Summary: "Dad. He must have done this, another one of his stupid tests…" "What kind of test?"

Character Dynamics: Artemis, Sportsmaster

A/N: All text in italics indicates an earlier time in Artemis's life and all normal text indicates a present timeline.

Checks for wind speed, angle, and distance surged through his mind as the bowstring began to slice through his combat gloves. The target issued to him for today's job made her way to the podium ( which was slightly off center from the open window of his hotel room. He hadn't bothered with a luxurious suite or a homey middle-class room and therefore lacked a balcony to perch predatorily upon. ) of the grand stage through a flurry of handshakes and practiced waves. His scoping eye never strayed from her stiffly poised form and began to trace the seam line of her tailored blazer. Several thread counts down, his gaze locked on to the precise stitch that covered her heart.

Maintaining a steady hold on the drawn weapon, the nocked arrow resisted the urge to shiver in sync with his taut, muscular grip. The feather fletchings of the bow's ammunition stilled while his drawn arm retaliated by stiffening. Fully equipped, he simply waited his objective out, fully prepared to release the lethal arrow at the designated moment. An amateur would have gone in for the kill by now or rather take a cheap shot too late. He, however, was not an amateur.

Having packed lightly to begin with, all essentials were stashed in the quiver currently propped against the doorframe of the barren hotel closet. The instant he released the fatal dart, his alias would be discovered. Beneath the dark wash of his pants, a compact utility strap encircles his thigh. Midst other weaponry, multiple fake licenses filled with gridded facts, Social Security codes, and alibis were stored within a particular pouch. With a simple shift in demeanor, he could take on the identity of any one of six certified American citizens.

Standing before the crowd concerning the nationally political affair, the running candidate's lips parted to engage in delivering her well rehearsed speech. The opening remarks were given and his target suddenly stilled. Like any politician who strategized to be successful in the very near future, she gazed upon her crowd with unabashed passion. That, however, would be the final move in her young, malnourished career.

Every muscle connecting from his gloved fingertips to his wrist relaxed as he released the drawstring. Turning from the imminent crime scene, the assassin shouldered his quiver and exited the room. A simple stroll across the hall to a vacant room he had picked the lock of earlier led him to his designed escape route. He never allowed himself a backward glance.

Sportsmaster never missed.

Enduring a vicious double-elbow slash from the older man, a spray of blood flew from her freshly busted lips. Artemis collapsed to the floor in a defeated pile of limbs, the prospect of failure restraining her like a body bag would. The taste of pennies galled her, and when she lifted herself from the floorboards with trembling arms, her eyes detected a thick splatter of scarlet. She's pushing off from her knees to ascend to a fighting stance when he sends a swift sweep to her head. Her body twists across the floor and through her own blood. A torturous pain writhes through her skull as if cracking it, blooming from her throbbing temple. She wants to look up at this man and spit in his face, but her eyelids are purple and angry with distress while her tongue drowns in the vital fluids gushing into her mouth. And truthfully, no matter how agonizing and humiliating succumbing to defeat is, she's grateful to rest for these few given moments.

"Get up, child. You'd be gutted on the streets fighting like this."

His steel toed boot digs into her gut and suddenly, there isn't enough air in the room for the both of them.

Superboy, who had assumed the identity of a security guard for the political speech, rushed from his post backstage upon hearing the crowd's collective gasps and screams of horror. By the time his eyes flickered to the female politician pitching forward at the podium, she was out of sight. A dome of water encircled her, closing her off from the lenses of the media and of the innocent supporters. The body trapped inside was distorted in the rush of liquid, but the prominent color of blood seemed to rapidly bloom within.

Aqualad's firm orders bled into his mind. "Artemis, check the perimeter of the hotel. Superboy, check the ground level and the lobby. Robin, find that window and search the room. Kid, I want you to search all surrounding buildings. I'll stay with Miss M."

All teammates complied except the superhuman clone.

"Superboy, that's an order."

His legs refuse to move. He knows that each passing second practically provides the assassin with a grand escape, but the image of the woman at the podium gasping in shock and heaving forward with an arrow sticking out of her chest won't leave his mind. "Is... Is she okay?"

"I shall take care of her. Go!"

Arms pumping hard, Superboy obeys Kaldur's harsh tone and shoves aside frantic onlookers as he sprints towards the hotel complex juxtaposed to the stage. "There's a grappling cable attached to a balcony on the street side of the building. That must have been his escape route."

With a walkie-talkie clipped to his holster to play the part of a copper, static mixed with police reports confirmed Artemis's discovery.

"I found the room he shot from. There's nothing in here."

"And all that's in the lobby are scared looking bellhops."

"But I see a guy going like a bajillion and five miles an hour on a motorcycle! I think he's trying to out-speed me! ...He's wearing a quiver, too."

"Great. You chase after him, K.F. Try to get a good look at his profile. Superboy, Artemis, let's rendezvous back at the stage. We'll need to hold off the press."

"What about our civvies cover? We're a covert operations team, remember?"

"So! M'Gann is hurt! Don't you—"

"No. She'll live, Superboy. I'm maintaining my water barrier until she regains consciousness. She wasn't able to stop the arrow with her telekinesis but she did shape shift around it. I don't know enough about Martian biology but I do know that the arrow didn't puncture her heart. She's still breathing. The only person who can possibly help me now is Artemis. She may be able to identify the arrow intended to kill Miss Serena Stryker."

"Who, unbeknownst to our assassin, happens to be in a safe house monitored by the Justice League. Lucky for us, we had a decoy."

"Lucky? M'Gann could have died! What do—"

"Enough! Artemis, I need you on center stage to look at this arrow. Superboy, maintain your cover and report to the stage, also. All security forces are constructing a barrier around the area. I need you to grant Artemis access to get to me. Robin, try contacting Kid. He seems to be out of telepathic range."

By now, the pandemonium had hushed to speculating murmurs throughout the political assembly. Shoving her way through the anxious onlookers, Artemis, under Connor's consent and the confused gazes from fellow officers, reached her leader's liquid bulwark within mere minutes. Allowing her access, Kaldur maintained a division between the maimed Martian and the audience. Acknowledging the presence of children among the bystanders, he didn't want to risk their catching sight of all the blood loss.

The stained blazer has been ripped from Megan's torso, her button up undone to reveal a bloodied undergarment and gushing laceration. The cleaved flesh runs deep, Artemis notices with a grimace as she kneels down next to Kaldur. His intense gaze flickers towards her, relief caught betwixt anxiety in the clear pigment of his eyes. One webbed hand rests upon Megan's forehead, accidentally smearing blood across her flesh like warrior paint, while the other presents the offending shaft. Crimson beads drizzle down the sides, eventually seeping into the feather fletchings. With careful hands, she liberates him from the weapon, fingering it gingerly to get a feel for its components. Eyes growing wide with realization, she immediately recognizes the custom design of the arrowhead.

"It is very similar to your own set of arrows." His tone isn't accusatory but the comment isn't offhanded, either. He's merely drawing parallels and she can't blame him for that.

She nods in agreement, uncaring that the lines and cracks of her hands are filled with blood. Her dark eyes dissect the head of the arrow once more, confirming the ownership. The sudden urge to lodge the arrow into her own heart spurs within her at the mere thought of the man, "Sportsmaster. It belongs to Sportsmaster."

The dark folds of a parachute billowed around her crouched position on the wide rooftop. The wind had unexpectedly amplified during her descent, causing her to glide over the skylight of the building and land approximately ten feet beyond her designated mark. If the celebrity crowd currently housed by Gotham City Town Hall hadn't been so convivial, busied with fine wines and gossip, perhaps her cover would have been blown. Security measures of the opposition failed to appear on the roof, however, so she proceeded to carry on.

Unlatching the heavy harness from her body, clad in a black catsuit and a matching utility belt, she withdrew her collapsible recurve crossbow from the waistband. Loading the weapon with a lethal cursor, she jammed a laced up combat boot through the cocking stirrup and prepared the setup for tonight's slaying. It was the ultimate test to prove her worth not only to the League of Shadows, but to her merciless father. The criminal design was simple: Kill the heir to the Knock Out Tournament Executive Committee, the honored guest of City Hall's assembly. KOTEC, a famed international weapons company branched off from Cadmus Labs, had recently entangled with Shadow affairs, setting off top gun R'as al Ghul to a ruthless extreme. Finally concluding that the dominant death rates involving his organization could not be further tolerated, R'as called his top assassins in to do his dirty work. And at the moment, Artemis was about to get her hands very, very dirty.

She wasn't going to carry out the mission, however, without instituting her own set of rules.

Scouting from the sky above, her method of transport propelled through the dark night at a distance. To any citizen below, the aircraft may have been a barely acknowledged, if at all, factor to their dull lives. After all, it wasn't as if the common human being could identify an attack helicopter with an abyss of altitude between them in the dark of the night. Little did the innocent know, however, the aircraft was about to explode into their lives, destroying all normalcy they had ever known.

With the string of her bow latched into position, she mounted the armament with practiced precision. Her open eye searched through the scope for her intended target, eventually locking on to it, never to stray until the trigger was pulled.

Aboard the hovering aircraft, the pilot linked to the PNVS and a man serving as extra cargo proved to be the only occupants. Anticipating a head shot, her curled finger rested on the trigger that ensured an instant kill. The cocked ammunition, a rarity known to penetrate any highly polymerized element, glinted in the moonlight as she noted the weather conditions and the altitude of her target. Holding her breath, she didn't dare allow the heartbeat in her palm to interrupt her aim.

With the cool efficiency of a soldier, she pulled the trigger and watched as the arrow sliced through the atmosphere and lost itself in the dark, star speckled oblivion of the night.

Turning from the chopper, she clipped the bow to her utility belt and tugged at her ponytail to secure it. Behind her, the chopper's usual flutter magnified to a staccato of flight patterns. In her mind's eye, she pictured the aircraft spiraling out of control, the pilot slumped over the controls, and the man in the backseat staring down the teeth of death.

Slyly dodging the skylight, she kicked the discarded parachute aside and advanced towards the gutter system on the side of the roof. Reaching for a grappling arrow stashed away in her quiver, she swiftly anchored it to the rainwater channel. She had just begun to scale the building when an explosion sounded nearly seven miles west of her location. Her ears recognized the strident rip of a heavy collision and the crackle of a wild inferno, the kind that melted flesh and bone into nothing but ashes.

Lips flourishing into a satisfied grin, she continued to cascade down the wall of the building. If she was to complete this mission, she was to do so without a backward glance.

Having flourished under the dogma of one of the world's most qualified assassin's, of the famed Sportsmaster, and of the same man who had been aboard the fallen helicopter; it was safe to say that Artemis Crock never missed.

Although Wally West could never resist a challenge, the prospect of being beaten consequently upset him. Especially over something as trivial as this.

The engine of Sportsmaster's cycle snarled as he floored the accelerator. As the race dragged on, the speedster concluded that this man would be sent to prison for more than attempted murder. Stoplights and signs took on a whole new meaning, suddenly permitting the assassin to rip through intersections whenever he pleased. Apparently, a cyclist did not require two hands on the handlebars anymore. Instead, they grasped onto a bow and dug through a quiver filled with fatal arrows. Heck, with Wally hot on his trail, Sportsmaster hadn't even bothered driving on the designated road half the time. He struck a dare with all terrains.

It wasn't until the pair started rapidly approaching a rising drawbridge when Wally realized that his attempt at independently nabbing one of the Shadow's most notorious assassins had been ultimately fruitless. Of course, he could have made the jump. Landing without breaking a bone or puncturing a vital organ, however, was an entirely different ordeal. So, skidding to a stop in a cloud of engine exhaust, the fastest kid alive watched dismally as the criminal soared over an ocean liner and drove out of sight.

The strident burst of static in his ear wasn't nearly as helpful. Cringing at the cacophony, his gloved hand flew to his active comm link to tune into it.

"Yo, K.F.! Can you hear me?"

"Yeah, Rob, loud and painfully clear."

"Good, coz we figured out who the assassin is. Were you able to track him down?"

"Er..." Running a hand through his shock of red hair, the speedster glanced spitefully at the drawbridge. It had yet to connect again. "He ditched me. Last I saw of him, he was heading towards the North side of Gotham."

"Well that makes sense. That's the worst part of town."

"Wait," suddenly, two frayed ends of information linked up in his mind. "Who's the assassin?"

"Sportsmaster."

Maybe that wasn't too surprising. Still, he was curious. "And how did you all figure that out?"

"Artemis recognized the arrow he aimed at Miss M."

Tapping against the earpiece, he checked to make sure he had heard correctly. "But... Artemis has never fought against him. At least, not during her time on the team."

"If I didn't know better, kiddo, I would say that you had added me to your hit list."

Yelping in pain, Artemis writhed in the harsh grasp of the hidden speaker. He held her from behind, curling his fingers against her scalp to firmly grip her by the hair. Yanking roughly, he drew her to his broad chest while his other arm restrained her by the neck. Escaping was a fruitless battle, now. He had the upper hand. One slight slant at the neck would snap it for good.

The shadows of the alleyway might have concealed his profile but it wasn't enough coverage. The velvety rumble of his voice still echoed in her nightmares.

"You've impressed me tonight, Artemis. You assassinated the only pure blood heir to KOTEC and took down an attack aircraft designed to wipe out tanks. Not all eleven year old girls can say that."

Her tone is horrified and strangled in his grip. "How... H-How did you—"

"You thought I went down with that chopper, didn't you?" The chill of Sportsmaster's stoic facade crushed the side of her face. His ragged breaths vented through the slits of his mask, scalding the shell of her ear. "Silly girl. How can you possibly take me down when I taught you everything you know?"

If it hadn't been for her father, she wouldn't have come home that night. Instead, she would have stayed until dawn with Superboy and Kaldur in the Medical Wing of the Cave and watched as Megan slowly gained her strength back. Crashing on the couch with Wally and Robin was an equally tempting way to spend her twilight hours. But terror ate her out, driving her away from these people she had grown to call her family. Fear constantly loomed over her shoulder, but after the events of today, it had progressed into a massive burden. Sure, Megan's wound rattled her a little, but bloodshed was a sight her eyes had become accustomed to over the years. The conversation between Wally and Robin on the comm link was what damned her to the shabby sight of her apartment complex, to her own little corner of hell.

Artemis frowns pensively. Her cheek swells with the pain her father's backhand slap begat. Her dark eyes stare blankly at the front door that he had just exited. She's watched him leave countless times. There are never any tears, and even if there had been, the time to cry is long past. He's hardened her beyond caring.

Mere minutes before, he claimed that her attempt at reforming into some prudent heroine would never save her from the things he's trained her to do.

But what he doesn't know, she keeps telling herself, is that I've learned a thing or two since he left. He might be the reason as to why I'm good with a bow, but that's all he's good for.

A/N: Jeez. This took forever to write. I just had to do it and, admittedly, it was really fun to type this out!

If any of you have ever played the Dead Or Alive video games, you might have caught my allusion to KOTEC in this story. The fictional organization was inspired by DOATEC ( Dead Or Alive Tournament Executive Committee ), an equally fictional organization in arms. Even though they differentiate, I'll disclaim it. And if you are a gamer who likes action/fighting games, I highly recommend DOA. It's commonly compared to Tekken, if that's any indication. DOA's better in my humble opinion, though. ^-^;

For those of you who are not familiar with a recurve crossbow, the type of weapon my younger version of Artemis uses to take down that attack helicopter, it is similar to a common crossbow. The big difference, however, would be the scope, cocking stirrup, and trigger. I've practiced archery before but admittedly have never used a recurve crossbow. I've seen it in use, however, and based my description off of that. I hope there wasn't too much confusion during that scene. I don't know all the technicalities of the device.

Anyways, thank you for reading! Like it? Hate it? Love it? Flame it? Let me know in a review!