Today was the day that Kid Flash, Speedy and Aqualad were finally granted access to their mentor's headquarters. It had been all Kid Flash talked about for the last month and Speedy had made a few comments here and there so Dick had to go see them off. Although he wasn't part of the heroing world, his best friends were and it was only right to support them. He dawned a black hoodie, a black cap, black sweatpants and you guessed it, black trainers. He wore sunglasses too to hide his cat-like eyes and had tucked away all the other features that would give him away. He'd never been to the Hall of Justice, being a criminal he strayed away from highly public, highly policed areas but for his friends, he'd resist the urge to high tail it in the other direction. He slipped through the crowds and caught sight of his friends standing proudly with their mentors. They looked really excited and he was excited for them. He'd spent some time on upgrades for the pair to celebrate the event. Cameras flashed and he could just tell Kid Flash was enjoying every second of it. Aqualad, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Flash (although they were on really good terms) and Batman (they were on terms) were preventing him from jumping the gate and saying hello to his friends but he didn't mind. This was their day and the last thing they needed was the press running a story on some mystery figure high fiving them. He followed them inside and went with the crowd which seemed to concentrate on one big window. He cocked his head to the side but went along with them, pushing his way to the front. An older woman had told a few people to move out the way so he could see which was sweet but she didn't need to add that he looked like an eight-year-old nor ask where his parents were. Damn his small stature and dead parents. The window looked into what looked like a large CEO's office rather than the headquarters of superheroes. Maybe they didn't have the budget for something cooler. There were a few bookshelves, other walls lined with what looked like CDs, a big computer screen with a keypad and chairs spotted around. He was a little disappointed considering how much hype this had gotten but he hoped it was enough for his friends. 

It wasn't enough for his friends evidently. When the group walked in, an argument broke out almost immediately. Speedy had argued that this wasn't the right place, that there was something called the Watchtower that was the true headquarters of the league. He'd be pretty angry too if this event they'd all been looking forward to wasn't even the real deal. It was probably to keep them quiet but that wasn't at all fair. Selina always treated Dick with respect, letting him at least know about things he can't get involved with and taking the time to explain why. Of course, he wasn't always pleased with the situation but at least he knew. He wasn't being led on to believe he was getting a higher position than he was. Still, although he understood both the anger and disappointment, he hadn't expected Speedy to quit. Speedy loved his job. He was one of the best yet there he was throwing his hat on the ground and storming out. The shock turned to upset as he saw Kid Flash's expression. Surprise, pain and fear all mixed into one. Most of the crowd had moved on by now, taking their photos and gossiping as they did but he stayed. He watched as the mentors were called away and the two proteges were left in the room. With a frown, he tapped on the glass a few times to get his friend's attention. The ginger glanced up at him and smiled when he figured out who it was. He waved much to the confusion of Aqualad and got out his phone used only to contact his criminal bestie. Dick's phone buzzed and he picked it up with a smile. "Hey, dude. I'd say congrats on the promotion but looks like it went down like a lead balloon."

"You can say that again. Do you think he's serious?"

"Speedy doesn't bluff. He might calm down but I think the decision will stick." Kid Flash hummed with a dejected look.

"Who are you talking to?" Aqualad asked. The speedster glanced up to his friend who gave him the nod to put him on speaker. 

"This is a friend of mine. He's like an informant for Batman," he explained briefly. "Thanks for coming through."

"Had to. Especially with what just went down but maybe we can salvage the situation," he suggested. Before the mentors were called away, there'd been a fire at CADMUS. He'd heard the name before which in his business, usually meant something shady. Shady meant criminal and criminals needed a hero to catch them. Maybe a criminal to help the hero too. 

"What do you mean?" Aqualad inquired.

"There was a fire at CADMUS, right? Local authorities will just put out the fire but aren't you curious about how it started? If I know the name then this is a job for you two. That's if you're cool with it," Dick answered. The pair looked at one another, silently debating about it. They both agreed with a nod.

"We're down."

"Perfect."

"Don't you mean purrfect?"

"I will fight you."

They met up a block away from the CADMUS facility, hearing the fire engine sirens blaring. "Apologies but I'm not familiar with you. Your name is?" Aqualad began when Kitten joined them. The younger stuck out his hand with a smile. 

"I'm Kitten. Kit for short. Catboy if you want a broken arm," he greeted. The older took his hand and shook it. "Nice to meet you Aqualad. Now, we better get to hauling our asses over there. We should go in through one of the open windows in the office sector. The fire would've cleared everyone out." They nodded and ran in. The firefighters paid little attention to them even with the addition of a new person working with the heroes but that wasn't too surprising. Kitten brought out his trusty grabbling gun and spied the open window, shooting the hook before pulling himself up the wall. He got inside gracefully and looked down to his friend who chose to run up the wall. Kid Flash just about made it but needed a helping hand to clamber inside. "Should've gone faster. You need like 50mph to pull that off," he commented. The taller rolled his eyes and watched Kitten hook up to a computer. 

"You really think Speedy is gonna quit?" he asked quietly.

"Not quit the business but quit working with GA. Maybe us too. People outgrow being sidekicks," Kitten replied, his eyes focused on the screen. He was searching for something but the speedster didn't know what. He just trusted him to find something. 

"I can't believe this though. Flash has always been good about this stuff," he grumbled.

"I love you dude, I really do, but I need to concentrate right now. We can talk about this later though. Promise." Kid Flash nodded and looked over to the window where Aqualad was now climbing through. "He's hacking."

"I can see. Look through some of the desks, see if there's anything there." He nodded and began looking alongside his fellow hero.

A few minutes into it, Aqualad noticed something lurking and watched the mysterious horned figure enter the elevator. He called the group's attention to this and the friends gave each other confused looks. "The elevators should be locked down right? That's fire procedure," Kid Flash commented.

"That's not the only weird thing about the elevator. Look at this." They gathered around the screen as Kitten pulled up the blueprint for the building and the elevator design. "They've got tonnes of lower levels and the elevator is a highspeed express one. Fancy stuff but too fancy for a simple research lab. They've definitely got something going on down there and I reckon it's got something to do with the fire." He pulled his USB out of the computer with a hum and walked over to the elevator. There was a slot for a card there. Probably the cards people used to even get close to the lower levels. Technology was pretty high to have one of those elevators so the building was most likely high security. They would've already been caught on camera if it had survived the fire but people had seen them enter so their entrance hadn't been covert. No point keeping up with it getting further. They could make the impression they were going overt then slip into the shadows to lose anyone on their tail. He nodded to himself and looked to Aqualad. "You wanna open those doors?" The older walked over and put his hands in between the doors, forcing them apart. They peered down the long elevator shaft then looked at one another. None of them could fly so floating down wasn't an option. Kitten looked up and smiled when he saw he could hook his grappling hook. He shot it, tested how stable it was before stepping off and dangling over the shaft. "Nice. I'll go down as far as I can go then you join one at the time, got that?" They nodded and watched him release more and more rope.

"So, is he a hero in Central City?" Aqualad asked.

"He works in Gotham but he gets around. He's...he's Kitten."

"That's not comforting. If he's a villain-"

"He's not a villain! He's just morally grey. He doesn't kill people, he's a useful guy to have around and as long as you don't offend him you'll be golden." Aqualad gave him a frown but he swiftly ignored it. He knew Kitten and he was a good guy. He just had a knack for borrowing without permission. "Flash and Speedy like him. You can trust him." The other hummed sceptically. 

"I'm spent! Start coming down!" Kitten called. Kid Flash went first, sensing his fellow hero's hesitance. 

"Give him a chance." 

Once they were all on the same floor, they crept through the hallways but Kid Flash got bored of that very quickly. "I'll just run ahead and check it out," he began.

"No," Kitten told him sternly. "We're in super bad guy territory. You can't just-" He was cut off by the speedster doing what he did best, running off. He groaned and facepalmed although he was glad to see that Aqualad wasn't like his friend. "We best go after him."

"Indeed." They ran in the direction he'd disappeared in and hoped he'd stopped somewhere close. There was no way they'd catch up if he hadn't. "So you are a criminal yes?"

"Look man, I get that this is pretty weird but talking about the ethics of my work right now isn't the time," the younger replied, shutting it down straight away. He didn't want to get into it when they were in a high-security area where death could be waiting around the corner. Not only that but their friend had run off and if either of them knew Kid Flash, they would know he was getting himself in trouble. The hallways were similar to any office building, with wood panels and carpeted floors. If anything, this just looked like a really fancy law office. As they continued to run, they found the familiar yellow and red suit of Kid Flash. That wasn't what they were focused on though. Beside him in a much bigger hallway were hulking massive grey creatures. Kitten cringed every time they took a step, the sound being so loud to him on account of his better hearing. They had red markings on their bodies and horns bigger than them. They smartly decided to lay low as they stomped past and keep quiet. This was definitely some extremely shady business. The million-dollar question of the day was what were they for? Once they'd gone past, Kitten punched Kid Flash in the arm. "Ow, what was that for?" 

"For running off," he snapped. "I'm guessing you didn't see that in the elevator, Aqualad?"

"No, but I don't feel what I saw was so different. Perhaps it was simply smaller than the others?" 

"We should search the whole floor, see if we can find what you saw. Besides, I want to see how this place works without being on a power grid. Maybe I can use some of it," the younger suggested.

"You're not stealing anything with us here," Aqualad told him sternly.

"Killjoy," he huffed. 

They roamed around the halls further before stumbling across what exactly was powering this place. Creatures that looked similar to the bigger ones were. Kitten was definitely letting them keep their power source. He didn't want to take one of those things home, Catwoman would definitely tell him to take it back. Upon coming across another computer, he hooked up to it and downloaded as much information as he could. "We'll need to keep that," Aqualad stated. "This place needs the League."

"Screw them. They left the pair of you high and dry. You can do this without them plus you have me and I'm pretty damn awesome," Kitten argued. "Trust me, you take this place down and they'll actually respect you."

"I'm with Kit," Kid Flash added. They had to make names for themselves and this was the best way to start. Taking down a whole shady facility without their mentors was definitely worthy enough to get some respect. 

"I'll be out of here as soon as we're done. I don't wanna get anywhere near Batman. I kinda stole some of his tech last week and he hasn't stopped complaining about it," he offered, hoping that would ease the older's fears. After getting as much as he could, Kitten unplugged and they went to continue their surprise tour of the facility when Guardian of all people appeared.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"We could ask you the same thing," Aqualad replied. They took note of the creature sitting on his shoulder. It looked smaller than the ones in the hallway and Aqualad recalled that it was a similar shape to the one he'd seen in the elevator. He narrowed his eyes on the creature. What was it doing sitting on the shoulder of Guardian? They didn't get the chance to ask as Guardian swiftly set a squad of other creatures on them. Kitten, thinking on his feet, threw a smoke bomb at the floor and pulled on the pair of heroes to get them going. They didn't fancy trying to reason with Guardian and so followed him. "Okay plan: get to an elevator, give me cover whilst I get it open, we go down a few more levels to see what else these weirdos are planning."

"How long do you need?" Aqualad asked. 

"Two minutes. I've got the right plugins, just need to match them up," he answered. The older nodded and once they found an elevator, he and Kid Flash stopped a few feet in front of Kitten whilst he worked. Their pursuers hadn't been long behind them and soon enough they were fighting. Aqualad batted them away with his Water Bearers whilst Kid Flash punched and rammed into them. He darted in between the things and managed to have some of them attack one another. The doors to the elevator opened and he quickly called their attention to it. They pushed back the closest creatures then ran for the door, relieved when the doors closed before anything got in. "I'm getting weird deja vu right now something crazy," Kitten commented, hoping to brighten the mood.

"You could've left us," Aqualad stated. "But you didn't." He looked down at the criminal with a ghost of a smile. 

"I don't do murders," he replied, smirking. "Besides, your mentor is water-based and I hate water." Kid Flash glanced at the numbers of floors, noticing instead of climbing they were decreasing.

"Out is up, Kit."

"We're not done here. They're keeping something called project Kr down here. We find that out and your mentors will have to respect you."

"But we may be going too far," Aqualad argued.

"Then I'll take the blame for it but we need to figure it out." They looked unsure but didn't make another comment about their descent. They were heroes after all.

Eventually, the elevator stopped and they cautiously peaked out. Seeing the coast was clear, they walked out and continued to explore. There were two hallways in front of them, both too similar to distinguish. Before they could choose one, a figure stepped out from the shadows. A tall lanky version of what they'd seen before and as its horns glowed red it yelled, "Hold!" It threw a sheet of metal at them and never being one to follow orders they dodged the blow. Kitten threw a sharp disk in its direction only for it to be stopped before it could hit it. "Oops?" he said then high tailed it down one of the corridors with the heroes in front. There was another explosion as they ran, assuring that they wouldn't be stopping to ask questions. Kid Flash ran ahead only to knock into a scientist and ran into the door behind them. The door read Project Kr, exactly what they'd been looking for only the door was closing and his friends were only now coming into view. He looked around for something to keep the door from closing, finding a block of what could be building material and placed it in between the door and the door frame. "Hurry it up!" he yelled to his friends then ran into the room. Kitten swiftly followed by jumping over the block then Aqualad stepped inside. He knocked away from their block so they couldn't be followed inside. "We're trapped," Aqualad pointed out, Kitten hearing footsteps behind them being proof of such.

"That might not be our only problem," Kid Flash stated. He was at a control panel and as he pressed a few buttons, a light flickered on to reveal what he meant. A clone of the biggest hitter in the League sitting under the city in the hands of what could only be assumed as villains. This couldn't mean anything good. They all went wide-eyed upon seeing the creation and an uneasy feeling filled the room. There were three of those things they'd seen in the hallway above sitting on Guardians shoulder above the clone in small glass cages. "Holy shit," Kitten murmured.

"Kr. The atomic symbol for Krypton. This must be a clone of Superman," Kid Flash stated.

"No really? I thought he was a clone of Aquaman," Kitten remarked.

"Kitten, hack."

"Okey-dokey," he replied, walking over to the computer. He plugged himself in and used his software to bypass the security code. "Looks like his name's Superboy. Some weapon by the looks of it. Seems like he absorbs sunlight."

"What about the creatures?" the older inquired.

"Genomorph gnomes. They telepathically educate him on everything. Can't imagine it's much good," he answered.

"Maybe they're doing something else too," Kid Flash added with a grave tone. Considering the clone looked like it was sleeping, they could imagine that the Genomorphs had something to do with it.

"Dude, he was grown in sixteen weeks! Must take some tech to pull that off. Confirmation of the Superman DNA. This guy is a direct clone," he continued. "From the looks of this, Supes isn't connected. Must've been stolen during a fight or something."

"They're basically making a slave out of Superman's son," Kid Flash announced, an unease clear in his tone. Nobody would want this for their offspring even if it was a surprise. They could only imagine the plans for such a thing.

"That's it, we're contacting the League," Aqualad told them sternly. Both him and Kid Flash attempted but the youngest shook his head.

"There's no signal down here. If you wanna call in an emergency, we've gotta get up top," he insisted. They huffed in defeat and looked back to the clone. There was no way they were leaving the poor guy here to be experimented on. He looked peaceful now but what if he was in pain or would be in pain? They couldn't risk waiting for backup, they needed to break him out pronto. "We can't leave him here," Kitten said, voicing what they were all thinking. 

"Set him free," Aqualad ordered. He nodded and got to work.

Suddenly there was a loud gush of wind as the metal cage around the clone disappeared into the floor. They stood back a bit as he cracked his hands, probably his first movement in his entire life. As he did, they noticed that the horns of the G-Gnomes began to glow and with that, the clones eyes snapped open. They couldn't even get in a hello before the clone lunged at Aqualad. He sent the pair rolling to the ground then set on top of the Atlantian's chest, delivering blow after blow to the face. Kid Flash and Kitten ran over, the first grabbing his arm and the latter covering his eyes. "We're on your side Supey!"

"Chill out will you?" They were both knocked away, Kid Flash being thrown to the other side of the room and crashing through the glass. He landed with a heavy thump as his eyes slipped closed. "Sorry dude but you can't just attack people," he stated before smacking a smoke pellet against him. He jumped away as Aqualad kicked the clone off him. The clone crashed into the console and coughed from the remanents of the smoke settling. Kitten sent out two tasers and activated them once they latched onto Superboy's chest. Only, the electricity did nothing. Superboy grabbed hold of the wires and yanked on them, pulling Kitten along with them. Superboy grabbed him by the collar and threw him to the floor, stepping on his chest so he wouldn't move away. Kitten knew immediately he'd been pinned too hard and clawed at the foot applying the pressure. Any more and he was going to be spending way too long recovering. He might not get the chance to recover at all. He gritted his teeth and whimpered as the pressure kept coming. Luckily, Aqualad had managed to get onto his feet and was now wielding a hammer made from water. "Enough!" he shouted as he hit the clone with it, sending him flying. He went to Kitten's side as Superboy crashed into his chamber. Kitten latched onto him, doing his best to stay conscious only to let out a pained groan and fall limp. Aqualad turned to find Superboy standing up and jumped over him as he tried to run into him. He latched onto the clone's back and delivered more electricity yet upon Superboy jumping into the air, he was crushed against the ceiling. With that, he fell to the floor limp. They were taken out before they could do anything. Now they were at the mercy of the scientists at CADMUS.