🚨🚨🚨Read my new story Peter Parker: To Think is To Choose.✅✅✅
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"Power without identity is a storm without a sky — it destroys, not defines."
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The basement of the Hall of Justice had never felt so full.
Robin's boots tapped lightly against the polished floor, eyes darting between his new teammates — Aqualad, stoic and focused as always and Kid Flash, who was pretending to be calm but couldn't stop vibrating his leg.
Superboy sat apart from them — tense, arms crossed, staring at nothing.
He hadn't said a word since the League brought him up from Cadmus.
The air was thick with silence and unspoken questions.
"Batman said someone was coming to talk to him." Robin muttered.
"Who?" Asked Kid Flash, craning his neck toward the door.
Before anyone could answer, the temperature seemed to shift.
The light dimmed — not because it grew darker, but because something had entered that made brightness itself hesitate.
King stepped inside.
Simple clothes — Hawaiian shirt, dark pants, unadorned. The shirt was a gift from Ace. In her defence it made him look a tad bit less like a walking reminder of perpetual disappointment for everyone. No symbols, no cape, no armor. Yet the air pressed down like gravity itself acknowledged him and he did all that in a Hawaiian shirt.
The trio fell silent. Even Superboy's defiance cracked for a second.
Batman gave a curt nod. "He asked for time alone with the boy."
Robin's eyes widened. "King? Alone with Superboy?"
King's calm gaze flicked toward him. "You can stay, Robin. You've already seen what truth costs. As for Kid Flash? Stop tapping your foot."
Batman's eyes narrowed— the faintest trace of approval — before he and the other mentors stepped out. The door closed. Silence swallowed the room.
The Mirror of Origin
Superboy stood as King approached, fists clenched. "Who are you supposed to be? Another one of them?"
King tilted his head. "Them?"
"The heroes," Superboy said, voice sharp. "The ones who think I'm some lab project gone wrong."
King stopped a few feet away. "Are you?"
Superboy froze. "What?"
"Are you a mistake?" King asked, his tone calm — terrifyingly calm. "Or are you a man?"
Superboy's jaw tightened. "I didn't choose to be made."
"No one does," King said. "You think the world asked to be born? Or that I did?"
Superboy looked confused, angry. "You don't understand. I'm— I'm half human, half—"
"Half afraid." King interrupted. "Half trying to prove you belong to a father who can't look at you without seeing his own imperfection."
Superboy's breath caught. His voice cracked with a mix of rage and grief.
"You don't know him!"
"I know men." King said, taking a step closer. "I know the kind who raise suns and then hide from the light."
Wally looked between them nervously. "Uh, should we—?"
Aqualad placed a hand on his shoulder. "No. Let it happen."
King's voice grew softer. "You think you need to earn your name, clone. But names are not earned. They're carried — until they fit."
Superboy's fists trembled. "Stop calling me that."
King's eyes glowed faintly — not with light, but with comprehension. "Then tell me what you are, clone."
Superboy's voice cracked again. "I'm— I'm—"
King pressed. "Say it, clone."
"I'M NOT HIM!"
The words ripped through the air, raw and thunderous.
Energy burst around him, cracking the ground beneath his feet.
Then silence.
King didn't flinch. He simply waited.
Finally, he said, "Good. Now we can begin."
Superboy blinked through the haze of his anger. "Begin… what?"
"Becoming." King said quietly. "The process of unlearning what others made you and discovering what you choose to be."
The Watcher in the Shadow
From the upper level of the observation deck, Superman watched unseen behind one way glass.
Bruce stood beside him, arms folded.
Clark's expression was unreadable — a storm behind calm eyes.
"He's… helping him." Clark said finally.
Bruce's voice was low. "He's teaching him what you couldn't."
Clark turned sharply. "You think I didn't want to help him?"
"I think you didn't know how." Bruce replied. "You've spent your life being the man who can fix anything — except people."
Below, Superboy had stopped trembling. King was speaking softly but every word hit like a hammer shaping steel.
"Do you know why you have his eyes?" King asked the boy. "Not to remind you who you're from but to show you who you can surpass."
Superboy looked up at him, defiance turning to focus.
King continued, "You're not the shadow of a god. You're the reflection of humanity's persistence. You were made to replace if something beyond human broke — so stop living as though you're its failure."
For the first time, Superboy's voice was steady. "Then what am I supposed to be?"
King smiled faintly. "Whatever your next breath allows."
The Lesson
The session ended quietly.
Superboy didn't say much but when he turned to leave, he didn't look like a weapon anymore. He looked… like a person trying to be.
Robin, Wally and Aqualad followed behind him, eyes wide with something close to awe.
King turned slightly toward the upper observation window, gaze meeting Clark's through the reinforced glass — as though he had known he was there all along.
Their eyes locked.
King's voice was a whisper but Clark heard it.
"He doesn't need to be a god. He needs to be a man."
Superman looked down, ashamed and for the first time, understood.
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Danzoslayer517
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