disclaimer: What, no banter?

an: headache. just get on with it.

disclaimer: alright then. Kill la Kill is a product of Hiroyuki Imaishi and Kazuki Nakashima, and property of them and Studio Trigger, a division of Ultra Super Pictures. Young Justice is a production of Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman (among others), and is owned by DC Comics and Warner Brothers Animation.

"Spoken"

"[Spoken in something other than English]"

Thought

++Telepathic communication++

"Non-radio electronic communication"

[[Radio or similar communication]]

chapter iii: ridin' the storm out

Ridin' the Storm Out

Side 01 Track 01: Ridin' the Storm Out

Released: December 21 1973

Artist: R.E.O. Speedwagon

Language: English

Earth-16

Mount Justice

Happy Harbor, Rhode Island, United States

12:00 Eastern Daylight Time

July 18, 2010

Ryuuko tried to pay attention to Miss Martian's tour of their little fortress, she really did. When it came to memorizing where was what, at least, she succeeded. Thirty minutes of the rest of the Team (but mostly Miss Martian) talking about the base's history was a lot to take in, even if it wasn't really a solid 30 minutes of talking.

She still tuned out a lot of information about the predecessors to the Justice League, and the Justice League itself. The most she caught on to was that they had formed during the Second World War, and the Justice League had fought some elemental-powered aliens, and in the end had to be abandoned – but that made it a perfect place to hide in plain sight.

It definitely wasn't because some things were lost in translation, no sir. Besides, anything she missed, she was sure Senketsu would tell her later.

++You really should start relying on me less, Ryuuko.++

Oh, shut up.

Ryuuko's reverie was interrupted by Superboy commenting that he smelled smoke, which provoked a gasp from Miss Martian. She shouted about her cookies, then flew off towards the kitchen. Senketsu's eye drifted up towards Ryuuko, who turned to Robin. He shrugged, and the five of them went off after their sixth member.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Upon reaching the kitchen, it became apparent to Ryuuko, who had never gotten above a 78 in home economics in her life, that the cookies were beyond saving. Miss Martian pulled the sheet out anyway, confirming Ryuuko's suspicions – on the tray were nine lumps of charcoal. She'd done better, but she'd also done much worse – neither of which she mentioned.

"I was trying out Granny Jones' recipe from episode 17 of – uhh, never mind," the Martian girl said sheepishly as Kid Flash proceeded to dig into them anyway.

"I'm sure they'd have tasted great," Robin said in an attempt to cheer her up. "He doesn't seem to mind."

Kid Flash looked up from the cookies just in time to realize everyone else was looking at him.

"I, uhh, have a serious metabolism."

"I'll… make more?"

"It was sweet of you to make any," said Aqualad.

Miss Martian sighed in small relief. "Thanks, Aqualad."

The dark-skinned Atlantean shook his head. "We're off duty – call me Kaldur'ahm… actually, my friends call me Kaldur."

"I'm Wally," said Kid Flash in his usual tone when he was making an attempt at flirting. "See, I already trust you with my secret I.D. - unlike dark and broody over here; Batman's forbidden the Boy Wonder from telling anyone his real name."

"No problem for me, I-" Ryuuko tried to say, before Robin elbowed her in the side and shook his head. Ryuuko gave him an "are you serious" look, to which the Boy Wonder only nodded.

Not even in the Batfamily and I gotta keep up this 'secret identity' crap.

"Well, mine's no secret – it's M'gann M'orzz! But, you can call me Megan. It's an Earth name, and I'm on Earth now."

She then turned to the as-then-lacking-in-secret-identity Superboy as he skulked off, only for him to whip around, rage clear on his face. Clearly she didn't stop whatever was pissing him off, as he decided to make it clear to everyone else.

"Get out of my head!"

M'gann was more shocked by this than anything, and tuned her apparent telepathy to include the rest of the team.

++What's wrong? I-I don't understand - everyone on Mars communicates telepathically-++

Ryuuko had gotten used to telepathy – it had taken some time, but she had eventually gotten used to Senketsu being in her head. This was different and she suspected Senketsu being made specifically for her had something to do with it. It was almost painful – Megan's telepathy was a knife being moved too hard through a steak and grinding against the plate beneath it.

Still less horrifying than having thoughts stitched into her brain. But Megan was just communicating.

Just communicating, and it felt like her brain was being played with a bow saw.

Kaldur had to step in. "M'gann – stop!"

She stopped. She looked even more shocked than before.

"Things are different on Earth. Here, your powers an extreme invasion of privacy."

"Besides," added Wally, "Cadmus's creepy psychic gremlins left a bad taste in his brain."

Megan was practically stumbling over herself to apologize, but Superboy was clearly uninterested as he shot her a look that could burn through steel before storming off.

"Just. Stay. Out."

Credit to Megan though – she recovered fast.

"Hello, Megan! I know what we can do..."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The hangar was at the southern edge of Mount Justice's third floor, facing the sea, and the kitchen was squarely in the middle. So it was a bit of a walk to get there, but when they did, it was hard to be impressed. The hangar was large, but it was just flat sheets of grey metal everywhere, with any equipment being hidden away – no doubt behind the massive panels big enough to hide a car laid vertically against the wall in. Despite being one of the faster walkers, Superboy trailed behind the group. Megan had managed to (somehow) convince him to come, and he looked more annoyed than pissed, but he still wasn't so much as looking her in the eye. In the center of the hangar was… an egg.

A big ruby-colored egg with black stripes.

Miss Martian gestured to it as if it was a source of pride for a Martian to own an egg the size of a school bus.

"It's my Martian bio-ship."

Ah. That would explain why it would be a source of pride for a Martian to own an egg the size of a school bus.

"Cute. Not aerodynamic," said Wally, "but cute."

M'gann just smirked. "It's at rest, silly. I'll wake it." Reaching out her hand towards it and closing her eyes in focus, she did just that – the main body of the egg flattened, narrowing at the back but maintaining width at the front. The upper front of the teardrop-shaped fuselage turned into a mass of black, clearly representative of a cockpit window. At the sides, lumps extended out, lengthened, flattened, turning into a pair of blade-like, Y-shaped wings. With a wave of her hand, she even turns it around, revealing a flat, paneled backside to the fuselage which promptly opened up a door and disgorged a gangplank.

It was then that Ryuuko finally recognized the bioship.

"That's the ship that Martian Manhunter picked me up in!"

"Uncle?" M'gann asked, eyebrow raised. "He did say he took it for a test drive..." she mused as she walked up the gangplank. She paused at the top and peered inside the cockpit, looking a bit confused for a moment. But just for a moment, then she turned and smiled at the others.

"Well? Are you coming?"

The other members hesitate a bit, but all five board the alien craft. Inside, they find a cabin of purples and blues arranged much like the bridge of the Enterprise-D – two seats close together up front, a raised captain's chair in the middle with two more seats beside it, and a third seat with a sort of panel thing behind the captain's chair.

Kaldur and Superboy took the front two seats, Robin and Wally took the outer two, and Ryuuko took up the rear as M'gann settled into the captain's chair and brought up a pair of globe-topped pillars. As they all did, the chairs morphed a five-point harness for each of them. Reactions to this were mixed – Ryuuko narrowly avoided letting out a girlish yelp, Robin managed to keep his down to a 'whoa', and Wally seemed genuinely impressed.

"Red Tornado, please open the hangar doors."

The android did not respond, but the doors opened anyway. The bioship lifted up and took to the air at a nice, leisurely pace, until M'gann got a childish smirk.

"I've never flown a bioship in an atmosphere this thick before… how about we see what it can do?"

After a round of confirmations of acceptance of that plan, most excitedly from Wally, M'gann's grin widened.

I immediately regret this decision, thought Ryuuko as the bioship suddenly accelerated like a plane on a catapult and pulled nearly straight up. She then cut the engines entirely, but before the bioship could truly begin to fall, she feathered the steering and put the bioship into a double cobra before gunning it straight down, only to pull back up just in time to skim the water. All the while, everyone on board had very different opinions on M'gann's barnstorming.

Ryuuko was silent in her concern.

Superboy gripped the seat for dear life but was also silent.

Robin thought the Batplane was still better.

Kaldur thought Atlantean subfighters were about the same in the water, though it felt a bit odd performing such stunts in the air.

Wally and M'gann were having a blast, and both continued to cheer and laugh. M'gann performed a double loop that went into a slalom between a long row of sailboats, then barrel rolled around a Cessna before she decided that it was enough fun for the day. She leveled off, taking a nice steady cruising speed of about 300 knots around the edge of Happy Harbor.

"Incredible..." said Robin

"She sure is," Wally replied, only to immediately backpedal under M'gann's gaze and say he was talking about the bioship – which, like all planes, is a 'she'.

Robin couldn't help himself. He gave Wally a knowing look before turning to M'gann. "Fast with his feet, not so much with his mouth."

"Dude!" But it was too late – All three of the other occupants from M'gann back were at the least snickering at his expense.

Ahh, banter. O, how Ryuuko had missed it coming from people her age and at her skill level. Superman's was always too child-friendly and dolphin-safe, Captain Marvel's too childish, Wonder Woman's too formal, Flash and Plastic Man were always a little too busy to train her, and Batman was as much capable of banter as sprouting wings.

Ryuuko didn't hear whatever Kaldur and Superboy were talking about, but Robin must have, as he quickly maneuvered the conversation away from Wally's ineptitude at talking to girls.

"Don't worry, he'll come around."

"He doesn't seem to like me much," admitted M'gann. Left unsaid was that he had a decent reason to.

"Doesn't seem to like anyone much," Ryuuko added.

"You guys realize he has super hearing, right?" Wally helpfully pointed out, not bothering to whisper like the others.

It was again up to Robin to steer the conversation away from an awkward situation, this time towards what exactly Miss Martian was capable of herself. And while it wasn't as much as the Martian Manhunter himself (notably she couldn't phase through walls, but neither could Kid Flash), it was still a lot – she managed to transform into a female version of all the boys but Superboy and a rather accurate representation of Ryuuko, though her thought-responsive clothing seemed at a bit of a loss as to how to recreate even Senketsu's inactive form. Levitation and telekinesis she had already shown, but what she hadn't shown she had to mention, as it was hard to see from the cockpit until she pulled the bioship over the water and rolled onto its side.

The team looked down. There was no team (or bioship) looking up at them.

"Camouflage mode."

They were all stealthily following the Cessna from earlier when the ship pinged.

[[Red Tornado to Miss Martian. An emergency alert has been triggered at the Happy Harbor Power Plant. I suggest you investigate – covertly. I'm sending you the coordinates.]]

"Received. Adjusting course."

Robin scoffed. "More busy work, no doubt."

M'gann was a bit more optimistic. "Well, a fire led you to Superboy, and Uncle says Hasamiha dropped out of a dimensional hole. We should at least find out what caused the alert."

Turns out a tornado is ample cause for an alert in southern New England. M'gann tried to maneuver around it but the tornado seemed alive in the way it suddenly snapped around to swallow the bioship. It tossed the bioship at a cluster of parked SUVs before charging back for the power plant, no doubt to cause more mischief. M'gann just barely manages to stop the bioship before it can so much as scratch the trucks beneath it, then much more controlledly positions the ship above a free set of parking spaces. The Team drops out of the bottom of the ship, which darts off into the distance until it's no more than a red dot.

In front of them, power plant workers run out in a blind panic from the doors. One even jumps from a second-story window, landing in an acceptable roll and continuing on, nearly colliding with Ryuuko.

"Are tornadoes common to New England?" shouted Aqualad over the roar of the wind, turning first to Robin with his question. Except Robin was not there, only his laughter was

"Robin?"

"Kuso, not again," muttered Hasamiha as she activated Senketsu.

++That boy's going to cause no end of trouble like this.++

You said it.

The windows blew out one by one, pelting the teenage heroes with glass as they approached the larger of the two ground entrances. Inside it was… far less damaged than any of them expected. The turbines were still intact, most of the cables were intact (though some had popped out of whatever was holding them in place), and it seemed that most of the systems were still online.

On the far side of the room stood a man in a robotic suit (or just a robot) of black and red, with a brown tattered scarf and blue tubes on his shoulders, arms, and back. There was no face to judge facial expressions from, but from the posture he seemed almost… disappointed?

This was all very confusing, but Hasamiha put it out of her mind as she caught a flying Robin being blasted back by a typhoon-strength gust of wind before he could hit something; Ryuuko herself landed on the steel balcony that served as a second floor. Superboy jumped up from the loading area to join them.

"Who's your new friend?" he asked as he dropped to a crouch.

"Didn't catch his name," the Boy Wonder admitted as he squirmed out of Hasamiha's grip, "but he plays a little rough."

The robotic man dismissed the wind around him and moved into a come-at-me-bro kind of stance.

"My apologies, allow me to correct that. You may address me as Mister Twister." With his introduction out of the way, he quickly intercepted the charging Superboy and used a pair of tornadoes to fling him into a support beam. The dent the half-Kryptonian made in it made it clear he'd be feeling that in the morning.

Miss Martian finally came in, landing next to Robin. looked around at the four more experienced heroes around her, who nodded back at her. True teamwork was beyond them at this point, but a simple charge attack wasn't that hard of an idea to communicate, even without telepathy. All at once, they moved.

Kid Flash led the charge, making a beeline for Mister Twister before handspringing into a flying two-leg kick with a quarter of the distance to go. The red-black android caught him with a blast of wind with a few inches to spare and almost dismissively backhanded him into a turbine with enough force to knock him out cold. Miss Martian flew almost as high as the roof and dove almost straight down in a flying kick, but Mister Twister caught her leg and threw her at Aqualad, sending them both crashing into a pillar.

"I was expecting heroes, not a squadron of sidekicks," the android said as Robin leapt from an overhead walkway. "Least of all one made up of children."

"We're not children," Robin insisted as he tossed a pair of bladed disc bombs at him.At the same time, Hasamiha burst out from behind a support pillar at full speed, coming at Mister Twister from the side. Unsurprised, he caught the bombs and Ryuuko in a tornado, blowing the bombs aside and forcing Ryuuko to stab her Scissor Blades into the ground to prevent from being sent flying like the others. This at last gets his full attention and he immediately ups the windspeed on her. When this failed to blow her away, he fired a bolt of electricity at the blades themselves. The Life Fibers in her and Senketsu may not have been conductive, but the ground and the Scissor Blades absolutely were, and she yelped as she let go and was immediately blown into a wall.

"Objectively, you are." He held off the wind and thunder for a moment as the team (bar the still unconscious Kid Flash) got to their feet. "Have you no adult supervision? I find your presence here without it… disturbing."

"Well, sorry to see you so disturbed," Robin said mockingly as the conscious part of the team grouped up around him. "Maybe you'll be a little more turbed after we kick your can!"

Suggestions?

++Ryuuko, Senjin form should provide more than enough grip to keep you from being blown away.++

She paused for but a moment, as Miss Martian telekinetically ripped a steam pipe in half above the metal man, providing an acceptable smokescreen for them all to move in.

Sure woulda helped against the Aviation Club…

Hasamiha let out a roar as Senketsu transformed further – spikes down the straps on her stomach, on the edges of Senketsu's 'eyes', her arms, along the sides of her legs. The horns on her head doubled in length, her heels seemed to widen, and she gained a pair of red, Wolverine-style claws on both hands.

Things happened quite fast after that. Superboy jumped up and dove in as Miss Martian had, and just in the same way he was caught and tossed away. Said alien narrowly avoided the thrown clone and used her telekinesis to rip one of the steam pipes out of the ceiling completely and toss it down at Mister Twister, who easily dodged it.

Clearly visual wasn't the only spectrum his eyes could pick up.

Robin drew another set of explosive discs and Aqualad charged from near the turbines, drawing from both his own magic and the electricity from the plant itself to charge up a spell with a bit more punch. Both were dispatched with a blast of wind, Mister Twister actually managing to slam the two together. It was a good thing that Robin hadn't armed the discs yet.

Hasamiha jumped over the both of them, blades in both hands and a jet of pink light from the vent on her back in her wake. A blast of wind is only good to force her to actually plant her feet on the ground, the spikes on her shoes digging up gravelly clumps of concrete with each step. Mister Twister put up his arms to block her and realized, too late, that that was exactly what she had been counting on.

She couldn't target the arms or body, not without absolutely confirming Mister Twister was indeed an android, but there were plenty of ways to skin a blowhard. She raised her arms up and slashed in a downward X, cutting the blue cables above the wrists. Using the momentum, she flipped forward, and propelled herself off his wrists with a double kick to land herself next to Aqualad and Robin.

Mister Twister let out an aggravated roar and pointed the jets on his wrists at the three, clearly intending to blow them away. All that came out was a sputter of sparks and a whine like that of a dying jet engine. He didn't need a face for the Team to realize just how un-pleased he was with this development as he stared at the jet on his right arm. He let both arms fall to his sides and released both jets with a hiss-click, as well as the blue cables.

And then he clapped.

"Impressive. I won't deny you children have power," he said, "but if you think disabling my aerojets will stop me..."

He raised his right hand in a fist to his face, and blue bolts of electricity crackled around him in earnest.

"You're dead wrong."

Hasamiha and Superboy moved to stop him, but they weren't fast enough. His hand went to the side, and a blast of electricity struck a turbine with enough force to detonate it. This had the desired effect of knocking most of the teenage heroes down, but unfortunately for Mister Twister, the shrapnel hit him as well. No matter. There were only a few cuts in the armor, and what wires were now exposed only led to the jets – which he had already removed.

He turned for the exit, levitating off the ground with his weaker boot jets.

"Yes, that was quite 'turbing'. Thank you."

He was out the door by the time Kid Flash's body finally deigned to allow him back into the fun. Once again, he decided to rush out, easily outpacing the metal man and stopping in front of him in a fight-me pose.

"What'd you do to my team?"

If this was an attempt to intimidate Mister Twister, it was a complete failure. He shrugged offhandedly. "Embarrassed them, largely." He then brought his hands together and produced a single massive thunderbolt that sent Kid Flash flying – unlike Adult Flash he was, sadly, not faster than a speeding bullet, let alone lightning.

He was caught – midair and still screaming – by Miss Martian. "I got ya Wally," she said as she let him down gently.

On the other side of the villain, Robin, Superboy, Aqualad, and Hasamiha formed something like a barrier between him and the power plant.

"I would have thought you'd all learned your limitations by this point."

"What do you want?!" shouted Aqualad.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Mister Twister, raising his arms halfway to praising the Sun. "I'm waiting for a real hero."

The Atlantean wasn't convinced. He turned to Miss Martian. "Read his mind."

"But-I thought-"

"It's okay with the bad guys!" both Hasamiha and Robin hissed, though Hasamiha slowed up a little at the contraction. Still had a bit of trouble.

Reluctantly, Miss Martian nodded. She cleared her mind, focused her telepathy and… nothing.

Wait, nothing?

"Hello, Megan! Mister Twister is a T.O. Morrow android!"

Who?

++A mad scientist who also built Red Tornado.++

"He's inorganic – there's no mind for me to read. And how many mad scientists do you know that make red androids with elemental powers?"

Aqualad grinned. "Then this should be simple."

"What, you have a plan already?" asked a vaguely surprised Robin.

"If you all are willing to listen to it, yes. Just in case, M'gann, contact Red Tornado..."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Those kids had been talking for quite some time. Well, not very long by standard definitions of the concept – but in battle, time passed more slowly, and forty-five seconds had already passed since the teenage heroes had started conversing with each other. During which time, Mister Twister continued to just hover there, menacingly. Kids. Rookie heroes and sidekicks on their first jobs alone (or with others) always seemed to think that talking was a free action just like in cartoons. He was willing to humor them; they were just kids.

However.

He also wasn't going to just sit around and let them get down every intricate detail of a plan, and if they couldn't come up with something moderately possible in 45 seconds, then they weren't worth the time he had already spent.

"Far be it from me to interrupt an enemy when they're making a mistake, but I believe this has gone on quite long enough."

He descended from the skies, the air literally crackling with energy around him as he prepared to finish this in one – wait.

Where was the speedster brat?

The 'speedster brat' was directly beneath him and running in circles fast enough to create a tornado as strong as the ones Mister Twister was ironically no longer capable of creating. Without his arm-mounted air jets, Mister Twister only had enough control to keep himself from flying into the power plant's wall, and that was from the tornado alone.

Miss Martian's telekinesis was more than enough to take what control he had left and slam him into the wall, and a smoke grenade from Robin blinded him to Hasamiha and Superboy's fists crushing his shoulder joints.

He dropped to the ground like a stone, and Aqualad delivered the coup de grace via watery blades from his Water-Bearers to the shoulders, cutting off Mister Twister's arms entirely.

The android sat up, and its chest opened to reveal a simple cockpit and a wiry brown-haired man with not enough muscle and too much sideburn for serious villaining.

"F-Foul," he stuttered, "I-I call foul..."

Miss Martian focused intently on him, her eyes narrowing then snapping wide. She karate-chopped the air, and a wave of telekinesis cut the man in half, revealing that he was an android, too.

Wally winced, bending over to examine the wreckage. "There better not be an evil baby piloting this one..." Nonetheless, he reached down and plucked a mechanical eye from a mechanical socket, holding it aloft when Ryuuko raised an eyebrow at the action.

"Souvenir."

Neither he nor anyone else noticed the iris flashing red.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Earth-16

Mount Justice

Happy Harbor, Rhode Island, United States

3:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time

July 18, 2010

"It was most likely created to sabotage or abduct you," Kaldur said to the far less hostile wind-wielding red android there with the rest of the Team. They really needed a name besides that, 'covert' ops or no.

"Agreed."

They were all gathered in the main 'briefing room' of Mount Justice, where Ryuuko had first demonstrated her transformation. The wreckage of what was once Mister Twister was laid out on a simple steel table lit in the blue glow of the cave's supercomputer, which was scanning for anything useful. They'd found a lot, including that it had been monitoring them until M'gann shorted out the other eye.

"Is this why you wouldn't help us?" asked M'gann, who still seemed a bit nervous.

"Had I stepped in, it would not have been to help. This was your battle. I do not believe it is my role to solve your problems for you, nor is it your role to solve mine for me."

"But-"

"Consider the matter closed," the android said as he headed for the boom tubes.

To his credit, Wally didn't seem all that upset by Red Tornado's statement. "Superman, Aquaman, Flash, they'd all've jumped in for the assist."

Robin nodded in thought. "Guess if we have to have a babysitter, a heartless machine is our best option."

"Robin!"

"Dude! Harsh!"

"And inaccurate," said a Red Tornado who had stopped as cold as Robin's blood. "I have a heart – nanotube steel fiber coated in vanadium alloy. I also have excellent hearing."

Robin sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "Right, I'll uhh… strive to be more… accurate."

"And respectful," said Kaldur as he put a hand on the Boy Wonder's shoulder.

Red Tornado said nothing, but turned back to the exit without so much as a swish of his cape, and left with the Cave computer's announcement. M'gann stayed behind to watch him leave, as the boys headed back to the dorms.

"You know what? This team thing," started Wally.

"Might work out," finished Kaldur. Ryuuko couldn't help but agree.

She couldn't hear what Superboy said to M'gann as he stayed behind, but from the smile on her face, she didn't need to.

an: I wanted to give Mister Twister the full fight, and give M'gann her Character Moment here. I really did. But Ryuuko is as much of a powerhouse as Superboy at least, and she has a sword – and can get spiky. It became pretty obvious early on as I was writing this chapter that she'd end up forcing Mister Twister's hand. M'gann is a rookie, but I doubt J'onn would leave out in her crash course on Earth's greatest heroes that Red Tornado can't shoot lightning. Aquaman might, but I think in the episode it was more Kaldur trusting M'gann a little more than he should have, plus being caught up in the moment.

Well, that and I don't want to stick too close to the canon path if I can. Thankfully there's plenty of time in July 2010 according to the canon timeline for Ryuuko to at least be up to other stuff so it at least doesn't look like I'm sticking extra-close to canon.