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Parallels	By : sirensoundwave Category: DC Verse Cartoons > Young Justice Views: 3184 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Plot and anything you don't recognize, mine. Everything else (Young Justice or any characters licensed by DC) belongs to their respective creators/writers/artists. Just know I make no profit off of this and shut up about it...m'kay?

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
- 14
Sup. This is Rocket's chapter. I will admit I don't know much about her beyond how she met Icon. I know almost as little about Icon. So I'm gonna make it up. The only Dakotaverse hero I know anything about is Static since Gear was actually modelled after Virgil's gay best friend Rick Stone (who as far as I can tell had no abilities other than talking Virgil into not going off half cocked) and does not exist in the Milestone Media comics. There's more I could rant about but I have a feeling some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. I like Gear though so he and Static will be mentioned with a bit of creative licensing (...it's been off the air how many years? I FORGOT stuff). Everyone's favorite firebug too. The II after Icon's real name is a typo in chapter 3. It should be IV.
Warning: Static Shock was toned down A LOT to be suitable for a Saturday morning cartoon show. Actually, every comic book has been.
Mad World covered by Gary Jules starts us off.
Plot and anything you don't recognize, mine. Everything else belongs to their respective creators/writers/artists. There are too many to list. Just know I make no profit off of this and shut up about it...m'kay?
Chapter 13
Mad World
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world
Mad world
This was shaping up to be an interesting day. Raquel still had water in her ears from the amusement park but it hadn't dulled her hearing. If she still felt like herself, she would have belted that son of a bitch right in his face for making Kal cry like that. She never knew her folks either but she was pretty sure she knew who they had been. Her mother had been a firefighter. Her dad was a police officer.
Which made it so messed up that they died while off duty during the riots. Their family had been out shopping when the madness started. She, her sister and their aunt were the only ones to survive the crash. Still Lenora Ervin was badly scarred on her back and hands trying to get to the infant Raquel out of her car seat as the sedan burned. All she had to show for it was a funny scar on her foot that had faded.
She knew her aunt felt guilty for not saving her own brother but Raquel had seen the death certificates in the attic; the two of them had died on impact. The car seat and a bundle of clothes she had been playing with protected her. Her Aunt Lenora and 6 year old sister Della only lived because they were about to get into the car when the van plowed into them.
She knew her Auntie Nora was doing the best she could it was just...she saw no future for herself. She wanted to be a writer when she was little. Unfortunately, she could never seem to figure out what to write about. As she grew she realized just how bad her neighborhood really was. It wasn't safe to be out after dark. At age 9, she watched a guy get shot for his Fubu jacket right outside their building. Then the mugger beat him to death for getting blood on it. The police came but what could they do? Guy was already dead and everyone else knew what happened to snitches.
By highschool, some of the girls she knew were expecting children; for at least one, her second. Her first boyfriend tried to get her in the same boat. But what made her lose hope completely? Della died of a drug overdose. Della, the one who had been a star student and was well on her way to being the first in their family to earn a scholarship, fell apart. It was a slow process but she started acting weird and disappearing for days at a time. She accused Auntie Nora of messing with her dreams so she would forget their parents. Of trying to steal their beauty to cover her burns. She said the voodoo already worked on Raquel who was 11 at the time. The day she ran away, she broke every mirror in the house so Aunt Lenora couldn't find her. She ended up becoming a crack addicted prostitute, which did not help with her delusions.
Raquel decided right then that there was no hope for getting out of Paris Island Dakota's ghetto. Crime had taken away her folks and burdened her Aunt with responsibilities and guilt that should not have been hers. The streets and schizophrenia murdered her sister. It crushed her dreams into nothing. She did the only thing she could think of not to feel totally helpless. She joined a gang.
A few years later, the Big Bang happened and crime got much worse. The police also got help against the super powered villains in the form of Static Shock. Later Gear, Shebang and RubberbandMan (part time) joined the fight. Seeing the strange relationship between Hotstreak, a known hood who became a pyrokinetic (and slightly psychotic) Bang Baby and Gear made her think a little. Hotstreak tried his damndest to kill Static but he seemed less aggressive with his partner. When they fought, the pyro's attacks were often a little off target and only grazed the techie. He once threw the smaller blonde across the street when a building was collapsing onto them both. Generating enough heat to melt the brick and metal protected him. Not many noticed he'd saved a hero but she did. And so did Gear.
Alva Industries created an antidote to the mutigen that cured the metas of Dakota. Even the heroes began losing their powers. Ebon and Hotstreak decided to set off a second bang and ended up fusing into a monster with both their powers. There was enough gas left to restore Static and Gear's powers and they defeated the creature aboard an old ship. Days after the last fight, the red and blonde haired youth was found half dead in the harbor.
He still had his fire abilities but this time doctors not on Alva's payroll discovered something about the effects of the gas by studying him and the few remaining meta criminals. It had an 87% chance of causing some form mental illness, especially if there was any predisposition to such conditions. Something Alva Industries already knew. Most were just troubled young people who got worse after exposure. Unfortunately reexposure made the cure useless. Their very powers were driving them insane; Static and Gear had chosen to get help (from the JLA) when they noticed it the first go around and RubberbandMan just turned out to be lucky; Shebang's abilities were from a genetic experiment so she wasn't affected. There was a chance, if one was willing, to get better. The city's heroes were proof of that. Especially after Hotstreak agreed to go through treatment in order to get his life together at Gear's insistence.
Even with her doubts about the path she was on, she did not leave the Griffins. That turned out to be a good thing. If she and her crew hadn't broken into that house (and gotten tossed about like toys) she never would have learned lawyer Augustus Freeman IV was an alien. Or had that argument with said alien leading to him become Icon. And her becoming Rocket.
Yes. Icon would not exist if she didn't point out that Dakota and the world could be a safer place if he used the gifts he had naturally. He could do what so many wished they had the chance to. Make a difference.
Of course there were conditions. She had to give up her gang membership and ditch her thuggish friends. She had to get serious about school again. Late patrol and crime fighting could not be valid excuses for not doing assignments unless she was injured. Most importantly, she had to commit to working on her writing. Even if it was only a journal entry a day.
She was happy to find someone who cared as much about her future and her as her Aunt Nora. Someone else who didn't make fun of her dreams and encouraged her to move forward. Even if he was a stick in the mud.
Then she almost died and it happened.
If she felt like she was an outsider among those who were supposed to be her people before the feeling multiplied after it happened but only Icon, the Dakota heroes and the League's medical staff knew exactly what it was. Her former friends also called her sell out and the taunting got worse when Kaldur started to visit. Just a few weeks prior to the attack at the cave, someone broke into their house. She was not about hurt his feelings by telling him that though. She had changed her outlook some but she was still a girl from the hood. Why couldn't they see that?
Her avatar RoqitRiter helped her deal with that. She could meet people who identified with being alone and unable to relate to others that society lumped them together with. After all, KSK was where it was okay to let your freak flag fly.
*I am bum...bum...bum...a line break!*
Icon was just about to rush back to the upper levels when he received the com that things were under control. He had elected to go down into the basement and check on the hub that controlled the Cave. It was clear that there was surface damage to the base but if the hub (which also contained the cave's power source) was comprised, things could go very bad, very fast. He had the best chance of containing the energy long enough for evacuation should the hub go critical. And living through the blast.
The time alone allowed him to think.
A year ago, he had been just trying to live out his life. Well, the current one. Having crashed here on earth in the 1800's he was currently impersonating the 4th generation of his own line. He had only a vague idea where he was really from or what he really was until he joined the league. Something he owed to Raquel. No matter how unfortunate the circumstances.
When a slave woman opened his escape pod all those years ago, she triggered the DNA scanner that disguised him as a human baby. Thinking he was an answer to her prayers, she named him Augustus and raised him on the plantation where she was owned. He realized soon after maturity that he was not like his fellow slaves. He could work longer and harder than those of equal size. His ability to heal kept him from getting sick. The list was quite long. He began to fear what others may do if they realized he was not quite human. Not to himself, but to his mother Miriam who several overseers had already rumored to be a witch.
Learning of the move many were making westward, he gathered his courage and ran taking his mother with him. She made it as far as the Platte River Valley in Nebraska along the Oregon trail before succuming to typhoid fever. When he was ready to give up, his mother used the last of her strength to slap him as hard as she could.
"You's gonna die a free man Augustus. But not here! When I pass on, you's gonna bury me. You's gonna cry a spell. Then yous gonna car'y your gre' big black buttocks 'cross them mountains you he'r me? God ain't car'y us dis far for you's ta give up jus cus I'ma gone home."
And he did just that. He'd lived all over the country, watched America expand and grow over the last two centuries. As things began to change for black people, he found himself drawn to helping those in need. He became a lawyer to fight for the little guy in an arena they often lost in alone. He became determined to show that just because he looked a certain way did not mean he ignorant. Over the years he took to assuming the identity of his own son. How else did you hide the fact that you did not age?
Then, he began to lose sight of why he became who he was. He never forgot his mother, he never could. Just that he started to lose hope for those he had wanted to help. Augustus became disgusted with how so many opportunities were afforded to the youth of the day but they passed them up to drink, gamble, be a menace to society, then have the nerve to complain about how "the system was holding them down". Meeting Raquel was like a sucker punch to the face.
Here was a child that had big dreams shattered by urban plight. The violence and drugs had taken every one but her Aunt from her. She lived in a place where she had to carry a switchblade in the fifth grade in order to get to her school bus stop safely. She learned martial arts and gymnastics not as recreation but to give her the edge in a brawl. Raquel was intelligent beyond her years, a talented writer and naturally scientific mind, but it was hardly ever encouraged unless at home.
Wanting so much to belong, she purposely pretended to shave nearly 40 points off of her IQ. She coasted through school because the teachers didn't want to keep dealing with the same 'problem' children year after year. One really couldn't blame them though. Teachers had so little resources they were forced to pick and chose between those who showed they might have a shot and those going nowhere in life. And they were obviously not qualified to make that distinction. The poor girl had been conditioned to believe things would not get better no matter what she did. So why bother?
Yes, the system had been keeping her down. Or at least it was letting her potential slip away.
So, when she and four other teens broke into his house and he was forced to fight them, both he and her got a wake up call. Raquel cleverly deduced that he was not an ordinary man from his use of his strength and reflexes while her cohorts just ran away terrified. That the stuffy lawyer could fight for what was right beyond the courtroom. And showed up the next day to apologize. Then yell at him for sitting on his ass all this time and letting three kids (and occasionally one grown man) fight the city's outrageous crime rate alone. She demanded, yes demanded, that he do something and let her help him do it. Even after the Second Big Bang, there were still people with metahuman powers. Natural mutations and other accidents still occurred. There were also still those who would rather use their minds for evil and invented things that aided them. The argument lasted a week. In a month, Icon and Rocket made their debut much to the relief of the citizens and acceptance of Static and his crew.
A month prior to joining the JLA and YJ, the two once again argued. This time about the membership. Static and Gear had flat out refused to leave Dakota City when they were offered slots. Virgil would not leave his father, sister and stepmother unprotected and Richard would not leave his lover Francis for fear he may go back to a life of crime if his issues got too much to handle alone while he was away. It was why both went to the local university instead of a) MIT that would have thrown money by the truckload at Richard (Gear) or b) Harvard Medical that would have flipped over Virgil (Static).
Icon did not feel comfortable leaving, it felt like he would be abandoning them even though he still would live there. Rocket protested that because he wasn't literally moving they weren't leaving. Then the two were attacked by a villain that could cancel out machinery. While trying to shield her, Icon was shot and the bullet passed clean through him. Straight through the now useless Inertia belt around Rocket's waist as well. Static did not have the knowledge to repair the damage done to her body on site but he did keep her alive long enough for the Watchtower to be contacted after their foe was defeated.
Mr. Terrific got there, medikit in hand, just in time to see the belt reactivate and charge up. Rocket was bathed in her trademark lavender hue and her breathing steadied. On the station, it was determined that Icon's DNA had been carried on the round and reacted with the same technology that disguised him as a baby. It fused with Rocket's healing her and making her 20% Terminian, his race. She would retain a limited form of his healing ability. This did nothing to reassure her when she tried to remove her costume and blacked out from the intense pain of attempting to remove the belt. It was the same thing as if she had tried to hack off her own arm. Alien DNA and tech had permanently bonded to her. Icon acquiesced to her request that he join the League but only so that she could receive care if her body began to reject it's new enhancements.
She had joked about being able to wear cool bling now that she could will the belt into whatever she wanted but he knew she felt like even more of an outsider because of it. Watching her pretend she was someone else just to talk to people she once considered friends in Dakota was a good indicator. RoquitRiter was just a front so she didn't completely lose contact with the Griffins. From his observations, they had no idea who she really was but maintaining those friendships was worrying to him. Watching her battle like a gladiator, party and cause mischief with them one day then be part of a short story critique the next after saving the city showed she couldn't break free of internal conflict in her second life online. The one that was supposed to be an escape.
He sighed and rubbed the one scar that had never faded along his jawline. The place both his mother and Lenora Ervin hit him decades apart. One with a delicate hand tring to give him perspective. The other with a very heavy mahogany chair trying to cause brain damage.
*I am bum...bum...bum...a line break!*
So, how'd I do? I will not apologize for messing with stuff but I want to know if this chapter was at all believable even to fans of the Milestone Media comics (if any happen to be reading). Up next, we see how poorly Nabu has dealt with Zatanna's feelings and just what happened to show him the taint of chaos magic in her. We also see how helpless Giovanni is to comfort his daughter. Spoiler: She's actually the first to go off on her 'mentor' in a Smackdown-esque manner. The twins are a observed closely by the good Doctor too. Next song, Made of Scars by Stone Sour.
New Ranking
Miss M/ Manhunter: Closest to openly communicating. Most likely to mend first.
Rocket/Icon: Both understand but don't know the other does. Need a tiny push.
Artemis/Green Arrow: She wants a dad, he wants a daughter. Both are stubborn. Tch, Arrows.
Robin/Batman: Two emotionally stunted people who need help communicating. Badly. Possibly counseling.
Aqualad/Aquaman: Trust issues abound. That "fall back I'll catch you" exercise isn't gonna fix this.
Superboy/Superman: Still a FEMA level disaster requiring divine intervention; which has been received and is about to get a boost.
Peace yo. Sirensoundwave out.
- 12
- 13
- 14
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Parallels