Downtown, Boston, 12:23 PM.

October 1st, 2010.

Almost as soon as Aiden made it outside, he realized just how good the building’s soundproofing was; this attack was fucking loud. The plant-thing, which he could clearly see from halfway across the city, was also the single largest moving creature he had ever seen in his life.

It was sending chills down his spine, something that large twisting and coiling like it was-so he did his best not to look directly at it as he made his way towards the meeting place. He could already feel Enkidu’s Ki-signature standing on the building in question while Byrna’s own was about two blocks away and moving surprisingly quickly.

She’d put the idea of the ice-skating on hold in favor of the much easier to implement motorized wheels in the redesigned boots. Aiden had got a laugh or two out of watching her zoom around the warehouse as she made adjustments yesterday.

Aiden dropped down onto the roof next to Enkidu, just as Byrna made the jump from the building opposite them before she skidded to a stop.

“Giant plants,” Aiden said in greeting, nodding at them both. “Yikes.”

“How the heck do we kill it?” Byrna asked nervously. “I don’t have anywhere near enough energy to ice even a quarter of the thing.”

Byrna had left the unfinished torso piece behind, instead only wearing the now thin legs and gauntlets, along with a welders mask. They were silver-blue in color, sleek, and looked almost nothing like the woman’s previous costume.

“It’s moving, so it must have a nervous system of some kind or a skeletal equivalent,” Enkidu said seriously, “We need to separate as many of its-uh-limbs from the main body.”

“So cut it into pieces, basically?” Aiden clarified, watching as the massive plant latched on to everything around it with its thick tendrils.

“Yes, then destroy the main body,” Enkidu confirmed.

Aiden cracked his neck and stared at the thing that was making his skin crawl; he could feel that itch rising slowly as he focused his anger and annoyance at the thing.

“Got it; play it safe, hit, and run tactics; I don’t want to win the fight at the cost of one of you, understand?” Aiden insisted, “I’m going in.”

“Shouldn’t you be playing it safe too!” Byrna called after him incredulously.

He was already too far away to respond, and his focus was entirely on the plant now. The closer he got to it, the greater it seemed to grow; he wondered if he could have ever brought himself to approach such a thing in his old world.

Aiden had never been easily intimidated, but this was something else. Since he’d arrived here, things had been different somehow; he’d heard the sound of a gun in an alley and walked straight in-he hadn’t known until afterward that he was bulletproof.

He’d been calm then-or more accurately, completely unafraid despite having not been able to confirm his durability.

The same thing had happened after the assassin’s had attacked him, although that time he’d been more worried about Selena. When they had set off the explosion and deleted his apartment, he’d been angry, but he’d felt no fear at his injuries.

Aiden had broken his leg once, a long time ago, and there had been a pervasive undercurrent of fear at first, fear that he’d ruined himself-fear that he’d never be able to walk again, and fear that the worst-case scenario where they would have to take the leg. It hadn’t been rational; he knew that now-but at the time, he’d had little to no idea about that kind of thing.

He’d felt nothing like it after the explosion, he’d had metal sticking out of him, and he’d been far more injured than he’d ever been before-but there had been not a single moment of fear. Something had changed in his response to an emotional stimulus, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not.

Whatever it was, it was the only reason he could even bring himself to approach this disgusting thing. Aiden slammed into the massive tendril that flashed through the air towards him with all the force he could muster; barely a second later, he burst out the other side with a shower of plant matter and sap.

It made no motion to indicated it had even felt the attack or the loss of its own limb-but it did strike out at him with more of the tendrils. Aiden swayed around it before kicking down at the plant, destroying enough matter with the impact for it to be severed.

It fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and his eyes caught a blue stream of light slashing across the bottom-most tendril, leaving a line of ice behind. The tendril swung at Byrna, who had already slide past it, and shattered on impact, sending the top half of it careening through the air.

Aiden flashed over to it and kicked it down to the ground before it could impact the glass windows of a nearby building. He turned back just in time to catch Enkidu diving straight off one of the surrounding buildings, roll forward into a summersault and sever another tentacle with a picture-perfect heel drop.

The plant was starting to writhe, and the hundreds of tendrils wrapped around its base were starting to unfold, reaching out into the air. Two of the larger ones snaked around the base of two buildings and squeezed.

Aiden tore through the thick tendril on the left a moment too late, and the building disintegrated as it impacted the ground, sending dust and debris everywhere. The second building survived as both Byrna and Enkidu managed to sever it in time, a combination of another ice beam and concussive force.

Aiden gritted his teeth as visibility was reduced to almost nothing, and barely a second later, one of the thinner tendrils snagged him by the leg. He ripped his leg out of its grasp within a second, but it had managed to hold him still long enough for the much thicker tendril to send him straight down towards the street below.

The impact was enough to leave him stunned for a moment, and by the time he got his bearings, he was three meters deep in the ground.

“Oh shit-,” Aiden swore as a twisted mass of tendrils smashed down on top of him.

He lifted his left hand and tried to stop its momentum with pure strength and failed, being sent even deeper into the ground as it shattered around him. A single tendril stabbed down past the now rising mass and buried his face deeper into the rubble. It kept him pinned just long enough for the twisted mass to get another swing prepped.

Aiden couldn’t believe he was being beaten by a fucking plant; He stuck his hand out, past the tendril that was still holding him down by his face, fingers splayed. He pushed as much Ki as he could gather into his palm and sent the yellow wash of unformed energy rocketing upwards.

It was the first time he’d ever tried using Ki in an offensive energy attack, and it surged upwards like a flash of diffused light.

The plant burned away as the blast tore through the twisted limb, through the top half of the main body, and kept on going. Aiden could feel his Ki rapidly diminishing the longer he held the attack and dropped it before he could deplete below half of his reserves. The hole he’d been buried in was now a smooth tunnel upwards at an angle, the tendril holding his face had evaporated, and the top half of the plant’s main body was simply gone along with a massive circle of the skyscraper behind it.

Aiden was really, really glad that nobody had been in that building.

“Holy shit.” Aiden coughed, wiping the blood out of his eyes.

His palm was burning, and when he checked, it was red raw, badly burned from a failure to control his attack. There was a sharp pain in his left arm, and the fingers on his left hand were definitely broken.

The thing he was most upset about was that his brand new suit was absolutely fucked; both his sleeves were burned away, the front of his jacket and dress shirt were mostly missing-barely holding on by the shoulders and tie. His temporary mask, a black metal oval painted white, was singed black but otherwise unharmed.

Aiden dragged himself up out of the tunnel, floating upwards until he cleared the opening and got a full view of his surroundings. White lines of ice crisscrossed the plant’s main body, and massive chunks were missing all over it, from Byrna and Enkidu, respectively.

Despite missing almost half of its total mass, the plant was still attacking.

Byrna’s Ki-Signature was retreating from the plant, seemingly trying to circle around to where he was. Enkidu was almost directly opposite him, on the other side, jaunting left and right around the attacking limbs with seeming ease.

Was it the Joker who was controlling this thing or Poison Ivy? Aiden couldn’t remember, but fuck whoever it was-they were absolutely dunking on him.

“Aiden!” Byrna shouted as she zipped underneath one of the reaching tendrils and spun, sliding to a stop as the wheels in her boots locked up, sending sparks scattering everywhere. “Holy crap, I thought you were dead-you look almost dead actually, not going to lie.”

Aiden wiped the blood out of his eye again as it dripped down from his hair.

“Thanks,” Aiden grunted, studying the plant. “I’m going to try and get it into the air.”

“Are you going to hit it with that light again?” Byrna asked quickly, “What the hell was that? I felt the heat from over there!”

Byrna pointed over to where she had come from.

“Energy attack,” Aiden mumbled, “Byrna, cover me for a minute; I’m going to lift it up.”

“Got it!” Byrna said excitedly.

Aiden took a couple of stumbling steps forward before giving up on that entirely and just lifting off the ground. He waited until most of the limbs had been sent out after Enkidu and then poured on the speed, slamming into where the bottom of the creature touched the road with a crack. The plant skidded forward, and he ended up buried meters inside the disgusting thing. A thin tendril immediately followed him in, only to fall to the ground, cut in half by a line of ice.

He jammed his hands upwards, as deep as he could get them, and then surged up as best he could immediately he sunk further into it before the plant’s tissue finally held up against the force, and with a grunt of effort, he forced the entire thing off the ground.

Once it had lost its grip on the buildings, it became easier to lift until finally, he was high enough that nothing was going to be destroyed as collateral.

Aiden starting forcing as much of his remaining energy into his hands as he could; once it reached almost all of what he had left, he expelled it in the same reckless way he had earlier, and once again, the energy simple escaped as a wave of flashing light and heat.

The skin on his hands burned, and he let out a scream of pain as the plant withered, burned, and disintegrated around him. He held it for as long as he could, and once the plant had finally been rendered down to ash, he let the attack fail.

Aiden panted in the air, unable to focus on anything other than the white-hot pain overtaking him; he failed to hold onto his flight and started to fall. He barely had the presence of mind to use the last of his Ki to protect himself, and he hit the roof of a building with a crack.

“Fuck.” Aiden said quietly, staring up at the empty sky, unwilling to move.

Hospital, Boston, 12:23 PM.

October 2nd, 2010.

“The heroes of the hour, Enkidu, Snowflake, and Bubbles, have managed to vanquish the massive plant that attacked Boston, one of many attacks around the world. Although much of Boston CBD was destroyed, it could have been much, much worse had they not acted when they did.”

“Free publicity, baby,” Aiden said, smirking.

The injustice league had been dealt with, thanks to Conner and his team, along with assistance from the Justice League. The plants had all been defeated, and the situation had come to a close.

“It’s not really free if you’re half dead when you get it,” Byrna said curiously.

Hmm, she was onto something there.

“Paying with my body is better than hurting my wallet,” Aiden said lamely before wincing at the phrasing.

“Paying with your body, huh?” Byrna smirked. “I thought you were a bodyguard, not an escort.”

“Hilarious,” Aiden mumbled before pouting. “How long do I have to stay here, anyway? This sucks.”

“Maybe next time you should try not setting yourself on fire.” Byrna laughed, “I’ll go find a nurse, don’t go anywhere, okay?”

Aiden sighed at the teasing remark.

It had been an international event, a lot of people had been hurt during the attack, and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage was done to the cities infrastructure. There was a mental discrepancy between events that seemed like they weren’t very important in a cartoon and the effect they actually had on society when transferred into a real, living world.

Once again, he cursed the fact that he hadn’t paid more attention to the show; he should have remembered this plant nonsense; it hadn’t been a more than an episode or two, he thought, but it wasn’t the small event that his faded memory had tricked him into believing.

It got him thinking about all the things he did remember-like that magical-horror kid who split the world into two sections or something. When had that happened? He would have noticed it had occurred already, so that was likely looming in the future somewhere.

That had been solved by the heroes though, he shouldn’t need to get involved in that-No. This was exactly what he’d just been thinking, small things from the cartoon that, when transferred to real-life, had a substantial effect.

People had most likely died during that attack; any adult that was driving with children in the car would have disappeared, leaving the car to crash. Plane pilots had vanished, police officers, and what if someone had been performing surgery or something?

There wasn’t a real solution to that one either; it’s not like he knew where the ritual was taking place; he couldn’t even remember the kid’s name. Could he send someone a message about it? Tell Dinah during his next appointment that he’d heard a rumor about some crazy evil magic kid was going to split the world in two?

No, he missed his appointment again; that was yesterday during the clusterfuck that was the plant attack. Then again, she hadn’t called him or appeared either, no doubt working with the other heroes in an attempt to stop it.

There was the invasion of aliens as well that killed all of the Justice League. Aiden frowned; they’d been back afterward somehow-no wait, that had been some kind of telepathic scenario gone wrong, that hadn’t actually happened.

There was some dude with a magical sword? Even straining himself, he couldn’t recall much else of note, surely there had been other things of importance. Something about a desert and a mind reader? Oh! That would be that Bilayan stuff that was all over the news.

Aiden was pretty sure it didn’t have any backlash over here, though.

He still couldn’t remember what the shadowy group actually did in the show; there were a lot of scenes where they complained about their plans being foiled by the team of mini-leaguers, but what had they actually done? Kid flash had fought one of them, hadn’t he? While delivering a heart-to Boston-or from Boston, actually, he couldn’t remember other than it had been snowing?

He could hear voices outside the door, so he put it out of his mind for the moment.

Hospital, Boston, 4:30 PM.

October 2nd, 2010.

“Conner, good work stopping the bad guys,” Aiden said calmly when the boy had picked up.

“Aiden?” Conner said curiously. “Why are you calling now?”

“A very important reason, which I’m going to need your help with,” Aiden said evenly, “Hear me out?”

“Okay,” Conner said simply.

“I have just received some very sensitive information,” Aiden said seriously, “I know with one-hundred-percent certainty that it is going to happen, although I’m not sure when exactly it happens, the next couple of months most likely.”

Conner remained completely silent on the other side of the phone, so he continued.

“Okay, there’s an evil magical horror kid,” Aiden winced at his own terrible description, “He has something to do with chaos or something; he knows a magical helmet guy.”

Aiden was starting to cringe as his terrible explanation grew worse by the second.

“Doctor Fate?” Conner said firmly.

Aiden blinked-had that stuff already happened then? That meant that the original helmet guy-Doctor Fate-guy was dead then.

“Oh, thank god, you know who I’m talking about then?” Aiden said, relieved. “What’s the evil kid’s name?”

“Klarion,” Conner said easily.

“Yes! That guy, Klarion,” Aiden said, pleased, “Klarion plans on recruiting a bunch of crazy magic guys, and then cast this stupid spell that will split all the adults into one world, and all of the children into another-it will result in a huge amount of deaths, so I need you to pass the information onto Batman, or maybe Wonder Woman.”

“I can do that,” Conner said hesitantly, “How do you know this?”

“Sorry,” Aiden said apologetically, “I’m unable to reveal that; I wish I could tell you, though.”

There was a beat of silence.

“I managed to lift off the ground today,” Conner admitted, out of nowhere. “It was only for a fraction a second before I ran out of energy.”

“Congratulations,” Aiden said honestly, “You’re a fast learner, or you’re practicing a lot; both are things to be proud of-it doesn’t matter which honestly. How did it feel?”

There was another pause before he responded.

“It felt good,” Conner admitted. “I’ll make sure to keep practicing; thank you for the information.”

“No worries,” Aiden smiled, “See you next time.”

Aiden scrunched his face up as Conner once again hung up on him without saying goodbye.

“Come on, man,” Aiden sighed, annoyed. “Have some basic human decency, uh wait, Kryptonian decency? No! Half-human-half-Kryptonian-Fuck! What if it’s half-genomorph-”