[ EPISODE 6: INFILTRATOR ]

GASTON — A climbing technique where the fingers face inward, like you're trying to pry open elevator doors from the middle, a move that requires complete engagement of the chest and shoulder power.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER HER FIRST MISSION, JJ woke up the next day sore all over. She couldn't be certain if it was because she'd exerted herself far too much or the shocking strain on her body from using her abilities to that extent that her muscles hadn't been accustomed to, but it didn't feel like the familiar ache post-climbing session, or the hellfire eating at her after a day's worth of combat training with Dinah. When she got out of bed that morning, her calf muscles seized up and JJ knew she should've stretched more before going to sleep. Irritation kept her trapped in a foul mood, and the mental admonishment felt harsher than the excruciating cramps she'd experienced and the fatigue that filled her bones with cement and made every action feel thousandfold heavier than they should have.

For fuck's sake, she was an athlete, and she should've been at the top of her game. If she hadn't been so lazy when she'd gotten home, hadn't been too exhausted to fight Olivia forcing her to have a slice of sugar-infected cake that made her feel slightly sick afterwards, she would've taken more care to roll out the tension in her muscles.

That day, she was supposed to attend a climbing session in the afternoon to make up for the one she'd missed for the mission, but Olivia had demanded JJ stay home to rest, preventing potential injury. If JJ hadn't seen reason, she might've actually fought Olivia off. And so she'd stayed home, miserable and bored and in a foul mood that engulfed her like a storm cloud festering broken glass, cutting anyone who tried to get too close. She spent the entire afternoon putting herself through torturous stretching exercises she'd found on the internet to recover quicker.

Pain was temporary, and when she pushed herself a little too hard, JJ refused to relent and go back to bed. If she stayed catatonic, it'd only get worse. So she broke it down to the basic mechanisms: pain was caused by microscopic damage to the muscle fibres. Delayed onset muscle soreness could occur after starting a new exercise programme or an increase in intensity or duration of a regular work out. The soreness was only part of an adaptation process leading to greater stamina and strength once the muscles recovered and rebuilt. Tissue damage was all part of the necessary process.

An hour later, Olivia kicked her back into bed and buried her in ice packs and pain killers. When she offered a massage, JJ only glowered at her under the pile of ice packs and blankets until Olivia threw her hands up in mock surrender and left.

Three days of resting, smothered by Olivia's maternal fussing, and JJ finally grew sick of wallowing. She was fine. She'd stopped aching after two days, and by the afternoon of the third, she'd already changed into her sportswear, hitched her backpack of climbing gear to her shoulder. Plugging in her earbuds and cranking her music to a volume that drowned everything out, JJ squared her shoulders and darted for the front door, determined to get there before Olivia could stop her. As she laced her shoes up at the door as soundlessly as she could, JJ was beginning to think that she would make a decent stealth agent after all. Unfortunately, one of Olivia's arms caught JJ on the way out, one foot out the door. JJ only shook her off, cut her a hard glare, and said, "I'm fine."

"The hell you are," Olivia said with narrowed eyes and a reproachful curl of her lips. She crossed all four pairs of arms, and JJ noted the icing stains on her bedazzled Kiss The Baker apron Dinah had gifted her last Christmas (which was gaudy and an eyesore, but Olivia still wore with unabashed pride). The smell of sugar perfumed the house, practically glistering in the summer air now that the heatwaves were starting to seep in through the open windows. Having planted herself between JJ and the front door, now thrown shut like dungeon gates, JJ half-expected Olivia to use brute force and all eight arms to wrestle her back into her room for another day's worth of rest.

"I said I'm fine," JJ snapped, winding the cord of one of her earbuds around her index finger. "Look, I've already missed too many climbing sessions—"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, it's not going to kill you to miss a few," Olivia groaned, throwing JJ a pointed look. "You just got back from a mission—your first one, might I add—that you definitely over-exerted yourself on. Say I believe you. You may not be hurting now, but there's no way your body will appreciate being put through more rigorous physical activity. Because what will kill you is overworking yourself, and there's really no shame in just relaxing, you little psycho. You need to take it easy, okay?"

JJ slanted Olivia a flinty look. Olivia didn't know what she was talking about. If she missed a few sessions, she'd fall behind. Competition season was coming up, and if she slacked now, it'd cost her. And if she wasn't giving her best, then...

Then she would be nothing.

"Let me go, Liv," JJ said, low as a menace, a thread of steel sharpening her voice into a threat. "Or I swear to God, I'll jump out the window."

Olivia flinched so hard she hit the door with a thud, the wood shuddering on its hinges. When she turned to face JJ, her half-patronising, half-endeared expression had lost its lustre, hardened into these sharp lines of barely restrained anger lashed together with a trembling lip and a flare of her nostrils. The thing about Olivia was that she never hid anything. Everything she did, everything she felt was strung up on the outside for decoration, and, like a mosaic, Olivia's features cracked apart, and the pain leaked out through the gaps in her countenance. Chest heaving, Olivia clenched her quaking hands into tight fists at her sides, knuckles blanching.

"Don't you dare say that to me again," Olivia seethed, and the deceptive calm in her tone was deafening.

Between them, the air froze, and all the oxygen seemed to be sucked right out the window. In the vacuum that JJ's words had created lapsed a silence that pounded against the walls of the apartment, a silence pregnant with the ugliness of a thing that couldn't be taken back, and JJ could see it reflected in Olivia's fierce glare, the sheen of tears threatening to fall. Like a playback of the past, JJ could see the whole thing reeling in Olivia's head. A ghost that never stopped haunting them.

Guilt was a slow poison in JJ's gut, slowly stealing its way through her veins, twisting her gut. Even though Olivia knew that JJ's abilities wouldn't let her die, and she'd easily survive a fall from a thousand feet up, this knowledge was relatively new. Three years ago, none of them had been aware of it, and JJ had only been acutely mortal, and the memory had left a gash that kept bleeding out. JJ never talked about it. Never once brought it up even when Olivia had tried to force her into seeking help. Over time, Olivia had learnt to back off, and the wound eventually scarred over into peacetime where they were no longer precariously treading on eggshells around each other.

She'd crossed the line and opened it back up, and she could smell the blood.

"You—" Olivia swallowed, swiping the back of her hand across her eyes— "You don't get to say that to me. You understand? You cannot do this to me again. I won't... I won't allow it."

Clenching her jaw, JJ cast her gaze away, unable to stand looking at Olivia this way. All that scar tissue and broken trust bleeding into the floorboards.

"Julien—"

"You're not Mom," JJ said, in a tone icy enough to freeze empires, and though the words were her own, she couldn't reconcile the sounds with her own mouth, couldn't stop them slipping out into the open. "Stop trying to be her, I don't need you to, I'm not ten anymore. I'm fine. Whether or not you believe me is not my problem."

Hurt flickered over Olivia's face. A thousand emotions chased themselves across her expression, despair, fear and anger being the main ones that JJ distinguished from the tempest raging inside Olivia's head, not one brewing out of rage, or the urge to strike JJ, but out of indecision; what to feel, and where to direct it all, and so Olivia couldn't look at JJ, or she was looking right through her, JJ couldn't tell. Like a catatonic statue of a former being, Olivia's eyes were empty, and she was barely breathing. JJ detected only a sadness within—paralysing, overwhelming, immobilising sadness—and it ran through her like a river that'd frozen up and died and nobody lived there anymore. The worst thing wasn't even that she couldn't take the words back, or that she'd meant it; it was that she'd been wanting to say them for a long while, but never mustered the gall to until she snapped. Thing was, it wasn't Olivia's fault either. After their parents died, Olivia was the one who had to pick up the slack, had to step into the role of the head of the house, and she'd had to do it all alone. Toeing the line between parent and elder sibling was a difficult task, and JJ understood that. But that didn't mean it wasn't frustrating.

She knew she should apologise, but the right words were stuck in her throat and all the wrong ones were laid out in the space between them, a division drawn in the sand by the flesh wounds inflicted by her.

And so, as with everything, JJ kept her mouth shut. Instead, she only shouldered past Olivia, who didn't stop her when she wrenched the door open, didn't dare to, because JJ never wasted time on making empty promises and for fear that she'd have to live through it again. Picking at a frayed seam on the fabric of the finger tape wound around a half-healed blister, JJ cast her gaze forward and put her earbud back in, drowning out every invasive thought threatening to permeate the equilibrium of her focus.

Only when JJ had shut the door gently behind her did Olivia let out the trembling breath she'd been holding in as the tears dripped down her face.

But the question that followed JJ all the way to the bus stop never stopped scratching at the back of her skull, like a prisoner desperate to claw their way out of their cell, kept echoing down the tunnel she'd made out of her one-track mind: Did you mean it?

Did you?

✷

ARMS BURNING, JJ strained every muscle in her body as she locked herself into the hold on the incline, a sloper that threatened to sand down the skin on her fingers. Sweat beaded her temples, plastering her hair to her forehead. With nimble fingers, JJ made quick work of clipping in the rope attached to her harness into the quickdraw bolted to the wall before repositioning herself. JJ didn't look down, not because she was afraid—she was only halfway through the 15 meter lead-climbing wall—but because there was only one goal in mind. The top. In a burst of energy, JJ rocked up and lunged for the next set of holds.

Latching onto it, JJ let out a sharp hiss as the lower half of her body swung out from the momentum, and her hands threatened to slip, but she held fast to the handholds, a set of features protruding at sharp angles from the wall, pushing as hard as her shoulders could take. Metal clattered as the quickdraws she'd already clipped the rope into rattled on their hinges, snapping against the wall. Every move was calculated; she'd studied the wall with her teammates and planned her route before starting off, and JJ had enough years of experience on her to know what this particular route demanded from her. This was what she needed, a stark contrast to how she'd felt a few days prior, on the mission that she could barely find her footing in. Pulling into the gaston, JJ swiftly secured her footholds before pulling the rope from below, clamping the rope between her teeth, and clipping into the quickdraw again.

Below, her teammates watched as she ascended the wall, sat on the benches waiting their turn at the next available lead climbing wall. Today, Coach was pushing for lead training, which meant that the climbing team was going to have a rough evening.

After her parents died, JJ rooted herself in the grime and the burn, the blood and the strain. Olivia called it JJ's coping crutch, a necessary distraction, but JJ never felt distracted, and she didn't need to cope. In fact, she'd never felt more present as she did now, hanging in the balance with the rock wall art her palms, as though a camera lens had finally shifted into focus and the world around her pulled into view with a jarring clarity. Life was complicated, full of grey areas and emotions that hindered more than served, and there was the case of intolerable people. Climbing lassoed life and lashed it into clean, tidy lines that simplified the messy world around her. In the sport, there were goals and structure and precision. Everything else fell into place around it, and JJ's eyes were wolf-sharp and her head never clearer.

Olivia was wrong.

Pain shaped every warrior, but it was death that took the blindfolds off.

JJ was fine. And she would continue to be fine, even if Olivia thought otherwise.

When she made it to the top, she let out an explosive exhale as she clipped into the final anchor, and signalled for the belayer to let her come down. As she descended, JJ shook out her arms. Off to the side, Coach nodded in approval, and scribbled something onto the clipboard perpetually suctioned to her arms. The moment her feet touched the ground, JJ unclipped her harness, ignored the pressing stares from her teammates, who couldn't quite place their appreciation of her technique and raw athletic power with their inherent dislike for her as a person.

"Jones," Coach called, waving her over, phone clamped between her shoulder and her ear. "Come over here for a sec."

"Coach's favourite, as always," Georgie, one of the girls still awaiting her turn at the lead wall, sighed to her friends just as JJ passed her.

A lick of irritation blazed through JJ's chest, but she held her head high and refused to give into the impulse to double back and kick Georgie in the head like she really wished she could. Now that she'd trained with Dinah for an extended amount of time, she knew how to make it hurt. It was only a small, seemingly harmless remark that didn't hold much persuasion when presented in front of a jury, considering it was all factual, but the tone in which Georgie had said it implied something more poisonous. As if by being the top climber among their ranks, she was somehow their enemy. Beneath the veneer was all emptiness; no drive or dedication. All these girls and their bark with no teeth to bite, so they lashed at her in the only way they knew how. It was no better with the boys on the team, who pretended she simply didn't exist.

Fiddling with the drawstring on her chalk bag, JJ shot Coach a questioning look as she approached, managing to catch the tail end of her conversation.

"—alright, I'll let her know."

Coach took the phone off her ear, disconnected the call, and pocketed it.

"Your sister wants to pull you out of training now, says there's some really important matter you need to attend to," Coach said, and fixed JJ with a raise of her brows. Manifestly, she wasn't too content with the sudden call. Truthfully, neither was JJ.

JJ frowned. If Olivia was pulling her out of training, it could only mean League business that required effort from the Team, which extended to needing JJ's efforts as a part of said team. Regardless, Olivia had promised JJ when it all began that this wouldn't interfere with training. Cutting into the back end of the last hour of her session was considered interference, and JJ didn't know if she was paying for what she'd said earlier today or if it was truly an emergency that couldn't wait another half an hour.

"She says she's coming to pick you up in five minutes," Coach continued. "Look, I'm all about don't-ask-don't-tell, but you've already shaved your training down from five times a week to four, so if it's going to be a problem in the future—"

"It won't," JJ said, pinning Coach with a hard stare.

Moments later, JJ had changed out of her climbing gear, showered and pulled on an extra set of clothes she'd kept in her locker in case of emergencies like these. A pair of combat boots that Dinah had gifted her (of which she was certain were military-grade since they melded to the shape of her feet comfortably and sensibly), and a navy blue shirt tucked into a pair of black cargo pants. When the Zeta tubes beamed her right into the high-tech cavern of Mount Justice, announcing her arrival—"Recognised, JJ, B09"—JJ nearly tripped over a boy with bright red hair, who was splayed out on the ground in board shorts, flip-flops and a white smudge of sunscreen smeared over the bridge of his nose, as if he'd fallen over just seconds before she'd arrived. A pair of sunglasses sat askew atop his forehead, and his expression was what Olivia would've described as dumbfounded as the others—including a couple members of the JLA—looked on in a myriad of expressions ranging from mild amusement, to hands clasped over mouths, holding back laughter, to secondhand embarrassment.

Only one person in the room was unfamiliar to JJ. A girl with blonde hair and a green suit, a quiver slung around her shoulders, much like Green Arrow's, stood with her arms akimbo, the line of her lips tugged into visible bemusement as she regarded the disastrous display of unprofessionalism.

"Care to fill me in?" JJ asked, lifting a brow as she surveyed the ground, littered with beach items. A vibrant blow-up volleyball rolling around at Batman's feet caught her eye. "You know what? Nevermind. I don't want to know. I cut my climbing session short for this. It better be good."

"You missed beach day," Robin said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Right, JJ thought. Beach Day. Three days ago, M'gann had sent her an invite—meaning, she'd passed on the message to Dinah, who'd relayed the offer to JJ, who'd declined in favour of training. Since school started in just a few days, JJ's time was limited. She'd turn up for team missions, but anything outside of that was off her list of things in periphery.

Everyone else was decked out in their super-gear. All except for the boy at JJ's feet.

"So did I!" He exclaimed, looking fairly miserable.

"KF?" JJ guessed, caught off-guard by the lack of his mask. In truth, JJ still didn't know much about the identities of her teammates, and so she went by process of elimination. It was the red hair that'd singled the boy out. She didn't know how real name, though. Just his alias. She didn't even know Robin's real name—or even the real colour of his eyes, since he never took off the mask or the sunglasses whenever they were together.

"That's me," Kid Flash groaned, and scrambled to his feet.

"I thought you said you were Wall-man," the blonde girl mused, smirking.

Kid Flash slanted her an incendiary glare, but the girl only flicked her gaze over to JJ.

A corner of her lip pulled into a derisive downward tick as JJ stepped over a lawn chair and a bag of sandwiches to stand by Robin. "And you are?"

"Artemis. Your new teammate."

"JJ."

"Kid Flash." The ginger boy, whose freckles JJ couldn't stop noticing, made him appear younger, someone JJ didn't quite expect beneath the mask. "Never heard of you."

"Um," Green Arrow said, stepping forward, placing his hands on Artemis' shoulders, as if to declare the relationship, "she's my new protégé."

"What happened to your old one?" Kid Flash asked, devastated.

"Explanation," JJ said, voice low so only Robin and Kaldur could hear. "Now."

"Recognised: Speedy, B06." The automated voice of the Zeta tubes announced, and in a flash of light, a lean figure cut by angles stepped into the cave. A man with ginger hair and a red suit that exposed his muscular arms regarded the group of heroes and sidekicks with mild contempt. Strapped to his back was a quiver of red feathered arrows and a sleek red bow. Behind the domino mask, JJ could only imagine the tension in his gaze. She felt his anger radiating off his shoulders, felt the dark cloud of bitterness slice through the air.

"Well, for starters, he doesn't go by Speedy anymore," he said, his tone acridly dry. "Call me Red Arrow."

"Roy," Green Arrow started, shock tugging at his features. "You look—"

"Replaceable," Red Arrow—or, Roy—gritted out scathingly.

"It's not like that," Green Arrow said, "you told me you were going solo."

"So," Robin started, resting his elbow on JJ's shoulder. "That guy over there was Green Arrow's sidekick. He's the one we call Speedy, but I guess he's got a new alias now. When we first started this gig, he kind of stormed off after we found out we weren't actually going to be part of the League and emancipated himself from Green Arrow's sideshow."

"So he's his own hero now," JJ said, finally putting the picture together. She could understand the contention between the two archers better with this piece of context, she supposed.

"So why waste time finding a sub?" Red Arrow snapped, lips pulled back in a snarl. "Can she even use that bow?"

"That's rude," JJ muttered, and immediately had a growing pit of unease knotting her stomach, because those words and that condescending tone sounded dangerously familiar to her. She'd definitely said that to someone on her climbing team before about a piece of equipment.

"Yes, she can," Artemis said, stepping into the challenge, shoulders squared as if ready to throw down with Red Arrow. JJ could respect that.

"Who are you?" Kid Flash exclaimed, scowling.

"I'm his niece," Artemis said, at the same time Green Arrow declared, "she's my niece."

"Another niece?" Robin mused.

"But she is not your replacement," Kaldur said, in reassurance, "we have always wanted you on the team, and we have no quota on archers."

"And if we did, you know who we'd pick," Kid Flash said.

"Whatever, Baywatch," Artemis said, rolling her eyes, "I'm here to stay."

"You came to us for a reason." Kaldur's eyes were assessing, his expression solemn.

"Yeah," Red Arrow said, "A reason named Dr. Serling Roquette."

Robin seemed to perk up then, and he lifted his arm, projecting a hologram screen pulling pieces of digital information about the subject with a few taps on the projected keyboard. "Nanorobotics genius and claytronics expert at Royal University in Star City—" the hologram expanded, projecting to the rest of the audience gathered at the floor, showing diagnostics and headlines, and a picture of Roquette— "vanished two weeks ago."

"Abducted two weeks ago by the League of Shadows."

At Red Arrow's interjection, JJ's spine went ramrod straight. Before her death, before she'd joined the JLA, before she'd even had JJ, her mother, the hero everyone once hailed as Alley Cat, was an active member of the League of Shadows. Her corrupted past wasn't something she liked to talk about, even less to her youngest daughter, who'd been curious enough to dig up articles on her mother and her involvement in the shadow business.

"The League—" Robin began to explain, taking JJ's stony silence as a sign that she was still struggling to piece it all together.

"I know who they are," JJ said in a voice like hard ice. Ignoring Robin's curious stare, the analytical scrutiny he swept her with, JJ flexed her aching fingers, running her thumbs over the worn skin and the fabric tape looped around her blisters. JJ hadn't been part of this world long enough to know most of the superheroes by name, and she was practically an outsider to the dynamics between them. But she wasn't that out of the loop. When she'd been growing up, the Shadows had been lurking at every corner of her life. Everywhere she turned, she'd always felt as if someone was watching her. The only reprieve she'd gotten was when her mother had died in the explosion. But what was that reprieve when it came with a downward spiral of everything else come crashing down on her?

"You want us to rescue her from the Shadows?" Robin exclaimed, and JJ could hear the excitement humming in his tone. Despite his composure, JJ could see the cogs turning, the anticipation shuddering his bones apart as he, along with the rest of the team, stepped closer to Roy.

"Hardcore," Kid Flash said, grinning as he knocked his fist against Robin's.

"I already rescued her." Roy strode towards the projected screens displaying the information on Roquette, procured out a device, and projected his own hologram screen. "Only one problem. The shadows had already coerced her into creating a weapon. Doc calls it the fog." On-screen, a panel of devices appeared, and JJ's lip twisted at the animated projection of the robotic tic-looking bug that scuttled its spindly legs. "Comprised of millions of microscopic robots. Nanotech infiltrators capable of disintegrating anything in their path—concrete, steel, flesh, bone. But its true purpose isn't mere destruction. It's theft. The infiltrators eat and store raw data from any computer system and deliver the stolen intel to the Shadows, providing them access to weapons, strategic defense, cutting-edge science and tech."

"Perfect for extortion, manipulation, power broking," Artemis remarked, glancing skyward in thought. "Yeah, sounds like the Shadows."

Beside JJ, Kid Flash bristled, sneering. "Like you know anything about the Shadows."

Artemis merely turned towards him and flashed him a surreptitious smirk.

Kid Flash's false bravado blinkered. "Who are you?!"

"Roquette's working on a virus to render the fog inert," Roy said.

"But if the Shadows know she can do that..." Robin frowned.

"They'll target her."

And they won't stop, JJ thought, jaw ticking. They'll drill holes into any defense they put before her. It's only a matter of time before they find her and eliminate her.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
haha so jj is Not a great person,,,, we been knew........

jj as random memes i saved