Chapter Text
Match slams Superboy into the ground with a hand on his chest and a swift sweep of his legs. The crater the action makes is minimum 10 foot deep, and he notes the circumference in case it's necessary information later for his report.
"Jesus, fuck, Match—!" Superboy yells, scrambling at the hand now around his throat, squeezing and cutting off oxygen. If Match just presses a little harder, he could crush the idiot's fucking windpipe, and be done hearing his stupid voice at least for a few weeks.
Probably less, with their accelerated healing.
Match was ordered to neutralize Superboy and take him to the Agenda for testing as soon as possible, which meant right away. Match had flown into explosions and smoke, screaming and clanging, clearly some sort of battle that the Young Justice were having, but that wasn't important.
His mission was of the utmost priority.
Match leans his weight, and by extension his TTK, down harder on Superboy to press him more firmly to the rocks. Their body was used to more extremes than a standard human body, so Superboy had to be deprived of oxygen for longer to cause loss of consciousness. Not much longer now though.
Except, right when he thinks he's about to succeed in his mission with little resistance and a stellar time, he hears a gun go off. Now, there's been guns going off this whole time, accompanying the sound of screams or metal clanging. This time, though, the gun sounds wrong, like it's scratching at the inside of his ears, and then he feels…
White hot fire envelops his body, and it's only his practice with being awake for surgeries that he is able to clench his TTK down on his jaw muscles before he can scream. His TTK doesn't seem to reach his fingers though, and they go from tightly gripping Superboy's throat to spasming and twitching with little regard for the way he orders them.
The electricity and hot fire is flooding his veins though, and he can think little else before everything goes black.
When awareness comes back into his body, he's in a new place. Match doesn't open his eyes, and keeps his breathing deep and even, to trick his captors into thinking he's still unconscious while he recovers and reorients.
He reaches out with his TTK that had been wrapped tightly around his body to inspect the area he's in, but it's… wrong. It's reaching a much smaller portion of the setting he's in than it theoretically, and usually practically, could. It's… not worrisome, but at least noteworthy.
He initially thinks the room he's in, a tight five by five foot space, is a cell, but with a finer investigation of the corners and locks, it seems it's a repurposed interrogation room. He can only stretch his TTK to down the hall, and the surrounding rooms which aren't much bigger, and have no people in them. There is a camera situated in the corner of the room he's in, and matching ones in all adjacent rooms, including the hallway.
He can't reach any further, and has extended the length of time investigating with only TTK far enough, so he brings it back to surround his body and—
… what.
His eyes shoot open with no regard for standard procedure in a kidnapping situation and he immediately sits up to look down at his hands. They're… small. Incredibly small. Smaller than they've ever been while his programming has been up, or as Superboy would say, than he's been "awake." Even his cuticles are small, he notes, even though that should be a given, since he seems to have shrunk nearly proportionally.
He turns them over and looks at his palms, the fine lines of fingerprints there. He's never had fingerprints before. The Agenda removed his before he ever even "woke up." He didn't need them to impersonate Superboy; Cadmus removed his too. It was written in their coding, the idea that he has fingerprints now alludes to the magical nature of his situation.
He's never been this small, or had fingerprints, or anything of the sort. His coding was written to be a teenager, and so he never had been a child like this. Whatever spell he was hit with must have just extrapolated data from what he looked like to create a toddler version of him, and not actually sent him back in time.
This is so annoying.
He feels… He doesn't feel anything. He doesn't have emotions, he is a weapon. Yet, a burning behind his eyes presses forward. Why did he have to be hit by whatever magical being the Young Justice was failing to apprehend this time? He had things to do, he had to report back to the scientists at the Agenda, the ones that work under Waller.
He would go back, have the scientists fix this ridiculous body modification, and then finish his mission to secure Superboy. They might need to wait some time, though, since the Young Justice would be on guard for weeks now, after Match's failed mission.
It's so irritating. The burning sensation behind his eyes gets worse, and he wonders if his heat vision is malfunctioning due to the age change. His vision doesn't go red, though, simply blurry.
A hitched breath makes him (not jump, he doesn't jump, he doesn't startle, all of those unnecessary reactions were programmed out of him) look around, but there's no one else in the impromptu made cell. He reaches his TTK out and doesn't feel anyone around as far as he can reach. That's fine, he does best when on his own. He was made to be an independent weapon, and so long as it has orders, a weapon can run itself.
His vision goes blurrier, and he stops his perusal of the room to feel them with one of his hands. The co-ordination in his hands is messier than usual, probably part of the magical age regression, and so all he can manage is balling up a chubby, small fist, and rubbing one eye. His hand comes back slick and wet.
His eyes are leaking salt water, in a way that people call 'crying.'
He, quickly, rubs the other one, and tamps down the burning feeling as much as he can, to hide the evidence. He's never cried before, he's a weapon, he doesn't need to cry because he doesn't feel emotions. (He doesn't know how they'll punish behavior indicating emotion, he doesn't want to be punished.)
Match doesn't want anything, a punishment would simply waste precious planning time and be a loss of resources while he recovered.
He walks over to where the door has a small window in the middle and presses his TTK into the metal seams to unscrew the bolts keeping the door in place in its frame, and get it to fall. Instead, his TTK bumps uselessly against the bolts, jolting around, and then returning back to his body, wrapping itself tightly around him. (It feels like someone holding an arm over his shoulders, if he pretends.)
He huffs, annoyed and slams his hands into the door, trying to shove his TTK into all the cracks and crevices. It twiches and reaches out, but doesn't go further than his hands. He tries to grunt and press harder, put the TTK behind his hands to make him stronger, to push through the door—
The only sound that comes out of him is a young sounding squeak and the door stays stubbornly unmoved.
His eyes burn again. This really is so irritating.