Jon Kent: Made Of Steel(Superboy Self Insert)

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(Jon's P.O.V)

I have always known Amanda Waller was dangerous.

But until I was dragged into her office, wrists bound, inhibitor collar digging into my skin, and under the dead-eyed stares of Belle Reve's finest, I hadn't realized just how badly she wanted to 'understand' me.

She stood with her back to me, hands folded behind her back, shoulders squared with the weight of authority.

When she finally turned, her eyes weren't angry or frustrated. They were sharp. Analyzing. Calculating.

I hated that look. It reminded me of myself when I schemed.

"How did you do it?" she asked.

I smiled. "Gonna have to be more specific."

"Twenty thousand dollars in damages and a broken AC machine is more than clear enough." Waller's bald consultant Hugo Strange cut in, studying me like he was assessing my worth.

"The term you're looking for is impressive Mr. Hugo Strange. Maybe even artistic. That is...if I knew what you were referring to. Which I don't." I shrugged.

His face showed no reaction despite the name drop but my new psionic powers detected a disruption in his brain waves.

Waller exhaled, slow and measured. "We know what your abilities are, Dagger. Light-based manipulation. And yet, despite that, despite the dampening field, the inhibitor collar, and every safeguard put in place, you -not popsicle junior over there because the camera feed shows he was asleep- YOU managed to freeze your entire cell. Ice isn't your domain."

I shrugged. "Guess I'm a fast learner."

To my left, Icicle Jr. groaned, rolling his eyes. "Lady, I live with him. He's just as insufferable in private."

Waller ignored him. "No metahuman adapts abilities like that. Not without external influence. So I'll ask again—how did you do it?"

Her gaze sharpened like a scalpel. I could feel the weight of the guards' attention pressing against me, the unspoken threat in the air.

I tilted my head, considering. "Maybe I'm special."

A nod from Waller.

Dull pain exploded in my gut.

Another stun baton cracked against my ribs, electricity ripping through my body. My teeth clenched, back arching as the shock coursed through my nerves.

I staggered to my feet, but didn't fall. Acting is all about weaving lies with reality, hence why I didn't deactivate my pain receptors. I needed to convince her she could harm me.

"That was just a warning," Waller said. "You will answer my question, or I will lock you up in solitary and throw away the key."

I forced down a chuckle, steadied my breathing, straightened my posture, and grinned through the pain. "Go with whatever makes you happy, Waller. I live to serve."

For the first time, something flickered in her gaze.

Annoyance.

She didn't like that I wasn't scared. That I wasn't breaking under the pressure of her little interrogation tricks.

Finally, she waved her hand dismissively.

"Take them to solitary."

"Wait! I didn't do anything! It was all Dagger's fault!" Icicle protested as we were dragged away.

Mission accomplished.

-0-

Solitary confinement wasn't just about isolation.

It was about erasing hope.

No sounds. No windows. No way to mark time. The lights never fully turned off, but they never brightened either, keeping me in a perpetual limbo of fatigue and awareness.

The room was small and bare—concrete, metal, and nothing else. The food arrived at irregular intervals- bland and cold.

They wanted me to lose myself. To let time stretch and bend until I forgot the shape of my own thoughts.

Instead, I used it.

Away from the inmates and guards whose cloud of brain waves had made it hard to think, I could train my newly awakened mental powers. Psionic manipulation was all about using the mind to control things after all.

The first day was spent in meditation, mostly to expand my understanding of mental manipulation and partially to ignore Icicle's complaints from the cell next door.

On the second day, I was good enough to distinguish Icicle's human mind from animals like rats infesting the prison.

Tiny claws skittered through unseen vents. Beady eyes glinted in the dim light, darting across the cracks in the walls.

I reached out to do more than sensing.

At first, their thoughts were nothing but instinct—hunger, fear, survival. They were scattered, always panicked creatures moving on impulse. A behavioral pattern that was hard to break.

But I was patient and learned through misteps. Often at the cost of my target's life when my overwhelming mind snuffed out consciousnesses.

On the fourth day, I pressed gently, nudging their little minds, feeling the push-and-pull of their tiny wills against my own.

Success.

The first one resisted, fought, tried to scurry away. I let it.

The second one hesitated.

The third? It listened. It wasn't about force, it was about deceit. Basically coating my will with a reflection of their own Instincts.

A crackle of awareness spread through my mind.

I was seeing through its eyes.

Moving through its body. Once I had that down, I divided my control through more rats.

The walls of solitary no longer confined me. My mind slithered through vents, down corridors, kitchens to raid for better food, into the spaces guards didn't bother watching.

Piece by piece, I mapped Belle Reve from the inside out.

By the end of the week, I had a complete layout of the prison more detailed than before.

That was also when they took me to 'her' for a 'psych evaluation.'

-0-

Dr. Harleen Quinzel had a way of looking at people like she had already figured them out.

She sat across from me, legs crossed, clipboard resting on her lap, lips curled into something between a smirk and a question.

"So, Dagger, let's talk 'bout you."

I leaned back, matching her smile. "Flattered. But I usually don't open up until the second date."

She snorted, tapping her pen against the clipboard. "Cute. But you and I both know that ain't how this is gonna go."

Her office smelled like vanilla. It was warm, comfortable—almost too comfortable. Designed to make inmates lower their guard.

I didn't lower mine.

The questions started standard. Childhood experiences. Criminal motivations. Thoughts on authority.

I answered in half-truths, dancing around specifics, feeding her just enough to make her curious.

At the same time, I was already working.

Her mind was strong. Walls built from years of dealing with the worst of humanity. But after days of training with the rats, I was confident enough to take a crack at a human mind.

'Even the strongest walls have doors. Just have to find it.'

I nudged.

Not a push. Not a shove.

A tendril of a mental whisper that slipped through her blue eyes and into her mind.

Her thoughts, most of them about me, were too much to take in so I drifted away from them, into something deeper.

Gotcha. I hooked the memories I wanted and pulled them to the forefront.

Her focus shifted from me to the inmates. The suffering she observed but ignored. The collars. The screams at night. The way the guards watched, but never intervened.

Her fingers twitched against the pen.

She didn't speak.

But she was thinking.

I leaned forward, lowering my voice. "You're better than this place, Dr. Quinzel. Don't let Waller turn you into her."

She blinked rapidly, her gaze sharp and searching.

Before she could respond, the guards called the session to an end.

I smirked as I was pulled to my feet.

A seed had been planted. Unknowingly, she would water and nurture it herself. I just had to wait till it bloomed.

Icicle Jr. was sent back to general population after our psych evaluation.

I wasn't.

Back to solitary.

-0-

I sat in my freezing cell, my mind burning with activity.

The mind parasite I had planted in Icicle Jr.'s thoughts was already working, subtle and invisible.

Every person he interacted with—prisoners, guards, staff—would experience a gentle tweak in their memories.

A shift in awareness. They would all slowly forget me. Forget I was still in Solitary. Even Waller.

Meanwhile, my rats continued to spread.

Time for phase two.

The frost-covered floor beneath me had already been weakened, carefully eroded.

I focused on a single rat.

It scurried to the weak point.

I willed it forward.

Crack.

A section of the ground dissolved. The rat dropped through the floor- sliding down on ice, deep, into the Non-human wing of Belle Reve.

And through its eyes, I saw them.

Mutants. Hybrids. Creatures built for war. Beasts with abilities beyond human comprehension, aliens and Atomic Skull. I owed him for flipping me the bird and it was time to collect.

If my first Seed had bloomed through elemental abilities…

Then my second would awaken from them.

I split my mind—one half guiding the rats, the other sinking into deep meditation.

Piece by piece, I was constructing myself into something unstoppable.

(General P.O.V)

-Female Cell Blocks-

The rat scurried through the vents, slipping into a specific cell at the end of the block.

Unlike the rest of the cells, this space looked more like a sanctuary than a holding cell.

Candles burned on bookshelves, books covered in a dark aura floated in midair, and at the center of it all, Raven sat cross-legged, hovering above the floor.

Two female guards stood beside her—one fanning her lazily, the other holding a bowl of grapes.

On a bunk at the corner, Killer Frost sat with her arms crossed, watching with mild amusement.

She reached out for a grape only for A whip of darkness to snap across her hand, forcing her back.

Frost scowled at the forming welt. "You could share, y'know. Like a normal person."

Raven didn't even look at her. "Or you could get your own guards to feed you grapes."

Frost scoffed. "Sparing one wouldn't kill you."

But Raven remained silent.

In truth, she needed everything she could get.

The floating books around her weren't for her reading. They were constructs—manifestations of her power, filled with everything she had learned about abilities from the female inmates.

All of it… compiled for Jon.

She had felt him awaken his psionics. But then… nothing. Silence for a whole week.

Until now.

Raven's eyes flickered.

There was a presence in the room.

"Out," she ordered, her voice cold.

The guards obeyed without question.

Killer Frost hesitated, then frowned as a subtle push in her mind made her get up and leave as well.

The moment the door locked, Raven's darkness lashed out—snaring a small rat from the corner of the room.

It squealed in terror, but she was already diving into its mind.

A flood of information poured into her thoughts.

Jon's mind. His plans. His message.

She exhaled, rubbing her temple before sighing dramatically and flopping onto her bed.

"He's impossible."

A soft chuckle echoed from the crystal pendant around her neck.

"I told you he would be fine," Jor-El's AI murmured.

Raven scowled at the pendant. "He disappears for a week. And then he sends a rat as a messenger? Trust me when I see him, he won't be fine."

Jor-El's voice remained amused. "What did the rat tell you?"

She closed her eyes, her lips curling into a small anticipatory smirk.

"There's going to be a prison break."

Her eyes snapped open, glowing faintly in the dim light.

"And when it happens… that's when we strike."

Finally, she'd be leaving Belle Reve behind. And if it was up to, hopefully as a pile of rubble.