Outside the helicopter landed, and a heavily muscled blond man stepped out; he wore body armor, and his face was concealed by a gray hockey mask. He ignored the rows of cultists that greeted him, instead making his way to Kobra himself.
"Lord Kobra." The man said, nodding his head in greeting.
"Sportsmaster." Kobra said. "The shipment is ready."
Shimmer walked up holding a small briefcase in hand, inside was eight viles of a blue liquid.
"The new Kobra Venom?" Sportsmaster asked picking one out and examining it.
"A complete success." The cult leader said waving to his twelve foot tall massive subordinate known only as Mammoth. "Our mutual friends will not be disappointed."
Sportsmaster nodded. "This is a game changer. Finally, we can go mano-a-mano with the Justice League!"
Meanwhile, Megan was busy relaying everything we were seeing and hearing back to the team.
"Sportsmaster's the buyer?" asked Aqualad through the link "We need to contact the league. "
"We can't they are jamming our communications system. We are on our own. We have to stop them, we can't let them leave with the serum." Robin said.
"Then we need a plan fast! Because I don't like the idea of the bad guys getting their hands an serum the can mass produce an army as tough as Mammoth. " Kid Flash said looking over to Superboy and Aqualad to help think of a strategy.
" Alright listen up. Aqualad, Superboy and Me are going to create a distraction while Megan stays invisible and disables the helicopters. Robin, I want you to take down the jammers and contact the league as quickly as possible. Megan after you're finished back us up and Kid Flash I want you to run interference on the armed goons. " I rattled off.
With that said I decided to start us off, I disabled my invisibility but stayed hidden since I didn't want them being wary of invisible enemies, not until Miss Martian was able to sabotage the helicopters.
I jumped landing on one of the cultists and punching another. Gunfire soon went off, alerting the cultists, as well as the villains outside.
Since our cover was deliberately blown. Each of us went to engage their chosen target. Mammoth and Superboy were engaged into hand to hand. Though it looked more like a slug fest. But they did appear to be evenly matched.
The cultists ignored the two berserk fighters and chose instead to fire on me and Aqualad.
Aqualad made a shield with one of his water bearers to shield us from the gunfire and used the other to fire water blasts.
I saw that Superboy was gonna need some help with Mammoth so I joined in on the fight.
Mammoth tried throwing Superboy into the wall, but Superboy grabbed Mammoth by his overgrown slightly deformed arm and punched the beast in his face.
Seeing him momentarily stunned by the blow I flew straight into the chest of Mammoth, pushing him back, I then fired my eye beams at Mammoth which pushed him back even further, giving Superboy an opportunity to assault him with a barrage of punches.
Meanwhile, Aqualad was being pushed back by the ongoing fire from the culitists and was about to be ambushed by two culitists until Kid Flash ran towards them and kicked them away.
Then, three more cultists appeared and started shooting at him making him take cover. Kid Flash was running around and hitting more and more culitists, knocking them out, but since he wasn't bulletproof he had to be careful, since a moment of inattention could prove fatal.
Things were heating up and I didn't like the idea of my more squishy teammates under such heavy fire, so I decided I might as well give the cultists a bigger target to lessen the pressure on them.
"Superboy, uppercut his face. I'll do the rest." I told him.
He noddded and did just that sending Mammoth into the air. I then hit him with another eye-beam using the pig talisman's power, which pushed him towards the incoming cultists.
I started using the dragon talismans power to summon dragon fire into my hand and focused on making it as compact as possible and threw it down on the ground. It exploded and knocked them away from us.
Mammoth was proving too hard to put down, so with no other choice I used my monkey talisman's power to transform into what I dubbed my 'Shendu' form.
In moments I was covered in green scales and soon enough I was standing at 20 feet. I let out a roar that practically shook the ground and rattled their bones, some of the cultists dropped their weapons and ran away, while others began laying down more fire at me.
Kid Flash shout of astonishment only cemented how surreal my transformation must have looked like.
" Holy Shit! He really can turn into a dragon." Kid Flash bellowed.
As this was going on Sportsmaster who was trying to retreat, broke out into a cold sweat at the sight of the 20 foot dragon man. Luckily, his mission was to deliver the modified serum to the Light, not get into unnecessary fights.
Coming closer to the helicopter he arrived on, he noticed a faint shimmer in the air near the helicopters.
Luckily for him it seemed the heat sensor he had installed into his mask was able to pick up on the heat signature of an invisible enemy.
He pulled what looked like a metal pipe from his belt, which then extended into a javelin. He then hurled it at the shimmer.
The invisible figure dodged, but the explosive within the javelin went off, sending the now visible Miss Martian flying.
' I've been made and currently engaged in combat with Sportsmaster.' Miss Martin's panicked voice sounded out in our minds.
' Try and delay him until we get to you. Mammoth is proving more of a nuisance than I thought. We'll lead him into the tunnels and trap him there.'
We managed to push him towards the tunnels and soon enough we had him hemmed in into the tunnels.
"Superboy, help me destroy the support beams." I said to him.
Superboy gave me a nod and we both hit the closest one near us and instantly the tunnel started to collapse.
With Mammoth trapped we were free to deal with Kobra and the rest of the cultists.
"Hey guys, I just disabled the signal scrambler and sent out a message to the league. I'm on my way to assist with the fighting." Robin announced through our communication system.
As I sped through the area, knocking over cultists in my path, I noticed Bane had escaped during the chaos. "Bane's gone, but let's focus on stopping Sportsmaster from getting away with the serum. " I directed the team.
Suddenly, Kid Flash was immobilized by a bola from Sportsmaster when he tried to run through and take him out.
Megan swooped in, using her telekinesis to hurl rocks at Sportsmaster, who retaliated with a laser-equipped hockey stick. He also started throwing exploding hockey pucks at us.
Curiously, all his gear seemed sports-themed.
Robin engaged Kobra in hand-to-hand combat, but Kobra effortlessly countered every move.
I intervened, blasting Kobra away with my pyrokineses, Kobra got up from the ground and looked at his chest and saw his burned and red skin. He glared at me and said.
"You have made an enemy with a God, demon. " he said to me as he backed away into the darkness of the forest.
"We will meet again and when that day comes, you will feel my wrath." He then disappeared.
I rolled my eyes. ' What a drama queen.'
I tried to track him to see if he was in the forest but I got nothing. I had to admit that he was as good as Batman with the disappearing act.
Meanwhile, Sportsmaster was already in the helicopter with the suitcase containing the serums.
"Thanks for the work out but I got to run." He said to me as he threw a grenade at me and Megan.
Little did I realize the grenade wasn't a standard grenade, it was an incendiary grenade. This lead to Megan letting out a shout of pain and falling into the ground hard.
I quickly rushed to her side and after a bit of healing and confirming Megan's safety. "Are you ok? " I asked worryingly.
"Yeah, I'm fine he just caught me by surprise and I couldn't dodge in time." She smiled in response.
"Did you do it ?" I asked her seriously.
" I messed with a few components in the engine, and emptyed the fuel tanks." She responded.
In the distance we could hear an explosion and saw the helicopter crash somewhere in the forest.
" That won't be enough to do him in, but at the very least it should give him some trouble." I sighed.
I looked to M'gann " Were you able to get the other thing?"
"I did it while he was busy with Kid Flash. " She told me with a smile and revealed 8 viles of Kobra Venom.
I looked at her with excitement that my plan actually worked and proceed to hug her and kiss her on the cheek. She blushed with her face being as red as her hair. Everyone saw this and smiled, but I caught the slight look of disappointment on Kid Flash's face.
" I guess we now know who our new team leader is," Robin said to me and then gestured to the wreckage nearby, "Automatically making you the right guy to explain this mess to Batman."
I ended the hug with M'gann and she started to calm down from the kiss on her cheek.
I looked to Robin who was laughing at the prospect at me being yelled at by Batman but I patted him on the shoulder and said, "I'll just say this was all you and I had to clean up your mess after your ran off on the team and insisted that we take out Sportsmaster."
He stopped laughing and looked at me with a terrified look.
" You're bluffing. " He said.
" Try me. " I said with a mischievous grin.
We then started to head back to the Bio ship and went home. The league should be here soon enough to clean up the stragglers.
Mount Justice: August 4, 01:06 EDT
" This was supposed to be a simple recon mission. " Batman glared at the entire team who had been lined up in front of him. We were all in our cillvilain clothes.
Then Batman continued. "Observe and report those were your mission parameters. You will each receive a written evaluation on your many mistakes, but until then... good job."
He continued after taking in our slightly stunned faces. "Every battle plan changes when we face the enemy for the first time. Success hinges on how we adapt to the unexpected and who we trust to lead. Bringing back samples of the venom and stopping its distribution to the funders is commendable. It appears Cadmus requires further scrutiny. The notion of another organization financing this operation alongside Cadmus is now on our radar. "
Robin and I looked at each other, knowing full well that this was just the beginning.
Something about Cadmus was niggling at the back of my mind though.
I knew that the Light was funding it behind the scenes more specifically Lex luthor. This serum the Kobra Venom and them cloning Superboy from Superman's Kryptonian cells it was all part of some big plan of theirs.
I think I need to find a way to better remember what I watched on the show all those years ago because the feeling of dread whenever I thought about the Light and more specifically Cadmus was increasing ever since I got back from the mission.
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A/N: End of the Santa Prisca arc.
Next chapter MC will start exploring the mask he received and perhaps find a way to retrieve his memories regarding the world he currently inhabits.
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