Harper had intended to explore the newly improved Hall of Justice before venturing out to meet the future versions of her teammates, but apparently Victor had other plans. The next day he had been waiting outside of her temporary quarters, and now more than ever she could see the years wearing on his face. Somehow he looked both younger and older than he actually was simultaneously.

"We're not supposed to be speaking to each other, you know?" Harper leaned back in her wheelchair with a sigh, but there was the slightest hint of a smile hovering over her lips.

"Yeah. I know." Victor replied in a voice strumming with a sense of maturity that had come with his age. He was in his late forties, after all. He no longer had the breathy, light tone of a young adult. "But we were never very good at following orders."

"Speak for yourself, Megatron. I did it all the time in the military." Harper teased in a way that made Victor's eye light up. "You must be a bad influence on me."

"It was the other way around, actually." Victor looked like he might smile, but it was trapped behind his facade. "I'm sorry for the way I acted. It's...difficult seeing you again after so long."

"It must be. I'm a pretty pathetic sight compared to this new and improved Harper."

"No. You're worth more than she ever could be." Victor bit back sourly. It was clear that she was joking, but he didn't find this situation amusing at all.

"You really aren't fond of her, are you? I mean, she's a bit of a bitch but she probably gets that from me. Why are you so hostile towards her?"

"She wants something from me that I can never give her." Victor didn't need to explain any further than that. Immediately, Harper knew exactly what he was referring to. Despite their own relationship, he didn't feel the same way for this new clone. "Before you died, you tried to convince me that the next clone would be exactly the same as you were. For a while, she was fairly similar, but I had no interest in a copy of the woman that I loved. I only wanted you. Not her. Not anyone else."

"You're aware that I'm a copy too, right?"

"Weren't you the one that used to say that each clone was different from one another? Life experience made you into the woman I loved, and it also made the clone after you completely psychotic. After two years she started diverging into a completely different person. She became obsessed with the acceptance of others; the general public, the Justice League, Lara...and myself. She made dangerous decisions in the pursuit of that acceptance. She made clone 2904 with that goal in mind. She altered her DNA into something else...something stronger, faster, and more intelligent than any 'Harper' that came before her. She thought this strength would gain the admiration of the people around her, and that the artificially flawless appearance might seduce me."

Harper scoffed, digging into her pocket and procuring a packet of cigarettes that she had snagged from one of the teen 'heroes' pacing around the building. She lit it and took a deep draw. "Well, I never thought I'd be attracted to myself, but she is pretty hot."

"I don't see it." Victor replied with an expression of disapproval at Harper's decision to smoke inside the Hall of Justice. He didn't say anything though. She wasn't the only one doing questionable things in that building... "She looks like the physical embodiment of photoshop."

A snort sounded from Harper, and Victor thought that he had never heard such a beautiful sound in his life. Words couldn't express how severely he'd missed her. "I suppose so. She seems pretty loyal to you though. Well, you and her daughter anyway."

"Lara isn't her daughter." Victor said with so much bitterness that the sound alone could have killed someone...you know, if that was at all possible. "She's yours."

Harper's heart stopped, and in the silence that followed Victor could almost notice the lack of rhythm.

"You found her in the aftermath of a battle. Her parents had died when she was a baby, and her new foster family had also perished in that calamity. You brought her to me with this look of...determination on your face. I knew, straight away, that there was no arguing with you." The memories rushing through his head provided Victor with enough comfort to finally force a smile to his lips. It was an unreachable moment in time, but one he would remember forever. "I just said 'okay'. You died two years later, but she's a constant reminder of the person you always tried to be. 2903 and 2904 were the only mother's she could really remember, and they used that against me every opportunity they got."

Harper noticed very quickly that Victor referred to them by their numbers, and not as 'Harper'. She was almost going to mention it when a loud 'bang' rumbled through the entire eastern wing of the building. Victor sprung straight into action. Within the few seconds it took for the roof to collapse above them, he had rushed to her side and activated a shield. This was apparently enough to protect them from the crumbling building, and when the dust had cleared they saw someone rising from the rubble. It was the alien that Harper had passed in the halls the day before. The one that looked like Starfire...

"Mar'i!" Victor snapped in outrage. "What the hell are you doing?!"

The tall woman sneered at him, hair blazing behind her like pitch black fire. She looked remarkably unscathed by the impact, and unbothered by the destruction that she had caused.

"Uhh...who is she?" Harper asked, though quite possibly at the wrong time. She didn't sound too shocked by the structure that had just collapsed around her but that could have been because, after everything that had been happening, she was still unable to process it all.

"Nightstar. Kori and Grayson's kid." The cyborg hissed as if this girl was nothing but a stain on her parents memory. She probably was, if her recent demolishing of the Hall of Justice was anything to go by.

Mar'i glanced briefly at Harper, analysing her from top to bottom, then gave an unimpressed huff. Another alien appeared within Harper's line of sight, but this one was stark white and had only the smallest bump in the centre of her face to represent a nose. It didn't take long for Harper to deduct that this girl was likely the daughter of Hal Jordan and his Bekkorian partner Vell.

"Deowma! Ru ggralt hsalfin!" The alien yelled in some weird Bekkorian dialect... There were over twenty different languages on that planet, so it was difficult to pinpoint exactly which one she was using.

"I am not a coward!" Nightstar screeched, and in a blinding flash, she had thrown a star bolt in her direction.

The pale woman dodged it with all the grace of a trained fighter. Apparently unfazed by this attack, her black, colourless eyes flickered over to Victor. She smirked. "Dufor ishdy ame Lara, Bakraf'ti."

Victor bared his teeth in fury. "Tarcis. Stay away from Lara."

'Tarcis' clearly didn't understand him but the anger in his voice transcended all language barriers. Her smirk turned into a grin, as if she enjoyed the annoyance that her presence produced within the man. It wasn't long, however, before Nightstar tackled her back out of the debris, and vanished into the sky with her.

"The fuck's goin' on around here?" Harper finally exclaimed, but Victor had already started venturing outside of the Hall of Justice ruins.

"Just get to the western wing. It'll be safe there."

Glancing around at the rubble surrounding her, Harper muttered "You sure about that?"

There was no answer. Primarily because Victor had already sprinted out of sight; towards the deafening sounds of struggle. Harper had considered complying to his request...but as the sounds of battle grew, as did her curiosity. She ventured forward, avoiding any rubble that might become caught under the wheels of her chair, until she came to the ruins of a once lively street. Buildings had been rendered to ash, and the people below scurried away with cries of terror. The cause of such mass-scale destruction were a large group of young adults, all metahuman, fighting one another without any thought to the people caught in the middle. The sight shocked Harper to the core.

For the most part, she didn't recognise any of them...apart from Jessica and Dionysus who were tossing each other into any building that still remained standing.

Dionysus moved with deliberate motions and discipline that demoted a background in military martial arts. Jess, however, relied only on brute force and speed to batter her opponent into submission. Jess lunged at Dionysus with incredible speed, but was foiled when he rolled free of harm's way.

Her path threw her straight into the ground floor of another building, sending shrapnel and glass spilling outward into the sky.

"You annoyin' lil' goddamn cockroach! Stop movin' so goddamn much!" She roared, pulling herself back into the street.

Dionysus, who still took up a trained stance, twirled his blade. "You gotta stay sharp, Juliet. Got a lot of openings for me to punch through."

Harper recognised Juliet as being in the phonetic alphabet; Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and so on, usually used in the military. It overlapped with his fighting style and combat gear. Or...it could've just been a playful Shakespearean tease.

"Oh yeah, I'm sure there are a couple o' openings I got that you'd love to punch through." Jessica hissed as her eyes lit up crimson.

Dionysus smirked, and without any delay, he jumped through the air and away from Jess' heat vision. Unfortunately for Harper, Dionysus lead her gaze straight towards a crane that was perched directly above the wheelchair-confined clone. The scorching fire sawed right through the hoist rope, and the crane started to fall.

There was no time to move. Trapped beneath the shadow of its collapsing structure, Harper's entire body seized up; as if anticipating the painful death that was to follow...but it never came. A giant mech had appeared at Harper's side and caught the crane before it could crush her.

Harper recognised the suit instantly. It was a bulky thing, heavily armoured, and intended for high-offensive output. It had a shoulder-mounted mass driver cannon that Harper had designed to penetrate dense plating. It was Atlas. A suit that had been severely damaged by Atomic Skull. At least, it had been in her own time. This version didn't look so much trashed as it was worn and rusted.

The mech tossed the crane aside and faced its back to Harper. It's casing split open, revealing that there was absolutely no one inside. That meant that someone else was controlling it from a distance via neural implant. Likely a similar one to what Harper possessed. With the battle still raging around her, Harper quickly pushed herself closer to the suit. Her wheelchair sensed the nearby mech, and guiding her into the armoured chassis, it folded itself into a protective skeletal frame that rested around her body. Once she was securely inside of the Atlas mech, the opening closed behind her.

Instinctively, Harper tried to direct the suit forward, but it refused to obey her. Instead, it turned around and dashed away from the fighting 'heroes'. "H-Hey! No! Go the other way! I have to stop this!"

Still, the mech refused to comply. She knew that yelling at the metal contraption wasn't going to change the situation, but the destruction that she had just witnessed forced it out of her anyway. This suit was clearly still being overridden by a foreign entity, and that 'entity' was steering Atlas to the western section of the Hall of Justice; aka the part which hadn't been completely obliterated yet.

The source of this mechs unusual behaviour was revealed when the suit finally came to a halt. A woman stood in front of Harper, the same one that she had seen with Victor when she had first arrived. Lara. The morning sun danced on her hair, transforming the dark brown to gold and reddish glints. The texture itself was rough and wiry; knotty locks springing from her scalp and corkscrewing all the way down her shoulders. The only thing soft about Lara was her big molasses-brown eyes.

"You saved me?" Harper asked in slight disbelief. She hadn't even spoken to this girl, and yet she owed her a heavy debt.

"Shh!" Lara suddenly said with a shaky, anxiety-ridden voice. "D-Don't say it so loud...if mom finds out I'll get in t-trouble."

The sheer lack of confidence in the girl's voice was shocking. Especially for someone that appeared so intelligent. "Why?"

"I d-don't have any powers, and she worries...she doesn't l-like me getting involved..."

"Why not just use the suit? Clearly you're capable enough to control it from afar." Harper asked with an immense dislike starting to form towards this new 'Harper's' parenting techniques.

"I c-couldn't possibly...she wouldn't like it." Lara's voice trembled and she shrunk away from Harper as if she were a lingering, sinful influence. "Look, I heard what dad said to you...and I kn-know who you are. I owe you a lot for taking me in."

"I...haven't done that yet." Harper reminded sheepishly.

"Yeah, b-but you will...or might. I mean, I hope you don't change you're mind..." Lara shivered at the thought. "This was a one time thing, as a thank you for everything you've done...or will do...or whatever. I don't really remember you, but it's important that you live for long enough to save me in the past... D-Does that make sense?"

For a woman with such sharp features, and such toughness carried in her shoulders, Lara truly acted as if every single word was a struggle. Her personality didn't seem to fit her appearance...almost as if something had pulled her away from her own true nature.

"Yeah. That makes sense." Harper nodded, and the suit copied her. She didn't have time to ponder why this girl was so nervous. Her main priority was the travesty happening outside. "Can you tell me why all those supers are fighting?"

Lara's gaze wavered and she bit her lip with a shrug. "It's just...what they do."

"But why?" Harper pressed. There had to be a reason. Anything.

"Th-There's no more villains 'cause there's so many superheroes now, you know? S-So I guess they just got bored." Lara didn't sound too assured of her own answer. "I don't really know. I only talk to one of them, and she does it for...fun. I don't know about the rest of them. I really don't."

"It's alright" Harper sighed at the panic that had started to rise in Lara's tone. "Thanks for saving me."

Though Harper had changed the subject very quickly, this by no means meant that the conversation was over. She would figure this out one way or another, from Lara or Victor or J'onn, and when she did Harper was going to fix it before her departure. She couldn't keep the world like this; divided between superheroes and ruined by their own protectors. There had to be some way to stop all this recklessness...or a method to teach this new generation of supers about the responsibility they carry.