The Weaponeer

A Young Justice Fanfiction

Being reborn in a new world was less fun than people think, the basics of math are mostly the same, but when you're in a world where super tech is possible, science and math are vastly more complicated as you go through school than people in my old world could comprehend.

History also vastly differs from around 1914, we can thank Hugo Danner for that, during World War One Hugo Danner was the first Super Soldier for the French Empire, he was a member of the French Foreign Legion during the conflict. He made an enormous impact in each campaign he took part in.

That changed the whole battle for France in different ways, most of the actions and skirmishes being vastly bloodier than my old world, doubling the overall body count in several campaigns. One such drastic change was The Red Barron, who was more like a proto Captain America, and his flying circus were like SAS before there was a SAS.

The Original Spring-Heeled Jack, not the Villain of the same name, as well as Doc Savage in the British army, had fought at Ypres and before his death, he had helped to turn the battle in favour of the Entente Cordiale. But it was the 1930s when things just went overboard, metahumans were coming out of the woodwork and all of them mostly in America.

As World War Two quickly escalated these heroes were called up to take on Nazi Super Science, abominations and weapons, Hugo Danner re-entered the scene after disappearing into the 1920s and 30s and hadn't aged a day looking at the photos. The JSA was founded along with the All-Star Squadron and several other teams all working under the OSI.

The whole thing in the books is a tangled mess, and it turned my favourite subject into an even more annoying tangled mess, it was like trying to read the entire lineage and history of the Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburgs.

You'd think that knowing the outlines of the Golden age of comics would make it easier, but you'd be wrong, the comics were the actual battles depicted. The book history had the "sanitised" version sometimes omitting the Super Heroes entirely, but there were enough loose threads in the books you could tell that there had been a team of Super Heroes there.

The aftermath of the War was also a darker and more unsettling thing. The Black Hawks had been broken up after the War only some of their countries were no longer free and held under the Soviet Block. The few that did decide to return to their occupied homes were never seen or heard from again. Stalin's purges were darker and eviller than before, as he tried to push for Russian Superpowered supremacy, eugenics didn't die out with the Nazis but continued till the death of Stalin.

McCarthy was even more of a douche canoe than before. He broke up the Super Hero teams calling them un-American and communists demanding in public court that they unmask or retire, you can tell what they did, though one or two kept up the fight they were either killed by the feds or disappeared.

It's a goddammed mess, so when I try to fall back on what I know, it's wrong because meta humans, which is annoying as hell because I am one as well.

Looking back on the actions of meta-humans like me, it's an unsettling prospect to potentially leave a mark on history so distinct that they put you in a history book. I can't imagine men like Jay Garrick or Ted Knight ever considered that, nor do I think that they ever gave it much thought while they were doing it.

I discovered my powers when my Grandfather took me to a junkyard. I was seven at the time we had just finished watching Flash Gordon, which is the Star Wars of this universe, and I really wanted to build the Ray Gun that the Ming Troopers used, and Gramps needed to pick up some parts for his pink 56 Cadillac hardtop.

The Junk Yard had everything from computer parts to car parts and everything in-between, I rummaged through a few of the piles of old computer parts and other goodies. By the time Gramps had finished, I had assembled my Ray Gun.

My Gramps though it looked cool too till he pointed it at a pile of rusty metal rods and disintegrated them, I have to say I was just as shocked as he was, but I hid it better, he rushed me back to the house and took me down to the basement.

The basement was Gramp's den where he did his tinkering and reading when he wanted to get away from the noise when the whole family was over, I had never been down there before and was surprised by how homey it felt.

Apparently, our family had a history of Super intelligence that skipped my grandfather and father but my great Grandfather, one Charles Grayson. No relation to a particular boy wonder, worked for the Allies and the Allstar Squadron, he created a serum to boost his own prodigious mind, but it didn't appear again in his bloodline like other serum empowered people.

This was, at least according to family legend, before he put himself on Ice by literally placing himself in cryogenic suspension, his body was apparently taken by a long-time friend and vanished into the aether.

He spent a few hours showing me the superhero memorabilia he had found or bought over the years, including his most prized possession, a key to the Justice Society's secret HQ in New York given to my great Grandfather by Dr Fate himself, he also had a broken version of the Star-Spangled Kid's cosmic converter belt.

There was a thriving community of Super tech collectors who would follow super fights like storm chasers and recover technology, there was even a TV series about it on the Discovery Channel that was very popular, and there was also a show about raiding old Nazi mega bases sometimes the defences were intact and the automated kill bots were still active it was spectacular, Indiana Jones meets Sky Captain and the world of Tomorrow.

We spent the rest of the day together bonding over our joint love of super science. We remade the cosmic converter belt, well I repaired and upgraded it, and watched classic sci-fi on the large screen projector when my Dad came to pick me up, they both sat me down and made me promise not to do anything reckless and to reign in my test scores.

Specifically, they asked me to keep a B-/B+ average across the board to avoid any untoward attention from the Government and its shadowy tentacles, they had herd horror stories through the grape vine that Kids that showed my kind of talent had a nasty habit of disappearing.

I had agreed, all be it reluctantly, not to try and become a Super Hero in the meantime, but it was so frustrating to watch super adventures from the comfort of my own house and not to be able to go myself.

But, perhaps most frustratingly they refused to renegotiate the deal when Robin came on the scene, then Speedy and finally Kid Flash. They held to the agreement as if it was crafted by the gods themselves.

I tried to use the most reasonable argument that I could without sounding like a child throwing a tantrum. But they refused every time, even when I designed armour and equipment to protect me, which I may or may not have any intention of wearing, I also took up boxing at the local YMCA, but they were immovable on the subject.

So, I had to wait till after June 30th 2010, my 15th birthday, before they would even let me test my own equipment or have any super adventures. Still, there was one positive I had managed to convince my Grandfather and Father that we should start a business so we could get some more money for larger projects, as well as for my own selfish reasoning because I wanted a Zeppelin.

We had to go over all the laws, it was a very long process, but we found some loopholes in the law. We could build super-tech and not have it confiscated by the Government as long as we didn't use it for nefarious purposes ourselves, and the Government could not analyse the technology as long as it was painted by the company. It's how Luthor can still be in business despite the Government knowing he's a card-carrying supervillain.

On my 12th birthday, we founded a small corporation that specialised in esoteric technology as well as bespoke equipment for unusual circumstances, as such we could charge large sums of money for every piece we built and guarantee the quality.

We built safe atomic batteries that could be used for a wide verity of devices, ray guns for all occasions, computer systems and much, much more.

(July 4th 2010)

It was a beautiful day, the kind of day that summers were made for, it was comfortably warm, and the Greyson family were out in force to celebrate since Mark had reached his fifteenth birthday two days before they were rolling the two celebrations into one big one.

Mark's Grandfather also wanted to see Marks supposed superhero outfit that he had been making behind the scenes for the past few months.

"I admit I leaned into Decopunk very hard when I designed it," he explained to my smiling Grandfather, he gave it a final look over before he spoke.

"you look like a 1940s adventurer in the flesh, like your just back from a jaunt in the centre of the Moon," he said, which was true, not the moon part. Mark had designed the costume to be similar to the Rocketeer. A hero that didn't exist in this world in real life or fiction.

Mark had chosen tall brown riding boots, cream breaches, Brown leather double-breasted jacket but he decided on a different style of the helmet as thanks to his upgraded Cosmic belt he had no need for the fin to direct him in the air. He went with a mix of the black ant helmet and the Rocketeer.

Under the jacket he had a composite lamellar armour that was as flexible as leather but was resistant to stabbing, slashing and solid projectile weapons. The belt also had a shield that could protect Mark from plasma and laser weapons, but only with a limited effect there was always some bleed over with heat and impact which necessitated some small amount of padding.

At his hip were two cowboy styled gun holsters one held his stun ray gun the other held his experimental freeze ray he would be testing that today. He had his mobile sized lifeform scanner, that could double as a long-range communications device if the one built into his helmet was ever damaged, also attached to the rear of the belt.

Mark had spent several months taking apart and rebuilding The Cosmic Converter Belt (C.C.B) upgrading and testing the device on wrestling mannequins, he had even been able to lift a full cement mixer with ease.

He had also created a set of cosmic bands that connected to the C.C.B, these devices would allow for Mark to simulate super strength and if necessary, project energy blasts or zero-point energy fields that allow for a null gravity field to encompass almost anything. But the devices cannot lift anything bigger than a car if there not used in tandem with the C.C.B.

"I got the inspiration for them from your old Justice Guild comics" Mark said indicating to his wrist bands.

"Tom Turbine" he smiled. before they could continue the police scanner in his helmet squawked

"there's a fire at the Cadmus building." He said looking at his Grandfather "I should go, it would be a good test run just a little fire I can test my freeze ray and be back before it gets to dark."

"no super villain involvement?" he asked worried

"none just a run of the mill fire."

"ok, but let me know if anything else happens, the full League is in town and they attract villains like nectar to bees"

"I will." He said before he activated his equipment, he pointed himself at the general area of the fire and jumped off his C.C.B allowing for him to fly with small adjustments in the air as he quickly closed in on the Cadmus building he readied himself for his debut as a hero.