Title: Halloween, Part I of Masks

Rating: K

Warnings: Canon divergent.

Where else can I find this story? All five parts are on the first page of Part 5 of the original Young Justice Anon Meme on LiveJournal.

Summary: The Genomorphs didn't teach Conner about Halloween, or the first time Superboy was caught wearing another mentor's costume. From the Anon Meme, canon divergent due to old age.

Author's Notes: This is the first part of a series of fills I put up on the Anon Meme, for a prompt requesting "5 times Superboy was caught wearing the other mentor's costumes, and one time he wasn't." Now that I've posted all of Part V: Hero on the Anon Meme, I'll be reposting the whole series here, although I will be doing tweaks and revisions. Please note that I started this fill in May of 2011, and as such, characterizations and plot events diverge very quickly from the show's continuity.

Halloween
Masks, Part I

When Young Justice gets their first invitation to the Watchtower, it's for a Halloween party. It's sort of ridiculous, and if they'd stop to think about it, they'd realize it's actually sort of offensive, but they don't stop to think about it, because it's also so cool.

Except M'gann.

"I don't get it," she says.

"What's not to get, babe?" Wally asks. "Halloween part-ay on the Watchtower. Speedy's going to be so pissed he's not invited."

"But… I saw the Halloween episode of Hello Megan. Halloween is when the monsters come out and people put razor blades in apples and throw rolls of toilet paper on other people's houses. Why would the Justice League throw a party when there's going to be so much work to do?"

"You don't know about Halloween?" Robin asks. He looks oddly sad. "Not asterous." Then he bolts up and starts to explain it all to M'gann: about candied apples and trick-or-treating, about (fake) haunted houses, and, dressing up. M'gann listens with wide eyes.

Superboy listens too, though he hides his interest. Cadmus taught him about the sun and the moon and Superman, about gravity and momentum, but they didn't teach him about television shows or fairy tales, and certainly not about candy or dressing up or trick-or-treating. He was supposed to be a weapon, fully formed. A weapon, he knows, doesn't need to trick or treat.

There's one thing he's curious about, after Robin's enthusiastic explanation, but he doesn't want to ask in front of everyone, because he feels like he's probably missing something simple. Something anyone would understand intuitively, if they hadn't been made in order to destroy Superman. So he asks Wally when they're alone in the kitchen: "Hey, KF, about this dressing up thing, we already dress up, every day."

"Yah," Wally answers between shoveling ice cream into his mouth, "but the point is you're supposed to dress up like something else."

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know, something scary but cool. I went as a vampire last year. I'm thinking giant robot this year."

"Huh. Ok."

Scary but cool? Superboy knows just what he's going to wear.

It turns out, the Justice League knows how to throw a party. Superboy's never had a better time, ever. He doesn't know what could be better than Halloween.

Except Robin's been sulking in the corner all evening long.

"What's with Robin?" he asks Kid Flash, who's dressed like a giant robot.

"Robin looks forward to Halloween every year because that's the one night a year he gets to wear the Batsuit. You stole his costume dude."

"But he's still wearing the Batsuit!"

"Nope. It's not the same. Besides, it's always lame if two people have the same costume at a party."

Apparently that's another thing the Genomorphs forgot to teach him.

Author's Notes: So, the anonymous person who requested this story asked me when I first posted this what Batman would think. The answer I gave was: I think Batman would have been surprised, then relieved, to find out that Superboy didn't go as Superman. Then, he would have noticed that Robin was upset and made a comment to Superboy within Robin's hearing along the lines of "Nice costume. Did you get it at (Store)." "Yeah, how'd you know?" "They make really good Batman costumes, you almost can't tell the difference." But Robin would have heard the "almost" (since Robin's wearing an official Batsuit).

Feel free to review, or if you've already read, to say hi. Part II: Placeholder will probably be here next week. Part III: Red and Green and Part IV: Present are substantially longer, so those will take longer to fix up. I won't start posting Part V: Hero until I'm done revising that whole thing, and it's friggin' long, so, hopefully some time around January.