometimes door-to-door. Next come my foster siblings, and not twins after the Swedish fiasco, and neither is female so I don't have to worry about two periods a month like the Miami Beach fiasco. Next is my oldest foster brother, goes by the name David; muscle-bound, has his father's features, and member of the school's football team. He's been trying to get Head Quarterback for a few years but his grades always make him come a bit short of getting the position. After that is the is the older sibling above me and middle child, Daniel; he's built a bit smaller than his brother but has his mother's features, and is part of the archery team. I actually got into archery freshman year and almost shot right past my brother, only he's still got a few more years on me.

In summary, my life's pretty good right now. Three square meals a day plus desert if I so choose, satellite TV and DVR, my own video game console albeit used, and a few peers I can call "friend", but none in this particular class. There's a hint of vulgarity in the house, but it's spread all around, and after being put through the ringer like I have it isn't anything remarkably new. Sophomore year is almost done and summer vacation is right around the corner, so that's just about my whole life up to this point, more or less.

June 18, 14:46 EST

"Hmmm..." the social studies teacher hummed to himself as he looked over Virgil's paper. "A little informal, but a lot more elaborated upon than the works of your peers," he said tapping a pile of papers haphazardly tossed onto his desk, few of the hastily-made reports no longer than two pages in length and hashed out in all of ten, twenty minutes tops.

"I'm... glad you think so," Virgil returned, unsure whether to take it as a compliment or not.

"Well, everything seems to be in order," he said slapping an A- onto the paper. "I'll pull you aside Monday afternoon and have the arrangements made at the front office."

"Thank you, sir," Virgil said as he looked around the classroom. "Where's everyone else?"

"They left. Just because they gave me inadequate work, they think they can leave school early," the man said adjusting his glasses. "I'll cut them some slack today since it's Friday, but they won't be so lucky next week. Is school here really so bad?" he asked as he flipped through the papers, some of which weren't in double-spaced format, or lacked 12-point print, or both.

"They've probably just got ants in their pants," Virgil said slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Hey, um, you'll keep what's on that report confidential, won't you? I may've gotten a little too into it and written down more than I should have." 'Especially when it came to the lesbians. Aunt Period's visits were not pretty.'

"Understandable," the man said handing the A- paper back to his student, who proceeded to slide it into his bag. "Now, why don't you head on home. The next bus should be here in... ten, fifteen minutes."

"That's okay. I can walk. Good for the heart and all that," the brunette said leaving the classroom behind him, making his way inconspicuously to the exit and onto the route that would take him home.

NeoNazo356: Hello readers, before anything else, I'd like to take this time to introduce my Beta and Chief of Research, Spaceman.

Spaceman: Hello. When NeoNazo356 needs data in anything in the story, I'm the one that will hunt it down and together we develop the plots for his stories.

NeoNazo356: Hey now, don't sell yourself short. If it weren't for all the sound boarding you helped me with, there wouldn't be nearly as much planned content in this story as there was. And most of it wouldn't be as good.

Spaceman: Thanks. We sent thousands of messages, hundreds of pages brainstorming Ideas. We researched and developed histories for every character. I'm glad my efforts on various media, wikia and science site were worth it, and I hope the Readers will enjoy it as much as we had fun developing it.

NeoNazo356: Now, most authors leave "AN" at the beginning or even ends of their chapters, but I like to think Spaceman and I are laving "Author Commentary". Like director commentary, only in scripted format. In this way, people might actually be compelled to read it because its "fun", since on here Spaceman and I might answer questions some of you might have about the chapter prior, or just context that might be mixed.

Spaceman: This story is going to be mostly a crossover between animated series Young Justice and video game series Crysis, but there other crossovers elements (such as personal video game favorite Prototype). These elements are woven together, interconnected to form a story that I hope the Readers will enjoy as much as we do.

NeoNazo356: And in case it wasn't blatantly obvious enough, Virgil Valentine is an OC/Original Character, so if this is the kind of story you can't stand, just quit reading right now. I don't need to hear any of you bitch about me using an OC instead of a pre-established character from an IP/Intellectual Property. God knows there are so many interpretations of Naruto out there, some of which are so far from Masashi Kishimoto's original vision, they might as well be OCs by the same name. Now ending rant... Back on topic, this is mostly an introductory chapter to the main character in the form of a third, first, and then back to third-person narrative, so of course there won't be a ton of elaboration just yet. You'll have to wait until next time to read more.