Was he always the youngest?
The Outsiders had been treated as kids, but they’d all been teenagers coming into their own. Six was...
Well, to be honest, he wasn’t sure. How old was he? How old wasn’t he? Did it even matter now? Was this just what he was?
He’d had all these doubts before -- all of these and more -- but Garfield had a way of distracting him from them. Convincing him, for a little while, that it didn’t matter. Selling him the idea that who he chose to be was more important than what he was.
In the killing games on Mojo’s World, none of it had mattered. There hadn’t been time to think about it. Just survive. Now, on the rooftop, the corpse-child found all his doubts creeping back.
But, they weren’t past survival mode just yet.
"Do we always lose the war?"
"United States won the war in my world, course I was still a corpse when we did. Other countries helped too."
Swallowed up by the cape that seemed to have a life of its own, moving in ways that defied either wind or physics, the small hellspawn just seemed to shrink in an indistinct form. In truth, he’d pulled his legs up, sitting cross-legged upon the air as he hugged himself with his arms like a child huddling behind a security blanket.
He drifted away from the others. It was just more comfortable that way. But, though he tried to hide it, the conversation over the tins of spam was actually... nice. It was almost normal.
Six didn’t know anything about either of the two men -- Steve or Hex. So when Hex made reference to having been a corpse, the child immediately snapped his head up.
Had the man come back from being dead?
As the two men conversed, the boy drifted a little closer. Yes, he definitely said it. Hex had been dead, but now he wasn’t. He was alive. To Six, the man felt like the rest. Alive. The hellspawn had questions that immediately flooded his mind, but how to ask them?
Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m dead. And I made a deal with the devil. Or, a devil. Maybe. I don’t really remember, but I’m told that I did. Could what brought you back to life work for me? Asking for a friend.
Yeah... that wasn’t likely to go over well. People reacted all kinds of ways to the idea of Hell being a real place. Most simply refused to believe it was real. He doubted any of them wanted some demonic wannabe as part of their merry band of...
...well, whatever this was.
Justice League Multi-Verse? Garfield and the other teens had felt like Outsiders, but this group here, they were the real Outsiders. To each other as much as the world they now inhabited.
The child seemed to stand up in mid-air, his form becoming thin and straight as the cape was pushed to one side. A hand started to reach out toward Hex as the child continued to ask with the questions that conflicted both his head and his tongue...
“I think we have another doorway coming, people…”
Saved by the Barry.
Withdrawing back into the sanctuary of his symbiote, the boy hoped that his awkward almost asked question was missed between the conversation and Barry’s announcement.
It had been a stupid question anyway. His predicament was his problem to deal with.
Gliding over toward where the Flash was holding up the device that had brought them here. A number of things were glowing, and the man didn’t seem to understand it any more than the corpse-child by the look on his face. But, Six couldn’t argue with the reason behind what the man said next.
“Unless anyone’s keen on finding this world’s Atlantis, it’s our best bet.”
“We don’t know whether these portals can be tracked or not,” Six remarked. It made sense. Major Domo must have some way of tracking whatever hounds he sent to worlds to collect specimens for the games. “I vote for staying on the move.”
The Flash started to say something, but Six didn’t hang around long enough to find out what it was. If Garfield had taught him anything, it was to bail before the adults could speak.
Well, that, and leaping before you look.
What would Garfield do?
Probably not the best question to ask, but Six really wished the green teen was with them right now. So, instead, he’d just have to settle for trying to do the best he could to keep that memory of Beast Boy alive.
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EARTH
Hollywood, California | 2019This was uncomfortable.
The green teen standing beside him in the elevator made an exaggerated flourish as the doors opened. “Welcome to the Hub, little dude!”
The cape that masked the child-corpse’s slight frame seemed to bristle. “-tt-” the boy uttered with a click of his tongue. Six had been fine by himself in the abandoned mission back in Metropolis. This was unnecessary.
With a sweep of his hand, Garfield knocked the hood from off the boy’s head. “Come on, let’s introduce you to the team.”
Bringing his hands up from under the cape, Six reached back to lift the hood back over his head. Instead, he found himself being taken by the hand and forcibly dragged along. All the while, Garfield was calling out things. Here’s the gym. Here’s the kitchen.
Six could hardly claim to be paying attention. This was just some teenage club house. The kind of pretty place where other people belonged. As soon as Garfield just let go of his hand, Six was going to be back in Metropolis before anyone even missed him.
“...and here’s your room.”
Shoved forward, the small hellspawn stumbled into the room. It was simple. A twin bed pushed up against a wall. A dresser. Some trinkets.
And...a large poster of Space Trek 3016 on the wall?
But, what resonated with the boy was the notion of where they were. Turning his head so that he was looking back at the taller teen, the boy seemed to grapple a moment with the question. Unconsciously, he’d grabbed the sides of his cape and was fidgeting with it, before he finally voiced, “This is mine?”
Garfield just seemed to blow past the question, instead he stepped inside and commented, “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, but I tried to think about what my room at Happy Harbor looked like.”
At the quizzical expression from the child, the green teen added, “When I joined the team, I wasn’t much older than you.” Garfield gave a cheesy grin, the room lapsing into an awkward silence. Then, “Oh, here’s a Switch.” With that, the teen picked up a red and blue device, pressing into the hellspawn’s hands. “It’s kinda used, but I don’t really play it anymore.”
The boy turned the rectangular device over in his hands as he examined it. Buttons. Screen. But, what was its function? Finally, he looked up to ask, “What’s it for?”
“Playing video games!”
The corpse-child just gave a tilt of his head. Now, he had only more questions.
“You know what video games are,” Garfield uttered casually. Then caught the look on the boy’s face and grew more serious as he asked, “Right?”
More awkward silence.
“Okay, vdeo game lessons later,” Garfield stated, taking the Switch from out of the boy’s hands and setting it back on the dresser. Pulling open a drawer, he revealed some folded shirts. The one on top was black with a red S shield. “We gathered up some clothes for you. They’re some hand me downs, but we didn’t know your size.”
The boy didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. Crossing them, he grabbed hold of the sides of his cape and seemed to fidget side to side as he wrestled with how to respond. “I...” the boy began, simultaneously humbled and embarrassed at the situation he found himself in. Finally, he admitted, “I can’t exactly take this off.”
“I might be able to help with that.”
Six had been so caught up in what Garfield had shown him, he hadn’t even been aware that there was someone in the doorway. A tanned looking teen. He didn’t look familiar, but the child hesitated, as he felt as though he ought to know who that was.
As though picking up on the dilemma, Garfield moved up next to the other teen. “You’ve met Blue Beetle,” the teen uttered, giving a flourish as he added, “Well, this is Jaime.”
Jaime took a step froward, dropping down to a knee so that he was on Six’s eye level. “I have a symbiote,” the teen remarked, prompted a surprise reaction from the hellspawn. “It’s not exactly the same, but maybe the scarab and I can share some tips to help you manage with yours.”
“How old are you, Six?”
A third person popped into the doorway, though now Six was aware that there were several teens starting to congregate.
“That’s Halo,” Garfield supplied, before adding. “You haven’t met her yet.”
“Uh,” the corpse-child stammered, unaccustomed to talking about himself. Or having people ask about him, for that matter. “I’m ten,” he said finally. Then, he paused, and seemed to walk it back. “I... was ten, I mean.”
What did that even mean? Shrinking back away from Jaime, the boy seemed to withdraw back inside of his cape as he glanced down to the floor. “I... You wouldn’t understand.”
A hand landed on his shoulder. Glancing up, the hellspawn found himself looking up into the eyes of the girl. “You died.” It hadn’t been a question. “So did I. I was fifteen, just a few years older.”
The hood and the domino mask seemed to melt away. The cape retracted so that the slender figure of the chain wrapped boy was clearly visible. His mouth hung open for a moment, glancing from Halo, to Jaime, to Garfield, and then back up at the girl as he felt, for a moment, like he was understood. “Really?”
A hand landed on his other shoulder, as Garfield offered, “You’re not as alone as you think you are, brah.”
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DESTINATION UNKNOWN
Present Day (?)How long had the jump been?
An instant? Somewhere between there and here, Six’s mind had wandered back to the Hub. A sharp pang bit deeply into the core and fiber of his being, as though some part of him had been lost.
He missed them.
It was a strange feeling. One that the boy tried to shake off.
It was a distraction. He needed to focus on now. As the others began to emerge from out of the portal, the hellspawn hovered up from the ground, the cape swirling about his small form, as the corpse-child took stock of the situation.
For one, there was the alarm. For them? Or something else?
Bare concrete walls. Reinforced? “We’re in a bunker of some kind,” the boy noted. Bare pipes and compartment markings. Very military.
Thin colored lines decorated the floor, snaking off in different directions. It seemed they were in some kind of hallway, which arrived a dead-end split off to either side. A T-junction. Some colors went left, some went right.
The lights were dim. Emergency lighting?
The Martian piped up from behind him. "It is strange. I can sense the presence of other lifeforms. Their minds surround us, dozens within these walls, but not a soul to be seen."
“Yet,” the child amended ominously. Still, he’d take it as a blessing. For now.
Risking it, the boy closed his eyes and tried to meditate on the darkness. There was something. Not malevolent -- or, not malicious at least -- but he could feel...
...death?
Not yet. But close.
“Be on your guard,” the child offered cryptically, as his eyes flashed with necroplasmic charge as he opened them. “There’s a predator here.”
Okay, so with that said. Looking at the colors on the floor, the child stared at the dead-end ahead. Left? Right?
Was there a third option? If Garfield was here, there'd be a third option. But he wasn’t. So, instead, the child turned and looked at M’Gann and then at Barry before asking, “Uh, which way?”
In the absence of teenagers, adults would have to do.
"Keep right n' keep slow.”
Steve was the one who’d spoken up, as the man seemed to step forward of the group. “Good chance we're bein' funneled into somethin' nasty, so hop behind me when the shootin' starts, kiddo, got it?"
“Right,” Six echoed, drifting in the air as the boy started down the side corridor.
Wait, he hadn’t answered about the other part. “And got it,” the boy affirmed, fumbling awkwardly with that part. It was strange stepping into a team like this.
He’d fought the Outsiders. Then he’d been helped by the Outsiders. And then he’d become an Outsider. It was complicated, but it had all just sort of happened.
He supposed this was just sort of happening, but he still didn’t know who any of these people were. Sort of. Flash seemed like Flash. And M’Gann was... well, even the M’Gann of his universe had been mysterious.
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